Dieting should die, and be replaced by an individualized life-long plan of eating delicious and healthy foods, with exercise, thus maintaining a healthy weight in the long term.

The process of embracing an eating-style rather than dieting gets easier over time, instead of the repeated applications of intense dieting, between which one’s weight yo-yo’s up and down, making the next dieting session harder than the last. Here’s my thinking:

If you truly stop dieting……. Let me stop here and describe exactly what I think dieting is. When you head to the market to buy a certain few types of foods that you are going to eat while you’re on your latest, greatest diet. You throw your pots and pans out, because you’re going to only eat raw foods from now on. Maybe you hang onto your blender, because your new diet allows blended foods. Or you go to the mailbox to pick up the package containing your prepared little packets of ‘meals’ that you will eat while you’re on your diet. Or you stock up on celery, cucumbers and spinach and clear the fridge of apples, oranges and all other fruit, because your new diet does not allow fruit. Or you stock up on steaks, bacon and cheese and clear out most of the regular foods that you normally eat. Or you ditch every bread, tortilla and recipe that has a speck of flour in it (whole grain or not) because your new diet does not allow gluten. OK, OK, you get it! You know what I mean when I say going on a diet.

My contention is that going on a diet really implies you are planning to go off that diet as soon as you can. We’ve learned over many decades of trying to survive in a land of abundance, that when you’re on a diet, many, many different types of diets can help you lose weight – temporarily. There are a couple of problems with that weight loss. One is that, if you go to a party or a restaurant, sometimes you fall off the restrictive diet. Frequently, that is followed by some feelings of failure, which, of course make it harder for you to re-commit to the restrictive diet. Of course, when you stop with the celery and grapefruit, returning to your previous eating-style, you gain back what you’ve lost and sometimes more.

I’ve been writing in this blog for years now, about designing an individual eating-style that works for you. Yes, I realize that that designing a new eating-style is not snazzy. And it’s probably not going to yield a really rapid weight loss. But (now here is definitely the big BUT) ….but you can stop the dieting. You can begin to adapt your new eating-style to your personal preferences and your cultural and ethnic traditions (sometimes some creative adjustments need to be made in traditional dishes). That means you don’t go off the eating-style.

If you design your own eating-style, you are the center of control. You’re deciding the rules. Most people know that cheesecake is not a health food. But let’s just say for the sake of example, you absolutely love cheesecake. You know that it’s loaded with saturated fat and sugar (two ingredients that you’re striving to decrease in your new eating-style) – what can you do? You can tell yourself, this is my all-time favorite dessert and I don’t want to design an eating-style that says that I can never have cheesecake again. You can then begin to ask yourself questions. How often do I want to allow myself to have it? What size portion will give me the coveted taste, and be just enough to be rewarded? Can I be happy with having it for my birthday, and a few other occasions per year? Will I be eating it less frequently than I am presently eating it? How much do I really need at a meal to feel satisfied? Can I allow myself less than I used to eat? Will I feel happier and more satisfied to include cheesecake in my diet periodically? Or should I just say no to cheesecake?

In all honesty, cheesecake, doesn’t call to me – don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other high-calorie, less-than-healthy foods that I enjoy. But the point here is not cheesecake. The point here is helping you see the kind of questions that you might ask yourself when you begin to design a new eating-style for yourself.

Now, this system does not just work for foods that you’re trying to reduce in your diet. The same type of process works in adding foods to your eating-style.

One of the real benefits of maintaining a healthy weight in this manner is that you choose the food and you can be eating delicious real foods. When I used to do individual counseling, I’d almost always start with vegetables – helping individuals design an increase in vegetable consumption. Adding vegetables to an eating-style, almost always pushes out some other food with higher calories. It’s worth the effort to learn how to do stir-fry; make vegetable soups; design main dish salads; or make a homemade marinara sauce, chunky with chopped veggies instead of calorie-dense meat and cheese. Increasing the proportion of vegetables in relation to other types of food is the easiest place to start designing your new eating-style with a significant impact. And one of the benefits to starting here is that it helps you fill up on fewer calories than you ordinarily consume. The most interesting fact is that as you introduce more ways to increase vegetable consumption into your new eating-style you’re also getting more nutrients; and more fiber and possibly more protein in the process. Learning recipes that you as an individual enjoy, changes your weight management pursuit to a standard way of eating that you enjoy – something that you can maintain in the long-term.

A healthy dietary pattern higher in vegetables than you have been eating now poises you to also add in fruits, whole grains, low- or nonfat dairy, seafood, legumes and nuts. You can assure that your alcohol intake is moderate, and you reduce your intake of red meat and processed meats. Finally your eating style should be low in sugar-sweetened foods and drinks and in those refined grains that turn so swiftly to sugar in your blood. In addition, you’re watching out for saturated fat (think whole milk, cream – sour or not, cheese, desserts and meat) and beginning to use olive oil, or canola oil.

It’s a little bit like juggling. Let’s say that you start with finding ways to add more vegetables to your regular eating-style. You’re doing great and have really increased your regular vegetable intake and now you’re feeling ready for a next step. How about switching out some of the meat that you eat? Maybe choose a goal to have a meatless meal or two. Or simply cut your regular portion size down. That’s once nice thing about stir-fry and salads – you can easily be satisfied with a smaller portion of meat. Or chose a fish that you enjoy and decide that once or twice a week you’ll eat fish. If you try to do every thing at once, it may be overwhelming; a little like throwing five balls in the air at once, while learning to juggle. Let the habit gel a bit – get embedded into your new eating-style and then add another. This little at a time approach is far more likely to become a new habit – instead of falling off the restrictive diet.

One last thing about this method of eating/managing weight, if something does not work out the way you had hoped, you carefully reflect upon it. What went wrong? Then, not abandoning correct principles in a healthy eating-style, you design a way to approach that problem that will work better for you.

I’ll share an experience that I’ve just been through. I’ve managed normal weight for over 15 years by using the method above. Before that time, I frequently counted calories – which is pretty boring. Almost exactly two years ago, I was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis. It was an all over kind of thing, but in fairly short order, it decided that my knees were a good place to make havoc. I cut back and cut back on my normal physical activity; even going for a walk would cause me to look ahead. If I saw the slightest decline in the walkway, I’d wince. I walked increasingly slower and shorter distances than normal. Finally, I could see that I was going to be close to sedentary if I didn’t do something about my knees. After two skillfully done surgeries, I had two new titanium knees! Don’t let me mislead you; it was not just a snap. It took time for me to really get back to doing things I had done previously. The sad side effect of this little detour of life is that I gained about a quarter pound per week, for about a year. I saw my weight going up on the scale; but just concentrated on eating the way I’ve eaten for years. My weight did not go down. I’ll say here that I’ve never been one of those eaters who are satisfied with a tiny little cucumber finger sandwich or skipping meals. So this was going to be an adjustment for me. It wasn’t that I changed my eating-style; it was that I lost the benefit of my previous exercise in expending calories. It seemed to level off after a year. But I’m glad to say that it is now moving back to the previous weight. Fortunately, I’m able to get in more gardening, and a little more intense walking and swimming.

For the above reasons, I believe that dieting should be allowed to die. Designing a healthy eating-style can serve you for your entire life – only minor modifications/adjustments will become necessary as available foods and circumstances change. Undertake it with determination and commitment; know you can do it; then just do it.