Let’s be honest – how many food fads are out on the market at the moment ALL claiming to be the healthiest and best option pushed by all their advocates:
Dietary choices
Paleo
Keto
High Fat Low Carb
Carnivore
Vegetarian
Vegan
Raw foods diet
High Carb Low Fat
High Protein
Fasting
5:2
Whole Thirty
AIP (autoimmune) FODMAPS
Mediterranean
Blue Zones
Juicing
Blood Type Diet
Soup Diet
IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros)
Each one of these eating plans have pros and cons, and it’s not about me advising you which plan is healthier than the other, it’s about me explaining when healthy eating becomes unhealthy…
In the beginning we call it a “pain point” that makes you want to shift your current eating habit to get you into a better mind and body from some of the reasons listed below:
- Notification of a health scare or concern, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, etc
- You feel tired all the time, sore, and have no energy
- Constant headaches, migraines
- Overweight.
- Playing with your children may be too hard
- You realise that you are drinking too much throughout the week?
Which eating plan you choose is based on you and your needs, and it’s about being comfortable with the change from where you are currently at, but most importantly please be educated about your dietary choice, NOT influenced by others.
To change your eating or lifestyle there needs to be removal of bad habits and replaced with better habits – a successful way is to remember:
Choose a few good habits at a time, not ten at once.
Healthy eating becomes unhealthy when you start to obsess over the foods you can and cannot have (according to the eating style you are following).
Example 1: You’re following a keto diet (high in fat and little to no carbohydrates)
You go out with friends or family and they only offer pizza as a meal choice.
You instantly start having heart palpitations because this is full of carbohydrates and you either pass on the meal entirely, you pick the toppings off and leave the crust or you leave the venue.
Example 2: You’ve decided to go Vegan
You’ve seen an influencer on Insta flaunting she’s full vegan, she’s lost heaps of weight and never felt better.
You instantly stop eating meat and animal products.
You start preaching the vegan movement to all your family and friends and start unfollowing and unfriending anyone that supports eating meat.
All of these situations show that you are now entering an unhealthy eating space.
Healthy doesn’t stop with healthy eating, it’s about a healthy lifestyle, good sleep and removal of stress that all contributes to your ‘healthy self’
But at this point to stay on the healthy eating only…
Without being disrespectful it’s about lack of knowledge and understanding deeply of each of these dietary lifestyles.
Each INDIVIDUAL is exactly just that, individual and they have certain needs and history to lead them to certain dietary lifestyles.
Some people thrive on a Paleo style diet cutting down on grains and dairy, whereas someone who has an autoimmune condition operates better having less inflammation and pain in their body by following a FODMAPS dietary plan.
Here’s when healthy eating becomes unhealthy:
- Ignoring your body when you become lethargic, tired, inflamed but keep following the diet you ‘signed’ up for. Your body is your teacher.
- Nutrient deficiency is unhealthy (young girls just starting to menstruate following a vegan diet losing iron and not replacing diet with good iron levels). This causes illness and hormone disruption.
- Fasting to lose weight (weight loss through water weight, leads to weight gain when you eat, so can lead people to more fasting for the wrong reason – fasting is to help rejuvenate cells).
- Calorie counting a calorie is not a calorie, the nutrients within a calorie count more, just like burning calories differentiate
- Rules when a dietary plan puts out RULES, this becomes restrictive and stressful leading people into unhealthy relationships with food.
- Shopping by marketing labels and not looking at the ingredients (can be full of toxic additives that harm the body)
- Pushing your beliefs onto someone else is unhealthy, each person has their own story.
- Eating for weight loss all the time, (restrictive eating) your body requires cycles to adapt to less food and more food
- Eliminating foods based on a fad diet, not on what your body requires, you then make your body intolerant to foods when not necessary.
- Binge eating when you restrict to much and cravings overpower you to binge all the time, this may require adding supportive supplements to ensure your body is getting what it needs in minerals and vitamins.
The health industry is booming and since social media is available it’s quite scary what marketers can push with products, what damage influencers can do to innocent minds and naive consumers.
Many people look for the ‘quick fix’ the ‘magic pill’, but unfortunately we need to be smarter than that and take time to understand and learn about the origin of the dietary plan as in why it was designed and who it’s best suited to, because many people start these fads only to gain a bad relationship with food.
What you need to look for is something that works for you and gives you FOOD FREEDOM… never be scared of good whole foods, embrace them and try not to follow a set dietary style unless for pain management as previously mentioned.
Speak to a professional, health coaches are trained in understanding all the dietary plans out there, so they can help you with some changes to your health – they will teach you the good nutrients in all foods that can help your weight loss journey, improve your energy, get rid of brain fog, clear up your skin and remove joint pain, plus much more … food is medicine.
Good luck
PS: look out for my article on ‘beyond healthy eating” to explain about how it’s not all about what you eat, it’s about the whole picture – eating when tired, stressed or on the go.
