Should You Quit Eating Any of Nature’s Bounty?

Some diets are complicated or reject important food groups

Does this sound like you?

You’re carrying around a few extra pounds — five, ten, fifty. Doesn’t matter, you just want to lose them, desperately want to get rid of them forever. You are willing to try anything — within reason.

Enter the diet wars. Finding a diet plan that you can actually manage (that neatly fits your lifestyle) is your ultimate goal. Of course, not all diets and eating plans are equal. Some are meant to be short-term weight loss regimens, while others are touted as a new ‘way of life.’

Some diets have weird rules or tell you to avoid certain natural foods. Some make great promises about weight loss, while others tell you that a new healthier you is in your future. Of course, losing weight can lead to a healthier you. But at what cost?

Let’s take a brief look at some popular and extreme eating plans and see how they fare. I’ve included links to detailed information on each diet program.

The Mono Diet

Description/History: Lovely in its simplicity, the mono diet allows the follower only one food during a period of days or weeks. The premise is to interrupt one’s normal eating pattern with a restrictive monotrophic diet and then restart with a healthier eating plan. Weight loss is practically guaranteed if a week’s diet consists of five potatoes per day, right?

Drawbacks: Severely restrictive; unsustainable; Nutrition deficiencies can be harmful to the body.

Food Combining Diet

Description/History: This diet has a 5,000-year history originating in India. It was once called the Hay Diet when recommended by Dr. Hay in the 1920s. Suzanne Somers popularized food combining again decades ago. Its main premise is that some foods (certain carbs and proteins) are not digested at the same rate, thus should not be eaten together.

Drawbacks: This diet is extremely rigid and overly complicated with lots of rules. Forbidding the combination of protein and carbohydrates in the same meal has no basis in science.

Low-Carb as in Keto or Adkins

Description/History: Though there are many low-carb plans, the Adkins Diet is the most well-known low-carb diet. It has changed over the years, incorporating behavioral elements like beginning with an intensive period of very low carb (Adkins-20) and moving the dieter through stages to a maintenance level that allows eating a number of carbs that does not produce new weight gain.

Drawbacks: Eating low-carb is difficult and unsustainable for most people. Carbohydrates lurk in many popular foods, particularly prepared foods. Eliminating all bread, rice, and potatoes is quite a chasm to leap. Fruits and vegetables are all higher-carb food choices and they should never be eliminated from the regular diet.

Carbohydrate reduction is important in the management of some diseases, such as diabetes.

Description/History: The Ketogenic diet has been used in the treatment of epileptic patients. It requires an eating plan that is very low in carbs and high in fat. Its premise is that a body in ketosis will burn ketones for energy. With very reduced carbohydrate intake, there are no unburned sugars that can be converted into fat stores. The keto lifestyle has a number of acolytes who promote this way of eating (WOE) with multiple sources of keto-friendly snacks and drinks.

Drawbacks: In the short-term, low-carbers lose weight more quickly than on other diets. The ketogenic way of eating is extremely difficult to maintain long-term for most people. Dieters report a host of negative physical outcomes from eating low-carb, including brain fog and low energy (initially). Most fruit is eliminated on keto due to high carb counts, but some berries can be eaten. Counting carbs, net carbs, and macronutrients is an ongoing requirement that most dieters cannot or will not maintain.

Plant Paradox Diet

Description/History: Dr. Steven Gundry first touted this diet by positing that many plants contain harmful proteins called lectins. It believed that some lectins cause weight gain and certain diseases. The diet is quite straightforward, requiring the dieter to merely avoid foods with lectin. These foods include some grains, legumes, dairy, tomatoes, eggplant, among others.

Drawbacks: Avoiding lectin-containing plant-foods means eliminating a vast array of nutritious fruits and vegetables. No significant studies back up Gundry’s assertions about the widespread harm from consuming lectins.

Wheat Belly Diet

Description/History: Dr. William Davis proposed that the most significant causes of weight gain included gluten, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, various starches used in place of flour, soft drinks, fruit juices, and some fruit. Packaged snacks and meals are excluded, of course. Davis wrote a book based on an informal experiment he conducted in his own diet and some of his patients. This experiment is the foundation of his assertions.

Drawbacks: Again, eliminating extensive parts of multiple food groups is too complicated for most. Avoiding all packaged foods whether at home or eating out can be rather difficult. There is no scientific support for Dr. Davis’ claims.

Planet Earth provides all of its creatures a smorgasbord of meat, nuts, fruits, and vegetables for their consumption. We know well the nutrient value of the foods we cultivate for everyday use. None of it is bad for us, instead, ALL of earth’s bounty is good for us. (Certain allergic conditions excluded, of course.)

Some diets demonize entire food groups. You’ve likely heard the old saying, “everything in moderation,” and that might apply to our eating habits. But even that premise has its naysayers! (But he does make a bit of sense.)

Seems like dieters can’t win, but that’s okay. They don’t need to be winners, but rather losers. Weight losers.

I’ll end with a great quote from Michael Pollan about what to think about when crafting an eating plan for good health (which might include weight loss, as I stated before).

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Michael Pollan, 2008, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto