Your Diet Is a Prison Sentence
Many people treat going on a diet like a prison sentence: X amount of weeks at whatever penitentiary of your choice keto, intermittent fasting, paleo, or any of the other diets you can find on Instagram. Any of the above penitentiaries can leave you with a new outlook on life if you follow the rules, do your allotted sentence, and maybe even get out early for good behavior. For those who have trouble sticking to a diet or fail to see results, it’s easy to get bogged down by following a set of rules and feel trapped within them.
Ultimately, what makes a lasting difference from a diet is what you can learn from it. The things you learn are how the food you eat makes you feel, what is too much food, and what is just not enough.
Food serves two purposes: it provides us with fuel and fulfillment when eaten with friends or family. Both are extremely important. If your diet means you can’t go out to eat with people, then it really is a prison sentence. If your diet means you only eat food from a bag, box, or Styrofoam container, that is an early death sentence.
Ultimately, the foods that are best for us to eat are whole foods. I’m not talking about the overpriced grocery store. I consider whole foods to be foods where the ingredient list is the same as the label. Eating more whole foods will fuel your body and help you feel and perform better.
When you’re out to eat with your friends at the bar and it comes time to order, there are three options: I’m here to enjoy myself, I’m here to enjoy myself while compromising on my goals, or I’m going to stick to my goals.
Option one is easy. It means you order two IPAs, a double cheeseburger, and a side of fries.
Option two is a bit harder, but it allows you to enjoy yourself with some compromise. You order two light beers, a double cheeseburger, and a side salad.
Option three is when you order a club soda with lime, a double cheeseburger without the bun, a side salad, and sweet potato fries.
All three of these options are necessary to fuel us and bring us fulfillment. Finding a balance between these three options is the challenge. An easy way to think about it is this: if you were to eat out six times, three of them should be option three, two of them should be option two, and one of them should be option one.
This would lead to a good balance: half of the time, you’re committed to your goals; a third of the time, you’re making compromises to stay close to your goals while enjoying yourself; and around twenty percent of the time, you give yourself the freedom to enjoy good food in the process.
Consuming a diet of primarily whole foods at the above frequency will be a step in the right direction and will lead to positive changes. Weighing and measuring every morsel will lead to more precise results, but it is difficult to maintain over a long time or when life requires you to eat out. Keeping a food log in the Notes app on your phone or taking pictures of each meal is a great way to track your food, build the habit of pursuing quality food, and better understand the quantity of meals that you’re eating.
With food providing us with fuel and fulfillment, an approach that allows us to focus on eating more whole foods and gives us the flexibility to sustain it for a lifetime seems too good to be true, but it’s not. A diet is a prison sentence you can do for a set period of time and get some results based on the duration and effort you put toward it. If no habits are changed or formed at the end of your sentence, then your results will not last, and you’ll be back for a new sentencing of your choice.
Focusing on eating whole foods most of the time while tracking the quantity and overall quality of your meals will help you break free of this cycle and live a healthier life.
— William Plummer, CFL3
