Is it better to tweak your diet or to follow a diet designed for you by someone else?
Now, you might think that’s a bit of a dumb sort of thing to say. Why would you not want to go on a diet that somebody else made specifically for you?
I’ve hardly ever met patients that follow a dietician’s recommendation to the letter. Occasionally, people who are highly structured and weigh out everything they eat, pop up, but that’s not very common.
My question is, how can somebody else work out exactly the right foods for your bowel, your gut, at any particular time. I don’t think a professional can ever know your body and your physiology well enough to do that.
When it comes to food, I know what suits my palate, what agrees with my gut, and what doesn’t.
With my clients, I always make it a point to identify the foods they like and work around that information.
Most people gravitate to about nine or ten foods. They can change those foods over time, but then the bacteria in their gut is going to change as well. As your gut changes, so will how you think and how you feel.
When you make changes to your digestive system, you’re making changes to your entire life. That’s why I always like people to eat good food if they want to have a good life.
To have someone else come along and tell you that you need to eat X, Y, Z
on X, Y, Z day, and in certain portion sizes doesn’t work for me.
I do think that guidelines and suggestions are helpful. On many occasions, I’ve had clients who have avoided foods for some time because someone told them they shouldn’t eat it.
Further readings:
- 4 Types of Yeast Infection Recovery
- Weight Loss Is Common With Yeast Infection Treatment
- Vaginal Yeast Infections
- Are Carbs The “Bad Guy” When It Comes To Weight?
I’ll have someone ask, “can I eat bananas?” I say, “well, of course you can.”
“Well, I haven’t had a banana for three years.”
I say, “well, why?”
“Well, the naturopath I went to, he said that they’re bad for me.”
That’s very interesting, isn’t it? Someone says something’s bad for you, so you stay away from it for three years.
I don’t tell people things are bad for them unless it’s something like pop or donuts.
At different stages of your Candida recovery or SIBO recovery, you’ll be surprised how the gut can change. Sometimes the changes occur quite quickly, and that allows you to eat foods you haven’t had for a while.
I also have seen many people over the years with very poor digestive health that kept eating the same food day in, day out, day in, day out because they were told to eat those foods. It wasn’t until they stopped them or switched something out that their digestive health improved.
I’ve seen that pattern over a hundred times. A client is sentenced to a life of eating steamed spinach leaves for breakfast. That’s all they’re allowed to eat, and maybe a little bit of something else.
I don’t like that. It’s not the right thing to do to people.
Once you say to somebody, this is good and this is bad, that person and takes it as gospel. That will be their mantra going forward for five, 10, 20 years.
When someone says to you, this is a bad food for you, and this is a good food, take it with a grain of salt. Five minutes from now or next week, that food may be perfectly fine for your digestive system. You would be surprised how many foods you can tolerate even if you were told they were “bad.”
Of course, this advice doesn’t apply to junk food. I’m referring to healthy foods.
Be careful of the food police. There’s plenty of them out there. If you’re told not to eat something because it’s bad for you, you need to think that through yourself.
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