The main reason why I am so adamant about changing the language we use when it comes to getting healthier or losing weight is this; the language you use determines your approach, and your experience.
If you say “I am going on a diet” you are essentially saying that you are going to eat less for a period of time to lose weight and then go back to the way you’ve always lived, albeit with perhaps a few improvements here and there. In this case you are going to have a very different experience and get very different results than if you say “I am getting into a new diet style or lifestyle”. In this case, you are saying you will eat better quality foods in great tasting ways that promote your health and happiness, build this mindset and make it a reality in your every day life. Here you are not leaving your present reality overnight, nor living the new reality over night either. You have the option to move forward at a pace you can handle well.
This is the art of transitioning.
For some the pace of transitioning is fast, depending on their capabilities, for others this will take more time. Either way, the path to eating a Nutrient Rich diet is a transition. Get used to that word.
This is important to know when it comes to eating Nutrient Rich food, 90% or more of the time. Short of going on “Nutrient Rich Diet” for a short period of time, you will find for a host of reasons that you will be no more successful trying to make this change overnight than you will be trying to get financially successful overnight. It just doesn’t work really well; it’s too much too fast and just is as fun as when you get into a process of lifestyle change, and transition successfully.
Underlying your approach are two different time frames. One tries to overcome the effects of a poor diet and lifestyle overnight, while the other, characterized by no less of an intention for better results as soon as possible, recognizes that you’ll go as fast as you can go as long as you don’t compromise your health and happiness. This is the different between going on a diet and transitioning.
I don’t know what your experience has been but I can tell you this, if you’re like me, or the thousands of people I have worked with, you probably haven’t been very successful trying to change overweight. Yet this is what most commercial diets ask you to do. You buy the program and “go on it” overnight.
Essentially, you trying to transition to someone else’s lifestyle overnight, even if for only a short period of time.
And then, like the smoker who says this is my last cigarette, you may have said something like “I’m going to eat this last piece of chocolate cake and then I’m going to start my diet, I’m not going to eat cake any more and only eat low calorie, or low fat food or low carb foods”. I might add, drink meal replacement shakes or do what ever the common commercial solution you’re engaged in says you should do.
Clearly this idea of trying to stick to diet programs, without a fundamental decision to start eating “nutrient rich foods” as part of your lifestyle, is going to be hard. Despite the advertising and celebrity promotions and the testimonials from successful followers, diet programs do not work sustainably. It’s because life doesn’t work this way. It works if you’re aim is to win a Lamborghini or get your picture in a magazine; you heroically diet and workout for 8-12 weeks and get a quick tan in this highly motivating scenario. There is some benefit to this, but it says little for how you will be living 1 year from now, let alone the week following your effort.
I need to say there is nothing wrong with a heroic effort, IF, what you’re doing is health promoting and you are taking an aggressive approach that acknowledges what you’re doing and the potential consequences, that way you can respond accordingly. But this is not the case for most who find either they can’t stick with it or when their program is over, it’s time for things to return to normal and that usually means more of the same that got them into trouble to begin with.
For you to be successful at healthy eating, it has to be normal and natural. Not necessarily common, but something you could do normally or naturally for the rest of your life with a smile on your face.
So I want to introduce you to the concept of “transitioning”. It is the path to eating a Nutrient Rich diet. When you master the art of transitioning, you discover diet traps for what they are and learn how to avoid them and this path inevitably leads you to eating a nutrient rich diet.
Basically, the entire diet industry is a trap, focused mainly on short term weight loss goals and that usually means manipulating diet’s that don’t promote health. And if the diet does promote healthy, manipulative or obsessive ways of thinking that have little to do with the food itself, become the trap.
Truth is, you don’t have eat an unhealthy diet to lose weight, you need to learn how to Lose weight the Nutrient Rich Way. But before you can do that successfully, you really want to transition to a nutrient rich diet so that you start on a solid foundation. It’s one thing to lose weight eating healthy, but if you are trying to do that, on top of the transition from a diet that was formerly 80-90% nutrient poor, that’s is going to be one overly challenging process.
Up Next, I’ll be sharing the basic process of transitioning (transformation) most people go through.