This week I had the pleasure of returning to my old university to visit with an old professor. As I was walking around campus with him and another friend we stumbled into a conversation about all the dogma that exists in diet culture and how more time is spent fighting about the ideal diet instead of focusing efforts on helping people.
This isn’t the first time I had thought about this. The last couple of years I have become pretty frustrated with the lack of intention on helping people that I see in the health space. Especially on social media.
Instead, everyone is focused on creating sound bites highlighting why their diet of choice is better and bashing any approach that doesn’t align. I’ve been guilty of this as well.
I think that instead of becoming hyperfocused on specific diets, we should be hyperfocused on specific outcomes.
Let me explain.
We know that certain markers of health tell the tale of the current state of our health and future disease risk. These are markers like A1C, fasting insulin, triglycerides, hs-CRP, etc. Our understanding of the body tells us that when these markers are out of wack, we are in a state of poor health and our risk of chronic diseases in the future is higher.
So why not focus on improving these outcomes instead of focusing on which diet is best?
We know that there are many different dietary methods that can provide benefits. You’ve heard the sayings. There is no one size fits all approach to nutrition, everyone is different, etc.
Forget the how and focus on the what. If a diet is showing positive improvements in key health markers, you enjoy the food (to the extent you can enjoy without being on a junk food diet), and it’s something you are able to stick to. THEN IT’S A GOOD DIET. Whether it’s keto, low carb, paleo, weight watchers, IIFYM, Beach Body, or any other diet (besides vegan, that diet is out lol).
The health community needs to reprioritize our efforts away from being “right” and towards maximizing the impact we can make in helping people improve their health.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Irvin
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