Let’s face it; nearly every American adult who has ever put on a few extra pounds has tried to diet at least once. Indeed, an entire industry has sprung up around dieting, giving birth to companies that do everything from prepackaging food to creating customized software that helps dieters keep track of what they eat.

There’s no problem with legitimate businesses selling products and services to people who want them. But when it comes to dieting, it may not be the best thing for us. Those who diet tend to find themselves on the yo-yo, dropping weight only to regain it in future. This is certainly not healthy. It is far better to develop healthy eating habits than to focus on dieting.

Here are three reasons to consider abandoning the dieting mindset and developing healthy eating habits instead:

1. Healthy Eating Is a Long-Term Strategy

Dieting is a temporary thing. Whether a person chooses to count calories or uses a service that delivers pre-portioned food to the door, the whole point of dieting is to lose extra weight by controlling what is eaten. That’s good. But here’s what’s bad: the temporary nature of dieting generally means people go back to their old eating habits at the conclusion of the diet. The inevitable result is that all the lost weight is regained in short order.

Developing healthy eating habits is a long-term strategy. It involves looking at what kinds of food to eat, what quantities to eat, and how to balance eating habits with the rest of your life. Once these habits have been established, they are permanent. Any weight lost (and you most likely will lose weight by developing healthy eating habits) will stay off because you are not returning to the bad eating habits that caused your weight gain in the first place.

2. Healthy Eating Promotes Generally Good Health

The human body needs certain vitamins, minerals and other nutrients to work properly. A lack of sufficient nutrition can lead to all sorts of things including a weakened immune system, gastrointestinal distress, urinary tract problems, hypertension, and so much more.

What we put into our bodies – and what we leave out, for that matter – plays a huge role in overall good health. This is why medical science continually encourages people to avoid excessive sodium, sugar, foods with high cholesterol, and so on. But if doctors are right about those things, doesn’t it make sense that developing healthy eating habits would lead to better overall health? It does make sense because that is exactly what happens.

3. Healthy Eating Allows for Guilt-Free Treating

Going on a diet can be a killer at certain times of the year. Take the annual holiday season, for example. It is virtually impossible to face the holidays – and all the great food that comes with them – if you’re on a diet. The guilt is just too much. The dieter either has to live with the guilt of blowing it or
stand by while everyone else enjoys the food.

Developing healthy eating habits allows you to treat yourself to those indulgent foods (in limited moderation, of course) without having to suffer the guilt. It may be okay to have that piece of pie because you’re supplying your body with what it needs at nearly every meal. Because we are talking reality, it may be the case that you cheat and eat something you are not supposed to. Enjoy it, move on, be better the next day, and stick to the healthiest diet you can for the remainder of your life. The treats that come along the way are not for your health; they are for your soul.

Healthy eating is better than dieting in almost every respect. It improves overall health, keeps weight in check, and brings an end to the yo-yo cycle of dieting.