Metabolic Health
Here’s How a Customized Diet Can Solve Multiple Health Issues
Leveraging my experience, I provide five practical tips to personalize your diet based on holistic health principles
Here’s why I wrote this article.
What we eat, how much we eat, and how often we eat can make a tremendous impact on our health, fitness, and overall well-being. The impact was evident in my health, and I also observed it in others.
I found the secret to reversing multiple health conditions in a personalized diet. Therefore, I’d like to share hard-learned lessons and fundamental nutrition principles in a summary format.
As there is no one fit all size diet yet, I have emphasized the importance of customized diets in several health-related articles. As a result, the idea of designing a personalized diet resonated well with the subscribers of my content.
Some readers asked for specific tips, essential factors, and examples for creating a customized diet. Based on their request, I posted an article titled Here’s Why and How to Design a Customized Diet to Thrive.
The key points covered in the article were:
1 — Medical history, including documented blood markers
2 — Obtaining DNA tests and getting analyzed by professionals
3 — Understanding the role of essential nutrients
4 — Working with a qualified dietician
5 — Practicing an elimination diet
6 — Making the personalized diet a lifestyle habit
Our diet covers several aspects of our health, fitness, and well-being. In a nutshell, for me, the following five nutritional points were the root causes of my health issues:
1 — Nutritional deficiencies caused by inadequate micronutrients,
2 — Food intolerances caused by offending ingredients,
3 — Insufficient proteins causing muscle weakness,
4 — Lack of healthy fats affecting hormones,
5 — Excessive carbs, causing blood sugar and insulin spikes.
By customizing my diet, these five issues disappeared, leading to better health, which I summarize in the following sections with related conditions.
1 — Nutritional Deficiencies
One of the most significant issues related to my diet was the emergence of nutritional deficiencies, which I was unaware of.
I had issues with both macronutrients and micronutrients. However, deficiencies were mainly caused by micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals.
Fixing the deficiency of two critical vitamins, Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D, and the mineral magnesium significantly impacted my health and well-being.
I only provide these examples to give you an idea of the impact and implications of micronutrient deficiencies.
People might have different flaws in various diets. My point is not to what diet you follow but to focus on what nutrients you might be missing in your current diet.
The second key point was the lack of healthy fats, adversely affecting fat-solvable vitamins. And the third nutritional issue was the lack of bioavailable proteins.
As I initially followed a plant-based diet, my nutritional deficiencies were solved by introducing animal products. However, for some people, it might be different. Therefore, I highlight the importance of customizing the diet.
For example, from a minerals perspective, the dietician ensured that my diet provided adequate magnesium, calcium, zinc, chloride, chromium, copper, iodine, iron, manganese, molybdenum, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and sodium.
She also ensured that my diet included enough vitamins such as A, B6, B12, C, D, E, K, biotin, choline, folate, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, and thiamin. She asked me to pay attention to omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which play a critical role in brain and eye health.
2 — Food Intolerances or Allergies
Similar to deficiencies, too much of certain nutrients or, more significantly, anti-nutrients could be problematic.
In addition, some food can be allergic to some people. For example, nuts, eggs, nightshades, seafood, legumes, and dairy intolerances or allergies are widespread.
In my case, some food anti-nutrients, such as lectins and oxalates in plant sources, caused intolerance.
For example, consuming certain plants with too many anti-nutrients led to intestinal permeability (a leaky gut syndrome) and autoimmune conditions.
As anti-nutrients caused inflammation in the body, I also experienced severe autoimmune conditions such as arthritis which disappeared after an elimination diet.
My food tolerances were related to plant sources. But some people also can be intolerant to animal products such as eggs, fish, seafood, poultry, or dairy. Therefore, we need to use an elimination diet and remove offending foods.
3 — Insufficient Bioavailable Proteins
One of the debilitating issues was muscle loss which I did not know its importance in my younger years. The muscle is a critical organ for our survival, longevity, and well-being.
Even though elevated cortisol due to chronic stress was one of my issues for muscle loss, another vital point was the lack of bioavailable proteins in my plant-based diets. I undermined the importance of proteins and therefore lacked some essential amino acids.
Building and retaining muscle requires activating mTOR, a catalytic enzyme that regulates cell growth and protein synthesis.
Besides resistance training and insulin, an essential way of activating mTOR is to consume an adequate amount of bioavailable protein.
The body converts proteins ingested via food into amino acids. It then synthesizes them to create necessary proteins for tissues and organs.
Nine amino acids are essential for protein synthesis. They are leucine, isoleucine, valine, lysine, histidine, tryptophan, methionine, phenylalanine, and threonine.
Of these nine amino acids, leucine makes the most significant impact on activating mTOR. Other branch-chain amino acids like isoleucine and valine are also needed.
However, too much and too frequent mTOR activation is associated with health risks such as the development of cancer cells. Thus, a systematic activation of mTOR with diligence might reduce the risks.
As too much or too little protein in a diet could be a problem, we can address the risks of both deficiency and excessive amounts by customizing our diet.
Each person has different protein requirements based on multiple factors that need to be considered by a qualified professional who can analyze and determine.
4 — Lack of Healthy Fats
As I documented in a previous story, low-fat diets gave me numerous nightmares. I will not repeat those details in this story.
In summary, not including healthy fats in my diet caused hormonal imbalances. The lack of fats in the diet also has caused nutritional deficiencies, as I mentioned in the first section.
Like amino acids, some fats are also essential for the body. It means that we need to consume them from our food as the body cannot create them. One of the most important ones is omega-3 fatty acids.
Our hormones, especially leptin and sex hormones, require some healthy fats from the diet. Therefore a diet missing essential fats can be problematic and must be corrected by customizing our diet.
5 — Excessive Sugar From Refined Carbs and Frequent Eating
The health risks of excessive sugar are well presented in the literature. I documented the sugar paradox in a previous story. Even though the body needs glucose as the primary energy source, it sees too much sugar in the blood as toxic.
Therefore, the body uses the insulin hormone to balance the glucose amount in the bloodstream. Excessive sugar consumption can cause frequent and too many insulin spikes, breaking the balance of the body.
If excessive sugar consumption happens for a prolonged time, our cells can become insulin resistant, as I explained in a previous story titled Six Tips to Reverse Insulin Resistance, Lose Fat, and Stay Healthy.
In my case, the primary culprits for insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and pre-diabetes were consuming refined carbs and frequent eating with three snacks to my three main meals. The body had no time to rest and eliminate excessive sugar.
My customized diet, replacing carbs with healthy fats for energy sources, increasing healthy fats, initially skipping a meal, and later making a one-meal-a-day eating regimen lifestyle solved my issues and helped me thrive.
However, these solutions might not apply to everyone. Some people might perform better with more carbs and less fat.
And some might enjoy more frequent meals due to their lifestyles. Therefore, customizing the diet based on our needs is a wise choice.
Conclusions and takeaways
Diet is an individual and health matter. There is no “one size fits all” diet. Copying another person’s diet might not work. Therefore, each person needs a customized diet based on various factors.
Principles of nutrition apply to everyone. For example, we all need explicit vitamins, minerals, and specific amounts of proteins, fats, or carbs. However, the amounts and consumption frequencies might change from person to person.
Customizing my diet by eliminating offending food and adding necessary nutrients solved nutritional deficiencies and helped me unravel numerous health conditions.
The prominent issues that my customized diet solved and improved were insulin resistance, leptin resistance, reversing metabolic syndrome and pre-diabetes, lowering chronic inflammation, eliminating symptoms of arthritis, fixing leaky gut and brain fog, improving teeth, skin, muscle, and bone health, and improving mood disorders and anxiety.
These debilitating conditions were triggered or aggravated by the wrong diet, which did not match my requirements and genetic makeup. Therefore, I keep highlighting the importance of personalizing our diets and eating regimens, such as meal frequency.
In addition, when I personalized my diet, fat loss, and muscle retention became a breeze. I never needed to cut my calories too much or to perform exercises relentlessly. My body knew what to spend and store for optimal health.
I’d like to point out that diets introduced by celebrities might not necessarily align with your body. For example, some celebrities become vegans or carnivores and promote products or services. They show their beautiful bodies, but we have no idea whether their diets caused the outcomes.
Keep in mind that they are paid to introduce specific products or services. Or they might have other motives that we don’t know and might have nothing to do with our health.
I think copying famous people’s diets might not work or cause worse outcomes. The best diet is the one that suits your needs, your body type, and your goals.
Here’s How I Got Healthier and Smoother Skin via 5 Lifestyle and Holistic Health Methods.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
Petechiae, ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
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