Let’s Go On a Diet!
Whenever there is ‘diet’, many people will associate it with losing weight. This is not entirely wrong, because losing weight is also one of the goals of the diet. But what kind of losing weight needs to be emphasized? Is it a condition when a person will lose weight until only bones are covered with skin? Or an adult who weighs like a child? If your answer is yes, then there is definitely something wrong with your diet.
What is actually diet?
When you hear your friend say that she/he is on a diet, or when you say that you are on a diet, all thoughts will generally be focused on the desire to reduce weight by reducing the number of food portions and limiting the amount and type of food. Not a few also think that diet is an eating pattern that tortures themselves and makes people who do it suffer because they cannot eat the food they like, on the contrary, they should only eat food that are generally avoided by many people.
This is what needs to be cleared from an understanding of diet. Diet refers to the food and drink a person consumes daily and the mental and physical circumstances connected to eating. In other words, diet can also be defined as eating patterns that are done regularly or become habits.
See! From those definitions, it does not say that diet is an eating pattern to get a skinny body. So, people who go on a diet are not just people who want to lose weight. Diets are also carried out by people who want to gain weight, recover from illness or for those who want to maintain a stable health and weight.
What to do before diet?
Yulia Baltschun, a fitness and diet specialist, wrote in her book I Hate Diet that there are at least two main things to consider before starting a diet. First is when you start a diet, it means you start to touch the science of the body and food. This is certainly not an easy thing because you will need time, effort and even money to learn it. So, from here you will realise the second thing before starting a diet that you should not focus on momentary goal or target. For instance, like you want to lose 10kg for your graduation ceremony or you want your stomach to be flat at your wedding reception.
Diet has a goal to have an ideal body by improving body composition to be balanced and healthy. To achieve this goal, we certainly need patience and consistency. Patience that the body needs a process to reach its best condition, it will not be a short time but adjust to how many ‘problems’ the body needs to fix. Then there is consistency, which when we have achieved our ‘body goal’, it does not mean that we are free to do anything. Including eating carelessly just like before we went on a diet. Because the body that is ‘already’ healthy must be maintained. That is why diet is also known as a sustainable lifestyle in order to achieve and maintain the best body condition.
So, are you ready to go on a diet?
-Northern Ingo-
