Your Diet: Looking at the Big Picture

The theme of National Nutrition Month® is “Nutrition: It’s a Matter of Fact”. The past few days, we have been discussing the key messages to this month’s theme. Another key message is:

Look at the big picture: No single food or meal makes or breaks a healthful diet. Your total diet is the most important focus for healthful eating.

Let me give you an example: Jake has been following the MyPyramid Plan now for the past week. He has been eating foods from each food group and has been doing pretty well with portion control. This morning, he goes out to breakfast with his guy buddies before they play golf. He orders a “Grand Slam Breakfast” from Denny’s Restaurant because he’s hungry and loves the food that is served with it. He then feels guilty because he ate “huge” portions that weren’t part of the MyPyramid Plan, nor was the food “heart healthy”. He decides to give up his meal plan and starts eating whatever he wants again, in whatever quantities he’s hungry for at the time.

Does this ever sound like you, where you give up your “diet” because you ate poorly for one meal, or you ate one food that you didn’t think was good for you? How many times have you said “Oh, forget my diet because I just had ……..”?

Well today’s message is such: Do you really think that one unhealthy meal for one day, or one unhealthy food at one meal really breaks your diet? It doesn’t! It’s ok to vary your diet sometimes and to eat something that’s not so healthy for you once in a while. The real key is what your TOTAL diet is like over a longer period. If, at every meal you eat unhealthy foods, then that isn’t good. But if you eat 1 unhealthy meal out of 20 other meals that week, well that’s not bad at all! That’s an unhealthy meal 5% of the time, and let’s face it 5% really isn’t a big number!

I’m not saying that you should eat poorly every day, but I think that allowing yourself one night every week or every couple of weeks of eating something not so healthy is OK. By giving yourself variety in choices, you can stick to a healthy diet more easily. And by allowing yourself some foods that you think are not healthy, you will be even more motivated to stick to a diet.

After all, how many of us defied our parents when they said “don’t do that?” It made us want to do it more, didn’t it? Well, it’s the same with food. The more we tell ourselves we can’t eat something, the more we want it. So that’s why the “everything in moderation” idea works so well, and why no single food or meal makes or breaks a healthy diet.

In the words of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind, “Tomorrow is another day.” So, if you mess up today, just pick yourself back up at your next opportunity!

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