Can we do something about the word diet?
Not the real one. The real one is fine. Your diet is what you eat. That is all it has ever meant. Everybody has one — you are on a diet right now, reading this, whatever you had for lunch.
But the word got hijacked by the wellness people, and now diet means weight loss. So when I talk about the tribe and eating well, people say to me, "oh, but I'm not on a diet." And I want to say: yes you are, luv. You may not be on a weight-loss regimen. Those are different things and we have let them collapse into one.
I would like them uncollapsed. Diet is what you eat. Regimen is the restrictive thing. And you are allowed to care about the first without signing up for the second.
The free-free-free problem
I had a moment recently that made this concrete.
I was bringing a subscriber some of our Megan Bars for the first time. She had told me she was watching her gluten and her sugar, so I said, perfect, these will suit you. And then, handing them over, I heard myself explaining: these are sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free.
Halfway through the list I thought — that sounds awful. I have just described this thing entirely by what has been taken out of it. Three subtractions and not one word about what it tastes like.
But sugar-free doesn't mean it isn't sweet. There are things you sweeten with that were never processed sugar. Gluten-free doesn't mean it isn't soft and chewy. And dairy-free just means it didn't need dairy — not that something was removed and you should feel the absence.
The flavour is the one thing that is not missing. That is the sentence I should have led with.
Both of these are fine
Some days I will sit down with a cup of Greek yoghurt, a drizzle of honey, some granola. Lovely.
And some days I will sit down with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and melted vanilla ice cream. Also lovely. Genuinely, no wink, no confession.
Both of those are on the same diet, because a diet is just what you eat, and what you eat is a whole week and not a single bowl. There is also nothing that says I can't have a proper slice of cheesecake that is not sugar-free, not fat-free, not anything-free — and definitely not flavour-free, because it is full of whole ingredients and butter that came from somewhere real.
Why deprivation doesn't even work
Here is the practical argument, for anyone who finds the philosophical one soft.
If you keep depriving yourself of a thing, you are going to keep wanting it. More, not less. You build it up into this big bad boogeyman, and then the day you finally have it there is a whole emotional event attached to a slice of cake.
It was just cake. It was always just cake.
Food has no morality. There is no good food and bad food, there is no earning your dinner, and there is no clean and dirty. There is only how you combine things across a week, for the body you have and the life you actually live.
That is the whole philosophy. It fits on one line: it's just food.
