Riley Houston RD
- July 26, 2022
- 3:37 pm
I love food, especially eating, but dieting not so much, which is ironic coming from a registered dietitian (RD)- diet is literally in my job title.
This is because a diet takes commitment and discipline, but most importantly, dieting needs a reason, which I don’t have, and why would I? I don’t have kidney damage, my liver and intestines are working well, and I’m not trying to reach new aesthetics and performance in the gym. Although, this doesn’t mean I don’t follow healthy eating practices.
The term diet is thrown around a lot today – especially over social media from self-proclaimed nutrition experts, biohackers, and most Facebook users with too much time on their hands – diet and its meaning have become convoluted, ambiguous, and a word that everybody knows but few can explain.
What is a diet?
Technically, diet is defined by any food or drink in terms of its qualities, composition, and effect on health. Therefore, anything and everything we consume can be considered part of our diet – even wine.
What does everyone mean when talking about diets? A dietitian talking about a diet refers to carefully selecting foods for a specific purpose. Everyone has unique eating habits, food likes, dislikes, allergies, intolerances, health, and socioeconomic status. A diet should be updated and ‘tweaked’ at least once a month to account for changes.
In terms of health, the diet of someone with kidney failure will require protein and electrolyte restrictions and higher energy requirements (depending on the progression of the disease and other factors such as dialysis). In contrast, someone with an auto-immune disease such as SLE will require a diet much higher in protein, omega 6’s, and altered quantities of micronutrients, such as more Selenium for antioxidant function or lower Iron to starve any infections of oxygen. Both will need some form of diet to help improve their health and quality of life.
Further, a professional athlete (let’s say an Olympic gymnast who’s training 6-7 days a week for roughly 5 hours a day) and a bodybuilder (who wants to pick up lean muscle and lift heavier who’s at the gym five days a week for 60 – 90 minutes a day) will both need a diet. But these diets would completely differ from macronutrients and micronutrients to fluid intake. However, a healthy individual who does cardio 3-4 days a week for the health benefits wouldn’t necessarily need to follow a diet. However, all of these scenarios need to follow healthy eating.
As I’ve said, a diet needs to be specific for each individual, so why are there so many diets around and endorsed by professionals? Well, these diets, such as the Mediterranean diet, DASH diet and Flexitarian diet, as well as so many others, all follow very similar concepts of lower refined carbohydrate intake, high-quality protein sources, lower saturated fats, higher unsaturated fats, and a modest intake of fruits, vegetables, dairy and water. They serve as guidelines to make adaptions to your current eating habits. Many diets prescribed by RDs and nutritionists use these as the base of their prescriptions. So although they aren’t explicitly programmed for you, we still consider their diets.
Find out what diet works for you – let’s talk.
Dieting vs Healthy Eating
As a dietitian, I tend to get challenged by people trying to force their beliefs about food and nutrition on me. But the most outstanding issue I’ve encountered is how people use diet and healthy eating interchangeably. Sure, a good diet should be healthy, but eating healthy doesn’t mean you’re dieting, and not every diet is healthy – such as the air diet (a diet based on getting all your nutrients from the air).
For example, a liquid diet is commonly used to prepare for Barium swallows or to help recover after extensive bowel surgery, but it wouldn’t be considered healthy; stay on it for more than a week and guaranteed to become deficient in something. Likewise, the diet of a pro-boxer a month before their weigh-in is likely to be unhealthy due to severe fluid and calorie restrictions, but they are still diets nonetheless.
Healthy eating is simply eating moderate and varied foods that include all the macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals needed to stay alive and prevent any adverse effects (such as malnutrition). Without healthy eating, humans wouldn’t be where we are today. If our forager ancestors didn’t roam around snacking on a wide array of nuts, seeds, berries and vegetables whilst occasionally hunting down meat or fish, we wouldn’t have developed and evolved into today’s society.
Unhealthy eating arguably started during the agricultural revolution. Still, it only started presenting after the industrial revolution after food processing. Then, mass production developed – coincidentally a few decades before dieting rose in popularity – where people had easy access to an unnatural quantity of foods which they chose to consume, mostly refined food of excessive amounts while eating very little of anything else (such as vegetables).
The first book published on the concept of dieting was in the 19th century titled Letter on Corpulence by William Banting (not the banting you’re thinking of) – It was more of a pamphlet (22 pages). He wrote the book after taking his ENT’s advice to lose weight, cut out most carbohydrates, and switch to fruits, vegetables, and meats (keep in mind most of his carbohydrates come from sugars and sweets). He successfully lost weight by changing his eating habits, and his quality of life improved – his periodic deafness disappeared, and he found himself walking up a flight of stairs without passing out. This is considered a diet because he changed his eating habits and followed a specific diet plan (which follows healthy eating habits) to improve his health. So he followed a diet that encompassed healthy eating.
When, Why and How you should start a Diet
If you’ve ever talked to someone who’s followed a diet that worked for them, then I’m sure they have told you how life-changing it is and that you should follow their diet. Although it’s not that simple, who’s to say that diet will work for you? How do you know the portions are sufficient, or you’ll get all the nutrients you need in a day?
The first thing to consider is how to benefit from a diet. Committing to a diet – changing your eating habits – is a commitment. You need a reason; otherwise, you won’t be able to stick to it. On the other hand, if you find benefits and willingness to make a change, then perhaps a diet is worth it.
Before buying a diet plan online, make sure to do some research to see if your current eating habits need a complete change or some slight adjustments. Research your country’s food and dietary-based guidelines, food pyramids and models you can find on government websites. Learning those guidelines can help analyse your current intake and give you somewhere to start making a change. Try those recommendations for a month before making any massive changes, but if those aren’t an option for you, then consider a diet.
The easiest and safest way to create and follow a diet is through a qualified dietitian or nutritionist – Important that registered dietitians are the only professionals qualified to formulate and prescribe any diet relating to health. Most diet plans sold online are generic and written by unqualified people who firstly can put your health at risk and move you further away from your goals than when you started. I’ve seen diets that prescribe insulin to non-diabetics, tell you to eat over a kilogram of full-fat cream cheese a day, and those that suggest starvation is the answer.
A qualified RD/nutritionist can design a diet plan tailored for you to meet all your nutritional requirements and help you achieve your goal. They look at your current eating habits, food choices, and lifestyle to create a plan for you using the scientific method (literally the only proven and supported approach). They will assist you throughout the diet and help you through the highs and lows, but most importantly, they offer a support system so that you don’t have to go at it alone.
Receiving a prescribed diet is a massive step in the right direction; all that’s left is to see it through until the end and remember any diet takes time, so don’t expect to see a difference overnight.
Make that first step; contact me for your personalised diet.
Conclusion
Humans need food to survive and stay healthy, but that doesn’t mean we all need to diet to be healthy. Healthy eating and dieting aren’t always the same but can share similarities. A diet is only required for specific reasons using specific foods of particular quantities, and because we are all different, we all require different dietary needs. While healthy eating is simply getting in a modest and varied amount of foods to ensure we meet our basic needs to stay healthy.
There are so many diets available online and so many more people that claim to be experts, which makes it difficult and stressful to determine if you need a diet and what kind of diet you need. If you want to start a diet, the simple and safest way is through a registered dietitian or nutritionist.
Avoid the hassle of searching for a dietitian – get in touch with me.
