Which Diet is Right For You?
With so many diets to choose from, how do you know which diet is right for you? Is there one diet that is better than all the others? Which diet guarantees the most weight loss? Which diet insures that you will be your healthiest? Let me give you some straight talk so that you can cut through all the marketing to discern what you really need.
It’s Not About the Weight.
The answer doesn’t matter if you’re asking the wrong question. Is “Which diet is right?” even a productive question? Perhaps, first, you should ask, “Do I really need to go on a diet? Why do I need to go on a diet?”
Chances are you feel like you need to lose some weight. There is an assumption here: “If I lose some weight, I’ll be healthier.” But I’m telling you, that’s backward! In reality, if you get healthy first, then you’ll lose some weight! We tend to think that we carry around those excess pounds simply because we haven’t exercised enough yet to compensate for all the calories we ate. But if that simple calorie-in, calorie-out math were correct, there wouldn’t be a glut weight loss and exercise programs on the market, because we’d all be skinny!
There is an assumption here: “If I lose some weight, I’ll be healthier.” But I’m telling you, that’s backward! In reality, if you get healthy first, then you’ll lose some weight!
Which Diet is Right for You? It Depends
The reason that you diet and workout like crazy and still can’t get those pounds off is because there’s an imbalance, impairment, or blockage somewhere in your body. Your body is not stupid. In fact, your body is absolutely brilliant! It compensates precisely and marvelously to all the conditions under which you ask it to live, keeping you alive and functioning in spite of whatever stresses, toxins, illnesses, and food-like substances you encounter. It may be working around inflammation, or poor digestion, or skewed hormones. But it adjusts and optimizes what is available to keep you as resilient as possible.
Therefore, in order to understand which diet is right for you, it’s imperative to understand what unique dynamics are going on inside of your body. Just because your friend lost weight on a keto diet doesn’t mean that your gall bladder is strong enough for you to process that many fats. Even though your mom is a vegan doesn’t mean that you will make enough hemoglobin, antibodies, enzymes or hormones without animal protein in your diet. And while your wife eats low carb, it doesn’t mean you can compete in sports without a few more starches to burn.
Four Hormones Are Key
Truthfully, you are not really in control of your weight. Your hormones are. If you are fighting stubborn weight loss, chances are that at least one of these four hormones is out of kilter. So, which diet is right for you will depend on your levels of thyroid, estrogen, insulin, and cortisol. If you focus on bringing the hormones into harmony, you will not only settle at a better weight, you will feel stronger and more vibrant, too.
Truthfully, you are not in charge of your weight. Your hormones are.
The Right Diet for Poor Thyroid Function
If your thyroid is sluggish, so is your metabolism…and your digestion…and everything else. Of course your body holds on to your energy stores! It’s an insurance policy against loss of fuel. For that reason, you need MORE nutrition, not less if your thyroid hormones are out of balance. Low calorie diets are stressful to the body, and stress is very damaging to thyroid function. So is hard-core, extreme exercise. Consequently, it’s time to stop dieting and exercising if you need to support your thyroid.
Six top nutrients for thyroid health are iron, selenium, zinc, iodine, protein, and Vitamin A. Incidentally, these nutrient require robust digestion. Minerals are hard to absorb, and protein is tough to break down. If you have wimpy digestion, dieting is not going to augment your thyroid function. Work with a practitioner to prime digestion first!
Eat for Estrogen Balance
Did you know that fat tissue is endocrine tissue? In other words, fat tissue makes hormones! So, if you are more than 20 or 30 pounds overweight, there’s a likelihood that you are making more estrogen than your body needs. Estrogen tends to increase weight gain. Therefore, the more weight you gain, the more you’re likely to gain. Dieting is not going to fix that.
The right diet for estrogen dominance is one that supports the liver. It’s your liver that has to break down all the estrogen for elimination. Super foods here would be cruciferous vegetables, high-fiber foods, and B vitamins, especially the active form of vitamin B6, pyridoxal-5-phosphate (P5P). Most detrimental to estrogen excess would be foods that contain “xenoestrogens,” sustances that either mimic or stimulate estrogen in the body. You can find a list of xenoestrogens here.
The Right Diet For High Insulin Levels
You don’t have to be diabetic in order to have high fasting insulin. In fact, insulin may be elevated decades before rising glucose shows up on your bloodwork, even at pre-diabetic stages. You can have chronically high insulin because of ongoing stress in your life, excess calories, or simply too many refined carbohydrates in your lifestyle. Ask for an insulin test the next time you have annual blood samples drawn for lab testing. Functional practitioners consider any result in the upper two-thirds of the reference range to be unhealthy.
An appropriate dietary approach for correcting hyper insulin production is a low-glycemic, high fiber one. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s high or low fat, or even high or low carb, so much as it matters the type of carbs you eat. Focus on vegetables! Stay away from foods made with flour, eliminate all sweeteners, and implement some kind of intermittent fasting or restricted time window eating if you are able. You must make dramatic and sustainable changes for about six months to give your organs an abrupt and extended holiday from this deadly metabolic process.
You must make dramatic and sustainable changes for about six months to give your organs an abrupt and extended holiday from this deadly metabolic process.
Correcting Abnormal Cortisol Hormone
Stress is a killer for normal cortisol production. If you feel that you are wired all the time, or tired all the time, you may need to investigate your cortisol levels. But stress is not just emotional! You can be stressed by a hidden food sensitivity, heavy metal toxicity, an imbalance of gut microbes, or a simmering infection, such as gingivitis.
For that reason, the best diet for cortisol health is the one that resolves your unique physiological needs. It may be a high fiber diet, or a dairy-free, gluten-free one. For someone else, it could be a low-starch diet, or one high in polyphenols. There is no one-size-fits-all diet! A functional approach to your needs is best in order to customize a program that works for you.