Copyright 2015 Kay/wavesandpebbles

When I was setting up my Waves and Pebbles Facebook Page, it is possible to select interests to show what groups of people you would like to see your page.    What was fascinating is that in the process of doing so, the numbers of people who have expressed an interest in specific things is shown.

I found it startling that 22,554,479 people expressed an interest in “Healthy Diet” against just 34,552 in “Healthy Eating”.  It may be that it was their own choice of wording for their interests.  However, regardless of what is behind the figures,  it got me thinking about the different perceptions of “healthy eating” and “healthy diet”.  Are they one and the same?

For me, “healthy diet” brings to mind trying to lose weight and implies some kind of planning of menus, whereas “healthy eating” is about having knowledge about what is healthy or not (or at least supposed to be) and eating a balanced diet which includes all the nutrients that the body requires.  I believe that healthy eating is the key to losing weight, as once a diet comes into the equation the mind can become obsessed with thinking about food and wanting to eat things that are banned on “the diet”.  I know that in my twenties being on different diets was a big part of my life, as it was for my friends, until I did eventually lose the weight I wanted and stayed that way for many years (through healthy eating).

I’d be interested to hear what others think.  (I’ll copy this onto my Healthy Eating Forum page https://wavesandpebbles.wordpress.com/healthy-eating-forum/.)