As we all know, nutrition is closely linked to performance, weight loss, increased muscle mass and many other health benefits. Following good nutrition is the process of assimilating food for growth and repair of worn tissue, and we should use it to create proper balance within the body to promote health.
Easier said than done, right? It’s one thing to start a new eating plan and lose a bunch of weight. But it’s quite another to maintain that weight loss and continue your success once your go back to your old familiar habits. The solution? Change your old familiar habits! Swap them for better ones that will help keep you on the track to success.
In our vocabulary, the word “diet” has come to mean a painful, restrictive eating plan designed to lose weight very quickly and easily as long as the plan is followed. A common pitfall is that people follow this diet for some time, lose a bit of weight, get off the diet, overcompensate for all of the delicious food they were denying themselves, and gain more weight than prior to starting! A lifestyle change, however, is very different. Rather than looking at a short term goal such as weight loss, one would look at a more long term goal such as being healthy. Furthermore, the strategy used to achieve this goal would have to be sustainable and realistic.
Incremental lifestyle changes may not seem like big enough changes to really affect your health, and they are unlikely to give the quick results everyone craves. But they work much more efficiently when looking at the big picture! Therefore by looking at the long term horizon, you’re not “dieting” and denying yourself something which is important, only altering what you are eating. It’s not weight loss that is the goal, it’s being healthy. Weight loss is just an exciting byproduct!