When it comes to nutrition, there are lots of ways to reach goals and maintain a healthy and active lifestyle. Weight, though potentially an important part of the equation, is not all there is to enjoying health and finding a sustainable path forward in nutrition.
Most people don’t think about nutrition much unless they are trying to improve their health. If a person wants to lose weight, begin an exercise program, reduce inflammation, or use food to help with some other physical ailment, then they might begin to really focus on what they put in their mouth.
There is no limit to what you can find on the internet about nutrition. Just do a quick search of anything related to weight loss, food as medicine, or best foods for working out, and you’ll find thousands, if not millions, of nutrition articles. The access we have to information can be good. But it can also be very overwhelming and confusing, especially if the information is about a topic that you don’t fully understand.
My goal in this post is to help you have a strong understanding of some of the most popular nutrition plans around today and exactly how and when they might be beneficial to you.
Before embarking on a particular plan, you should determine whether it is sustainable in your life.
What exactly is sustainability in nutrition? Sustainability in nutrition considers whether or not a plan works for an individual every single day, in any situation.
And before we can add to our sustainable plan, we need to be able to do the very basics of nutrition really well.
So what do these two things even mean in real life?
Basically, if your plan doesn’t work for you on vacation, then it doesn’t work. And in turn, if you start and stop a plan over and over, then it’s not working either. Lastly, if whole foods aren’t the majority of what you consume, then trying to follow a plan, probably isn’t going to work either.
In other words, first and foremost, you need to get the basics. Before we move on to some higher-level plans that are popular right now in the nutrition world, if you need help getting started on basics, grab my free 5-day Nourishing Wellness Ebook now.
Once you consistently master the basics of nutrition, then you might be ready to move on to a higher-level refinement of those basics.
So let’s talk about some of the most popular nutrition plans floating around our culture today.
Paleo Diet - The Paleo Diet has built it’s fame on claiming that it includes foods that our ancestors ate for thousands of years before the modernization of farming. This diet gained popularity back in the 1970’s but gained quite a bit of popularity after the publication of a book in 2002, and then really began to soar after one of my favorite nutrition & health experts wrote a book called The Paleo Solution in 2010.
Paleo is a fairly simple plan based on whole foods. It doesn’t exclude many God-made foods, but it does discourage grains and legumes. It also definitely cuts out processed sugar and most dairy, though in recent years, the Paleo community has begun to accept raw, organic, grass-fed dairy as a reasonable addition to the everyday diet.
This diet is highly sustainable and can easily be done when eating out or going on vacation. It has a plethora of options available on the internet for things like dessert recipes that fall into the “acceptable” range for Paleolithic followers.
Keto Diet - The Keto Diet is an extremely low-carb, high-fat, moderate-protein diet. The goal of the Keto diet is to get a person to maintain a state of ketosis, which means that the body moves into using fat for fuel instead of the sugar that is its preferred method. Like Paleo, Keto isn’t a new concept, but it is one of the newer strategies for weight loss.
As claimed, the Keto Diet can definitely lead to rapid weight loss. However, it will be a little more difficult to sustain when it comes to things like vacations, holidays, and birthday celebrations. Unfortunately, this unsustainability factor can set back your body’s response to the Keto Diet guidelines pretty drastically.
Intermittent Fasting - Intermittent Fasting (IF) can be summed up as an intentional meal timing schedule in which a person chooses not to eat for a certain period of time and then chooses to eat for a certain number of hours. There are many various forms of IF, which range in length and frequency.
Intermittent Fasting, similar to Keto, starves the body of glucose, its preferred energy source, and pushes it to use fat for fuel. The biggest difference between Keto and IF is that meal timing is restricted, but carbohydrates are not, and the variety of “acceptable” foods is broader.
Carnivore Diet - This is exactly what it sounds like. In this diet, an individual eats like a carnivore, consuming only animal products, including all types of meat, poultry & fish. Eggs, butter, and organ meats make the cut as well on the Carnivore Diet. And, since you might be wondering about the fact that fruits & veggies are not on this list, that is intentional. Those are a no-no on the Carnivore Diet.
This diet can be sustainable, but participants must understand the depth of the reality they are getting into. If eating only essentially meat, butter, and eggs for the rest of your life sounds exciting to you, this might be the thing you need. It also can serve as a short-term way of eating if you are considering an elimination diet, which can be very long and tedious. Participants who choose this way of nutrition make some very bold statements about how good they feel when doing so.
Carb Cycling—Like the Carnivore Diet above, this diet’s name gives away the plan's plot. Carb cycling involves alternating carbohydrate intake on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The biggest wins of this way of eating are typically weight loss and a more mindful approach to what goes in your mouth.
Because Carb Cycling requires intentionality, you will think long and hard about what you eat. This mindfulness is a natural by-product of the carb-cycling diet. It is indeed sustainable, but it does require quite a bit of planning on the part of the participant.
Calories In, Calories Out method—Probably one of the most popularly touted methods, the Calories In, Calories Out method is less about weight loss and more about sustaining weight and its premise is to eat the same amount of calories that you burn each day. Many people turn to this method after reaching a weight loss goal. As with all the others mentioned here, this one can be sustainable but will require a lifelong commitment to counting calories. Also this method is only a guessing game unless a participant gets tested to find out exactly how many calories their body needs each day.
There is also a problem with counting calories alone: not all calories are created equal. So, if you’re looking to put the best food options into your body by eating whole foods, this method will be great. However, if you’re more concerned about making your daily candy bar fit into your calorie count, you may eventually destroy your own progress by spiking insulin through the intake of high-carbohydrate, processed foods.
Macronutrient Counting—This method is similar to the Calories In, Calories Out method. However, it focuses more on the Macronutrient side of food, which ensures you intake plenty of protein, carbohydrates, and fats. The Macro Method still requires daily counting, but calories simply add up as you count the Macros that they are made of.
This type of counting can still have a downfall in that you can use up all of your allotted carbohydrates & fats for the day quickly if you are consuming processed foods. By eating processed foods, you’ll probably do more harm than good for your body. The goal with Macronutrient counting would be to eat only whole foods to help your body feel its best.
While every diet and plan has substantial evidence that it can work, choosing the plan for your life is not a one-size-fits-all approach. We all live unique lives and have unique DNA, so what works for one person may not work for another.
Carefully choosing what will best fit into how you live your life, what your goals are, and how your body feels all need to be taken into consideration.
Though each of these plans can be sustainable, the best option for you may be no plan at all.
If you need help figuring it all out, Contact Me & let’s have a chat about what might work for you.