"Diet" vs. "Healthy Eating"

I just wanted to clear one thing up while we are talking about proper nutrition.  Eating healthfully is not a diet; it is a way of life.  “Diet” is a nasty word. It implies giving up something or trimming down. It implies hardship and complete control. It implies there is something wrong with the person or creature who must diet.

We have become an overweight society obsessed with getting “more bang for the buck”. Hence, the super-size menu and larger portion sizes in restaurants. We purchase things in bulk and then must consume these things before they expire. Otherwise, we waste, and that is even worse than over-consumption in some people’s opinions.

What is a diet, really? It is just finding ourselves consuming what we should in the proper proportions. Weird. Imagine going to a restaurant and getting a 6-oz portion of chicken with a small salad, 1/3 C veggies, and ¼-1/3 C brown rice. No dessert. Then imagine paying the same price for that dinner as you would pay for the meal at “normal” portion sizes. Not only would you still be hungry, you would also feel cheated out of your money. And yet, that is all we should be eating.

Over-consumption and out-of-control portion sizes do not only relate to restaurants, but also to these bulk discount stores. I recently purchased 64—yes, 64—rolls of toilet paper because we were out. We had a heck of a time finding places to put all those rolls! Granted we have 3 bathrooms and 6 people using them, but, really, 64 rolls? Did we save enough money to justify the inconvenience of tripping over the rolls which did not fit into cabinets?

What should be done to trim down the waist and the waste? It would require a whole change in the way we think. It would require us to be conscious of what we do or what we eat and determine the underlying cause of our over-doing it. With the toilet paper, it was simply convenience (I was at Costco already and didn’t want to make another stop). However, we now have toilet paper towers in our upstairs hall just waiting for the kids to knock them down--again