Monday, August 12, 2013

Magical Diet

Clean, nutritious food is vital to our well-being. It's not shocking that people invest their food with magical properties. The problem is that fad diets are simply not a panacea for all life's ills.
Image Credit, Eliad Cohen.
To look this good, you have to eat well.

Instead, a focus on healthy diet, properly balancing macro and micro nutrients, and enough but not too-many calories is most beneficial. The real magic comes from our bodies' ability to remain healthy and fit from a great variety of foods. What we need to remain healthy is:
Additionally, there's hype about this food or that diet. Most of them are bollocks and not worth the time and energy people devote to them.
The up-side of all these fad diets and food fears is that people are thinking about what they are consuming. They are demanding a wider-variety of nutritious foods with less fat and a better balance of nutrients. The down-side is that clinging to a food or diet as a panacea is magical thinking, which is its own harm.

So, if you're wondering: "What's the harm? I feel like the changes I've made to my diet are beneficial." If you're getting enough nutrients, you're probably not going to hurt yourself physically. But for me, the reasons why we do things are as important as doing them. Choosing a diet because it is emotionally satisfying confuses and annoys me, especially when it is paired with a firm political stance. That stance can influence others who might be at risk from duplicating the choices you've made for yourself.

Those others might choose to treat symptoms identified by the proponents of diet-as-magic, eschewing real medical care. Even once those others get medical advice, the use of a diet may mask the real causes, undermining a doctor's ability to diagnose the real causes. Instead, it's better to focus on getting enough calories including the recommended balance of macronutrients and micronutrients, and visiting a doctor when necessary to diagnose and treat symptoms.

So, eat well, exercise and visit your doctor if you have worrisome symptoms or make a change to your routine. Also, if you're cycling, eat like an athlete!

Love,
Your Bear

1 comment:

  1. If people are that gullible, then that's their problem. No one who has a brain and the education to use it can be influenced one way or the other by someone's uninformed opinions.

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