The only diet there is: Trust yourself.

Paleo, Vegan, Whole Food Plant Based, Keto, SAD, Carnivore, Vegetarian, Atkins, South Beach, IIFYM, Fasting, Mediterranean ... and anything not mentioned above. Anyone looking to lose weight, feel better, add muscle or whatever change they might be looking to bring about is flooded with a plethora of eating strategies. Never has it been more confusing than today with Youtubers promoting eating plan X while globe trotting. You can Google for 10 reasons a certain style of eating might be beneficial and find just as many reasons it is not beneficial. Who do you believe? Studies loaded with conflicts and selective criteria. It's no wonder some people lose the will to change or stick with one strategy which just doesn't work.

I will start by sharing my food journey and where it has got me to today and what the learnings were for me. Hopefully there will be something therein which might be the catalyst for your journey.

My goal was to bulk and craft a diet which would work over the long term. I have since come to understand that this is an ever evolving journey. Having a naturally slim body type (ectomorph) was always going to make bulking a fun ride.

Up until the age of about 19, I was a relatively clueless and ate what was on the plate, in the fridge etc... I knew McDonalds and the colonel were not the last word in nutritious cuisine, but did not have any reason to ask what was. A standard Indian diet had got me through life. Also at 19 I discovered the gym and along with it bro science which taught me that in order to bulk up, I needed protein and lots of it. So I went crazy with common wisdom of the day which was to drop the fat and kick up the protein. I got busy with boiling up the chicken and if there's one thing I remember from those years, it's that my bowels did not like what I was doing. Fast forward past a few doctors visits and some Googling and armed with the knowledge I needed some fibre, I ricocheted and went hardcore with wholemeal and vegetables. Should have occurred to me at the time that this was bad news when I was getting afternoon dips, but I blamed the late nights, early starts. With dating, being out with friends and social events this all fell to a very standard eating regime between the ages of 29 - 34. In fact in that time I went back on the protein big time, including powders, and incorporated a lot of roughage. Great, that's the ticket, right? No. That was bad news too with pains in my body that something really did not feel right. I then stumbled upon the work by the Whole Foods Plane Based (WFPB) doctors and intellectualised my way to their suggested eating plan. It was funny how my idea of WFPB was to take the foods I was eating and already loved which fit into that category and just eat more. Makes total sense, but to remove animal products and not replace with other foods which would provide similar minerals and vitamins was not the best approach. Inevitably that failed and by now the LFHC (low fat high carbohydrate) eating plan was giving a healthy dose of sugar highs and lows throughout the day. I would eat to stay awake only to crash harder later.

Fast forward another few months and I stumbled across this eating style which skewed larger meals to the end of the day, the warrior diet, and later a more extreme version - intermittent fasting (IF). Given the energy dips and brain fog I had been having, this completely blew my mind. The mental clarity. Doing away with breakfast preparation, the unfamiliar, but welcome sensation of actually feeling 'on it' all morning had me hooked. I've actually leveraged this for smashing out productive sessions with professional projects and on road trips which keeps me on the ball for longer. Fasting was great, but it felt like it was a way out of a problem without solving what was actually underneath it all. After playing with different fasting regimes, I turned to a functional doctor and for the past year we have been working on resolving some underlying gut issues. So today I look back and think these gut issues never really gave any of those eating / timed eating regimes a fair shot. However I acknowledge that I needed to go on this journey (process of elimination) to get to this point to investigate gut health as the culprit.

I will continue to tinker as my gut heals, but there are some key lessons I learnt on my journey.

1. The plans listed in the opening sentence are just the suggested plans by someone who applied a label. This does not need to be your plan. You can pick and mix.

Going Whole Food Plant Based, for example, is quite a switch. If you need to get the calories, you might find you need bigger and more frequent meals once the animal foods have been taken out. You might also need to plan carefully to be sure you are getting all the nutrients your body is used to getting. If there is no reason to want to go vegan other than to try or having been inspired by someone you follow on YouTube, would it be worth phasing animal products down to one day a week or every other week?

2. If something worked for you back then, it does not mean it's going to work now. I read somewhere that we end up recreating ourselves every five years. Further, changes to lifestyle and entering different phases in your life may end up deciding what you eat and indeed when. If I am on a road trip, no question, I'll be doing IF and most likely one meal a day. Senior folk tend to need more protein and athletes need more of everything. Being fixated on one diet or approach could be testing at the best of times and following one version of a diet may not work. Maintain a degree of adaptability

3. Learn to listen to your body. It will tell you much more than a text book or blog post ever will. This is probably my biggest takeaway. You can read and get fired up with success stories from others, but it could completely not work for you. You will not know this until you try, adjust, keep or move on. Keep an open mind and listen to your body for when you might be getting brain fog or feeling lethargic. Give it time and be gentle on yourself.

My food journey, like for many others, has led me onto a journey of inner transformation.

I've come to realise that there have been times when I changed diet from a place of fear - for example on first reading about why to go whole foods plant based - much of the science is based on avoiding disease x if you avoid this product). Is that really a powerful place from which to choose a change in diet? I have nothing against that eating pattern, but I began to realise that I was not empowered in my decision to adopt that diet. The problem is you can find anecdotal and other evidence both supporting and bashing most of the above diets and lifestyles. In the end you need to decide if it is for you. You need to embark on that journey and all the while being mindful of the changes you are putting your body through.

My journey has taught me (and I will probably echo Louise Hay's sentiment here), that you have to go on your own journey to find what works for you. Keeping food journals and diets on elimination may not sound fun, but I guess you're reading this because you have a growth mindset and open to change.

In conclusion, the only diet there is is one of your own design through inquiry and challenge and its efficacy will be determined by how well it works for you. Not the person in the book or on the screen.