What is a diet anyway?

Author: DHMason

By definition being on a diet means knowing and planning what you eat.

One common misconception is that diet means starving, fasting, or enduring suffering of different sorts. It does not mean that. These bad connotations are merely deformed ways of dieting.

It may include the withholding of certain foods but that depends on your diet, and it most often will include adding certain foods to your daily menu.

A second misconception revolves around the planning of a diet. Put simple - planning a diet is no simple task,

To plan a diet one needs to have a lot of knowledge in his/her possession.

It's not enough to knowing what foods are fatty and which are not,

You also have to know the structure of different foods,

And the effect of every type of food on our metabolism.

This is why you need to gather a lot of knowledge in order to plan your own diet.

Of course you always have the option of using a professional to plan your diet for you.

A third misconception: Diet is not a synonym to weight loss,

There are different kinds of diets and weight loss diet is only one of them.

Weight gain diet:

Weight gain diet is mostly used by athletes and body builders.

It is used to gain weight for muscle building and bulking up for all kind of reasons.

The point is not only eating whatever you want and get fat.

It’s planning a menu to help the body gain the weight correctly & healthily.

Weight control diet:

For some people keeping their weight is a big issue.

This kind of diet is designed to help people not gain and not lose weight.

It is often used by people who lost weight successfully but are afraid to gain the weight back.

It is also used by people who do aerobic activities regularly and do not want to lose weight & muscle.

Weight loss diet:

The most common of all diets,

Used by overweight people all around the world with the sole purpose of losing fat.

Weight loss diets can be very different.

There are many approaches regarding what is the best/fastest/healthiest way to lose fat.

There are some very radical diets that require serious discipline and devotion.

For example there is the "no-carb" diet,

This diet is currently debated all over the world because of the importance of carbohydrates to all the body’s functions.

There are weight loss diets that revolve around eating a lot of a specific food like lettuce, other vegetables or even ice cream.

Alongside with the “normal” diets we can see the pills, powders, oils and all kinds of food additives.

These are diets that you should be very careful with,

Some of them are totally unhealthy and mostly there results can be reproduced with a natural and healthy diet.

In short, changing your diet is not something to be taken lightly. A wrong kind of diet might actually be harmful.

I hope I helped you get a better understanding on what is a diet,

Good luck,

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/what-is-a-diet-anyway-899924.html

About the Author:

David H. Mason

For more information on dieting psychology, nutrition and fitness please visit:


www.LivingRightLosingWeight.com