The internet is alive with discussions and opinions about how to eat a healthy diet. Message boards, Facebook groups, and social media are full of recommendations for many “healthy” diets, from the Autoimmune Paleo diet to completely plant-based diets. And there are success stories for all of them.
But there are also people who have given their all to try and eat a healthy diet, and still aren’t seeing the results they hoped for. And if this is you, nothing is more frustrating. What gives?
It’s bad enough to be aware of all the yummy foods that could be problem. But when you’re never sure if you’re going to feel ok or have the worst day ever, and feel anxious about everything you eat, how do you figure out how to eat healthy?
Healthy Diet Basics
Despite all the competing claims, the basics of a healthy diet aren’t really in dispute across all these different communities (with the exception of the carnivores vs. the vegetarians!).
We know that a healthy diet generally includes lots of organic fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, pasture-fed meats and poultry, wild-caught fish and seafood, healthy fats, legumes and whole grains, and spices, herbs, and seasonings.
We know that processed foods, refined grains, gluten, sugar, alcohol, dairy (for many people), artificial anything, and hydrogenated fats are generally not a good idea to consume. These items feed the inflammation that promotes disease.
The devil is in the details, as you no doubt know. For some of you, grains flare your symptoms and you can’t touch them. For others, too many vegetables make you bloated and gassy. For others still, too much meat will leave you feeling sluggish and tired.
There is no one right diet for everyone, just one right diet for YOU.
So even though we know that these general principles work, why are we still SO confused? The answer is because very few people understand that they need to learn how to combine these foods properly for their particular body.
The Magic Pill Pitfall: Rearrange your Expectations of What it Means to Eat Healthy
For many of us, muddling through chronic illness, we’re willing to try anything that might bring us relief. It’s easy to be wooed by the promise of a simple fix when you feel crappy. Like me, I suspect many of you have been guilty of assuming that the “right” diet would cure everything.
The unfortunate truth is that if you’re chronically ill, or your health challenges are complex, you aren’t likely to completely reverse your problems with a diet shift alone (though this DOES happen sometimes).
While therapeutic diets are wonderful and important, and are a cornerstone of my work with clients, they are always a template to start with, and MUST be customized. For you. Just because the Paleo diet recommends plantains or meat at every meal doesn’t mean your body can tolerate this. You should always be looking to your body to tell you what is a healthy diet.
Eating a healthy diet starts first and foremost with understanding that your diet (along with digestive function) is your FOUNDATION for health. What we’re aiming for with a good diet is providing our bodies with what it needs to do its work.
The Healthy Diet Key to Success
The true key to success when trying to figure out your healthy diet isn’t contained in the food lists, recipes, or cookbooks. What creates success is learning HOW to determine whether your diet is working for YOUR body or not.
You may not have been given the tools to figure this out before. To truly practice Functional Nutrition, and help you get to root-cause resolution, we need to get ultra curious, and observe, observe, observe.
In practice, I use a Food-Symptom Diary tool to help my clients track what they’re eating along side of their physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. By bringing awareness to these connections, I can help them learn which foods help their bodies thrive, and which do the opposite.
Using this tool is essential when changing your diet or trialing a therapeutic diet because you need a way to notice the changes. Effects of diet changes, and symptoms from foods can appear up to four days after consumption!
You can do this, too. It’s not as easy-sounding as following a diet template. But if you invest in doing the work, you will have the information you need to eat a healthy diet for YOU.
Remember, the goal isn’t to figure out the magic pill, because there likely isn’t one. The goal is to establish a trusting relationship between food and your body, so you can know how to best support yourself while you work on other layers of your puzzle.
What Should You Eat?
If you have tried special diets and haven’t had success, and feel even more discouraged than when you started, never fear. It’s time to get curious. You can figure out which foods are safe, and which ones need to be avoided to prevent symptoms.
The first thing I suggest people do in this situation is to get back to the basics. Zoom out and tinker with your macronutrients, which are your carbohydrates, your proteins, your fats, and fiber. Find the right fuel mixture for your body by doing an exercise like the breakfast experiment. In this experiment, eat something with different ratios of macronutrients for several days in a row for breakfast, and observe the effect on your energy, mood, and other physical symptoms.
When you eat mostly simple carbs for breakfast, like a piece of toast and coffee, how do you feel? How about when you add an egg to that mixture? What about when you add steamed greens or other vegetables to those eggs and toast? See if you can get this mixture right, so that you feel satiated and energized until lunchtime.
Your needs for the mixture may be different at different times of day. Experiment to see what works best for you.
Once you feel like you have a good handle on how much protein, fat, fiber, and carbs you need to eat, THEN zoom in and get curious about more specific things: particular foods that aggravate symptoms, or help symptoms.
Using my Food-Symptom Diary, begin tracking what you eat alongside your symptoms. Really get curious. Consider many layers of detail. Look at all the ingredients in your products. Do removal and reintroduction experiments..
Though my Food-Symptom Diary has only 7 days-worth of pages, with more complicated symptoms, it can take more time than that to figure out the source. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t give up. It took me 5 or 6 weeks of tracking to finally figure out that broccoli was contributing to my constipation.
If you still can’t make heads or tails of what you find in your Food-Symptom Diary, it’s time to get connected with me (www.confluencenutrition.com/contact) or another practitioner who is trained to see patterns in a food diary. There may be layers you haven’t considered, or be aware of that could be impacting your symptoms.
Happy tracking!
Have you discovered something useful about your chronic illness by tracking your food and learning about your body’s specific needs? Leave a comment down below!
Sometimes, simply tracking your food and symptoms isn’t enough. You may need deeper layers of investigation. When you’re ready for some support figuring out why your “healthy” diet isn’t working for you, schedule a free Assessment Session with me, and I’ll help you explore how you could find YOUR answers.
To get the bigger picture view of what you can do to restore your whole health, grab your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery: How to Move Beyond Your Symptoms and Create a Personalized Plan to Restore Your Health here.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks