Around the age of ten, I decided that I would never again eat meat. The decision to become a vegetarian was not a temporary fad that I would one day give into when I was craving meat or when I was in a social setting and meat was served. Nearly 26.5 years later, I am still proud to call myself a lacto-ovo vegetarian. However, I don't feel my diet needs a name for the only thing that makes my style of eating different from Karel's style of eating is where we get our protein from.
My decision to become a vegetarian was not supported by the idea that I needed to do so to become more popular, to fit in with a crowd, to achieve a different body image or to boost my health. It also wasn't a New Year resolution. Oddly enough, I can't remember the trigger why I wanted to give up eating meat but I do remember that it was around the month of April and I was around 10 years old when I came home from school and told my parents about my recent dietary change.
I knew very little about nutrition at the time so this was simply a personal decision with no ulterior motive other than I love animals. Since then, I've never told or asked anyone else to become a vegetarian as this was a personal decision that was important to me but it also took a lot of effort, work and time to figure out how this style of eating would work for me.
Because my "new" diet was restrictive by nature, I needed to learn how to do it correctly so that it would support my athletic goals as a high school and collegiate swimmer and keep me in good health. I needed to do a lot of education to learn how to eat a healthy and well-balanced diet while fueling my very active lifestyle. I also needed to learn how maintain this diet in a healthfully way. I'd say that it took me a good 4-5 years to really master plant-based eating as an endurance triathlete.
Going back to the title of this post, still today, I've yet to think of my eating patterns as a "diet." I've worked really hard to create enjoyable, sustainable and healthy patterns that I can maintain for the rest of my life and most of all, as an elite ultra-endurance triathlete, I never feel limited by my lifelong style of eating. Even though I am vegetarian, I don't see my diet as something that is rigid and strict with rules and an off-limit food list. I don't panic when I eat out, eat with others, travel or if someone else prepares my food.
My decision to become a vegetarian was not supported by the idea that I needed to do so to become more popular, to fit in with a crowd, to achieve a different body image or to boost my health. It also wasn't a New Year resolution. Oddly enough, I can't remember the trigger why I wanted to give up eating meat but I do remember that it was around the month of April and I was around 10 years old when I came home from school and told my parents about my recent dietary change.
I knew very little about nutrition at the time so this was simply a personal decision with no ulterior motive other than I love animals. Since then, I've never told or asked anyone else to become a vegetarian as this was a personal decision that was important to me but it also took a lot of effort, work and time to figure out how this style of eating would work for me.
Because my "new" diet was restrictive by nature, I needed to learn how to do it correctly so that it would support my athletic goals as a high school and collegiate swimmer and keep me in good health. I needed to do a lot of education to learn how to eat a healthy and well-balanced diet while fueling my very active lifestyle. I also needed to learn how maintain this diet in a healthfully way. I'd say that it took me a good 4-5 years to really master plant-based eating as an endurance triathlete.
Going back to the title of this post, still today, I've yet to think of my eating patterns as a "diet." I've worked really hard to create enjoyable, sustainable and healthy patterns that I can maintain for the rest of my life and most of all, as an elite ultra-endurance triathlete, I never feel limited by my lifelong style of eating. Even though I am vegetarian, I don't see my diet as something that is rigid and strict with rules and an off-limit food list. I don't panic when I eat out, eat with others, travel or if someone else prepares my food.
Your current diet doesn't have to be a forever style of eating but it should be helping to pave the way to healthy habits that you can maintain for a lifestyle. Your diet also doesn't need to have a name if you don't want it to. If your diet has a name for medical/health reasons, just make sure whatever you need to avoid is replaced with an alternative that fills in nutritional gaps. Regardless of what you call your diet (if you choose to do so), your diet should not leave you hungry, deprived, unsatisfied, without energy, feeling isolated, requiring an excessive amount of planning and prep and costing you a lot of money. Your diet should work for you at home and when you travel. Your diet should be simple and stress-free. Sure, with any new improved style of eating, it's going to take some work but if it's all for a lifestyle change (and to support your mental and physical health), the work will be worth it.
When you think about the diets that are marketed to the masses these days, most claim to be a lifestyle diet. But sadly, diet plans don't teach you the tools that you need to make your new way of eating part of your life. And many diets make you more stressed, anxious, worried and fearful about food than before you started the diet plan.
In 2019, make the effort to personalize a style of eating that works for you, your lifestyle, your health and your activity regime. You may be surprised to learn that the diet that works best for you actually has no name. Yeah, this style of eating isn't glamorous or sexy but when you stop obsessing and stressing about food, you can put your energy, focus and attention into real life moments and experiences that matter a lot more than whatever diet everyone else is choosing to follow.