What Diet is Best for You?

You probably know friends or family members that have lost weight on a popular diet. But you try it and don’t lose anything.  What’s up with that?  Simple-there is no such thing as a one size diet. Foods best for you are influenced by your personal history.  This may include genetics, what diet you were raised on, your exposure to toxins and current stress level. In today’s article, I will describe the basics of four diets.  Many of you will be able to follow a combination, but it’s a starting point to see what diet type might be right for you and your lifestyle.

Paleo/Whole 30:  These two diets have modest differences but are convenient to put in the same category. These diets focus on single food items such as fresh fruits (diets vary on types), meat, poultry, fish and eggs, nuts, healthy fats and low calorie vegetables. Sweet potato and winter squashes may be allowed in limited portions. These diets eliminate dairy, gluten, grains, legumes, soy, sugar, alcohol and all processed foods.  These diets may be suited for persons trying to identify food triggers. Use it as an elimination diet for 4 weeks, then add prohibited categories of foods in gradually.  In addition, carbohydrate sources are mostly fruits, so this can also be set up as a low carbohydrate diet and used short term by people with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

Ketogenic:This trendy diet decreases carbohydrates to only 5-10% of calories and utilizes fat as the majority of calories (70-80%).  Protein is allowed in modest amounts (2-4 ounces/meal). This diet was developed over 90 years ago to treat epilepsy and forces the body to burn fat for energy. Lately it is being promoted for everything from weight loss to diabetes, Alzheimers and even heart disease.  While this diet may benefit these conditions (long term studies not available), it is very restrictive and difficult to follow consistently.

Plant based/low fat: This diet consists of grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables and limited whole food fats (nuts, avocados, seeds).  It is very high carbohydrate. Of all the diets it has the greatest depth of research to support a high quality of health and possible reversal of some chronic diseases. This diet may not be the best starting place for those with GI issues and autoimmune conditions.

Still confused? Try focusing on what all of these diets have in common.  Each of them encourages quality food choices, lots of low calorie vegetables and eliminates processed sugar, flours and oils. If you’d like to know more, I encourage you to consider either my Sugar Detox or Reclaim Your Health classes. I look forward to helping you on your journey to your best diet yet.

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Patty Walker RD LD CDE CLT

Patty is proud to serve her community’s nutritional needs for over 35 years.  WIth deep knowledge in nutrition for diabetes as well as passion for plant-based diets, Patty supplies nutritional keys to unlock health by getting to the root of disease and helping others set a course for optimizing health. In addition to coaching individual clients and teaching classes, Patty provides education seminars to local businesses, writes monthly nutrition articles, is a key educator for the Lions Club’s Diabetes-Reduction Initiative and hosts “Nutritional Wisdom” cable show on WCTV. The goal is to reach as many people in my community that I possibly can with the truth about the power of nutrition and healthy living.

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