Here in Smith Center, I talk with many folks just starting to get information about what to do about eating healthier. Making a healthy lifestyle modification can be an intimidating challenge, and those that even begin to contemplate it should be congratulated! The first step of a thousand-mile journey is often – if not always – the hardest! There are many things to think about as you begin, but selecting an appropriate place on the healthy diet spectrum for YOU continues to be one of the most important aspects of starting a lifestyle modification plan!
Selecting a healthy diet to use is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. What is right for you will undoubtedly change depending on what you are going through at different points of time in your life. For this reason, I do not refer to one diet that is the “best healthy diet.” Rather, I talk about a spectrum of healthy diets that may be right for different people, given their present life circumstances.
We live in a bullet point society. We have taken multi-tasking to a new level in 2021, so we tend to approach any new task in a “just the facts, ma’am” fashion. I remember CliffsNotes when I was in college for the first time in 1979. CliffsNotes break down long and complicated books like Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, James Joyce’s Ulysses, or Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov into short booklets with everything you need to know to pass a test. The CliffsNotes booklet for The Brothers K is 96 pages long – I still have mine. I remember thinking before a test, “isn’t there something that can break this down further for me?” In 1991 the first “For Dummies” book took it to the next level by presenting the computer coding language MS-DOS in a way we could all understand. The “For Dummies” and “Complete Idiot’s Guide” brands now offer thousands of titles covering everything from plumbing to building a rocket. Now in 2021, we all have the internet machine, and the first search results for anything that can be compiled and broken down into steps are always called something like “the ten things you need to know about…” The fact is that there is simply not a “regain your health in 6 easy steps” web page for you to refer to. Well, that’s not true; those websites exist, but they are almost always not based on solid research, and they are not specifically designed for YOU. They don’t know you and what you are able to change in your life! You need your own plan!
A diet is a short-term project to lose weight for a particular goal, like fitting into a dress or suit for a wedding. It’s a temporary change in how you eat that may not even involve other aspects of your life. Changing the way that you live is called “lifestyle modification.” Lifestyle modification is a life-long process of changing the way that you live in pursuit of greater health. Some may consider weight loss as one beneficial side effect of lifestyle modification, but health should be the end goal. Comprehensive lifestyle modification will reduce cholesterol and triglycerides, eliminate hypertension, stabilize blood sugar, reduce the chance of cancer, improve your day-to-day functioning in every aspect, and increase longevity. Dieting weight loss is almost always temporary, but if your lifestyle modification plan is comprehensive, realistic, and actionable, you can maintain the beneficial side effects for an entire lifetime, and that is the goal!
Any discussion about the “best” diet has to start here. If you are facing a health crisis, maybe your doctor has told you several times that you need to lose weight. If your doctor is talking about high blood pressure, uncontrolled blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, or all of these things you need to stop looking for a diet and start thinking about lifestyle modification. You need to own your health. Your health is not your doctor’s responsibility; it is yours!
Creating a lifestyle modification plan that is comprehensive, realistic, and actionable is something you have to commit to. Each aspect of your lifestyle modification is essential and needs to be well thought out. First, your lifestyle modification plan needs to be comprehensive. Consider all aspects of your life, including how you feel, think, and act over a day, week, month, and year. Second, your lifestyle modification plan needs to be realistic. Your commitment to lifestyle modification is steadfast and unchanging, but your plan is dynamic and has to be based on your willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time. Finally, your lifestyle modification plan needs to be actionable. What you feel and think is critically important, but what you do is where the results are!
If you are willing to change what you eat to drop blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and stabilize blood sugar, congratulations! Let’s get going!
The first question to ask yourself is: how much am I able to change? Are you able to eat reduced-fat and low-calorie Ranch dressing, or are you able to eliminate Ranch and use salsa or something else as a salad dressing? Will you eat reduced-fat baked potato chips, or are you able to eliminate calorically dense, nutritionally deficient snacks? Are you able to try non-meat breakfast sausage, or are you ready to eliminate high-fat breakfast meats altogether? The answers to these questions will enable you to choose an appropriate spot on the healthy diet spectrum to start. The objective is to select a starting point that will allow you to be successful and move on from there. If you have a significant commitment to lifestyle modification, the place on the healthy eating spectrum you choose to start will not be the place where you are next year. Your commitment to lifestyle modification is steadfast and unchanging, but your plan is dynamic and has to be based on your willingness and ability to change, given what is going on in your life at a particular moment in time.
The second question to ask yourself is: do you have the ability to make the desired level of change. The most effective diets demand that you cook for yourself. That implies that you have space, tools, and skills to produce your healthy meals or that you are willing to invest the time and energy to learn the skills needs to produce your healthy meals. But one’s ability to change isn’t solely based on cooking skills. Time is a significant factor. If you are experiencing an especially busy time in your life, you may not have the time to indulge in the most effective diet. A moderate diet might be a more appropriate place for you to start. Nobody else can make this decision for you. You have to own it!
Several diets can be effective based on what you are trying to achieve. Even well-known weight loss programs like Weight Watchers are now using different levels of programs based on a member’s individual goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to lifestyle modification. Some diets are very easy to follow and can yield good results over time but will not show results immediately. Other diets are difficult to follow but show significant results quickly. I like to think of all the healthy diet choices as a “spectrum” of diets with a diet called the DASH diet (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) on the moderate or conservative side of the spectrum and the plant-based whole foods diet on the more result-oriented side of the diet spectrum.
By far, the diet shown in many well-done studies published in peer-reviewed journals to be most effective in reducing weight, cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure is the plant-based whole foods diet. It also helps stabilize blood sugar significantly. But if you think that is something you can’t do at the present time, start with a more moderate diet and gradually move in the direction of the plant-based whole foods diet over time. The closer you get to the plant-based whole foods diet, the more results you will see!
For further reading on all aspects of the plant-based whole foods diet, I suggest “Undo It” by Dean and Anne Ornish. (https://www.amazon.com/Undo-Lifestyle-Changes-Reverse-Diseases/dp/052547997X/)
The DASH diet is the most conservative diet that has been shown in well-done studies published in peer-reviewed journals to be at least moderately effective in lowering blood pressure, but as a side effect, DASH dieters also lose small amounts of weight and lower cholesterol and blood sugar a little. You are going to have to educate yourself just a little and follow some numbers. For a 2,100 calorie diet, the DASH diet wants you to eat no more than 63 grams of fat, no more than 14 grams of saturated fat, no more than 150 mg of cholesterol, no more than 1,500-2,300 mg of sodium, and get at least 30 grams of fiber per day. The further you can reduce fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium, the more significant health benefits you will realize.
Besides making sure that you take all medications prescribed by your doctor, using a well-studied diet like the DASH diet can help you fight many lifestyle-related Illnesses. The National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI) – a division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that: “The DASH diet has been well studied in many clinical trials and in most of them has been associated with lowering of blood pressure. Further, there is evidence to show that the DASH diet also lowers the risk of adverse cardiac events, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.”
There are many things to consider as you start your lifestyle modification. Don’t underestimate the importance of selecting the right place for YOU to start!
Here are the references for today’s Healthy Eating Tip:
Challa HJ, Ameer MA, Uppaluri KR. DASH Diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). National Library of Medicine (NLM). National Institutes of Health (NIH). Books. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482514/. (Accessed 7/24/2020).
Appel LJ, Moore TJ, Obarzanek E, et al. A clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. DASH Collaborative Research Group. New England Journal of Medicine 1997;336:1117-1124.
Campbell TC. A plant-based diet and animal protein: questioning dietary fat and considering animal protein as the main cause of heart disease. Journal of Geriatric Cardiology. 2017 May;14(5):331-7.
Esselstyn CB. Resolving the Coronary Artery Disease Epidemic Through Plant-Based Nutrition. Preventive Cardiology 2001;4: 171-177
Campbell TC, Parpia B, Chen J. Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China Study. American Journal of Cardiology. 1998;82(10B):18T–21T.
Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998;280:2001–2007.
Ornish, Dean, and Anne Ornish. Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases. Ballantine Books, 2019.
Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998;280:2001–2007.