In this module, you will gain clarity around several very popular diets – specifically The Anti-inflammatory Diet, The Paleo Diet, The Keto Diet, and The Low-FODMAP Diet.
You will also get guidance on locating yourself “on the map” so that you can choose the best path forward based on your honest starting point. As you progress through this module, remind yourself frequently that going your own pace will result in more success than rushing yourself or cramming yourself into a diet that doesn’t work with your life.
There are 5 dietary strategies that I lean on heavily in my private practice. Here is a description of each.
The Anti-inflammatory Diet (I also think of this as a Foundation for Health)
Generally speaking, The Anti-inflammatory Diet avoids the foods that cause the most inflammation for the most people. These foods are grains, dairy (except clarified butter, aka – ghee), and sweeteners.
I say sweeteners, rather than sugar, because the term sweetener includes any food or beverage eaten alone or added to something else for the sake of sweetness. In addition to plane old sugar, “sweeteners” also include honey, agave, stevia, artificial sweeteners of all kinds, and the “natural sugars” founds in bananas, apples, and dried fruits. This does not mean that all fruit is off limits, but reducing fruit intake to a half cup of dark skinned berries a day will prevent you from simply compensating for other sweeteners by leaning more heavily on fruit.
The Paleo or Primal Diet
The Paleo/Primal Diet is very similar to the anti-inflammatory diet, with the addition of excluding legumes, such as beans and lentils. The only difference between the distictions paleo and primal is that the primal diet allows for high fat dairy products, such as heavy whipping cream, half-n-half, and moderate amounts of cheese.
The Keto Diet
The Keto Diet generally refers to a diet that is VERY low (under 20g) in carbohydrate. Protein intake is moderate – NOT HIGH (this distinguishes a well-formulated Keto Diet from the Atkin’s Diet). Also, The Keto Diet is usually, but not always, very high in fat.
The goal of a Keto Diet is to flip the metabolic switch, allowing your body to burn fat, rather than carbohydrate, as its primary source of energy. Many – including myself! – find it very easy to follow because, over time, it becomes easy to go hours between meals without even thinking about food, which makes it easier to attend to other areas of life.
The Low-FODMAP Diet
This is arguably the least popular and most confusing of the diets outlined here. FODMAPS refer to all the fermentable vegetables and fruits (usually those especially high in fiber content) that can instantly send your belly into a babbling brook. This diet is recommended for those who struggle with gas, bloating, and fatigue immediately after a meal.
There are two essential considerations as you choose your starting place and pace.
1 – Where are you now?
It is important do two things with deep honestly. To begin, imagine a map. It is important to know exactly where you want to end up, but it’s just as important – if not more – to know where you are now. Think of how useless the map in any given mall would be if there wasn’t an X labeled You are Here!
To do this, take inventory of your current eating habits. Do you often eat in restaurants? Do you lean on the convenience of packaged foods? Do you graze throughout the day? Do you obsess over sweets? Do you snack after dinner?
If your diet is loaded with processed food, you snack often, and dream of sweets, your starting point is what we call the Standard American Diet. FYI – even if you’re gluten free, you may still be on the Standard American Diet if you’re mostly eating corn chips, GF pizza and GF cookies. If you’ve been experimenting with one of the other approaches for a while, I trust that you’ll recognize yourself.
2 – How fast do you want to go?
I often use the analogy of sprinters and joggers, but the truth is that some walk. How quickly you change your diet is ENTIRELY up to you. I’d prefer you take an I’m-in-it-for-the-long-haul approach than jump in at a pace that’s simply unsustainable. There are no bonus points for perfection.
If you are a sprinter, you may get bored if you don’t get results quickly enough, which means it will probably work for you to make significant changes quickly. If you tend towards overwhelm, it’s better to walk or job, making one change at a time and allowing yourself time to integrate the change before making another one.
Once you’ve decided where you begin and how quickly you expect to move forward, the next step is to decide WHEN you will move forward.
If you have four weddings and a funeral coming up in the next three weeks, it may be in your best interest to make minimal changes until the chaos is behind you. This is not an invitation to put off starting indefinitely. In fact, I am confident that you can find a reasonable start date in the next month… and hopefully in the next week.
The value of choosing a start date is that it gives you a little time to prepare.
If you decide that you’re going dairy and grain free today, but have nothing in your kitchen but milk and cereal, you’ll only make success more difficult. You are more likely to make a sustainable change if you think it through and give yourself at least a day or two to prepare by going to the grocery store and possibly even cleaning out your pantry.
Once you choose a date, declare it proudly. Give it enough thought to know that it’s doable, but then – by all means – do it! Do you remember from Success Simplified that if you want a new result, you must commit to new action? If not, go there now and refresh your memory. Otherwise, make a firm commitment to yourself that you will begin, and you will give it your all.
Once you begin to map out your plan (don’t worry – we’re going to cover this in more detail in the next module), it is important to prepare yourself, just like you would pack your bags before leaving on vacation.
If you need foods that can’t be found in your frig or pantry, buy them. If you need to get rid of the cakes and cookies that you know will be calling your name in 2-3 days, dumb them. If you need recipes and inspiration, I have one word for you… Pinterest.
Make a meal plan for at least one week. Make it yours.
I am often asked for meal plans. I don’t provide them. Here’s why:
You will find far greater and more sustainable success if you take ownership of the meal plan. If I give you an exact plan with minimal wiggle room, you’ll 1 – have little to no flexibility to define your own pace, and 2 – feel helpless the moment you get to the end because you will not have learned this vital skill. Learn it now while you have access to member support.
Choose recipes that excite you. Find pins that inspire you. Ask questions on the group site. And remember that you are not a robot. This journey is about embracing a new way of eating. It’s not a program that can be scripted because it was built for humans who have real lives, real feelings, and real goals.
We’ve started laying new track for a more supportive relationship with food by breaking the habit of eating while standing at the refrigerator or pantry. Now let’s explore why you eat.
I know what you’re thinking: duh… I eat because I’m hungry.
To that, I say… are you sure?
For the next week, I want you to write down WHY you eat every time you want to put food in your mouth. Note: please make sure that you ask this question with the appropriate tone of curiosity. We don’t want the kind of why that evokes shame or implies that you shouldn’t be eating. We simply want to know, with all the curiosity you can muster, why are you eating?
- Are you eating because this is your only chance to eat for the next several hours, and if you don’t eat now, you may be ravenous and hangry later?
- Are you eating because you believe your supposed to eat at this time (very common with breakfast)?
- Are you eating because you’re tired? stressed? bored? lonely?
- Are you eating because you’re spending time with people who are eating?
The truth is, [accessally_user_firstname], there are LOTS of reasons why people eat, and most of them have little to nothing to do with hunger. Realizing this, and slowing guiding yourself to eat when you’re hungry and do something else when you’re not hungry, is a key ingredient to experiencing weight loss that feels effortless.
As you improve your diet, your body will naturally burn stored fat as a fuel source, and when this happens, your appetite will naturally decrease. This is the reason you want to pay attention to your hunger queues. If you’re eating out of habit when your body is trying to burn what it stored a long time ago, you will undermine your body’s weight loss efforts.
SELECT YOUR MODULE
In this module, you will gain clarity around several very popular diets – specifically The Anti-inflammatory Diet, The Paleo Diet, The Keto Diet, and The Low-FODMAP Diet.
You will also get guidance on locating yourself “on the map” so that you can choose the best path forward based on your honest starting point. As you progress through this module, remind yourself frequently that going your own pace will result in more success than rushing yourself or cramming yourself into a diet that doesn’t work with your life.
There are 5 dietary strategies that I lean on heavily in my private practice. Here is a description of each.
The Anti-inflammatory Diet (I also think of this as a Foundation for Health)
Generally speaking, The Anti-inflammatory Diet avoids the foods that cause the most inflammation for the most people. These foods are grains, dairy (except clarified butter, aka – ghee), and sweeteners.
I say sweeteners, rather than sugar, because the term sweetener includes any food or beverage eaten alone or added to something else for the sake of sweetness. In addition to plane old sugar, “sweeteners” also include honey, agave, stevia, artificial sweeteners of all kinds, and the “natural sugars” founds in bananas, apples, and dried fruits. This does not mean that all fruit is off limits, but reducing fruit intake to a half cup of dark skinned berries a day will prevent you from simply compensating for other sweeteners by leaning more heavily on fruit.
The Paleo or Primal Diet
The Paleo/Primal Diet is very similar to the anti-inflammatory diet, with the addition of excluding legumes, such as beans and lentils. The only difference between the distictions paleo and primal is that the primal diet allows for high fat dairy products, such as heavy whipping cream, half-n-half, and moderate amounts of cheese.
The Keto Diet
The Keto Diet generally refers to a diet that is VERY low (under 20g) in carbohydrate. Protein intake is moderate – NOT HIGH (this distinguishes a well-formulated Keto Diet from the Atkin’s Diet). Also, The Keto Diet is usually, but not always, very high in fat.
The goal of a Keto Diet is to flip the metabolic switch, allowing your body to burn fat, rather than carbohydrate, as its primary source of energy. Many – including myself! – find it very easy to follow because, over time, it becomes easy to go hours between meals without even thinking about food, which makes it easier to attend to other areas of life.
The Low-FODMAP Diet
This is arguably the least popular and most confusing of the diets outlined here. FODMAPS refer to all the fermentable vegetables and fruits (usually those especially high in fiber content) that can instantly send your belly into a babbling brook. This diet is recommended for those who struggle with gas, bloating, and fatigue immediately after a meal.
There are two essential considerations as you choose your starting place and pace.
1 – Where are you now?
It is important do two things with deep honestly. To begin, imagine a map. It is important to know exactly where you want to end up, but it’s just as important – if not more – to know where you are now. Think of how useless the map in any given mall would be if there wasn’t an X labeled You are Here!
To do this, take inventory of your current eating habits. Do you often eat in restaurants? Do you lean on the convenience of packaged foods? Do you graze throughout the day? Do you obsess over sweets? Do you snack after dinner?
If your diet is loaded with processed food, you snack often, and dream of sweets, your starting point is what we call the Standard American Diet. FYI – even if you’re gluten free, you may still be on the Standard American Diet if you’re mostly eating corn chips, GF pizza and GF cookies. If you’ve been experimenting with one of the other approaches for a while, I trust that you’ll recognize yourself.
2 – How fast do you want to go?
I often use the analogy of sprinters and joggers, but the truth is that some walk. How quickly you change your diet is ENTIRELY up to you. I’d prefer you take an I’m-in-it-for-the-long-haul approach than jump in at a pace that’s simply unsustainable. There are no bonus points for perfection.
If you are a sprinter, you may get bored if you don’t get results quickly enough, which means it will probably work for you to make significant changes quickly. If you tend towards overwhelm, it’s better to walk or job, making one change at a time and allowing yourself time to integrate the change before making another one.
Once you’ve decided where you begin and how quickly you expect to move forward, the next step is to decide WHEN you will move forward.
If you have four weddings and a funeral coming up in the next three weeks, it may be in your best interest to make minimal changes until the chaos is behind you. This is not an invitation to put off starting indefinitely. In fact, I am confident that you can find a reasonable start date in the next month… and hopefully in the next week.
The value of choosing a start date is that it gives you a little time to prepare.
If you decide that you’re going dairy and grain free today, but have nothing in your kitchen but milk and cereal, you’ll only make success more difficult. You are more likely to make a sustainable change if you think it through and give yourself at least a day or two to prepare by going to the grocery store and possibly even cleaning out your pantry.
Once you choose a date, declare it proudly. Give it enough thought to know that it’s doable, but then – by all means – do it! Do you remember from Success Simplified that if you want a new result, you must commit to new action? If not, go there now and refresh your memory. Otherwise, make a firm commitment to yourself that you will begin, and you will give it your all.
Once you begin to map out your plan (don’t worry – we’re going to cover this in more detail in the next module), it is important to prepare yourself, just like you would pack your bags before leaving on vacation.
If you need foods that can’t be found in your frig or pantry, buy them. If you need to get rid of the cakes and cookies that you know will be calling your name in 2-3 days, dumb them. If you need recipes and inspiration, I have one word for you… Pinterest.
Make a meal plan for at least one week. Make it yours.
I am often asked for meal plans. I don’t provide them. Here’s why:
You will find far greater and more sustainable success if you take ownership of the meal plan. If I give you an exact plan with minimal wiggle room, you’ll 1 – have little to no flexibility to define your own pace, and 2 – feel helpless the moment you get to the end because you will not have learned this vital skill. Learn it now while you have access to member support.
Choose recipes that excite you. Find pins that inspire you. Ask questions on the group site. And remember that you are not a robot. This journey is about embracing a new way of eating. It’s not a program that can be scripted because it was built for humans who have real lives, real feelings, and real goals.
We’ve started laying new track for a more supportive relationship with food by breaking the habit of eating while standing at the refrigerator or pantry. Now let’s explore why you eat.
I know what you’re thinking: duh… I eat because I’m hungry.
To that, I say… are you sure?
For the next week, I want you to write down WHY you eat every time you want to put food in your mouth. Note: please make sure that you ask this question with the appropriate tone of curiosity. We don’t want the kind of why that evokes shame or implies that you shouldn’t be eating. We simply want to know, with all the curiosity you can muster, why are you eating?
- Are you eating because this is your only chance to eat for the next several hours, and if you don’t eat now, you may be ravenous and hangry later?
- Are you eating because you believe your supposed to eat at this time (very common with breakfast)?
- Are you eating because you’re tired? stressed? bored? lonely?
- Are you eating because you’re spending time with people who are eating?
The truth is, [accessally_user_firstname], there are LOTS of reasons why people eat, and most of them have little to nothing to do with hunger. Realizing this, and slowing guiding yourself to eat when you’re hungry and do something else when you’re not hungry, is a key ingredient to experiencing weight loss that feels effortless.
As you improve your diet, your body will naturally burn stored fat as a fuel source, and when this happens, your appetite will naturally decrease. This is the reason you want to pay attention to your hunger queues. If you’re eating out of habit when your body is trying to burn what it stored a long time ago, you will undermine your body’s weight loss efforts.
In this module, you will gain clarity around several very popular diets – specifically The Anti-inflammatory Diet, The Paleo Diet, The Keto Diet, and The Low-FODMAP Diet.
You will also get guidance on locating yourself “on the map” so that you can choose the best path forward based on your honest starting point. As you progress through this module, remind yourself frequently that going your own pace will result in more success than rushing yourself or cramming yourself into a diet that doesn’t work with your life.
There are 5 dietary strategies that I lean on heavily in my private practice. Here is a description of each.
The Anti-inflammatory Diet (I also think of this as a Foundation for Health)
Generally speaking, The Anti-inflammatory Diet avoids the foods that cause the most inflammation for the most people. These foods are grains, dairy (except clarified butter, aka – ghee), and sweeteners.
I say sweeteners, rather than sugar, because the term sweetener includes any food or beverage eaten alone or added to something else for the sake of sweetness. In addition to plane old sugar, “sweeteners” also include honey, agave, stevia, artificial sweeteners of all kinds, and the “natural sugars” founds in bananas, apples, and dried fruits. This does not mean that all fruit is off limits, but reducing fruit intake to a half cup of dark skinned berries a day will prevent you from simply compensating for other sweeteners by leaning more heavily on fruit.
The Paleo or Primal Diet
The Paleo/Primal Diet is very similar to the anti-inflammatory diet, with the addition of excluding legumes, such as beans and lentils. The only difference between the distictions paleo and primal is that the primal diet allows for high fat dairy products, such as heavy whipping cream, half-n-half, and moderate amounts of cheese.
The Keto Diet
The Keto Diet generally refers to a diet that is VERY low (under 20g) in carbohydrate. Protein intake is moderate – NOT HIGH (this distinguishes a well-formulated Keto Diet from the Atkin’s Diet). Also, The Keto Diet is usually, but not always, very high in fat.
The goal of a Keto Diet is to flip the metabolic switch, allowing your body to burn fat, rather than carbohydrate, as its primary source of energy. Many – including myself! – find it very easy to follow because, over time, it becomes easy to go hours between meals without even thinking about food, which makes it easier to attend to other areas of life.
The Low-FODMAP Diet
This is arguably the least popular and most confusing of the diets outlined here. FODMAPS refer to all the fermentable vegetables and fruits (usually those especially high in fiber content) that can instantly send your belly into a babbling brook. This diet is recommended for those who struggle with gas, bloating, and fatigue immediately after a meal.
There are two essential considerations as you choose your starting place and pace.
1 – Where are you now?
It is important do two things with deep honestly. To begin, imagine a map. It is important to know exactly where you want to end up, but it’s just as important – if not more – to know where you are now. Think of how useless the map in any given mall would be if there wasn’t an X labeled You are Here!
To do this, take inventory of your current eating habits. Do you often eat in restaurants? Do you lean on the convenience of packaged foods? Do you graze throughout the day? Do you obsess over sweets? Do you snack after dinner?
If your diet is loaded with processed food, you snack often, and dream of sweets, your starting point is what we call the Standard American Diet. FYI – even if you’re gluten free, you may still be on the Standard American Diet if you’re mostly eating corn chips, GF pizza and GF cookies. If you’ve been experimenting with one of the other approaches for a while, I trust that you’ll recognize yourself.
2 – How fast do you want to go?
I often use the analogy of sprinters and joggers, but the truth is that some walk. How quickly you change your diet is ENTIRELY up to you. I’d prefer you take an I’m-in-it-for-the-long-haul approach than jump in at a pace that’s simply unsustainable. There are no bonus points for perfection.
If you are a sprinter, you may get bored if you don’t get results quickly enough, which means it will probably work for you to make significant changes quickly. If you tend towards overwhelm, it’s better to walk or job, making one change at a time and allowing yourself time to integrate the change before making another one.
Once you’ve decided where you begin and how quickly you expect to move forward, the next step is to decide WHEN you will move forward.
If you have four weddings and a funeral coming up in the next three weeks, it may be in your best interest to make minimal changes until the chaos is behind you. This is not an invitation to put off starting indefinitely. In fact, I am confident that you can find a reasonable start date in the next month… and hopefully in the next week.
The value of choosing a start date is that it gives you a little time to prepare.
If you decide that you’re going dairy and grain free today, but have nothing in your kitchen but milk and cereal, you’ll only make success more difficult. You are more likely to make a sustainable change if you think it through and give yourself at least a day or two to prepare by going to the grocery store and possibly even cleaning out your pantry.
Once you choose a date, declare it proudly. Give it enough thought to know that it’s doable, but then – by all means – do it! Do you remember from Success Simplified that if you want a new result, you must commit to new action? If not, go there now and refresh your memory. Otherwise, make a firm commitment to yourself that you will begin, and you will give it your all.
Once you begin to map out your plan (don’t worry – we’re going to cover this in more detail in the next module), it is important to prepare yourself, just like you would pack your bags before leaving on vacation.
If you need foods that can’t be found in your frig or pantry, buy them. If you need to get rid of the cakes and cookies that you know will be calling your name in 2-3 days, dumb them. If you need recipes and inspiration, I have one word for you… Pinterest.
Make a meal plan for at least one week. Make it yours.
I am often asked for meal plans. I don’t provide them. Here’s why:
You will find far greater and more sustainable success if you take ownership of the meal plan. If I give you an exact plan with minimal wiggle room, you’ll 1 – have little to no flexibility to define your own pace, and 2 – feel helpless the moment you get to the end because you will not have learned this vital skill. Learn it now while you have access to member support.
Choose recipes that excite you. Find pins that inspire you. Ask questions on the group site. And remember that you are not a robot. This journey is about embracing a new way of eating. It’s not a program that can be scripted because it was built for humans who have real lives, real feelings, and real goals.
We’ve started laying new track for a more supportive relationship with food by breaking the habit of eating while standing at the refrigerator or pantry. Now let’s explore why you eat.
I know what you’re thinking: duh… I eat because I’m hungry.
To that, I say… are you sure?
For the next week, I want you to write down WHY you eat every time you want to put food in your mouth. Note: please make sure that you ask this question with the appropriate tone of curiosity. We don’t want the kind of why that evokes shame or implies that you shouldn’t be eating. We simply want to know, with all the curiosity you can muster, why are you eating?
- Are you eating because this is your only chance to eat for the next several hours, and if you don’t eat now, you may be ravenous and hangry later?
- Are you eating because you believe your supposed to eat at this time (very common with breakfast)?
- Are you eating because you’re tired? stressed? bored? lonely?
- Are you eating because you’re spending time with people who are eating?
The truth is, [accessally_user_firstname], there are LOTS of reasons why people eat, and most of them have little to nothing to do with hunger. Realizing this, and slowing guiding yourself to eat when you’re hungry and do something else when you’re not hungry, is a key ingredient to experiencing weight loss that feels effortless.
As you improve your diet, your body will naturally burn stored fat as a fuel source, and when this happens, your appetite will naturally decrease. This is the reason you want to pay attention to your hunger queues. If you’re eating out of habit when your body is trying to burn what it stored a long time ago, you will undermine your body’s weight loss efforts.