Starting when I was very young, I have struggled severely with controlling my weight. I was over 100 pounds before I turned 12, and over 200 by the end of my fifteenth year. At my peak weight, at 17 years old, I weighed at least 245 pounds, and measure in at only five feet and five inches. That was three weeks ago. Since then, I have started a weight loss crusade, including eating better and joining a gym in my community. I now weigh 229 pounds, 14 pounds from where I started, and I am feeling great! But, I have had a hard time with people defining my crusade, as I like to call it, as a "diet." To me "diet" says temporary, "diet" says nasty food, "diet" says I am constantly miserable and can't eat anything "good." For these reasons, I am not on a diet, I am taking part in a lifestyle change.

I'll start with "diet says temporary." When you see all of those commercials on t.v. about those diet plans, like Atkins and Weight Watchers, and they make sure to showcase the current members, but they don't show the people who stopped their memberships and stopped buying their meals, and gained most of the weight they lost back, because they didn't learn how to choose good foods with good nutrients, they just ate what the company sent to them. Now, this isn't the case for everyone, but it happens. It also happens with diets like the paleo diet, and the extreme five bite diet, for three main reasons: 1) when your body doesn't get enough important nutrients, it starts to break down muscle and retain fat as it goes into a sort of survival mode, 2) eating the same boring or nasty foods for an extended period of time can lead to junk food binges, and 3) most people do not stay on a diet for the rest of their lives, and once they drop the diet, the weight just creeps back.

Now, when I say that diet says "nasty food," I am being very general, and very stereotypical with the fact that most foods that are linked to the word diet are not very tasteful, for the purpose of showing the restrictions the word diet places upon people. For example, when people hear that I am trying to lose weight, they automatically say things like "does your diet allow you to eat that?" and "haha! You can't have (insert delicacy here) because you're on a diet!" This also matches the whole "constantly miserable and can't eat anything 'good.'"

What I want to bring to light is that with a lifestyle change, you're not necessarily placing limits and pressure on yourself. With a lifestyle change, I can eat anything, in moderation. And that's the word: moderation. Limiting the intake of things that aren't too healthy while bumping up the intake of things that are healthy, that is the key to healthy weight loss. So no, I am not on a diet, I'm on a lifestyle change.