When I first read years ago that the Eskimos have nearly 500 words for snow, I was certainly surprised. But quickly I realized this really isn’t an excess.

Snow affects Eskimos more than you might imagine.

The wrong type at the wrong time when they are on a hunt, for instance, creates life-threatening conditions. Having so many words for snow allows for subtle and essential differentiation that could save lives.

Apply that same logic to English, and you realize our language has a glaring weakness.

A dearth of words for diet

In the broadest sense, “diet” is nothing more than the foods you eat, yet the word is also used to mean the kind and amount of food consumed for a specific reason. As often as not, that reason is appearance — though a better reason is to enhance health and fitness.

All of this influenced how I answered a question posed to me the other day by the custodian as he cleaned my classroom. He dumped what he had swept into the dustpan into the trash can, turned my way, and asked, “Which diet is the best one?”

I said what rightfully needs to be said next although it did not answer his question: “Best for what?”

The custodian is fit, in his mid-20s, and currently doing Cross Fit-type training after first focusing on bodybuilding and then bicycling. Was he looking to eat in the best way to fuel his new way of working out?

Hoping to shed some fat and get a bit more of a beach body before taking that cruise he had been telling me about?

Asking for a sedentary friend who spends countless hours playing video games? Inquiring on behalf of an older relative who has children and only a limited time plus a lack of enthusiasm for working out?

Or seeking an eating strategy that would allow him to celebrate his 100th birthday with a sound mind and body?

Each situation would call for a different diet, but you probably knew that.

What the custodian couldn’t answer in a single sentence isn’t nearly as apparent; it’s simply absolutely essential. He’ll never know — and you won’t either! — which diet is “best” until he knows his goal, the desired end result.

That may seem too simple to state, but it’s a mistake that so many dieters make that I feel the need to restate it: You need a clear and concrete goal in order to create a “best” diet.

After nearly 40 years of fine tuning my own diet as well as creating hundreds of successful ones for friends, coworkers, and clients, here are two elements that I see as essential for creating your “best” diet.

Estimate your caloric intake daily

The advent of phone apps that do the calculations for you has taken what many once saw as pure drudgery and transformed it into borderline fun. But bear in mind that regardless of the app or even if you go old school and weigh your foods on a scale, the number you tally is only ever an estimate.

Did you know the amount of carbs you consume from a serving of spaghetti changes, albeit slightly, based on the cooking time? Mushy noodles contain fewer calories than those done al dente.

Similarly, the amount of fat in the spaghetti sauce that your body actually processes rather than passes changes based on what else is eaten during the meal. Include a fibrous salad or broccoli, and some of the fat in the sauce gets excreted intact because it attaches to undigestable fiber.

Don’t be bothered by such inaccuracies, however. They will not impede your progress — as long as the inaccuracies are consistent.

For years, I have feared that I’ve underestimated my daily caloric counts, that when my total shows 2550 at the end of the day, it may very well be 2750 or 2800 — enough of a miscalculation to add unwanted weight. But that doesn’t happen because my food preparation and caloric calculations are consistent.

Consistency rather than pinpoint accuracy is what counts.

Know the ratio of protein to carbs — especially simple ones — consumed

Let’s say consuming 2500 calories per day maintains your present weight, that you’ve failed over the long term at eating less than that, but that you really could benefit from shedding some unwanted — and unsightly — fat.

No problem. You can keep consuming 2500 calories per day and lose body fat if you change the composition of your calories so that you consume a higher percentage of protein.

Protein consumption does not promote insulin secretion, which is needed to store energy as fat. While it is a bit of an oversimplification, your body essentially either stores fat or burns fat depending on the ratio of protein to carbohydrates — especially simple ones — in your diet.

A one-to-one the ratio of protein to carbs in your diet (instead of the more typical one-to-three or one-to-four ratio) increases the odds that glucagon — which is, in essence, insulin’s opposite — will be secreted, which allows fat to be burned as energy.