What's the right diet for me?

If you have ever tried to work out what diet you should be following whether for health and wellness or weight loss, the one thing that is so confusing is which one to follow.

Your friends may swear by one plan, your doctor by another and the minute you go to the internet or magazines, you will see the latest fad diet begin advertised.

Diet vs Nutrition

This is often the first barrier to get your head around. The problem with diets is that they often require a drastic immediate change for a period of time. After this time, you go back to your normal diet and, if this wasn't the best one for you, you may put on weight, get brain fog, lose energy, get skin problems, have a raft of chronic medical conditions flare up or get worse.

There are times when diet are useful, for example, an elimination diet is the gold standard for finding food intolerances in nutritional practice.

However, usually when you see the word diet, it usually refers to something which is unsustainable long term

In wellness forums, you will often see people refer to nutrition and the term WOL meaning Way of Life. These are people who see adding more nutrients into your body as a gradual process and they are very committed to maintaining a practice that has worked for them as a long term plan because they feel great.

Paleo vs Vegan or Low GI vs Fasting

There is no disputing there are many "healthy" nutritional blueprints out there and many internet forums will have people proclaiming the changes they experienced as the best or only way to eat and any other nutritional lifestyle choice is wrong.

It can be tricky to filter out the difference between noise and a well argued point. However, rather than focus on the differences between these diets lets focus on what they often have in common.

1. All of them focus on getting more nutrition through plants. It often surprises people that paleo is actually a very plant based diet with animal based protein only being about 10-20% of the total protein intake. All of them have a require a high plant based component (usually vegetables) which is great as they fill you with micronutrients that your body needs and is often depleted of in today's world.

2. All of them are about being aware how your body feels. All their advocates will talk about energy levels and symptoms of disease disappearing. So it is so important to consider how do you feel after eating, energised or tired? Do certain foods cause you to feel bloated or uncomfortable?

3. All of these lifestyle are promoted as being long term ways of life requiring the person to transform their approach to eating from just fuel to keep you going to the very lifeforce that changes your health and body condition.

Getting Started

If you are unsure of which nutritional regime is right for you, then start thinking about what it is you want to improve. What symptoms do you want to change? How do you want to feel after eating?

Every time you eat, start montoring these things afterwards and keeping a food diary. This can be so useful. If for example, you eat relatively well, but you notice you always get bloated after eating a certain food, or tired after eating certain food, then you can keep track of this.

#nutrition #diet #lifestyle