Diet and Deprivation are not Synonyms
Date Posted: January 16th, 2009
There’s this notion out there that a “diet” is something you do temporarily to lose weight. It’s necessarily difficult and painful, but it’s temporary and that temporariness makes it doable. Why does it have to be painful? Well for one thing we feel that we need to be punished for having lived an unhealthy lifestyle. And, if going from fat to fabulous was fun no one would be fat. Also healthy food tastes bad.
… Something doesn’t add up here. The road to health can’t actually be painful. That just doesn’t make any sense. It should be the path of least resistance, since our bodies presumably prefer to be healthy, right?
Myth 1: Healthy Food Doesn’t Taste Good
All other things being equal, if we have to choose between a salad and slice of cheesecake, we’d feel deprived if we chose the salad. This isn’t always the case, though. Let’s say for the holidays you ate lots and lots of rich food: spiral ham, prime rib, mashed potatoes, cake, cookies, and other delicious but not all that healthy food. Oh and no vegetables either because it’s a special feast. Why would we want to torture ourselves with vegetables? After three days of feasting you’re offered the same choice: cheesecake or salad. Which would you choose? I know I’d pick the salad. My body can only tolerate so many days of rich food before it rebels. By this time I’m probably feeling groggy and disgusting, not exactly a state I want to stay in. So the salad is the obvious choice.
But I’d go as far as to say that in general healthy food is more appetizing. Take a look at these comparisons:
Which would you prefer?:
- McDonald’s Hamburger or Stir-fried veggies
- Keebler Cookies or Home-made cookies
- Edy’s Highly Processed Ice-cream or Home-made ice-cream
- Highly Processed TV Dinner or a dinner cooked from scratch
These should be fairly easy to answer. Even if the home-made stuff is “fattening” it’s still a hell of a lot better for you than the processed stuff. People have been eating lard for hundreds of years but most additives for only 50 or so. Which do you think we’re more adapted to eat?
If you define healthy as all-natural (which many nutritionists wouldn’t), then healthy clearly doesn’t imply tastelessness. In fact, the main reason to choose the unhealthy options is just a combination of convenience (it’s a lot easier to get a hamburger than to make stir-fry) and ignorance (I don’t know how to make ice-cream).
Myth 2: Diets are Punishment
Diets don’t have to be (and probably shouldn’t be) punishment. If they are then you’re looking at spending months and months feeling deprived, with the illusive state of health as your only incentive. And on week three when you notice you’ve actually gained a pound and you’re feeling hungry, it’ll seem like an awfully high price to pay.
Now you may be asking, what does a wonder diet like this look like? Here’s one: a diet of real food. The only ingredients allowed are ones that were used as food before the 20th century. No calorie counting. No cutting of tasty food. Just a removal of processed foods. This isn’t a diet about depriving yourself of what you love it’s about becoming more aware of what you put in your body.
As long as you’re somewhat lazy, you’ll find that you’ll mostly be eating fresh fruits and veggies because they’re easy to prepare. No cooking involved. Sheer laziness leads you to eat healthier.
This is essentially how I eat now, and I don’t feel any deprivation whatsoever. I get to eat really awesome food on a daily basis, and the idea of eating fast-food for the most part sickens me.
Yes, technically you’re depriving yourself of highly processed, highly marketed, convenience food… but is depriving yourself of poison really deprivation?
You may be thinking that this sort of diet is either too expensive or too time consuming, but both of these assumptions truly are myths too, and I’ll cover them in my next post.
