Why every diet is a good diet

Good morning ladies, it's Cherie here from spicefitness.com. I just thought today it would be great to tackle the thing on diets, because everyone that's had results on a diet is a raving fan of that diet.

They're a raving fan because they've had results and they've found that they've probably got more energy than they've ever had before, they probably find that they've lost weight, they'll probably find a whole pile of things on that one particular diet that they've chosen. But I just want to challenge your thoughts today about why every single diet is good, and this is why. So there's no one single diet which is good for everyone.

The human body can do well under so many different conditions. Now I thought a few months ago I'd try this keto diet. I thought, great, let's get onto it.

By the end of the week, I was severely constipated because I'd restricted all my fruits that I'd normally eat, and I eat quite a bit of fruit every day. And I was feeling horrible. I was feeling bloated because I hadn't been in the toilet well.

I was feeling just lethargic. It didn't suit me at all. My sort of diet is more of a Mediterranean diet.

So I love lots of plants, lots of plant-based diets with virgin olive oil, and maybe a bit of meat on the side, but I just feel light and healthy, and that keeps my weight at a good place. So that's for me, but that's not for you, and it's not one diet fits all. So I want to talk a little bit of a chat about what some of the people in the world do with diets.

So if you look at the people in the Arctic, Inuit, so the Eskimos, I guess, and the African Maasai, they eat traditional diets high in fat and animal products and very few vegetables. So a lot of their diet is animal fats and obviously high protein as well. And so they do extremely well on that.

They are healthy. Hardly any heart disease or anything like that. Hi, Gail.

Good to see you. Well, I can't see you, but you can see me. And then in the South Pacific, there's people there that eat diets high in vegetables and starchy carbs, but low in fat.

Then you get the Takalau, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, near New Zealand, where they eat diets high in saturated fats. And so all of these people have very minimal heart disease, hardly any of the problems with diabetes and stuff that we have here with our highly processed diet. And that's the thing.

If you're starting to look at your diet, the best thing that you can do is pick something that actually works for you. Because if you're on a diet for like 4, 8, 12 weeks, but it's not going to suit you, then you're not going to stick with it. You want whatever diet you pick to become a lifestyle choice.

And so that's why it's great to pick something that suits you and involves quite a few different food groups. I think when you restrict any food groups, you're actually heading into a bit of trouble as well, because all sorts of foods will give us different things. So different things to add to our body being as healthy as it can be.

So it's possible to be fit and healthy regardless of which diet you choose. So it's that diet that's going to work the best for you. So just some rules.

I'm not going to make this a long live today. So stay with me if you can. Hi, Elva.

It's great that you could join me. So just talking about which diet to follow, there's no one particular diet that works better than anything else. And I'm coached with Precision Nutrition.

They do a lot of the science behind foods and the science behind diets and the science behind everything. So they are more about not promoting, and I'm along the same lines. I don't promote any one particular diet, but I do promote you just having a look at the extras that we have in between our great diets.

So if you choose to go to those chips and you know, packeted chips and packeted chocolate and all sorts of lollies, then you're adding a whole lot of processed stuff. And so any diet is great if you're looking at healthy, good stuff going into your body. There's no one particular one on any other one that works better.

Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mel. Good to see you.

So just some simple rules. So simply paying attention to what you eat is crucial in whether you'll lose weight and be a healthier version of yourself. So it's whether you choose to avoid carbs, eating more veggies, eating paleo, you'll get results if you're looking at every single mouthful that goes into your mouth.

And that's why when someone gets onto a new diet or decide to make changes with their health, and they start to look at everything that goes into their mouth, that's when you make changes because it's not actually this particular diet that's doing it for you. It's actually looking at what goes into your mouth that is going to make or break what you have. So if I decide to go high fat animal products every day, and that's what I'm doing, but I'm cutting out a whole lot of my junk food or my processed food, I'm going to make some good changes in my whole body.

So all the different nutrition camps have one thing in common, and that is they ask you to cut out junk food and highly processed food. So where all the goodness has been taken out of it. So you get quite a few cereals and things like that are highly processed.

So all the things that were good to start with have been all heated out of it or taken out of it. So you end up with something that tastes nice, but it's not that great for you. All diets focus on good quality food, all of them.

And so if you can't afford to get organic stuff, that's fine, just get the best quality you have. I've got a great market straight down the road from me, some Margate market. It's not all organic, but I know that it rotates around quickly and I actually do buy the organic apples there now.

They're only $2 a kilo, so why wouldn't you? I do have to find that I've got to put them in the fridge because they don't last as long as the non-organic ones out on the bench. But you know what?

I don't have to pay high amounts to get my good food, but I'm making sure I get the best food I can. And all diets steer towards whole, minimally processed foods, which have nutrients intact. So the least amount of processing that you can have with your foods, which is whole foods.

So if you can take something straight from your own garden, perfect. But if you can't, like I don't have a garden at this point in time, so I just pick good markets. So there's quite a few good markets around where I know that food is being constantly rotated around.

It's not lying there. Sometimes I get a bit concerned about the big stores like Woolworths and Coles, because I think they take quite a bit of their food back into the cold stores at night and bring it out the next day. And who's to say that it hasn't been doing that for weeks on end and who wants to do that?

I'd prefer to get things fresh. And if you can't get them fresh frozen, hey, look, the market down here, I get my blueberries at the moment frozen, but they're from just down the road, so half an hour away. And I know that they're grown in a local way.

So these blueberries, nice, big, and taste great, but I buy them frozen at the moment because they're not in season. So frozen, snap frozen can be a great way to get things as well, because they're often frozen, very fresh, picked, and within hours they're frozen. So it's good for you as well.

And also, so this is the thing. So when you decide to make changes and get onto a particular diet, when we start to feel better and correct some of our nutritional deficiencies, then we're a stark raving fan about that particular diet. 

But it could have been that you could have been on a number of different diets and they all would have done the same for you because you've taken away the highly processed food.

And so when we choose the higher quality foods, we end up also eating less because it fills you up. So it's a good thing to do. So if I eat a whole pile of, what's junky for me?

Chocolate right now. Yeah, I'm a chocolate fan, but I do make great little seed balls which are high protein. They fill me up for hours.

But if I had chocolate as compared to my homemade chocolate balls with cacao in them, I'm not going to be filled up by the chocolate. I'll want more and more and more. Whereas if I eat my own homemade seeded balls with all my seeds and high protein in there, they'll fill me up for hours and hours and I won't want as much stuff.

So with all good diets where you're eating well, we lose fat, we gain lean muscle mass and we feel great. So again, going over, there's no one particular diet that suits everyone on this earth. You've just got to find what works for you.

But with all diets, we clean them up. Hi Joanne, great that you could join me. And the other thing about diets, you'll find that everyone that starts on some sort of a dietary plan is also increasing their fitness.

So they start to move, they start to maybe lift weights, which is something I promote for every single person. You should be lifting weights. That's what we're designed to do back in the day.

If you look back to the days when we were in tribes, we would have pushed and pulled around logs to make our new houses. We would have climbed trees. We would have had to go spear that animal and drag it back to our camp and eat it.

We would have done all that. We would have moved. We certainly weren't sitting at a chair all day over a desk.

That's something we weren't doing. So trying to get that body to move is promoted in all diets, which will again, will get your body looking great because the moment you start to pick up some weights and start to tone and strengthen, your body looks great. Hello.

You can't beat that. So good diet combined with movement. And when someone exercises, you just can't do it once and go, well, I've done it.

It needs to become part of your lifestyle thing. So that's where you pop it into your diary and stuff. But so when we do move regularly, it helps to turn the food we eat into functional tissue instead of the dreaded fat.

Yes. And that's why I don't believe in scales while I'm here. I may as well do a little rant.

I'm going to finish in about one or two minutes. So stay with me if you can. Scales aren't good because they don't tell you whether you're carrying fat or whether you're carrying lean muscle or whether you're carrying some fluid.

I work on a cardiology ward and people lose two to three kilos each night. And that is simply fluid. So don't always believe the scales because when you start strength training, sometimes those scales won't move, but your fat percentage will go because you're starting to build up muscle and that becomes your fat burner.

It's an active tissue, is muscle that helps to burn off your fat. So ending off in conclusion, long-term, the things that work best are habits or practices when it comes to our diet. So don't believe that any one diet is what you need.

It's getting this head working in a way that we start to see food as a wonderful thing and making one small change at a time. So if you're not got any greens, for example, in your diet right now, it could be that for the next two weeks, you say to yourself, in every single meal, I'm going to have greens added onto the side, whether that's spinach leaves, lettuce. I love my broccolini.

I love broccolini done in a tiny bit of butter in the frying pan. So that's some greens on the side. So if you don't have greens right now, greens are great with all their benefits they give to your body.

So yeah, so it's just being able to change one thing at a time and precision nutrition, the people that I did my food coaching, my nutrition coaching with, just suggest one change every month. I sometimes like to tell clients maybe one change every two weeks, but if someone gives you a whole pile of dietary changes, you've got to do all at once, you know what, you'll often, you'll actually say no to that because the brain can't take all of that at once. So one small change at a time and a year down the track, if you change every two or three weeks, one small thing by a year's time down the track, you have changed a multitude of things in your life and that includes diet and fitness.

So in conclusion, the best diet to follow is the one that works right for you. And just going back, I love the, I follow Michael Mosley, who talks a lot on gut health and I'm really into gut health. I think a lot of our sickness does stem from the gut.

And so if we put good things into our body, our gut is going to absorb those good things and keep us well. And I love the Mediterranean diet for that. So a lot of plant-based stuff, but I still eat meat, but I just have that small amount of meat on the side.

And then a huge plate of greens. Last night for dinner, you should have seen my plate. It had a small amount of meat and then it had a huge amount of spinach leaves.

I had a beetroot there, fresh beetroot. That was so nice. And I had a broccolini.

I had sweet potato. It was quite a big plate, but all these healthy, healthy things. So yeah, try whatever thing that works for you, but whatever diet you go for, and I would add to this, whatever fitness stuff you decide to do for yourself.

So in the way of movement, it needs to be something that's going to work into your everyday lifestyle. If it's not going to work into your everyday lifestyle, or it makes you feel worse, then change it. Try something else, but there's no one diet that will fit all of you.

You've got a diet that will work for you. Mine is just as minimally processed as it can be, whole foods and trying to get in lots of color. Because when you have lots of color, there's so many good things you get from each one that you put on your plate.

So why wouldn't you do that? And if you can be buying not from your big stores, because I think they take food in and out. I mean, it's still good.

I've been doing that for years, but I try and buy a lot of my food from just the local markets. And yeah, I feel great. So yeah, find something that works for you.

Have a great day, ladies, and I'll see you next time. Enjoy your life and make it the best life it can be, is what I'd say. Look, just an add-on.

I'm a nurse. I work on a cardiology ward, and I see too many people that are sick, unhealthy, can't move. They look awful.

They're deconditioned, and they're not in a good way. And that's in their 50s, 60s, 70s. And I don't think that people in those age groups should be in that way if you don't have a disease.

So please look after yourself. The food that we put into our body is hugely important. And I think if you take some simple rules, minimally processed, then you can't go wrong, and lots of colour.

Yep. Have a good one. Bye.