I think that a lot of female college student try to lose weight. They often say, “I will go on a diet!” Do you know the true meaning of “diet”? Let’s look up “diet” in a dictionary.

diet: to eat less food or only food of a particular type in order to lose weight

As you can see, “diet” means losing weight only related to food. A lot of Japanese people think the word called diet includes losing weight by exercise. However, the way of thinking is mistake. It is better to say “weight control” than diet. We may be using the wrong English unconsciously. It’s terrible!

By the way, do you know “diet” also means Japanese National Assembly? (=kokkai) I think some people wonder why losing weight by food and the national meeting are represented by the same word. This is because of difference in the origin of word.

There are many things we don’t know about English. English is interesting! Let’s do hard both weight control and studying English together!