Striking the Balance between Health and Diet

Who doesn’t want to have a killer body, one that makes people turn their head when you pass them?

While ‘head-turning body’ probably happens more often in movies rather than in real life, let’s be honest, most of us still want to be that one with such body. Having great body, after all, is more about self-satisfaction rather than other people’s acknowledgement.

Some people may scorn the idea of body-building and other form of changing body shape. Maybe for them it sounds too vain. However, it’s wrong. A good body (though not necessarily a killer one), is also a sign of healthy person. Being obese is definitely not healthy, while being too skinny also often indicates sickness.

Another reason why maintaining or changing your body shape isn’t wrong, is because good body makes you more confident of yourself. And, when you are confident, you’ll see the world opening its opportunity door for you.

That’s why, many people, including me and probably you as well, are willing to spend much effort to maintain or change our body into a more ideal one. Some of us would exercise and some other would probably consume certain supplement that claims to help with weight gain or weight loss. The most effective way, however, that is also popular among us, is diet.

Diet the wrong way

Diet to change body shape is common and advised by many health experts. After all, diet is not just about starving yourself. Instead, it is a process to be more careful and selective about what you choose to enter your body. However, many people still do many common mistake about diet, which makes them not only fail to reach their body goal, but also compromise their health. Here are three of the most common diet mistakes:

  1. Have too little variant of food
    Diet does limit the variant of food. If you happen to be a picky eater, you probably won’t like the switch, especially because most of tasty foods are the kind of foods that isn’t allowed in diet, like meat and cake. There are probably only a few of vegetables and fruits you like, and you start to eat those that you can stand only. However, eating too little variants of food will limit the nutrients you get as well.
  2. Not caring about the quality of the food
    In diet, it’s not only quantity that matters, but quality as well. However, most people neglect this. They think, as long as they don’t eat meat or carbs, anything else are find. They will drink zero-sugar soda and fruit juice, then eat salad with dressing. Those processed food aren’t good for diet. They may not contain fat or carbs, but they usually lack nutrition while having so many preservatives and other additives that may interfere with your health.
  3. Thinking that exercising solves everything
    This is big misconception. People think that they can eat as much as they can as long as they exercise and burn the calorie away later. However, exercising won’t help if you have crappy eating habit.

Diet the right way

It’s important to follow the right way to diet because not only it will determine whether you reach your body goal, it also ensure you won’t get any consequence for your health during and after your diet. Here are several advices to do diet the right way:

  1. Know your body and your goal
    To start anything, you’ll need a finish. It is the same with diet. You need to set your goal before starting to diet. Many people surprisingly don’t do this. They just want to look good and start diet without specific goal of losing certain amount during certain time, not knowing how much body fat they should actually eliminate. It’s better to check your ideal BMI first, then based on that result, decide your own pace: how much you want to lose for certain period.
    It’s also important to know if you have certain body condition that doesn’t allow you to follow certain diet. So, before trying new diet, make sure to do your research.
  2. Learn various options of diet
    There are so many types of diet, from paleo to vegan to low-fat to low-carbs. Deciding the right type of diet for yourself will save you lots of time and effort later, compared to find out how a diet is not effective after several month of doing it. First, you should always see if a diet is safe with your medical condition (if any). Second, you should check if the diet suits your goal the most. For example, there is diet that shows you how to lose 10 kg for a month without exercise and there is diet that aims to put you into healthier eating habit.
  3. Create supportive environment
    The success of your diet will depend on your environment a lot. You, as a person, won’t always stay motivated or have enough willpower. During these time, you need external diet enforcer. Make food scarce from your vicinity, unless food that you are allowed to eat. For example, consider to keep only the essential food for your fridge and give away the rest for your friends or family. Empty your drawer from hidden snack as well and replace them with healthier option, like yogurt or fruits. You can also enlist the help from your family and friends to ‘fine’ you whenever you break the diet rule, and so on.
  4. Stay on the track
    It’s easy to give up diet and resume eating whatever you want, especially after you notice that your diet actually works and you’ve reached your goal. However, we should approach diet as a new kind of lifestyle, instead of a medicine. You don’t stop when you get healthy. Instead, you should be getting used to eating healthy food and limiting junk food. Stay on the track of dieting, instead of bouncing to yo-yo dieting, and you’ll have no worry about reshaping your body again for the rest of your life.

Walking between the line of bad and good diet is sometimes tricky, because diet seems easy, but actually there are many things you should pay attention to. There are many benefits we can get from diet, if we aren’t careful and don’t follow the rule, the diet could go the wrong way and make us sick instead of pretty and healthy.

Do you have other example of wrong dieting and right dieting? Tell us and we can discuss it together below.

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