Photo by Virginia Long on Unsplash
I used to eat whatever I wanted. I thought about my poop only when it announced itself and stopped thinking about it when the toilet paper came up clean. But a few weeks before my 20th birthday, everything changed.
I would later be diagnosed with an incurable digestive disease. Since then, I have tried many different diets while charting a lonely course beyond the ken of modern medicine. In that time I have learned how to more or less manage the condition. ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!’ exclaimed the doctor after my last colonoscopy. Exactly how much diet contributes to this precarious equilibrium, I don’t know, but it is certainly a factor.
I tried these many diets while chasing some hypothesis or other, and after a while, just for the sense of adventure. What would I find when eating only potatoes for 30 days? I never found out: after a week the blood sugar swings were so intense and hot flashes so uncomfortable that I had to eat other foods. But I learned about how my body handles that many potatoes and just how filling they are. They now make up a more substantial part of my regular menu than they did before.
Most crash diets are hard to do and impossible to stick with long term. But that’s the best part about trying them: you discover hard-won data about what works best, feels best, and is sustainable for you. I think many people could try a few new diets and see what they can learn1.
Reasons to try different diets even if you’re not trying to lose weight or something:
You will learn new things about your body, sometimes helpful and surprising things you wish you knew earlier.
You will learn new things about your mind and emotions, sometimes helpful and surprising things you wish you knew earlier.
You may realize your pre-diet baseline sucked and you feel much better eating X or not eating Y.
You will discover new flavors and foods. Some will make it into your regular rotation.
You will eat out less and cook more. This will make you a better home cook and will generally be healthier than eating out.
The character of your sleep and energy and mood will change, sometimes for the better.
There will be times when you feel like hell but then you come out of it and realize your body was just changing gears and you feel way better.
You’ll get more in tune with the signals your body is giving you.
Here’s a list of things I’ve learned on different diets.
General learnings
Cutting out a certain type of food does not make the alternatives ‘healthy’. They can often be worse.
Eating fewer calories is a struggle no matter what. You just have to get used to being a little bit (or a lot a bit) hungry most of the time in order to actually lose weight. But you can get used to this.
Keto
Eating no carbs eliminates my mid-afternoon energy slump.
Ketosis triggers a low-grade mania state of intense focus, all my ideas seem amazing, and I have boundless energy. This causes me to only sleep about 4 hours per night because I’m so wired and eager to get on with organizing the tupperware or whatever harebrained scheme I’ve just come up with.
I can tell without tests exactly when my body is in ketosis (as confirmed with tests).
Keto desserts like homemade chocolate coconut cream fudge sweetened with stevia and monk fruit can be amazing.
Pure monk fruit sweetener (without erythritol) is one of the most sugar-like and tummy-friendly alternative sweeteners. It does cause some kind of dependence though: I get a headache for a day after having it regularly and then stopping.
How to pick and ripen avocados.
The difference between total carbs and net carbs.
Elemental
Liquid diets may technically provide enough calories but my god am I hungry.
Candida
The flu-like ‘die-off’ period is real. It usually hits around day 5 and in direct proportion to how hard I went on cutting sugar. Easing into it helps.
Pau d’Arco really accelerates the die-off.
Intermittent fasting/OMAD
Not eating until the evening gives me a mini version of the enhanced focus and lack of afternoon slump that I get on keto.
I hit a point midafternoon where the worst of the cravings settles down and I get a sort of sense of well-being and lightness of body.
I have to exercise less during the day or the cravings become distracting and uncomfortable.
Eating too many different things during my one meal stacked on top of each other is a bad idea for the tum tum.
Low-moderate calorie restriction
My body is an amazing calorie accountant. A measly 250 calorie deficit in a day feels like ‘something is missing and I should eat more food’.
Different foods have vastly different ‘satiety’ or how full you feel per calorie consumed. Potatoes are the star here, but oatmeal, oranges, apples, beans…it’s almost impossible to eat too many calories on those foods.
Gluten-free
Wheat is good. Nothing quite replaces it.
My hands and joints are not as stiff when I avoid eating wheat.
Low FODMAP
Garlic and onions and beans and carbonated drinks really cause a lot of gas and bloating.
Mediterranean
One of the tastiest diets around.
No-sugar
Substituting with all the alternative sweeteners just keeps me craving something sweet.
Real sugar has a ‘roundness’ and ‘completeness’ to its flavor; alternative sweeteners only replicate part of the spectrum.
Part of what’s missing includes the blood sugar hit right after eating which I never noticed before. It feels like I hit the NOS and some blue fire came out but I didn’t actually go any faster or get that post-sugar flush. My body can tell I gave it some ineffective BS masquerading as the real thing.
Any alternative sweetener that ends in -ol is gonna torture me with growling, explosive, prolonged gas.
Sensitivity to sweets goes way up. Things like teriyaki and sodas and birthday cake and cheap candy have wayyyy too much damn sugar.
Sugar cravings reduce within a week. I still wouldn’t mind enjoying something sweet but the craving is much more muted.
Damn we consume a lot of sugar.
High-protein
Eating a lot of protein is often hard and sometimes gross and you start to think seriously about all the animals that have died for your consumption.
Yeah that’s a lot of diets. But I’ve got a dread illness under control without medication and living a mostly normal lifestyle. Some of that is due to what I’ve learned on these diets. I know what good feels like, so I end up avoiding a lot of unhealthy foods and habits by default.
Maybe you can too.
(Raises glass of cold sheep’s milk kefir) Salud!