Keto, carnivore, raw, low-carbohydrate, low-fat diets - to be honest, there are so many of them that it's quite overwhelming. Personally, I'm not a fan of diets of any kind. I used elimination diets for a long time and to this day I avoid (although not religiously), e.g. drinking cow's milk - but this is guided more by common sense and listening to my body, than by any fashionable or less fashionable diet. I'm also not super convinced about juice detoxes, although I admit that it's worth giving your body a chance to regenerate from time to time - though I do consider short fasts to be the most effective for this purpose, but I'll talk about that in a separate post. 😉
From my point of view, the only thing that brings real and long-term results for our health is improving our eating habits. A diet, by definition, is not something that we're supposed to follow indefinitely. It's usually not practical at all, e.g. eating only meat products or huge amounts of fat. These are simply not natural things for modern humans and are therefore difficult to maintain. The effects of such diets usually appear, but they tend to disappear almost immediately after we return to our good old... well, eating habits.
An additional argument against diets, in my opinion, is enjoying life. I believe that our beautiful planet has many riches to offer and limiting ourselves in using them is doomed to cause us frustration. I'm not talking about the need to visit McDonald's every weekend, but about the natural needs of our bodies to benefit from the harvest of the seasons. A raw diet can be great in the summer, but in Poland, in winter, there are very few fresh local fruits or vegetables that do not require cooking, and our body gets cold very easily - so it's not advisable to eat them raw in large quantities. Therefore, I believe that it's not worth eliminating them completely and never trying to use diets if we feel the need - but we only use them temporarily(By the way - in Bach Flowers , fixation on one "correct" diet and rigidity of rules is considered a negative state of Rock Water. 🤓)
So why not take a quick look at your habits and beliefs about food? My beloved Ayurvedaturns out to be a wonderful tool here. Its principles are very simple and primarily promote compliance with the Earth's cycles, which I believe is one of the most important factors overlooked in today's food systems. The human body is not created to live in isolation from Nature and completely disregard its cyclical patterns. Unfortunately, most diets completely ignore this key element and add the assumption of "one size fits all".
For this reason, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the doshas in Ayurveda. Thanks to this simple knowledge of the elements prevailing in our body and in Nature, we can optimize our habits so that they lean towards the tastes and properties of meals tailored to our personal needs. In this way, we will also maintain the extremely important variety of meals, which will change with the weather around us.
Ayurveda also offers valuable guidance on the best time to eat the largest meal of the day. It is early lunch time, i.e. the time of the firey Pitta dosha - from 10am to 2pm. Equally important is the regularity of meals so that our body functions optimally and without unnecessary stress, and an appropriately long rest window from eating will allow it to digest everything before the next meal. It's worth developing the habit of not snacking between meals and eating dinner at least 3 hours before bed. Personally, after an early dinner, I wake up more well rested. 💃
It is also a valuable habit to avoid all chemicals in food – always check the ingredients of what you buy! The rule is simple - if you don't understand the names of what's in the ingredients, it's best to put it on the shelf. If possible, it is worth getting familiar with cooking, because thanks to this we will eat the freshest, we can be sure what exactly we put into our food and we don't need to add preservatives or flavour enhancers - fresh and dried semi-finished products, fats and spices are enough. My bread production has started in full swing, and in the summer we will create hundreds more jars of fermented veggies and fruit preserves for the winter. 😍This may seem difficult or unnecessary - until you start and taste the results of your work!
Sugar and other stimulants are also the bane of today's diet. White sugar offers virtually no nutritional value, but it's highly addictive and contributes to many lifestyle diseases. Coffee, unfortunately, often falls victim to huge amounts of pesticides that destroy our bacterial flora. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to this and reaching for organic coffees (I recommend e.g. Ale’Eko CAFÉlightly roasted coffees), and replacing white sugar with healthier equivalents such as local raw honey or brown sugar. I think the higher prices of such products also promote greater caution in consuming them! Adhering to the principle "food is medicine", I believe that it is better to spend more on food than on medical treatment.
If you have a problem with moderation in having sweets, it's worth taking a look at the presence of candida fungi (yeast) in your body. They are the ones that cause the uncontrollable craving for sugar! Personally, 20 drops of propolis tincture mixed with water and drunk in the morning before breakfast helps me a lot - after a few days, the craving for sugar disappears almost completely. However, the natural need for a sweet taste appears in the summer, when fruit become sweeter, and that's exactly when you can allow yourself a little more. 🍒
PS I recommend this interesting article on LifeSpa.com which compares keto, vegan and Ayurvedic diets – click.