What diet am I on? (part 1)

With 40#'s weight loss now people have started asking me (every 24-48 hours) "What diet are you on".

This is becoming a problem because 1)I don't have a prepared answer for them. 2)They are not prepared to hear the real answer. The answer is a lot easier to say than explain so I've got to figure out how to come up with a concise explanation that works.

The simple truth is the oldest diet philosophy in the world sums up my "diet":

Eat healthy foods and get some exercise.

Yesterday I tried to give those exact words as my diet and it didn't work at all. :
There is such a powerful marketing force in out food industry that it clouds people's judgment and confuses them against what they already know. We know that broccoli is more healthy than lean pockets. They have created zillions of things like lean pockets, Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, and weight watchers Pizza that people buy into as healthy food. Making an ice cream sandwich with less fat and sugar in it does not make it the nutritional equivalent of brown rice.

So healthy foods do not mean (alternative versions of unhealthy foods that have reduced fat, sugar, or are now made with fortified whole grains) healthy foods are real foods that are healthy PERIOD. Somebody said if your great grandma would not know how it grew/was raised don't eat it. There is no Lean pocket tree. It's an oversimplification but that is the idea.

Good clean healthy real foods are what I try to eat as often as possible. It's the absolute most important thing I've found that you have to get into your mind. Shift away from fake, processed, engineered diet foods. Shift away from obviously unhealthy foods and move towards as much good clean healthy food as you can eat and do that 99% of the time. If that is all I did I'm sure that (it would be slower) but I'm sure weight loss would be inevitable.

That is weight loss....fat loss...very nice but that is only part of it and health/fitness is the next part.

We could loose lots of weight/fat on the cabbage soup diet or the Diet Coke diet I'm sure but it will not be healthy.

To be healthy we need....and here comes the next million year old idea:

We need a healthy balanced diet that provides all the nutrients required to sustain good health. We need vitamins, minerals, carbs, protein, fats, and all the other tiny things it takes to run the machine. We can get really skinny on the all white Rice diet or the Micheal Beal diet of one apple and one can of tuna per day but just like it did him we are going to pay a price for doing that to ourselves.

How exactly to divvy up those individual food items is too complicated to say right now other than more age old wisdom a "healthy balanced diet".

I do eat plenty of meat...I wold like to eat less someday but I like this quote from Micheal Pollan:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

So that is the part 1 just to lay it out. In part 2 I'm going to try and make a short answer that explains the above in a way that people will accept. People strongly want to believe that there is a new whiz bang package diet program or product that will make them loose weight easily without having to..

Eat healthy foods and get some exercise. :(

to be continued...