Things You Want To But Still Lose Weight Diet, the No Exercise Diet, the Gentle Exercise Diet, the Maxi Carbohydrate Diet, the Mini Carbohy-drate Diet, the 7 Day Diet, the 47½ Day Diet, the Rest of Your Life Diet, the St Francis of Assisi Diet, the Famous Film Star's Diet, the God Knows What This'll Do To You But Try It For A While Anyway Diet. The possibilities, both real and fictitious, go on and on.

   A more realistic use of the word diet would just be "that which you eat", or "that which is your eating life". One's diet is simply the sum total of eating desires and habits. A dietician is a properly trained health professional who understands the interactions of certain minerals, vitamins and general foodstuffs upon the body's systems from the orthodox medical standpoint. They would never write a sensationalist article for a popular magazine headlining a weight loss program. A consulting dietician makes a personal assessment of your body, perhaps including blood tests and allergy tests and then prescribes the correct foods and supplements for your individual needs. There are also naturopaths and yoga therapists who have this same approach and they prescribe herbs, foods and yoga practices to assist in better dietary management.
   Whether it be a professional dietary program or just an average mixture of foods that you eat instinctively, I shall use the term "diet" as meaning "the sum total of foods a person consumes at any given time". It has nothing to do with "going on a diet". You are already on one, or more to the point, in one, no matter what you are eating!

	~ What is the Proper Diet? ~

   Here is the big question about which many people wonder. Out of all the ideas modern and ancient, all the food trips Eastern and Western, all the orthodox viewpoints and all the alternatives, all the books and all the magazines, which is the best, which is right, what's the perfect diet? Who knows "The Right Way to Eat"? Is it for any one person to prescribe, in blanket terms, what anyone / everyone else should or shouldn't be eating?
   Let's face it, who would want to have their eating life dictated to them? Hopefully it is only advice or guidelines which you are looking for, and some new perspectives to embrace in your own dietary improvements. If you are looking for a totalitarian regime of food management, then this author cannot offer that. It is my own experience, after many years of trying many possibilities, that to expect one perfect system for all persons - to have one all encompassing set of food rules - is nonsense. Even if it were a special program for just one type of person, for example "an old person's diet" or "an asthmatic's diet", that could never take into account the individual's nature and personal life circum-stances. A rigid dietary program such as the magazine diet fads, is like a box which will restrict the growth of a plant - sooner or later the roots will become bound and the leaves will wither due to missing nutrients.
   If diet is based upon restriction, sooner or later there will become evidence of deficiency. If diet is based upon over-inclusion, eventually there will be evidence of excess.
   Of course, if there are already excesses in the diet, and symptoms of ill health coming from that, then these should be trimmed. Conversely, if there are deficiencies leading to imbalance, then these should be boosted. So therefore, diet is a very personal thing based upon who the person is, where the person is, how the person is and what the person does.
   This is one of the secrets of discovering a balanced diet - letting go of fixed concepts of food and diet. Each person needs to discover for themselves what is appropriate to good health based on the body's own feedback. You need no greater authority than that! BUT - that doesn't mean to just eat what you like and leave what you don't. First, the body must be re-educated to being an accurate judge of its true needs. A sick or imbalanced body is obviously an untrust-worthy reporter!