Healthy eating
Healthy eating equals everything in moderation.
Moderation = the amount of any specific food you can eat (pizza to broccoli) and still be healthy.
Meaning you can’t eat pizza at every meal and still expect to be healthy, broccoli, you can. The moderation is more.
Eating clean means a variety of different things, to different people but basically focuses on whole foods with little processing.
Eat and enjoy. No need to diet or restrict but certainly limit the amount of foods that aren’t beneficial to the body, empty calorie and deprived of vitamins/nutrients.
In the end, diet is very individualized based on someones goals though we can all agree that whole foods are the best.
What wonderful answers! After my second baby, and before I really got into fitness, I was very overweight. I lost 80 pounds just exercising and being mindful of what I ate. I hate “diets” as well, because I feel like they are doomed to fail. I also feel like you can have your cake and eat it too, in moderation. I try to teach my clients the same ideas, be mindful of what you eat, etc. I think it helps that they know I have struggled with weight before and that now I make healthy eating and exercise a part of my day with three kids and a part time job (I literally pencil in fitness classes or my exercise times and try to menu plan for the week). I think they can look at me and know that I understand them and can relate with them in various ways.
So glad to see all the answers going in this direction. It is good to see that so many fitness people are doing their best each day to eat with health in mind, rather than ‘going on a diet’, which tends to lead to ‘going off a diet’ which tends to lead to ‘I am off now and going on tomorrow so I will eat that whole cake’.
Like Karin I have certain ethical foundations to the way I eat. I also try to eat more whole and natural and less processed. It is a little hard when one is the principle cook of a family with allergies and different tastes.
It is true if one works in fitness what one does is more than just what one does. If we understand the principles such as soda is unhealthy, empty calories, and even ‘diet’ soda is not associated with weight loss, and has a lot of unhealthy things in it as well, can we live the truth of those principles, as well as teach them? And can we show to our students/clients that we live with the same pressures and pitfalls as do they? I don’t mean ‘Here I am, all perfect and always eating steamed brown rice’, but being honest that eating healthfully can be hard for many, especially at first, and that most people have times they go for the ice cream or whatever it is. But we know what is better for us and for the world and we do our best.
