Do Not Diet. Eat a Diet.

Most of the time, the diet craze is only counterproductive, and we know it.
Of course you have to eat. And of course you can't eat only junk "food," not move, and expect to be healthy, let alone fit. The right balance between energy input and energy use is a basic necessity.
Dean Karnazes, ultra-marathon runner, is notorious for having at least once ordered a pizza with everything for delivery while on the run. (That was a long time ago. Judging by more current stories, he has become a much more discerning eater.)

Yet, provided it is quite balanced, the only sense in which you need "diet" is as "a diet," a usual way of eating.

Such diets, the typical kitchens of the different peoples around the world, exist in as great a variety as there are environments providing different kinds of food, peoples using those foods in different ways, and individual people choosing how to modify them according to their tastes.

Experimenting with ingredients and flavors is not a problem. Suddenly changing the entire way of eating - dieting - is a great problem, however: The rebound after sudden calorie-restricted dieting is well-known.

The problem is that a fitting diet would ideally be existent in everyone's family already while growing up, so that it is learnt from the parents.
For that to happen and work, both the environment - the foods, the situation of cooking/eating, all that - and the persons - tastes, requirements, physical activity - ought not to change, however. Thus, most of the time, things will be more difficult.

The situation is usually even more difficult because, once in the habit of eating a certain way, the body finds this nutrition to be normal and tasty, it feels comfortable to continue eating that way (even if it is not healthy), and so on...

It takes quite some impulse to change something, and that is (usually) only reached through some kind of crisis - i.e., after a diet has been somehow wrong for a while already and its ill effects are making themselves felt. Then, we tend to want a radical, quick, solution...
Finally, it takes some knowledge to find better ways of eating - a point which will play a large role in following entries.

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