Chances are, you’ve tried a few diets. Whether it is keto, paleo, carnivore, or some other ill-conceived plan, they rarely help people heal chronic disease conditions in a fundamentally and sustainable way.
That’s because they miss the mark in nearly every way, by focussing on your desires for a quick fix, rather than a permanent solution.
Here’s 10 reasons most diet don’t make the cut.
1) They’re developed by “science” – I’m not anti-science, but the only reason it has been used for diets is to create a market for plans that short circuit the natural process of weight loss, manipulate systems in an unnatural way, or to eliminate triggers that create symptoms. As a result chronic disease is rarely solved.
2) They’re obsessed with calories – While calorie counting can have a desired effect with respect to weight loss, it does little to address the source of the issue and is rarely sustainable. For those two reasons alone, calorie counting is a fool’s game.
3) They’re not sustainable – How long can you count calories, remove certain food groups altogether, and measure and weigh every meal? I think you know the answer. Not only that, these actions do little to address your health issue.
4) They don’t address proper hydration – Drinking 8-12 glasses of water a day is not the best answer to your hydration needs. Focusing on highly hydrating foods (fruits and vegetables) and mitigating the dehydrating ones (flours, meat, coffee, alcohol, etc) will hydrate your body much more efficiently at the cellular level.
5) They miss the mark on anti-microbials – Infections are a big reason for chronic disease, and very few diets focus on the foods and herbs that help eliminate them.
5) They ignore food combinations – How you put food together, matters. Throwing everything into your blender or on your salad is not necessarily the best route. To fix chronic disease, you must ensure that food is efficiently digested, which means understanding how foods assimilate inside your digestive tract, when paired together.
6) They don’t consider digestibility – You can eat all the most nutrient dense foods on the planet, but if you don’t digest them properly, you can create more problems than you solve. This is one of the biggest problems in well-meaning nutritional plans.
7) They focus primarily on eliminating triggers (ie. gluten) – While this is a good idea, eliminating triggers doesn’t heal the source of the problem, it just prevents irritation of it. This, of course, doesn’t solve anything with regards to chronic disease.
8 ) They’re not cleansing – Keto, paleo, carnivore, and more…these plans are not cleansing at all, and without that core requirement for healing, nothing fundamentally changes.
9) They’re nutritionally myopic – Eliminate grains, kick out fats, remove carbohydrates, focus on protein…it’s all about tunnel vision for diets. A healing diet will have an incredible diversity of nutrients, while making sure that all the macro and micronutrients are met.
10) They’re bandaids focused on temporary results, as opposed to permanent change – I get it, you want easy results, and yesterday. The problem is when you chase that idea, you end up on a much longer and harder journey because these desires never pan out with most diets. There are very few diets out there that focus on HEALING and permanent change, which is why most don’t work for chronic health problems
Thankfully I never fell into the diet abyss, and my sound nutritional plan over 10 years ago helped me overcome 13 chronic disease conditions in a relatively short period of time. Instead of chasing just a CLEAN diet, I went after a HEALING diet, and that made ALL the difference.
If you want to learn how to eat to heal, then look into my THRIVE Academy, and save yourself years and sometimes decades of diet setbacks. You’ll never look back in disappointment. After all, if it’s helped people heal over 20 different chronic disease conditions, surely it’s good enough for you.
Derek Henry
Derek Henry, Founder of Healing the Body and the THRIVE Academy, used nutrition, supplementation, and a holistic lifestyle to naturally unravel 13 chronic disease conditions that conventional or alternative medical professionals couldn't help him resolve. As a result of this one-in-a-million health transformation and the knowledge acquired in the process, he now educates, coaches, and inspires others to transform their health through a natural and holistic approach. Since 2014, he has helped his THRIVE Academy participants heal over 20 different chronic disease conditions, primarily related to digestive and autoimmune concerns.
Follow Me: