What Should I Eat? The Ultimate Podcast Guide To Choosing The Perfect Diet For You: Part 1

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan, Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Well, hello folks, this is Ben Greenfield. You are going to notice that several times over the course of this month I'm gonna come at you, as I have a couple of times in the past, with a solo sod and today's customized nutrition solo sod is no exception. You're going to learn how to choose the diet that's perfect for you based on self quantification. You're going to learn why I wrote an article called F Diets and why it is that I actually don't really endorse any one particular diet. But I am going to equip you with a ton of information, everything that you need to know to self select the nutrition approach that is perfect for you. You're going to learn everything about over methylation, under methylation, the different ways that you can calculate how many calories that you need to eat, what to do if you want to be vegan, if you want to be keto, I'm going to cover everything in and feed you through the fire hose when it comes to nutrition. So this will be handy for you, especially if you're planning on kind of trying to dial in your diet for the upcoming new year. If you kind of want to have something to rely upon in between the giant amounts of feasting that you may or may not be doing over the holidays. Anyways, it's going to be a fun episode. All right, as promised, this is the official solo sword on personalized nutrition. How do you choose what diet is right for you? Not your next door neighbor who lost £20 putting eight vats of coconut oil in their coffee. Not your grandma who reinvented her entire life when she went vegan. Not your friend Jack who started eating a rib eye steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but you. What's right for you. So in this episode, here is what you can expect. I'm first going to lay out the concept of biochemical individuality and help you understand the type of things that don't dictate your response to certain nutrients, chemicals, compounds and food groups. Next, I'm going to go into some of the differences in methylation between individuals, along with examples of, for example, how we respond to coffee differently, how we respond to sugar differently, how we respond to fats differently. Then I'm going to bring you into kind of a tutorial on the best type of tests to get done. If you want to figure out what kind of diet is right for you, then we'll get into the good stuff. I'm going to give you some of some of the best diets that I actually do like and some of the best books to support each of those diets. I want to finish with it with a few final things in today's episode. What I want to do is spell out some best practices for particularly folks who are eating a plant based diet, because we do have a lot of listeners who eat a plant based diet. I want to get into the overall ethics of food and how we can support our environment, sustain Mother Earth through our dietary practices. And then finally, I want to give you some of my best books, some of my top resources when it comes to food books and diet books that I think everybody should own. So if that sounds good for you. Speaking of books, it's a perfect segue because we're going to jump right in. So there is a book that was recommended to me at a health conference by one Dr. Jeffrey Bland. He's actually deemed as the father of functional medicine. And this book, it's called Biochemical Individuality. It's written by Roger Williams back in 1998. And it goes into how there is no such thing as an average person, how we're all genetically and biologically unique. When sperm meets egg, our characteristics are not locked in stone. Bad genes do not necessarily cause disease by themselves, and nutrition and environment can alter the outcome. Now, the book is very interesting because there's a range of different sizes of stomachs and sizes of hearts and spleens and livers. It's crazy how widely varied, how biochemically and really anatomically varied each human being is, which again dictates why the diet that worked for your neighbor or your grandma or your friend Jack wouldn't necessarily work for you. So let me give you some examples. Despite it being present in copious amounts in just about every multivitamin on the face of the planet, some people don't actually need need to supplement with any ascorbic acid or vitamin C or vitamin A or a form of vitamin B called riboflavin. Why? Well, some people happen to harbor intestinal bacteria, their microbiome that produce ample amounts of each of these vitamins. Now the only way to know if you possess that bacteria would be to do the type of simple at home poop testing I'll get to later in this podcast. Another example would be vitamin D. There are well authenticated cases of vitamin D resistant people. So these folks produce heart damaging amounts of calcium and phosphorus deposits in their blood vessels when they consume. Even the FDA's current recommendation for vitamin D, which would be about 20 micrograms per day, 2,000 international units per day, is very common among a lot of people. And that can actually lead to excess calcification in the arteries. So that should be a big warning sign to anyone popping vitamin D like candy. But at the same time, many people, especially people with diagnosis, darker skin tones that can limit the amount of vitamin D produced from sunlight, or people like me who possess a gene, a SNP, that's responsible for lowering the amount of vitamin D that can be efficiently produced from sunlight, well, we can develop serious health issues like osteoporosis and hormone deficiencies when we don't supplement with vitamin D. So it's odd because despite the enormous amount of biochemical individuality that exists from person to person, there's a plethora of diet books published every year, particularly close to swimsuit season or the upcoming new year. And they promise to be the de facto final solution for everything from fat loss to acne to beating carb cravings to building muscle. When in fact the same ketogenic diet that helped your neighbor shed 20 pounds could result in rampant inflammation and brain fog and oxidized cholesterol for you. So what Roger Williams says in his book, I want to give you a quote from his book. He says genetic influences are far better understood now than in 1956 from major nutrition related problems such as alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Yet we seem frustratingly slow to integrate this knowledge into clinical practice and common knowledge. Most clinicians still treat and write about these problems as if inborn differences are unimportant. Professional and lay authors still recommend restricting diets they assume are best for nearly everyone. They debate heatedly about which one of the conflicting diets is right. High carb, low carb, vegetarian, high protein, et cetera. When will we automatically consider that all of these diets likely have merit? But Only for some individuals. Okay. Nutritional and biochemical individuality. He wrote that in 1998. And of course, the wheel keeps turning, keeps spinning when it comes to all these diet books coming out that claim to be the ultimate diet. So what I want to get into is, first of all, a little bit more detail about this concept of biochemical individuality. I want to give you some hardcore examples. So why not start with one of the elephants in the room, right? The ketogenic diet. Okay, so the ketogenic diet, high fat, low carb diet, that isn't necessarily the way that our ancestors would have attained ketosis, right? You know, our ancient hunter gatherers weren't walking around with blenders full of butter and coconut oil and exogenous ketones. And you know, DARPA developed supplements for enhancing ketosis. They were basically fasting or starving. And ketosis was a built in survival mechanism that we've realized is good. But most of us don't want to go through the pain and suffering of fasting to get there. So we, we take supplements. It's, you know, pill popping. So anyways, the, the extreme high fat, low carb diet is championed by many people as the perfect way to lose fat or enhance cognition or increase endurance. And it does work for these goals. For example, I personally followed this strict ketogenic diet for years, starting in 2013 when I was racing Ironman triathlons. I participated in this fascinating high fat diet lab experiment called the Faster study. And in that experience, that, that experience, if I can talk myself and 18 other elite endurance athletes followed this strict 90% fat based diet for 12 months. Then we appeared at a University of Connecticut lab to subject ourselves to blood and urine and stool measurements, followed by a brutal three hour treadmill run, and preceded by a equally brutal VO2 max test attached to, you know, blood collecting equipment and calorimeter masks. This was not like a run out in the park. This was full on lab rat. And we had a painful biopsy of muscle tissue from the quadriceps and the fat tissue from the ass cheeks. That's like a miniature guillotine shoved into your flanks to cut out tissue samples. And it was painful. You know, all for science, but the results of that experiment completely rewrote exercise physiology textbooks by revealing that long term adherence, long term, like I was on that diet for 12 months before that study, not two weeks like a lot of these studies, long term adherence to this high fat diet nearly doubles the human body's fat burning capacity both at rest and during exercise without causing performance decrements. So I, I still occasionally use ketosis and I supplement with exogenous ketones, which are basically like drinkable rocket fuel, as a brain boosting or endurance boosting strateg strategy on mentally difficult days or on days that require a lot of endurance. However, when reviewing blood work and biomarkers on lab tests of clients and people for whom I do fitness and nutrition consulting who are following a ketogenic diet, I've seen things like concerningly high levels of cholesterol skyrocketing well over 400. I've seen rampant inflammation, I've seen inflated triglyceride levels, unfavorable triglyceride to HDL levels, you know, high CRP and, and even high liver enzymes. So how could this be? Well, let me give you a few examples. There's one condition known as familial hypercholesterolemia that affects up to 10% of the world's population. And people with that condition tend to experience a metabolic firestorm in response to a diet high in saturated fats because their cholesterol and inflammatory biomarkers increase dramatically in response to foods like coconut oil and butter, and to a certain extent, a large intake of very fatty fish and fatty meat and eggs. When I talked to my friend Chris Masterjohn, who's been a podcast guest before, about this, and he's a very bright guy when it comes to nutrition, he explained to me that the best way to deal with familial hypercholesteremia, based on the research he's done, is to take the one gene for the LDL receptor that's responsible for contributing to this condition and try to bring it up to the expression level that would be found in someone without familial hypercholesteremia. So he went on to explain that from a scientific standpoint, that could be accomplished by maximizing the biological activity of thyroid hormone and suppressing the activity of this gene. Stay with me here. Called PCSK9, both of which are achieved by increasing insulin signaling. Well, this is not achieved. This metabolic tweaking is not achieved with a ketogenic diet. So much to the chagrin of ketogenic zealots, this diet comes down to eating. A drum roll, please. Low fat, fiber, rich, high carbohydrate diet and replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats using a diet very similar to what we might see, say, the Kitavan Islanders. These folks almost all have the familial hypercholesteremia gene, but they don't get heart disease. Their Diet is rich in fiber dense carbs like coconut meat and starchy tubers and fresh fruit. We also see a similar scenario in, for example, a plant rich Mediterranean diet with tons of vegetables drowned in extra virgin olive oil. So it turns out that people who don't thrive on a high fat, low carb diet could actually prosper on a low fat, high carb diet. There are other things that can dictate whether or not ketosis might agree with you that I'll get into in a moment, but that's just one example. So what are some other examples of a poor response to a ketogenic diet? Well, how about this? Alpha linoleic acid? Alpha linoleic acid, ala, that's a omega 3 fatty acid that's found primarily in plant based food sources like flax and walnuts and seeds and nuts. And it's an essential fatty acid because similar to essential amino acids, it can't be produced by your body, so it needs to be obtained through food. Now, plant sources of ALA are very popular among vegetarian and vegan diet enthusiasts because once in the body, they can theoretically be synthesized into DHA and epa. And those are critical fatty acids that enhance your cognition and your brain health and help to stabilize the state of ketosis. But there is research that suggests only 2 to a maximum of 10% of that Ala that's eaten is actually converted into usable DHA or epa. And in addition to that, the ALA converting genes, they're known as fadss. Those can vary widely, so one variant of them can increase conversion, another can reduce conversion, resulting in some people having a worsened ability to make effective conversion compared to those with the conversion increasing variant. Okay, biochemical individuality once again. So what am I getting at here? Well, the FADS variant that improves ALA conversion is most common in folks like African, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladesh, Sri Lankan populations, moderately common in European populations, and least common in Native Americans and indigenous Arctic populations. And that's likely due to the relative availability of plant Sources of Omega 3s and genetic adaptations to that availability. The more a population would have historically relied upon plant sources of fatty acids, an ala, the more that population probably adapted to be able to convert ALA into usable DHA and epa. And the more population consumed historically DHA and EPA directly, directly from animal and marine sources, the more the conversion increasing gene variant was replaced by the conversion decreasing variant. So if you have, say, African or Southeast Asian ancestry, then you likely carry the conversion increasing variant of the FADS gene. You don't need to consume as much DHA and EPA from Animal or fish sources. That doesn't mean you don't need to consume those at all. But you can get some DHA and EPA from plant based sources. But if you have, let's say a far northern European or Iberian or Native American or indigenous Arctic ancestry, you may not be able to effectively convert ALA into usable DHA and epa. Those of British and Northern European ancestry might be able to make effective conversion, but not as commonly or as upregulated as some of those other populations. So if your genetic heritage comes from these people groups, then you would need to get your DHA and EPA directly from meat and fish. Okay, so your ALA genes would influence your need or your not need. Yeah, I just made up that word for ALA from plant sources. Now, how about this one? There's another response to a high fat diet that is related to elongation of omega 6 fatty acids. Now, omega 6 fatty acids are like omega 3s. They're polyunsaturated fatty acids. They're found most commonly in poultry and eggs, grains, seeds, nuts, and vegetable oils. So Omega 6 is like linoleic acid, act as precursors to molecules called eicosanoids. And those, when derived from Omega 6s, can be pro inflammatory, especially when in excess. Now, while eicosanoids derived from omega 3 fatty acids are anti inflammatory, humans lack the ability to efficiently convert omega 6s to omega 3. So a high intake of omega 6 fatty acids, multiple spoonfuls of that nut butter in your pantry without a proportionally high intake of omega 3s could lead to cellular inflammation and weight gain. But if you do consume adequate omega 3 fatty acids, like a 1 to 1 ratio or up to a 4 to 1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3s, you may not be able to handle omega 6s as well as other people. Even if you do that, the process of converting omega 6s into inflammatory compounds is called called elongations. And that getting back to biochemical individuality is genetic. So some people have upregulated elongation that results in a greater conversion of omega 6 fatty acids into inflammatory compounds. So if you have upregulated elongation, a significant amount of the linoleic acid that you consume, like seeds and nuts, that gets converted into arachidonic acid. And that's a precursor to inflammatory compounds. So to eliminate that inflammation, you would need to get rid of a lot of these common ketogenic diet fat sources. And that would include, you know, seeds, nuts, large amounts of seed and nut butters, and even things like poultry and eggs. Or if you do consume them, you would have to simultaneously increase your intake of omega 3 fatty acids from fatty cold water fish like tuna and mackerel and herring and sardines. So this is another thing that you can determine by getting, you know, an omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid index, along with a genetic test. Okay, hopefully you're not going cross eyed yet and smoke isn't coming out your ears. I'm going to throw one more at you. The thrifty gene hypothesis. So there's this geneticist named James Neal. He proposed the thrifty gene hypothesis back in 1962 in an attempt to explain why certain populations are susceptible to type 2 diabetes. So this hypothesis explains, or has been used to explain at least why humans tend to accumulate fat mass by claiming that in the past, thrifty genes allowed humans to build fat reserves as a buffer against leaner times in a type of long term feast famine cycle. So as food became overabundant in the modern era, these genes continued to allow humans to build fat reserves, but quickly led to this pandemic of obesity. Because the foods responsible for triggering the thrifty genes are consumed in much higher quantities today than they have been in the past. So the fact is, there are indeed certain genes that cause some people to gain fat more easily than others, especially in response to, you guessed it, high fat foods. So the most common nutrients associated with genetic obesity are fatty acids. And two of the most notorious genes responsible for storing these fatty acids are the FTO and the PPAR genes. So the FTO that stands for fat mass and obesity associated protein. That gene regulates fat mass and body weight. Research suggests the FTO gene is the primary genetic factor associated with weight gain. And that diet is the primary environmental factor that triggers the FTO gene. So a high saturated fat intake is associated with FTO induced weight gain. So if you've got one or two copies of that FTO polymorphism, you probably want a diet that's pretty low in saturated fat. I fall into that category. I only eat about 5 to 10% of my total daily fat intake from saturated fat. Everything else is olive oil and avocado oil and more Mediterranean fats, not butter and coconut oil. There's another gene, the PPAR gene stands for peroxisome proliferator activated receptor. Okay? The PPAR gene, that's also associated with weight gain following a high fat intake. It's also associated with an inflammatory response following a high fat intake. And that gene is responsible for regulating fatty acid storage and uptake of fatty acids and growth of new fat cells. So a variant of that gene causes you to gain weight and produce inflammation in response to things like omega 6 arachidonic acid from seeds and nuts, as well as saturated fats. So if you have either of these genes, you're going to do better on a lower fat diet or at least, at the least, a plant rich Mediterranean diet versus a ketogenic diet. Okay, so that's one example, just one example of biochemical individuality. I'm going to throw another few quick ones here at you. There is sugar, right? That's another example of biochemical individuality. Wild variation in blood sugar responses that occurs when subjects in controlled dietary studies eat foods like cookies or bananas or sushi or whole grain bread. And the latest research on this was detailed in pretty nitty gritty specifics in Rob Wolfe's book Wired to Eat. And I'm going to put a link to all the books that I talk about and everything in the show notes for today's podcast. The show notes are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com FDIets yes, as in diets. Okay, F diets. So. BenGreenfulFitness.com FDIets so in wired to Eat, Rob talks about how every person's capacity to extract energy from food differs dramatically due to genes and microbiome. That's a biggie. Diet, environment, lifestyle. And that means that common measurements of the sugar content of foods like the glycemic index can be kind of useless when compared to individualized measurements of blood sugar responses to different foods. That's why I like blood glucose monitors or even continuous blood glucose monitors. There was a study in Europe called Food for Me. They looked at 1500 participants in seven different European countries. They were randomly given personalized dietary advice based on their genetic data or they were told to follow standardized dietary prescriptions, like eating lots of fruits and vegetables or lean meats or whole grains. And the participants in the personalized diet group fared far better eating according to their genetics than those in the one size fits all diet group. Another example, in addition to sugar, in addition to fats, would be coffee. Current guidelines advise consuming no more than four or five cups of coffee per day, which is fine for about half the population or slightly more that are genetically fast caffeine metabolizers. But for the other half who have a particular variant of a gene called CYP1A2, any more than two cups of coffee per day actually increases the risk of a heart attack and hypertension. So it's very, very Interesting. And scientists are slowly beginning to tease out all these connections. They've now linked at least 38 different genes to nutrient metabolism. And Roger Williams wasn't aware of this fact when he wrote Biochemical Individuality because this research has come to light since 1998. But there are genes like MTHFR for folate metabolism and FTO for body weight and fat composition, and APOE4 for cholesterol and FADS1 for fatty acid metabolism and TCF7L2 for blood sugar regulation. So this all means that depending on your genetic makeup, your microbiota, your health history, your living environment, you may need to consume more or less choline or vitamin C or fatty acids or starches or caffeine or folate. Don't begin to get down, as I say this, because the fortunate thing is you live in an era where through basic self quantification, you can figure all this out pretty easily. As far as how to customize your diet to you, let's also talk about overmethylation and undermethylation, because I think the carnivore diet is a hot topic these days. And I could go on and on about the carnivore diet. I've got an upcoming article on Outside magazine about that that'll take a deeper dive. So I'm not going to get too derailed talking about the carnivore diet. Maybe a topic for another day, but for the carnivores out there who just have to have their meat, the meat eaters who say, I like my steak, I like my steak. With eggs, there is a problem. Most meat, particularly muscle tissue, has high amounts of methionine, which is a potent methyl donor. Now, over the next few minutes, you're going to learn what a methyl group is, why it might be bad for you to consume a large amount of strong methyl donors, and how to eliminate the side effects of over methylation or under methylation. So, a methyl group, that's a carbon atom that's attached to three hydrogen atoms. It's a highly abundant organic compound derived from methane. Now, normally, methyl groups are attached to larger molecules, but when found on their own, they can either be methyl anion, methyl cation, methyl radical, and methylation occurs when a methyl group is taken from one compound or molecule and is transferred to another. So a methyl group can be added to your DNA from a methyl donor like methionine. Now, the process is largely responsible for switching genes on and off and silencing viruses in the human body. So when your body has normal methylation, less Desirable genes are switched off, like those that code for, say, cancers or autoimmune diseases, while helpful genes are switched on. Methylation is required for cell division, for neurotransmitter synthesis, for detoxification, for cellular energy metabolism, for the formation of your protective myelin sheaths around your neurons, for central nervous system development in children. And so the critical functions of methylation mean that when it malfunctions, your body can go haywire pretty quickly. So under methylation, that's a state of low methylation, as the name implies, either because your body is unable to adequately transfer methyl groups, or because there's not a high enough intake of methyl donating compounds or foods like me. Over methylation is a state of high methylation. Now, neither of those states are necessarily bad, but they have the capacity to cause different kinds of stress if the diet isn't set up to support them properly. So under methylation, it's kind of interesting, under methylators, they tend to be, they have certain personality types associated with them. You can be a hard charging high achiever. It can lead to perfectionism and overachievement. It's been associated with OCD tendencies, a low tolerance for pain, very ritualistic, systematized controlling behaviors. And by keeping serotonin levels low, a state of undermethylation can also make people more susceptible to depression. Overmethylation is associated with people who are more creative and sensitive. If you're prone to overmethylation, you probably have high levels of empathy or might also experience sleep issues, food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, hyperactivity, panic attacks, unwanted weight gain, and that's also correlated with schizophrenia, while undermethylation is more correlated with depression. So here's the deal. If you're prone to undermethylation, you would actually do pretty well with a high intake of muscular meats, as you do not have enough methyl groups being transferred to places that need them, like your DNA. You might need to consume a higher amount of meat to compensate, especially if you consume high quantities of plant matter and folate, as those don't supply sufficient amounts of methyl groups necessary for good health in undermethylators. Now, in addition, folate acts as a serotonin reuptake promoter. So drugs like antidepressants and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are received very well by undermethylators. So any compound like folate that exerts the opposite effect could be devastating to undermethylators. So if you're an undermethylator, a plant rich or at Least a vegan or vegetarian diet void of meat is probably not going to do you any favors and may kind of screw you over. But if you're prone to over methylation, the last thing you need is a high intake of methyl donors like muscle meat or daily servings of steak and chicken or rib eye for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So this would be an instance where vegetarianism or veganism or a largely plant based diet, maybe with some fish and some eggs here and there, could be extremely beneficial. If you're an overmethylator, you need to consume a little bit of protein, but not become an extreme carnivore who loads up three quarters of your plate with with cuts of animals and fills up the rest of the plate with 1/10 of an inch of vegetables. That ratio should actually be reversed in overmethylator. And the only way to know that is to undergo a genetic test, like a DNA test from 23andMe or from Utreans, for example. Okay, so I actually know I said I was gonna get into testing, but I thought of one other thing that I wanted to go over and this is pretty important. Eating according to your ancestry. Eating according to your ancestry. So ancestral dieting, eating like your ancestors, that's something that can come in here as well. So for example, in my case, as someone from a predominantly northern European ancestry, I ate plenty of fermented foods and meats and fish and eggs and berry and raw dairy and salt without a large intake of citrus fruits or other foods my ancestors would not likely have encountered in their local habitat. If you're of Scandinavian origins, your ancestors had good access to fish rich in omega 3s and vitamin D. So you probably need a diet higher in fish and vitamin D for optimal longevity. And certain genes can also influence these decisions. You know, an MTHFR mutation is what would influence the methylation that I talked about earlier. It can create a poor ability to methylate. And that tends to cluster in regions and populations where a group's traditional diet was rich in folate. So in one study from 16 different regions across the world, Mexicans, Hispanics, Italians and Chinese were more likely than others to carry MTHFR mutations that increase their need for dietary folate. So if you come from Chinese heritage or your grandparents migrated from Italy, or your dad was Hispanic, you should probably eat more folate rich foods like leafy greens or even organ meats or pastured egg yolks. Or you could take the Amy1 gene that codes for salivary amylase production and salivary amylase digest starch and carbohydrates. And the more Amy 1 copies you have, the more salivary amylase you produce when you eat carbohydrates. So the more copy numbers you have, the more likely it is that your ancestors ate relatively high amounts of starch, and the more likely it is that you can personally handle a higher starch intake. Populations that are traditionally more agriculture, like Japanese or continental Europeans, or populations that are high starch foragers, like the Hasda tribe in Tanzania, those all have higher AMY1 numbers compared to lower starch consuming populations, areas of Turkey or the Congo, for example. And if your ancestors came from a region that ate more carbohydrates, you could thrive on more starches like sweet potato and yam and plantain and taro and fruit and rice. And then here's another example for you, the lactase persistence gene. So lactase is an enzyme that allows an adult to be able to digest lactose without getting gut distressed or diarrhea or all the other mayhem that can happen in a state of lactose intolerance. So, as you can imagine, cultures that have not traditionally raised dairy livestock, including countries like Asia and Africa and most of India, rarely carry that lactase persistence gene. And in contrast, if you're of European descent, you're probably lactose intolerant. So this concept of eating according to your ancestry, along with the concept of overmethylation and undermethylation, along with the concept of specific responses to sugar, specific responses to caffeine, specific responses to fats, these all are perfect examples of biochemical individuality. Biochemical individuality. Now, I'll actually get into when I describe some specific meal plans that I like, how you could eat according to your ancestry more specifically. But before we dive into that, let's actually talk about how you would actually test, how you would actually kind of look at your specific susceptibility to any of these issues. So here's what I like to do. Here's what I encourage everybody to do a get a good blood test. I'm going to include links in the show notes, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FDIets a good blood test can determine holes in your diet that need to be filled by indicating different health markers like blood sugar, mineral status, thyroid status, cholesterol status, red and white blood cell levels, vitamin B levels, acidity, alkalinity, vitamin D status. So for, for blood tests, there's two that I recommend. One would be just the test of all your hormones, you know, vitamins, minerals, nutrients, etc. Everything that lets you see if there's any holes that need to be filled in with supplementation or specific food groups. I, I like one that, that I helped a company called Wellness Effects to design. It's called a longevity panel. You get one of those, you know, it's a, it's a, a, it's a big panel. But one of those in a year and you would, you would really know a lot about what's going on metabolically. I also like another blood test that's going to separate or be separate from the one I just described and that's for food allergies. There's a company called Cyrex that has the gold standard in testing for food allergies. And rather than sending you a dizzying and frustrating laundry list of false positives and hundreds of foods to avoid, which is what you get from most popular food allergy tests, Cyrex is far more sensitive. Test white blood cell reaction to raw form of the protein, cooked form of the protein. So you have your basic blood test and then you have a Cyrex panel. Now next is stool testing. Like I mentioned, there are certain bacteria, there are yeast, fungus, parasites, digestive inflammation. All of this can be used to determine your need for certain probiotics, whether or not you would need to do some kind of like a gut cleansing system or a reboot prior to launching into a more complex diet. And I'll explain some of that here in a moment, whether you need to avoid or include more fermentable substances, etc. So there's, there's multiple companies now that, that offer microbiome tests. The company Viome is, is doing kind of a full microbiome panel. There's a lot of controversy around a lot of these microbiome panels and whether what it's testing in the stool really reflects what's going on higher up, like in the small intestine. There's also a three day stool panel from a company called Genova Diagnostics that can also take a look at bacteria and yeast and fungus. And you know, gold standard scenario, you do both. You get like a Viome and a Genova and kind of take a look at everything that you get from both. I would say if you wanted to choose one at this point, I'd go with something like a, like a test from, from Viome, which is going to give you, you know, your, your complete microbiome analysis. So that's what I do as far as stool is concerned. Then there's DNA testing, right. Very big based off what I've just said so. There are companies like Utrients and you may have heard my podcast with Karim Danani that I'll link to in the show notes for this podcast. There are companies like 23andMe that you can test with and then export your results to Prometheus or Strategene or Genetic Genie to take a deeper dive into specifically health related genetic results. Even though something as simple as 23andMe will just show you like your, your ancestry so you can begin to make different decisions and even type in, you know, you can doctor Google a lot of this stuff. You know, this is what people hire me many times to do is help them to dig through a lot of these results. But you know, for example, you could, you could look up, okay, what are, what are the SNPs associated with the PPAR gene? I want to see if I have an inflammatory response to saturated fats. You type those into your raw data at 23andMe. You see if your homozygous or heterozygous or what type of polymorphisms you have in response to or related to PPAR or any of these other genes that I've mentioned. You know, methylation, mthfr, et cetera. So we've got blood testing, we've got stool testing or microbiome testing, DNA testing, and that's typically saliva. Then there's urine testing. I like urine testing for hormones. There's a test called the Dutch test that's a very good test for hormones. There's also very related to that something called an organic amino acids test. It's almost like a micronutrient test. It tells you about a lot of organic acids and fatty acids and amino acids and vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and hormones that you can't necessarily get via a strict blood test. And that one that would be for example, a test from Spectracel. And I'll include a lot of links to some of my favorites in the show notes. But okay, so so far we have a blood test, stool test, saliva test for DNA, microbiome test and a urine test. And then the last one you would want to get if you wanted to determine how many calories you're burning. Very accurate determination of calories. You get a resting metabolic rate test. Many universities offer these, many gyms and health clubs, the fancier gyms and health clubs a lot of times will have a bod pod or some other way to determine how many calories you should burn. So now you're kind of, you're kind of Sitting there and you're armed with, okay, what nutrients am I deficient in, what my ancestors eat, what kind of genes do I have? What kind of micronutrients might I be deficient in, what's my biome status, and what kind of bacteria might I be deficient in or have an excess of? Do I have any food allergies? And finally, do I have any indicators from a gut inflammation or a liver enzyme standpoint or anything like that that would dictate that I need to follow a very restrictive diet for a short period of time before I move on to something more complex and varied? Okay, so now at this point in the podcast, you should have a basic understanding of biochemical individuality, and you should have a basic understanding of the basic test that you can get. I'm using the word basic a lot. I realize that can allow you to look more into these type of things. And so now I want to get into now, once you have this data, once you're armed with this data, what you can actually do from a diet state standpoint. So here, here's the deal. I want to give you some of the best of the best, like the basic to advanced diets that I found to work time and time again for a variety of issues like fixing the gut or, you know, gaining muscle, losing fat, enhancing performance, you know, pick your poison, whatever your goals are. Now, before I fill in the holes for you and give you a few of my favorite diets, I want to emphasize something. No matter what diet you follow, we tend to see time and time again in a lot of ancestral diets, diets that the blue zones would follow, diets where there are disproportionately high amounts of lung, longevity and centenarians, we see the same dietary practices over and over again. So no matter what diet you follow, you should include some of the basic recommendations that we see. Some of the basic things that pop up over and over again. Incorporations of regular intermittent fast or longer fasting periods, being ruthlessly cognizant of inflammatory foods and controlling glycemic variability, right? Blood sugar fluctuations, occasionally refeeding the body with some kind of a fast food day or a refeed day that gives you adequate calories and carbohydrates, occasionally engaging in periods of more intense detoxification or fasting. Whenever given the option between packaged and processed foods, choose the former. Even if you have a kick butt greens powder canister sitting in your pantry that you paid 60 bucks for, but you also have kale and spinach and cilantro and parsley and thyme in your refrigerator. Take the wild plants first. Save the powdered stuff. When you're in a hurry or you're traveling, eat a wide variety of multicolored plants and herbs and spices. Whenever possible, eat clean, organic, wild, non GMO or otherwise healthy foods and ingredients. Whenever possible, eat locally grown foods that are available on a seasonal basis. Okay, so no matter what diet you follow, those are some of the best practices. I actually just yesterday released an article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called what is the perfect human diet Diet. And if you go and you read that, it should still be on the front page of BenGreenfieldFitness.com or just Google you know, what is the perfect human diet? Ben Greenfield and you'll find it. That will kind of lay out some of these basic best practices for you along with a few more. So now let's dive into into some of the meal plans that I actually like. Interrupted by a sip of Xevia, who is not a sponsor of this podcast but should be nudge nudge, wink, wink. Okay, so here are some of the meals that I like. If you have tested, you found inflammation, you have gut distress, you know that you need to switch to a clean eating protocol for some part of your Life, typically for four to about 12 weeks. Number one would be the autoimmune Paleo diet. The Autoimmune Paleo diet. So this diet is also known as the Paleo autoimmune protocol. It's like a very strict version of the Paleo diet. So it eliminates dairy, grains, eggs, nightshades and legumes. It's very good for people who need to heal inflammation and to heal a leaky gut. Okay. It could be mixed and matched with the SCD diet or the GAPS diet that I'll outline to you in just a moment. And the best book I like for that is the Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook. I have many of my clients who first come to me for coaching, who have been eating an unclean diet for a certain period of time, who have a lot of red flags on the their Cyrex panel. Follow an autoimmune Paleo diet for at least four to 12 weeks and sometimes you can retest and the gut inflammation has subsided and you can move on to a more complex diet that I'll outline in a minute. So another beginner option would be the specific carbohydrate diet, and that was originally designed as a way to manage celiac disease and gluten issues and It's a gluten free and grain free diet. It was actually a popular treatment for celiac disease decades even before gluten was discovered. And this would be the diet to follow if you have IBD or IBS or bloating or gas or gut inflammation, particularly those brought on by gluten or grain consumption. And you could mix and match any meal from an SCD diet with Paleo autoimmune diet or a GAPS diet. The best book to spell out the SCD program would be a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall. And I'll link to all the books that I recommend in the show. Notes, notes. The next very simple diet that I really like, again as a diet to just reboot the body and get you started would be the Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet. The Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet, also known as the GAPS diet. So it was actually derived from the specific carbohydrate diet to heal the gut lining. Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride has really worked on that protocol to develop a really good book called Gut and Psychology Syndrome. And it really focuses on foods that tend to inflame and cause issues with the nervous system. So you have cognitive issues and irritation and brain fog or nervous system based problems related to the gut. This would be a diet that could be beneficial for you to follow. And then the other very basic beginner options that I like, one is called Dr. Thomas Rouse Swiss Detox Diet. I like that one. Along with a diet by Dr. John Douard called the Colorado Cleanse. Those would be if you've tested, you have high liver enzymes, you have a beat up gallbladder, low bile production, fatty stools, issues with particularly the liver, the gallbladder, pancreas. To a certain extent. Both of these protocols include things like kitchari, olive oil, celery juice. If you heard my my podcast, my other solo sod about how to cleanse your liver. It's basically kind of a protocol very similar to Dr. Thomas Rao's Swiss detox diet or Dr. John Douillard's Colorado Cleanse diet. So either of those books would be perfect to spell out these diets. But I like that even a couple of times a year as a basic cleanse for the body. So I would say that's the type of diet that you do a couple of times a year and then you kick things off by healing your gut with either the autoimmune paleo diet, the SCD diet, the GAPS diet or variations of all three. There's kind of more than one Way to skin the cat here. And finally, if you need to pull up all the stops to manage gut inflammation and small intestine bacterial overgrowth and candida and yeast and fungus and constipation and fodmap sensitivities or leaky gut and you want to push the reboot button on digestion altogether. You can spend two to four weeks on what is called an an elemental diet. It's very simple, relatively boring. It involves consuming a meal replacement powder for breakfast, lunch and dinner, along with a few extra oils and fats and amino acids for added nutrients. I have some clients who have come to me with constipation and sibo and I'll put this on them on this diet for 30 days sometimes. So it would involve one to two servings of thorns. Mediclear meal replacement powder. It's called Mediclear sgs. And for each of those shakes you add amino acids. You could use the kion aminos. You use a little bit of extra virgin olive oil or MCT oil or coconut oil. Typically you can blend it up using organic bone broth. You can add some ice, you can add some stevia. So every meal tastes like a giant Wendy's frosty. And I've actually followed that diet myself when I need to a couple of times. I've actually had sibo tested positive for sibo and knocked it out using this diet and a few choice herbal protocols. So to learn more about that diet again you can go to the show notes BenGreenfieldFitness.com FDIets or you could read Dr. Allison Siebecker SiboInfo.com website or Dr. Michael Ruscio's book recent podcast guest his book called Healthy gut Healthy you. Okay, so those are some of the ways you can reboot your body. Autoimmune paleo specific carbohydrate gaps diet, the detox diet by Thomas Rao or John Douillard or the elemental diet. Okay, so you've cleaned things up, you've tested, you understand biochemical individuality. Now you want to expand things a little bit bit. So you know, you, you followed these cleanup diets. You've cleansed your liver, you've cleaned your gut. Now you want to move into something that is clean, that is easy to digest, that primarily consists of real whole food and that allow you to eat a wider variety of foods. So I've got three options that I like. One is the Wahls Protocol by Dr. Terry Wahls. It's like a, you know, she has one that, that's like A like a low carb ketogenic version version as a version of her diet that I actually like because it's very rich in plants. It's kind of Paleo esque. I'm not Paleo. I'll tell you what I eat in a little bit. But for people who are trying to keep things super clean on the Wahls Protocol, you eat a lot of meat and fish and vegetables, especially green leafy ones, brightly colored fruit like berries, some fats from animal and plant sources. But it's really skewed towards omega 3 fatty acids and you don't do much dairy, eggs, grains, legumes, nightshades or show. A lot of people feel really good on the Wahls protocol. It was originally developed to help her manage ms, but but I've had a lot of people follow that or combine that again. You can mix and match with these other diets that I'm going to describe to you. One other that I like is Stephen Gundry's Plant Paradox diet. That eliminates all dietary lectins, which are a natural plant based defensive protein that can cause gastric distress in a lot of people. They're found in foods like green beans and lentils and edamame. And you limit sugar significantly. You curb your intake of a high amount of omega 6 fats and it starts off with like this three day cleanse. So there's kind of a cleanse phase in there as well. Now I like that, that diet, particularly if you want to eat a wide variety of plants and vegetables, but your gut doesn't seem to do well with those giant green smoothies and you know, green beans and legumes and things like that. So the best book to go along with that is the Plant Paradox Diet. He's another guy that I've interviewed and I'll link to that one in the show notes. And then the last kind of like somewhat restrictive but relatively broad diet is just a basic lower carbohydrate, lower sugar version of a Mediterranean diet. So it's a plant, an omega 3 fatty acid rich diet. It's prevalent in many longevity hotspots and blue zones. And you know, we see in a lot of these hunter, gatherer and healthy ancestral populations, you know, limitations of sugar and a high intake of starches in many cases, but also a high intake of plants and a ketogenic Mediterranean diet or a lower carbohydrate Mediterranean diet, that's another option. Now I realize I've said low carbohydrate ketogenic over and over again. Now that's not necessarily because I think that everyone should be on a ketogenic diet per se, the way that modern, modern nutrition industry has defined a ketogenic diet with all these supplements and all these saturated fat fats. But I do think everyone should be very cognizant of glycemic variability, limitation of frequent fluctuations in blood glucose, and in many cases being cognizant. The amount of carbohydrates that you eat can be useful. If you're sub Saharan African or you're Southeast Asian or you've tested your genes, you have good copies of the Amy1 gene you can expand out and you can include especially with like dinner. This would be another case if you're an athlete. More starches, more tubers. There's taro, sweet potato, yam, quinoa, amaranth, millet, fermented sourdough bread, et cetera. But even that's just once a day. And even my clients who are eating a lot of carbohydrates, athletes and folks who have that Amy1 gene, they're doing most of it at dinner. So it's a low carb the entire day and then including carbs, modifying some of these diets to include almost like a carb refeed for dinner. So I have athletes, ironman athletes who I work with, and marathoners who will follow the Wahls protocol, low carb version or Stephen Gundry's keto version of his plant paradox diet, or a low carb Mediterranean diet. And then they just do carb refeeds in the evening. So those are some intermediate options. So next we get to advanced options. And this is where you fix your gut. Your blood glucose and your inflammation are under control. Your body weight is where you want to be. You've achieved full body wellness. Now you just want to enjoy and experiment with as many foods as possible and even weave into your diet the concept of, of eating according to your ancestry. So here's what you can do. Number one, huge fan of the Weston A. Price Diet. The Weston A. Price Diet the Weston A. Price diet is probably the closest to the way that myself and my family eat. And it's simply kind of this idea that you can eat just about any food on the face of the planet if it has been prepared properly. So raw milks and fermented foods and sourdough bread and grass fed butter and organ meats and a whole variety of foods prepared ancestrally. And it also includes a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables usually prepared in olive oil or butter, a lot of really mineral Rich salts, a lot of raw vinegar, and even the inclusion of some sweeteners like raw honey or maple syrup or maple sugar and some amount of of organic wine or beer. And the whole Weston A. Price protocol is really sound. If your diet can handle a wide variety of foods. There's very little I'm personally allergic to. I mean, like green beans is one of the ones that pops up on my Cyrex panel. But for people who don't have a lot of allergies, etcetera, man, the Weston A. Price diet is very good. You can also customize a Wesnay Price ish diet to your ancestry. There's a very good book called the jungle effect by Dr. Daphne Miller. I also interviewed her in my podcast, and she explains the dietary wisdom of traditional cultures who follow a diet specific to their genes and ancestry. And she even gets into a lot of these areas that she identifies as cold spots, which are the opposite of hot spots. And these are areas that have a remarkably low incidence of diseases like diabetes and heart disease and depression and colon cancer and breast cancer and prostate cancer. And what she actually found was that many of these cultures, they kind of eat a whole foods, Weston A. Price like diet, but it's specific to their tradition, their ancestry and their local environment. So, for example, Crete, Greece, that's a cold spot for heart disease. And the foods that they eat include traditional Mediterranean staples like olive oil and whole grains and legumes and red wine and leafy green vegetables. Copper Canyon, Mexico, if you're Hispanic, that's a diabetes culture cold spot. Rather than eating a traditional Taco Bell diet, they eat corn and beans and squash and peppers and no Paul cactus and onions, cilantro, tomato, jicama nuts, avocado, guacamole, Iceland, that's a depression cold spot. They eat fish, walnuts, right? High intake of omega 3, omega 3 enriched eggs, wild game, high in omega 3s, cabbage, bilberries, flaxseed oil, barley, rye, organic dairy products, products. Right. And that's specific to their diet and kind of staving off something that would normally be found in high amounts, you know, if they were to move to America and eat a westernized diet, but based on eating their traditional diet is actually supporting their ability to be able to fight off something they're genetically susceptible to. Very similar, like a Kitavan population eating a diet rich in kind of like, like, like fibers and coconut meat and things like that instead of high amounts of saturated fat. Africa, Cameroon, West Africa. If you're African American, that's a colon Cancer cold spot. And they eat a lot of collard greens and mustard greens and spinach and okra and plantains and beans and legumes and wild poultry and even some kefir and yogurt and fermented vegetables. Right. And that's their diet, keeps them from getting colon cancer as opposed to like a high saturated fat, high vegetable oil diet that frankly you don't have to stereotype. But a lot of African, African Americans, you know, especially in the Southeast, because I've been down there, you know, and spent a lot of time there. And you know, it, it's. It's an area where some of these westernized versions of an African diet have kind of taken over and screwed a population from a health standpoint that should instead be eating a diet more specific to like a hunter gatherer esque African based diet. Okinawa, Japan. Right. That's a breast and prostate cancer cold spot. They're eating a lot of fermented swamp forms of soy tempo and miso and natto and fish, cabbage, bok choy, a lot of bitter plants like bitter melon extract and green tea and sea vegetables and sweet potato and even some fruits like watermelon and grapefruit. And so you can actually go read Dr. Miller's book the Jungle Effect. But you can take a Wesleyan a Price ish diet and just kind of tweak it and shove it a little bit in the direction of where your genetic ancestor resides. And I would say like, that's like an eating for life protocol. After you fixed your gut, after you've kind of spent some time teaching yourself how to prepare plants properly and doing things like the Wahls protocol or a ketogenic Mediterranean diet. I mean, I think everybody should get to the point where they're kind of following a Wesley Price ish diet, eating all of the food that grows on the face of the planet and preferably eating according to their ancestry. So that's the deal with some of the diets that I actually do recommend. And I'll link to the article that I released this week that kind of gets into some of these diets in particular in more details, and also lays out a supplementation protocol that you could use to go along with each if you want to throw supplements into the mix as well. So what I did not get to yet was what to do if you are vegan, what to do if you also want to eat a plant based diet, but you want to kind of get into ketosis, what you should do when it comes to taking care of the environment. With the diet that you follow. But alas, I'm a little bit out of time. So here's what I'm going to do for you in part two. You're probably going to be listening to this when it comes out this week. In Part two, which I'll release over the next week or so, I'm going to go into some of my recommendations for plant based eaters. I'm going to go into some of my recommendations for taking care of the diet and the environment. And I'm also going to leave you with some of my top books and top resources for learning even more. So you're going to have to wait with bated breath for part two. But ultimately right now, if I've generated a lot of questions and you have follow ups for me, what I want you to do is just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comFDIets that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com FDIET and I will respond your questions and I try to at least take a glance at each one. And finally, I want to thank you for listening to this solo sode. If any of this is helpful for you, Leave me a review in itunes. Just say something nice. Leave five stars. Leave a review or subscribe on any podcasting platform that you use. Whether that's Overcast or Stitcher. What else is there? Google, Google Play, Google Music just if you subscribe and leave a review. And I know it gets annoying sometimes for me to ask this, but man it's huge to support the show because it's kind of a labor of love. Yeah, we have some sponsors but it's, it's very good if you actually subscribe and you leave reviews as far as supporting the show. So it's good karma. In the meantime, thanks for listening. And again, show notes are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com f diets. Want more? Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can subscribe to my information packed and entertaining newsletter and click the link up on the right hand side of that webpage that says Ben Recommends where you'll see a full list of everything I've ever recommended to enhance your body and your brain. Finally, to get your hands on all the all of the unique supplement formulations that I personally develop, you can visit the website of my company kion@getkin.com that's getk I-O-N.com.