Speaker 1 – fads come and go. And our next guest says that for National Nutrition Month, it’s time to start thinking and eating holistically. Dr. Erica Steele is with a holistic family practice. And she joins us now. Hey, Dr. Steele. Good to see you again.
Speaker 2 – Hello, Cheryl; how are you?
Speaker 1 – I am doing fabulous. So a lot of people are on special diets. Sometimes it’s for dietary restrictions, other times because it’s a fad diet, or maybe they want to do it to be healthier. Perhaps they want to do it to lose weight. But let’s talk about this. Why do you think they are so popular?
Speaker 2 – fats are prevalent because Americans always look for that quick fix, right? And so, they’ll follow an Instagram influencer or YouTube something. And then they’re like, Okay, this sounds good. This resonates with me. So I’m going to jump on it and do it. And maybe they do it, well, perhaps they don’t do it. Well, maybe they need it. National Nutrition Month Maybe they don’t need it. Maybe it works. Possibly it doesn’t work; you can see the dilemma.
Speaker 1 -Alright, what are some of the issues with fad diets that people can run into.
Speaker 2 – So many people like they’ll pick one; there’s no science behind it. And as you know, and we’ve talked about before, like, I’m very science-based, very individual, it’s all based off of lab work. And so people don’t have that data. So they’re just randomly picking one that resonates with them intuitively, and then they may try it. And again, they may not be optimizing it, and they may not be doing it well, right. Or their body just may not, you know, respond to it. And so they can actually create a lot of damage to the digestive system.
And as you know, so many fads come and go, and sometimes they get rebranded and renamed because it’s all really based on your macro ratios, right? And so macro means your macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. National Nutrition Month But if you’re not consistent with anything, the body doesn’t get used to it and adapt to it. So you actually can create a lot of damage to the digestive system that you want to be concerned about. And because the majority of the hormonal system, immune system, as well as neurological system is housed in your digestive tract, if you’re going on these fad diets over and over and over again and changing it up, you can really do a lot of damage to those systems as well.
Speaker 1 – Oh, yikes. And so it’s hard, though, when you’re seeing influencers on Instagram eating this and doing try this, you’ll feel better and lose the bloat. So what can people do to avoid the diet fads and then having all these problems?
Speaker 2 – Again, it really boils down to data. So you know, looking at a person’s lab work and evaluating that. So if your lipid panel, say, your cholesterol, triglycerides, and HDL LDL, are really high, right? That means that your liver is not processing fats. So you probably don’t want to go on a high-fat diet. So high-fat diets, unfortunately, don’t shoot the messenger. But keto is a high-fat diet, Atkins is a high-fat diet, and even veganism and vegetarianism trend to go higher fat because the protein sources are fat too.
It’s really about understanding nutrition and how the nuts and bolts of nutrition work the carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and understanding those ratios. And I’m a big tracker; I’m all about tracking my food, mainly because of data, we don’t have data, and we don’t know it doesn’t exist, right not to give license to eat anything unhealthy. But the fact is that we really need to look at the data and modulate and see what works. So there’s a place for intuition. But, again, as a holistic doctor, I’m all about the feeling and how it feels in my body. But we only have balance if we have the data to back it up. And so using the data and intuition, and once your body kind of clicks in, and you know what it feels like, I do really well on a high protein, mid-range carb, low-fat diet. I can feel if my body if I’ve eaten a little bit of fat, that’s a little bit more, so then I’ll overcompensate. And I’ll have some carbohydrates, but that’s after years of training myself and my body. And also looking at my data.
Speaker 1 – I understand this because when I eat certain things, my stomach rejects them. And so I know, okay, don’t eat like that. But that’s what you were for. You look at the lab work and the data, educate people, and have some nutrition programs. Tell us about that real quick.
Speaker 2 – Yeah, we’re super excited. We have a holistic nutrition National Nutrition Month program that’s actually coming out. And it’s a four-week program. So you don’t even necessarily need to, you know, use a provider like me. This is a baseline program that teaches about all of the macro’s metabolic rate it teaches about; we talk about heart healthy, right? We talk about what’s healthy and what’s not healthy. We go through all the fads, look at the ratios, and empower people to understand how these things work, especially in the world we’re living in with all of the influencers in YouTube and Facebook groups. So I find a calling to educate people on the science behind nutrition and how it works.
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Speaker 1 – Good to have you break it all down, Dr. Steele. Thank you so much, as always.
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Speaker 2 – Excellent, thanks for having me, Cheryl