There is No “One Size Fits All” Approach: How to Find a Diet That Works For You
Perhaps through the recent Corona virus outbreak, you’ve learned that the strength and health of your immune system is impacted by things such as your body composition and current diet. If learning this gets you thinking about the extra weight you are carrying around currently, mentally and physically, let’s take a moment to reflect on your own personal journey with managing your health and maintaining a healthy weight.
Maybe you’ve struggled with health issues for years, and you just can’t seem to stick to a nutrition plan touted to be the best for managing a particular condition. Or you find yourself going “on” and “off” diets, whether prescribed by your doctor, recommended by a friend or family member, or discovered through an influencer on Instagram. If you are like most, the success that you have with a rigid or specific nutrition plan, whether you are looking to lose weight or improve your health, is short-lived and you begin to feel like a failure.
Let me share a little secret with you. It isn’t your fault that you haven’t had more than short-term success with a dietary plan. Just the opposite actually. It is that the dietary plan or prescription that failed you in the sense of being a poor fit for your personal preferences and psychology.
Think of it this way. Let’s say I’m trying to learn how to play the piano and so are you. Maybe I learn to play a simple song within 1 week of taking lessons, but it takes you 4 weeks to learn that same song. Would you think that it is your fault for not learning the song sooner, or would you realize that your way of learning is simply different than mine?
So let’s look at this from more of a scientific level. According to one research project led by scientists in Israel and published in the journal Cell, people can metabolize the exact same foods in very different ways. In other words, what is a “healthy” diet for one person may not be healthy for another. Yet doctors, nutritionists, and health coaches all over the world tend to prescribe one particular dietary approach or method without considering things such as an individual’s history, genetics, environment, or psychology.
Here at Metabolic Living, we do not believe in a cookie-cutter solution to managing your body composition, metabolism, or even improving your immune health. In fact, just the opposite. We work with you to come up with your own personalized nutrition plan through teaching you how to be a metabolic detective. We encourage you to continuously learn more about how your physiology and psychology functions best by monitoring something called SHMEC.
SHMEC is a funny little acronym, coined by Dr. Jade Teta, that stands for sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings. Monitoring SHMEC, and adjusting accordingly, is one way to take a hormones-first approach to managing your health and weight. It allows you to make sustainable lifestyle changes without relying solely on willpower.
As Dr. Jade has said many times, we as humans crave certainty. That helps to explain why we may continuously return to the same diet or exercise plan over and over again, never having success but always expecting a different result. It may take time to uncover your metabolic formula, but once you learn how to work with your body rather than against it, you are set up with a life-long formula to always assess and monitor, respond and adjust.
Metabolic Living’s mission is to help you optimize your metabolism, so you can look your best, feel your best, and perform at your highest level each and every day. We are here to support you as you work to build a strong and healthy metabolism that fuels you and your immune system for years to come. Are you ready to change from being the dieter to instead being the detective? Let us know how we can help!