Have you noticed that people don’t call weight loss plans “diets” anymore?

They call them “lifestyles”.

What a load.

Society has slowly (oh so slowly) come to recognize more and more that diets don’t work.

Diets may lead to short term weight loss, but they will fuck up your metabolism in the process, making it ever more efficient so that your body will hang on to every calorie for dear life for a very long time future.

Also, almost all dieters end up regaining the weight.

Yo-yo dieting is not good for your physical health.

Yo-yo dieting is hard on the mental health too.

Every time the diet fails, the dieter blames themselves for the failure.

It’s not you that failed.

Diets are pretty much designed to fail.

If diets didn’t fail, people would lose the weight and that would be that, and the diet industry would go out of business.

The diet industry is first and foremost a business.  And businesses need repeat customers.

What are some warning signs that you are looking at a diet in sheep’s clothing?

If your “lifestyle” is calorie restrictive (even if it’s through limiting or eliminating certain food types), it’s a diet.

If your “lifestyle” claims that it is for your health, but that you can only achieve this goal of “health” by weight loss, it’s a diet.

If your “lifestyle” creates moral judgments about food (good food v. bad food), it’s a diet.

But mostly, if your “lifestyle” is weight-centric, it’s a diet.

Being vegetarian or vegan is a lifestyle.

(Yes, Virginia, there are fat vegetarians and vegans.)

The Keto Diet is not a lifestyle – although, that’s what someone tried to tell me the other day.

It’s in the fucking name!

And just because Weight Watchers changed its name to “WW”, it doesn’t make it any less of a diet plan.

Get a grip people.

If you truly feel the need to diet, I’m not going to tell you that you can’t.  Your body, your rules.

I just hope that you are informed about what you are really doing to your body and mental health, and then, get on with your bad self.

However, don’t try to tell me it’s a “lifestyle”.

I’m fat, not stupid.