Are You Getting Enough Nutrients from Your Diet?
Proper nutrition is essential for good health and wellbeing. Your diet should provide you with enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to nourish and support your body. But how can you know if you are getting enough of these vital nutrients?
Here are some signs that you may not be getting enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in your diet:
Are You Getting Enough Calories?
You often feel tired and fatigued
You struggle with hormonal imbalances
You experience dizziness or lightheadedness
You frequently get sick or experience prolonged healing times
Are You Getting Enough Protein and Carbohydrates?
You struggle with hormonal imbalances
You experience frequent cravings or hunger pangs
You feel weak or fatigued during exercise or physical activity
You struggle with concentration or mental clarity
You often feel tired and fatigued
Are There Enough Vitamins, Minerals, and Antioxidants in Your Diet?
You experience frequent colds, infections or illnesses
Your skin, hair, or nails are dull or lackluster
You experience frequent headaches or migraines
You experience inflammation, joint pain, or chronic fatigue
You struggle with hormonal imbalances
How Can You Check Your Diet is Nourishing and Supporting You?
This is an area of focus with nearly every single one of my patients - doing a deep dive into your diet to discover if you’re getting the nutrients you need to be able to maintain your health. If you answered yes to any of the above questions, it’s a very worthwhile exercise to explore exactly how far away you are from hitting the optimal targets each day for calories, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Track your food intake: Keep a food journal for a few days or use a nutrition tracking app to monitor your calorie and nutrient intake. Try to track a typical work day, and a typical non-work day. Or track one or two “good” days and one or two “bad” days to see the variation in nutrition you are getting on those days.
Analyze your diet: Once you have tracked your food intake, analyze your diet to see if you are getting enough of each nutrient.
Consult a nutritionist or health practitioner: If you are unsure about your nutrient intake, consider consulting a nutritionist or health practitioner to assess your diet and recommend dietary changes or supplements.
General Protein Guidelines
In general - to heal from most health conditions, the body needs extra protein to be able to finance all the extra repair. I recommend 1-1.5g of protein per kg of body weight, each day, to support the extra work your body will do to repair. Your longer term maintenance level of protein that your body needs may be lower than this, in the 0.8-1.0g protein per kg of body weight.
General Guidelines for Fats and Carbohydrates
Your requirements for carbohydrates and fats are going to vary according to your age, stress levels, health status, and your health goals. If fatigue or hormonal imbalance is an issue, or if you are dealing with a lot of stress and overwhelm, it’s often best to have your carbohydrate intake on the higher side, and keep fat intake lower. If you have plenty of energy, your hormones are perfect and life is just grand - you can likely have a higher fat intake and lower carbohydrate intake and still feel really good. Play around to find the levels that best suit your physiology.
What diet do I recommend?
There isn’t one particular “diet” that I recommend to everyone, the main goal I have with all my patients is to support them to be able to eat the widest variety of whole foods whilst still maintaining a great level of health. Occasionally that means I will recommend a short period of restriction to assist with reducing inflammation levels, or an elimination diet to help with identifying problem foods.
Isn’t dairy/fruit/gluten bad?
Avoiding any particular whole food for extended periods of time is something that should only be done for a very good reason - each different food that we eat provides us with a unique profile of vitamins and minerals, trace nutrients and antioxidant compounds. Having the widest variety of foods to choose from helps to protect us against a very avoidable cause of nutrient deficiencies. As long as you feel good when you eat them, there’s no inherent problem with good quality dairy products, wheat products or fruit.
Your own personal diet
Knowing that many of my patients have already tried, or are already following a diet when they come to see me, I’ve seen thousands of variations in the way that food can make or break your treatment outcomes, and I’ve seen nutrition play a massive role in whether or not you’ll even be able to reach your health goals. You won’t ever see me advocate one particular diet as “good for everyone, all the time”, we are all unique, and we all have very different things that we want to use our body for, and very different things going on for us with our health. Ultimately I want to help you to come up with your own personal diet that works best for you, is based on whole foods, and contains the broadest range of foods that supports your ongoing health.
Common diets, their benefits and pitfalls
Paleo Diet: The Paleo diet is based on eating whole, unprocessed foods similar to those consumed by our ancient ancestors, such as lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It eliminates grains, legumes, dairy, processed foods, and refined sugar. Benefits of the Paleo diet include weight loss, improved blood sugar control, and reduced inflammation. However, some people may find it challenging to follow the diet long-term due to the restriction of certain food groups. Many people unintentionally end up reducing carbohydrate intake which can have consequences for hormonal balance.
The Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) diet is a version of the Paleo diet that emphasizes eliminating foods that are known to trigger inflammation and autoimmune reactions in the body. This includes eliminating grains, legumes, dairy, processed foods, refined sugars, nuts and seeds, and nightshades (such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant). It’s an extremely restrictive diet that can be difficult to implement, but when followed correctly, it’s an extremely low inflammatory diet, but when followed for long periods of time (longer than 2 months) it can lead to nutrient deficiencies and contribute to fatigue, hormonal imbalance, headaches and migraines. I always recommend starting the reintroduction of one food group at a time from the 4 week mark, keep an eye out for any reactivity your body might show and if all is clear you can add a new food every 4-5 days. If there is reactivity after reintroducing a particular food, it’s evidence that you may need to keep away from that food for a little longer and trial reintroducing it at a later time.
Keto Diet: The Keto diet is a high-fat, low-carb diet that puts your body into a state of ketosis, where it burns fat for fuel instead of glucose. The diet involves consuming a very low amount of carbs and increasing your fat intake. Benefits of the Keto diet include rapid weight loss, improved blood sugar control, and reduced inflammation. However, it may be difficult to sustain long-term due to the restrictive nature of the diet, and it can lead to side effects such as fatigue, constipation, hormonal imbalances and nutrient deficiencies.
Vegan Diet: The Vegan diet is a plant-based diet that excludes all animal products, including meat, dairy, and eggs. Benefits of the Vegan diet include improved heart health, lower risk of certain cancers, and reduced inflammation. However, it can be challenging to obtain all essential nutrients, especially protein, vitamin A, vitamin B12, and iron, from a purely plant-based diet without supplementation. In the longer term, if there are significant nutrient deficiencies in your diet that remain uncorrected, this can lead to increased inflammation in your body, and reverse most of the health benefits of following this diet.
Low Fat Diet: The Low Fat diet involves limiting your fat intake to less than 30% of your total daily calories. The diet emphasizes consuming foods that are low in fat, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins. Benefits of the Low Fat diet include improved heart health, lower cholesterol levels, and weight loss. However, it may be difficult to sustain long-term due to the limited food choices and may lead to nutrient deficiencies and hormonal imbalances. In the longer term, most people need to consume somewhere between 50-80g fat per day to provide the fat soluble nutrients required for proper hormonal balance and cellular function.
Carnivore Diet: The Carnivore diet is a diet that consists of consuming only animal products, including meat, fish, and eggs. Benefits of the Carnivore diet include rapid weight loss, improved blood sugar control, and reduced inflammation. However, the diet is highly restrictive and lacks essential nutrients, including fiber and vitamins C and E.
Fruitarian Diet: The Fruitarian diet is a plant-based diet that consists primarily of fruits and vegetables. Benefits of the Fruitarian diet include improved digestion, increased energy, and reduced inflammation. However, it can be challenging to obtain enough protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin B12 from a purely fruit-based diet, and the diet very quickly leads to nutrient deficiencies and imbalances and poor health. At best, followed for a few days it can suffice as a “detox” or “fruit fast” and can help create some dramatic changes in fluid metabolism and overall lymphatic system support. This diet is absolutely not recommended for people suffering from fatigue, hormonal imbalances, or anyone who is weak and run down.
Summary
There are so many more diets out there, these are the ones I’ve seen discussed the most, and have showed up most commonly in clinic. There’s no one particular diet that I advocate as being the best - other than to say I don’t recommend following any of the above diets for any extended period of time. I’ve seen time and time again that it’s best to follow a whole foods based diet with the widest variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, fish, dairy, whole grains, nuts and seeds that your body thrives with. Avoid anything that makes you feel terrible, and if you need to be avoiding lots of different foods in order to feel ok please go get your health checked out with your trusted health practitioner.