A couple years ago, a young girl came up to me in the gym and asked how she could lose some of the fat around her waist and hips.

I said, “You’re not going to like the answer.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“It’s 80 percent diet.”

“Diet?! I’m not going on a diet.”

I said, “You’re already on a diet. It’s just a crappy one.”

She laughed.

But this is the truth. Although most people think of diet as something that restricts calories or forbids them from eating certain things, a diet is simply what and how you eat. Every one of us, every living animal on the planet has a diet. As humans, especially in the United States, many of us tend to have poor diets.

We think of diets in terms of

• Paleo
• Mediterranean
• Keto
• Atkins

Etcetera, etcetera. We don’t think of diets in terms of Julie’s or Michael’s or my diet.

Growing Up

I ate tons of food, but couldn’t gain weight. I was that scrawny 145-pound 6-foot-3-inch guy in high school. I shoveled cement from the time I was fourteen, ran at school and for fun (I was at a 5:00 mile and did an 18:17 5k), I skateboarded and biked about 8 miles to work every day. I ate a lot, but most of what my parents kept in the house was healthy. I drank a couple gallons of milk a week. We weren’t allowed cokes, chips or cookies except on weekends and special occasions. Whatever mama fixed, we had to eat . . . except one thing. My sisters and I were all allowed one item we didn’t have to eat if cooked. My one item was asparagus. Mama fixed canned asparagus. That stuff was and still is naaaasty. But I love fresh asparagus sauteed or grilled.

Anyway, when I was out of the house, I ate like garbage. A college student, I went for cheap. A family size can of Mini Ravioli for lunch or dinner, a whole pizza, you get the idea. I still didn’t gain much weight. At 155 pounds when I was 20, I thought I was getting BIG.

It took 20 years, but my diet finally caught up with me.

But here’s the secret

Weight management is nothing but math. Calories in vs. calories out. If you take in more calories than you expend in a day, you will gain weight. If you take in less, you will lose weight. So, technically, you could eat Big Macs all day, every day and lose weight or not gain a pound.

Everybody has a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the number of calories required for you to maintain your current weight if you were laid up motionless in a bed–like in a coma. Everything you do expends more calories. If you think about it like a car, your BMR is like simply starting your engine and leaving it in park. It consumes very little gas. The faster and more you drive, the more gas you consume.

• 1 carb = 4 calories
• 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram of fat = 9 calories

This is partially why cutting fat sometimes helps people lose weight. They are dropping those 9 calories per gram. Sometimes, the fat is a healthier choice because many companies will add sugar or sweeteners to make up for the fat loss. In that case, one often consumes more calories for the same amount of food servings.

Think about it

The point of this post isn’t to tell you to get on this diet or that diet. Instead, the point is to get you thinking about the diet you are currently on. As you think about your current diet, ask yourself a simple question . . . okay, maybe not so simple. Ask yourself, “What do I want?”

Do you want to lose weight? Gain weight? Get leaner? Eat healthier? Feel better? etc.

This will determine what you need to do to achieve these goals. In the future, I’ll post about various diets and goals. For now, though, think about what you are trying or hoping to achieve.

If you have a smart phone (or computer), I highly recommend getting the My Fitness Pal app. I believe there is still a free version of it. It is an incredibly useful tool that has helped me a great deal for more than a decade now.