12/06/2024
Does Keto work? Does Carnivore work? Does Vegan work? Does Low Fat work? Does fasting work? These are all questions that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. The real question should be “At what point in time does X diet work?”
Pretty much any diet strategy to lose weight or improve health will do exactly that—at least in the beginning. But if you stick to an extreme imbalance by cutting out a major group of foods (such as fats, carbs, meat, plants, no food, etc.) for long enough, you will start to see the benefits disappear. You may plateau for a while, and then after long enough, you will eventually see an inversion effect, where the diet that once helped you to lose weight or improve your health is now having negative effects on your health.
Pretty much all diets go through 3 phases over time: The Improvement Phase; The Plateau Phase; and The Decline Phase. The exact time frame for each phase will vary from diet to diet and from person to person, but the overall theme is the same: if you stick to an imbalanced protocol for too long, your body’s homeostasis will eventually become imbalanced, and as a result your health will decline.
Examples:
•Only eat meat for too long, you lose commensalism bacteria like bifido, and build up harmful bacteria like fusobacteria.
•Only eat plants for too long, and you starve your body of essential amino acids, nutrients, and vitamins.
•Avoid carbs for too long, and you’ll actually lose insulin sensitivity.
•Avoid fat for too long, and you’ll wreck your cell membranes and hormones.
•Fast too often/long, and your body will slow its metabolism and increase brain circuits that drive hunger.
But all of these things, in the beginning, can do wonders for your health! The body loves to be in balance, but applying imbalances (I.e. restrictive diets) can stimulate adaptations in the body that improve health in the short term. As time goes on, the benefits disappear, and are replaced by negatives.
So what’s the takeaway? Eat a balanced diet that covers all of your body’s different needs most of the time, with occasional periods of different dietary protocols to address specific health goals.
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