I’ve researched all kinds of diets over the year. I’ve looked at the Gaps diet, the Body Ecology Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Vegan diet, the Fodmap diet, and on and on.
I’m not a fan of diets. I’m not even a fan of the diet that I recommend to people. The reason why I have concerns about diets, is that the best and worst foods are very individual. What if a person has severe leaky gut or a massive allergy to one of two of the key foods recommended by a diet? What if a person has Blastocystis hominis or Dientamoeba fragilis? How does having IBS affect a diet’s recommendations?
There are many other factors that can influence health. What if a person is in an abusive relationship but thinks the Fodmap diet is going to fix their gut? What if antibiotics have wrecked someone’s gut flora, and now, they’re trying to fix it with Fodmaps? I’m sure you get my point. There are too many “what ifs’ for any one diet to be “the answer.”
Diets don’t cure people. They temporarily remediate. That’s why I get concerned when everything is food-focused. There are a billion different “foods to eat” and “foods to avoid” checklists on Google. We’re told not to have excess fructose. Avoid high-fructan foods. Avoid high-poly foods. Avoid high lactose foods. After a while, there’s not much left to eat.
For example, goat’s milk is high lactose, yet it’s fine for most people. Does it really make sense to avoid apples because of their fructose content?
The best diet for anyone is a fluid, dynamic thing. What upset your gut today may be perfectly fine in three weeks. If you stick to a diet for months, or even years, you become rigid and limited.
Just because a piece of paper tells you to avoid all these foods, do you avoid all those foods? I don’t think so. I think you need to avoid what aggravates you at the time, and that’s a very fluid, dynamic thing.
I’m not a fan of any particular diet. I’m a fan of people avoiding foods that give them trouble. I’m not going to say follow the Candida Crusher diet for the rest of your life. I’m not going to tell you that the Paleo diet is the answer to your health problems.
You need to follow a diet that is customized to your circumstances. You can narrow down the best diet for you by incorporating healthy food and observing which ones aggravate your gut.
Many diets don’t take into consideration factors like lifestyle, relationships, being kind to others, and your sleep habits.
I hope my perspective has been a wake-up call for people out there who follow strict diets and get limited results. I hope this perspective will also reach those people who surf from one diet to another. Some of my clients have followed fifteen to twenty diets and are worse off than when they started.
It’s not all about what you eat. It’s about been how you live and how you incorporate the right foods into your life.
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