Finding a Sustainable Diet

When you hear the word diet, do you imagine a painful experience where you eat an unusual way, or do you think about the way that you eat on a regular basis? Diet shouldn’t be an unusual thing that you do every few weeks or months. If that’s what the word diet conjures in your mind, then it’s time to change your thinking.

A diet isn’t something that you should go on and off of at random intervals. Instead, it should be the way that you eat all the time. Your diet is how you eat, and what you eat. “Going on a diet” is a saying that gives an indication that you should go on and off a diet. You really need to make your diet the way you always eat.

In order for this to be the case, you’re going to need to find a diet that works well for you. While we’ve discussed intermittent fasting here in the past, you should only follow that diet if you can make it a sustainable part of your life. If you find that you’re always hungry, or that you can’t concentrate when you’re fasting, then modify your diet for what works for you.

Furthermore, if you’ve changed your diet to something that is so restrictive that isn’t sustainable, you’ll likely find yourself binging often. If you absolutely love pizza, and you’ve changed your diet to something that includes only the healthiest of foods, there’s a good chance that you’ll fall off of your diet on a regular basis. Rather than eliminating pizza completely, you should include it as part of your diet - you eat it, just less often than you previously did.

A diet that is sustainable is something that you can do every day. That means that it will likely include some foods that others consider unhealthy. That ultimately shouldn’t be a problem as long as you’re keeping the number of calories that you eat within your daily limit. If you’re eating pizza for dinner, you just need to understand that there are usually 300+ calories in a single slice of pizza. That means that you’ll have to eat a bit less throughout the day in order to stay in your calorie count for the day.

Extremely restrictive diets generally don’t work for people, especially if you’re just getting started on a healthier lifestyle. Completely changing to only healthy food in a single change is destined to fail. There’s a reason that you eat chips, soda, and other junk food - those foods are addictive. It’s going to take time to overcome some of those cravings. Setup your diet to allow for a gradual move away from eating those foods regularly.

Ultimately, the goal of eating a sustainable diet is to help you feel better and live longer. Going in and out of eating healthy on a regular basis will help a little, but it won’t have the profound effect that you’d expect. Generally, if you’re falling off of your diet, it’s because it’s not sustainable. You need to figure out why that is, and adjust accordingly.

Don’t be afraid of eating healthy. It will help you feel better. However, finding a diet that you can sustain throughout your life without falling off the wagon easily.