Hi friends! After I posted about the vegan diet last week, alot of you reached out (which always makes me so so happy) and mentioned that YOU also get confused by all the various diets and lifestyles out there. And while I am no expert, I put together a list of the common diets & lifestyles and a short explanation of each.
I don’t encourage one lifestyle over another because our bodies are all different and require different nutrients. What makes me feel good, may not work for you. So check out my master list below and let me know if you think I should add any. Thanks!
MASTER LIST
Alkaline Diet: A diet based on foods that can alter the PH value of your body (think acidity v. alkalinity). This one was quite confusing to me so I’m going to rely on an expert to explain this one.
“When you metabolise foods and extract the energy (calories) from them, you are actually burning the foods, except that it happens in a slow and controlled fashion.
When you burn foods, they actually leave an ash residue, just like when you burn wood in a furnace.
As it turns out, this ash can be acidic or alkaline (or neutral)… and proponents of this diet claim that this ash can directly affect the acidity of your body.
So if you eat foods with acidic ash, it makes your body acidic. If you eat foods with alkaline ash, it makes your body alkaline. Neutral ash has no effect. Simple.
Acid ash is thought to make you vulnerable to illness and disease, whereas alkaline ash is considered protective. By choosing more alkaline foods, you should be able to “alkalize” your diet and improve health.
Food components that leave an acidic ash include protein, phosphate and sulfur, while alkaline components include calcium, magnesium, and potassium.” (Thank you HEALTH LINE for this amazing breakdown!)
Foods that are considered acidic are meat, poultry, fish, dairy, eggs, and grain. Foods that are alkaline are fruits, nuts, legumes, and vegetables. For more information visit HERE.
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Blood Type Diet: The idea is that health and nutrition recommendations are based on your unique genetic individuality. Basically. the book THE BLOOD TYPE DIET explains that a persons blood type determines what foods he/she may be able to digest best and which foods they may struggle with. Read here for more information.
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Clean Eating Diet: There isn’t one strict definition or set of guidelines around a Clean Eating Diet, but Carrie Forrest, MPH in Nutrition defines it as “Clean eating includes real, whole foods most of the time, choosing organic and sustainable options whenever possible. Clean eating also means selecting foods that meet one’s individual needs. So, by that definition, clean eating isn’t limited to one particular diet, such as vegan, plant-based, or paleo. It’s less about restriction, and more about including an abundance of real, whole foods to nourish, heal, and energize. It’s a very individual and flexible approach that can be adapted to everyone’s specific needs.”
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Elimination Diet: This diet is usually a short-term plan to help you determine what foods are tolerated and not well tolerated in the body. The plan consists of eliminating certain foods that may cause allergies or digestive reactions and then reintroducing them slowly and one at a time. More information can be found HERE.
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Gluten Free Diet: This diet is most often correlated with celiacs disease. A gluten free lifestyle consists of eliminating protein gluten which is found in grains such as wheat, barley, rye, and a cross between wheat and rye called triticale. For more information visit HERE.
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Intermittent Fasting: Although this lifestyle isn’t food specific, it still monitors the way you INTAKE food so I thought it was important to include. Plus, I love this lifestyle and want to shout it from the rooftops because when I follow it I feel SO SO GOOD.
Intermittent Fasting is an eating practice where someone eats during a 6-8 hour window in a day and fasts for at least 16 hours with no food consumption. It’s a way of getting yourself into a fasting state daily. This is congruent with our genetics because it is a model of our ancestor’s eating schedule.
I’ve done SO many posts on IF and challenges too. For more information visit HERE. For a sample schedule of IF, click here.
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Keto: My friends Dr. Emil and Amanda Tocci are experts in IF + KETO! We did a whole blog post HERE. However, in a nutshell the keto diet is a way of eating that focuses on consuming a macronutrient ratio that is low in carbs and high in fat in order to shift your body into utilizing fat and ketones as it’s primary source of energy. So its consuming a lot of healthy fats and minimizing foods that are high in sugar and starch to eliminate glucose. Revisit my post on it HERE.
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Paleo: This diet is high in fat, moderate in animal protein and low to moderate in carbohydrates. For example you may eat generous amounts of saturated fats, animal protein, vegetables either cooked or raw and served with fat nad low to moderate amounts of fruits and nuts.
all cereal grains,legumes, vegetable, hydrogenated and partly-hydrogenated oils, added sugar, and dairy products. To learn more visit HERE.
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Raw Foodism: This lifestyle is all about eating unprocessed and uncooked foods so you get all the nutrients without additives and in an easy to digest manner.
Dr. Axe explains, “The thing that ties various raw food diets together is that generally no foods that have been pasteurized, homogenized, or produced with the use of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, industrial solvents or chemical food additives are included. This means avoiding, or at least greatly reducing, most popular packaged and processed foods sold in the grocery store like breads, bottled condiments, cereals, crackers, cheese, refined oils and processed meats.”
Learn more about this lifestyle & visit Dr. Axe HERE.
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Vegetarian: The Vegetarian Society defines this lifestyle as: “A vegetarian is someone who lives on a diet of grains, pulses, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, fungi, algae, yeast and/or some other non-animal-based foods (e.g. salt) with, or without, dairy products, honey and/or eggs. A vegetarian does not eat foods that consist of, or have been produced with the aid of products consisting of or created from, any part of the body of a living or dead animal. This includes meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, insects, by-products of slaughter or any food made with processing aids created from these.”
Within the Vegetarian lifestyle there are specific types of Vegetarians. For example:
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Vegans eliminate dairy products, eggs, or any other products which are derived from animals. Check out my post on Veganism HERE.
Fruititarians diet is 75% fruit.
Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat both dairy products and eggs; this is the most common type of vegetarian diet.
Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products but avoid eggs.
Pescatarian eat vegetarian but also add fish/seafood to their diet.
Ovo-vegetarian eats eggs but not dairy products.
Find more information on this lifestyle and the Vegetarian Society HERE.
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Whole 30: The Whole 30 is predicated on eating meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, some fruit, herbs, and natural fats. The whole concept is to each foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable and and are unprocessed.
What isn’t allowed? Sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, and dairy among other things.
Find out more info HERE.
This is such great information! Will be bookmarking this for future use!