Before getting down to business, I wanted to announce the winners of my Healthy Made Easy E-Book giveaway:
- Lucie
- Shashi
- Sam
I’ve emailed you each a copy- please let me know if you haven’t received it!
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Pescatarian, vegan, raw food, paleo, gluten-free, low-carb, vegetarian, vegan, high protein, grain-free…wherever we look, labels are being thrown out. It seems like we now have to follow a specific kind of diet to achieve maximum health. While labels definitely have their time & place, I personally think they look better on my handbags than my diet.
For starters, our diet does not define who we are.  Eating a certain way does not imply the kind of person you are.   If eating meat allows you to look & feel at your best, there’s no reason to feel guilty about doing so. Secondly labeling ourselves as a certain kind of eater automatically limits us to a set of rules & requires us to justify our dietary choices when they deviate from certain expectations.  While rules can act as a great guideline, they’re not the be all end all…especially when trying to abide by them causes more stress & frustration than overall wellbeing.
When we identify ourselves as a particular eater, we forget how individualized our diets need to be. While a black & white approach to eating sounds nice, in reality there’s a lot of GREY area. Between different needs, tastes, preferences, health status, activity levels, genetics, there is no clear-cut approach to eating. When you speak to someone following a specific diet chances are they will boast the benefits of eating that certain way, which may make you question your own choices. Rather than try and completely replicate that way of eating , use it as a source of inspiration to help you find a way of eating that suits YOUR needs and lifestyle.
Even if a diet has produced miracle results for several others, it doesn’t mean that the same will apply for you.  Nor does mean that it’s the only diet that can make you feel at your best. Here’s the thing: whether you eat grain-free, vegan, paleo, low carb, high carb, WHATEVER…all these different diets & labels aim to ultimately lead us to the same goal:
 Good health & wellbeing
Find your own path to walk and don’t feel discouraged or guilty that it’s not a straight road. Pick aspects of the Mediterranean diet which appeal to you, draw on some vegan principles, eat a few Paleo-friendly meals…whatever. Base your dietary choices on foods that taste good, nourish your health and make you feel amazing- physically, emotionally & mentally.  Â
As for the kind of diet I eat? I follow something called a Qualitarian Diet. In other words I base my meals on fresh, high-quality, nutrient-dense ingredients while also limiting my intake of processed foods.  Recently I seem to be gravitating more towards plant-based meals.  Maybe it’s a part of the meat-hangover from the Whole30 but beans & legumes have never tasted yummier.  I’m not going to lie though: I’m looking forward to getting my burger fix when I visit London next month…oh and some Peri Peri chicken at Nandos ;)!
What kind of eater are you?
I am a nutrition seeker myself. I eat as I want and I feel I should. Great post
Thanks Anita <3
So true Khushboo – just because a diet works for one, doesn’t mean it will work for others too. I am a follower of the Shashi diet – which boils down to clean eating supplemented with chocolate 😉 Though I really struggle incorporate more quality protein into it. I had not heard of a Qualitarian Diet before and was fascinated by some of the articles on Google – one of them mentioned the rejection of lettuce for cooked broccoli -I am curious, is this an opinion or part and parcel of a Qualitarian Diet?
And I am so excited to be one of the winners! Thanks so much!
As soon as I get it, I am digging in! Happy Monday!
Ohh whoops, I didn’t realise that a Qualitarian Diet actually exist with rules- WHOOPS! Hope you enjoyed my e-book…I sent it out on Monday :D!
Nice article Khushboo, as with everything else in life, its all about balance and moderation.
Yes ma’am!
First: wooohoooo, thank you so much – I’m so excited to be picked as a winner for your book! Can not wait to start reading.
I love this post. And I couldn’t agree more with you. Every person is different and needs a different diet – I switched many times and still do sometimes it always depends on my mood 🙂
But the Qualitarian diet is always in there!! 🙂
Hope you enjoyed reading my e-book, Lucie :)! No harm in constantly changing your diet- life ain’t static!
Just downloaded the e-book…it looks great and I can’t wait to read! I’ve learned over the years not to put a label on my eating habits – I just eat what sounds good. I got just as excited over finding pre-roasted beets when I was grocery shopping as I do when I pick out a kind of ice cream that I really want – I just focus on what I love to eat. Mainly keeping health in mind…sometimes not so much 😉
Hope you enjoyed reading my e-book, Sam! And I’m with you about getting excited about opposite kinds of foods! Some days broccoli can make me as happy as a bowl of ice cream :)!
I think I am an “eat-everythingatarian” 😉
Bahah NICE!
I follow the Amanda diet — I eat whatever Amanda happens to be needing at any given time. Sometimes it’s a vegan meal/snack, sometimes Paleo, sometimes gluten-free, and sometimes it’s even SAD. Labels definitely look better on handbags, and while I spent years and years labelling my diet, I find that I feel so much better now that I gave all that up and started listening to my body more. When I was vegan, I started craving dairy like a madwoman, and I ignored that craving for a long time before not being able to take it anymore. Same thing happened with being vegetarian — I needed some meat in my diet. Labels mean restriction, and I’m definitely not a fan…
The Amanda diet sounds ideal! I think the key to nutrition is reaching a point where you are in tune to your body- listen to what it’s telling you rather than what the books tell you!
I eat vegan, but HATE telling people. I blog vegan, and mention it there..but otherwise I do not publicly announce it haha. I eat vegan because it makes me feel good, and the title just fits with what I eat. I do hate labels though!
I think the moment we label ourselves as a particular eater, we open ourselves to unwarranted judgement & speculation!
After years of trying to label my diet as vegetarian/ vegan/ healthy I’m now – trial and error included as of now – a convinced follower of the happy diet [I guess I’d be a happy-tarian?!]. We believe in unlabeling foods [no ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’] and eating what and as much of everything as makes us individually feel good. Chocolate and chickpeas are their own food groups and should be consumed every day.
Basically, for me that means eating a largely plant-based diet with dairy when the fancy strikes.
Agreed about daily consumption of chocolate & chickpeas…especially if the latter comes in the form of hummus ;)!
I was just thinking about a similar topic!
While I am a vegetarian, that’s where the labels stop for me. I do what works best for my body. And really, I hate being so stringent with my diet (only bad things come from this), so I call my way of eating the “go with the flow” approach. 🙂 I think we need to learn to trust our bodies more and listen. For example, if I don’t eat a reasonable amount of carbs on a given day, I am super lethargic. Lesson learned!
I think I could get on board with the “Go with flow” diet ;)!
I like the Qualitarian Diet. That works for me. Whole foods. Nutrient Dense. High Quality. Yep, well said. Even though I don’t eat meat, you’d be hard pressed to find me say it anywhere in recent history on my blog.
From a marketing perspective it’s going to kick me in the ass because I don’t label or tag my recipes as vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, etc but I don’t want to. To me, it’s great Qualitarian Food. I suspect whole foods might be the only label I’d be comfortable with, but even then I’d likely get confused with the store in searches. Oh well.
Oh I feel you about not tagging recipes. Heck if I ever do use buzzwords like “vegan” or “gluten-free”, it’s most likely due for the sake of traffic…and I have no shame in admitting that ;)!
I need some of that lentil salad and veggies!! I honestly cannot go a day without veggies in some form!
You and me both 🙂
Can I be a “No Shit”-tarian? LOL!
Hahah I don’t see why not 😉
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