What does Diet mean
This is how an Online Dictionary defines the word Diet:
The usual food and drink of a person or animal
And that tells us doesn’t it? After all whatever we eat … that is our diet – in the treditional sense of the word. Yet the Diet Industry has taken the word and made it their own, which includes all varieties of definition.
But what do we think of that? Everywhere we look we find the word … its smacked right there as a product name for one of the nation’s favourite soft drinks, and so on.
Yet if you have a medical condition diagnosed sometimes you might be ‘put on’ a special pastoral diet to aid your recovery … but this will be a temporary measure …
My (now) elderly mother was put on a special plan back in the eighties and somehow forgot to come off it . She is old school and if a doctor tells her to do something then they must tell her to do the opposite before she will adhere. And she became convinced that she was on the plan for life. In time it caused some complications (and its too near breakfast to go into detail). The upshot was that another doctor resumed her eating to ‘normal service’ and she hasn’t looked back.
Marc David (the Nutritional Psychologist) recognizes that ‘special eating plans’ be reserved for short bursts of post-illness recovery and the body’s owner (that’s us) should keep an eye out for any signals that we are recovered. After all we know our own bodies better than any medical health worker. Or at least we’re meant to. And sometimes this simply involves ‘tuning in’.
So be aware that next time you hear the word ‘diet’ – you are on one – we all are – but avoiding plans that we take up for ourselves without tuning into our body and mind that is a topic for another day.
