The Diet Wars Are Real—Here’s How to Find the Right Plan for Every Body

What You’ll Discover Inside:

• A Food Fight with Real Consequences
  How online diet drama distracts us from what truly matters—and disempowers the people we’re here to help.

   

• The Myth of the “Perfect” Diet
  Why every popular plan—from raw vegan to carnivore—holds a sliver of truth… and a blind spot that can cause harm.

   

• The Missing Piece in Every Protocol
  What all diet tribes forget to mention and how it could make or break your client’s results.

   

• How to Find the Real Truth (Hint: It’s Not on Instagram)
  A smarter way to decode conflicting advice and build nutrition plans that actually work.

• The YOU Diet: Where All the Puzzle Pieces Finally Fit
  Dr. Ritamarie’s signature framework for personalization that puts the power back in the client’s hands.

Resources and Links:

• See the Full Transcript here
• Download our FREE  Eat to Thrive Guide
• Download our FREE Guide to Fasting
• Get the Replay and Recordings from the Wellness Reset Weekend 
• Join the Next-Level Health Practitioner Facebook group here for free resources and community support
• Visit INEMethod.com for advanced health practitioner training and tools to elevate your clinical skills and grow your practice by getting life-changing results. 
• Check out other podcast episodes here

Transcript

Dr Ritamarie 

So keto says carbs are evil, and carnivore says plants are toxic, and plant-based says meat is the enemy. Somehow they're all right, and they're all wrong, because every diet holds a piece of the truth. The real challenge is figuring out which truth is applied to you,your body, your goals and your current state of health. If you're working with clients and patients, figuring it out for them too. 

Dr Ritamarie (0:53)

Today we're going to unpack the most popular diets, keto, paleo, plant-based, frugivore, Mediterranean, intermittent fasting, and carnivore. And we're going to explore what each one is, who might benefit, and where each one might fall short, and for whom. 

But most importantly, I'm going to give you a framework, a framework for designing the eating plan that truly fits each person's body, each stage of life, and the unique biochemistry. And the diet that's good for you when you're 20 may not be good for you when you're 80. 

Food has become tribal. People identify with their diets, and they defend them like their sports teams. But the reality is most diets help people feel better at first, not because they're perfect, but because they remove something that was inflammatory or stressing the body. And that doesn't make them universally right. It just makes them good for a time and a place.

So the perfect diet isn't a set of rules. It's a personalized evolving response to the body's needs and signals. So let's look at what each diet is, what it gets right, who it's for, and what things we need to watch out for. 

So let's start with keto, short for ketogenic, developed to help epilepsy back in the 1920s. It's a very low carbohydrate diet. It's a high fat diet, and it pushes the body into a state of ketosis where fat is used for fuel instead of glucose. The pros, well it's great for blood sugar regulation if you do it right. Because some people think that eating a lot of steak is keto, and it's not. And that can cause you to go out of keto. It supports mental clarity, it reduces appetite, it reduces cravings. So it can be healthy, and it can help people lose weight, but it can also potentially stress the thyroid and the adrenal function over time. Not for everybody, but it can. It can be difficult to sustain.

The way it's usually done, which is what I call dirty keto, is way too low in fiber and plant-based phytonutrients and way too high in meat and animal fats and oils. A lot of oil on a traditional, if you want to call it that, keto diet. So it's for people with insulin resistance or pre-diabetes or diabetes type 2. Those looking for a short-term metabolic reset. We use it to put people through metabolic resets. It's not ideal for people with thyroid issues, high stress, or poor detox capacity. 

Dr Ritamarie (03:14)

So let's talk about dirty keto versus clean keto, clean and green keto. Dirty keto is butter and bacon. I was jokingly looking for a picture of butter and bacon to show us on a slide presentation. And I went and I checked on Amazon and there was actually a book called The Butter and Bacon Diet: The Ultimate Keto. It's like a lot of butter and bacon. There's not a lot of value. 

There's not a lot of health value in butter and bacon. Although some of you out there might argue with me on that, but dirty keto doesn't allow much in the way of plant food, doesn't allow much in the way of vegetables. 

It's like you have to have under 25 or whatever the threshold is for that particular person, grams of carb in the diet. And when you go that low, even lettuce throws you out. What they're not doing is telling you to test. Test. Use a finger prick test. I found that I could eat 150 grams of vegetable carbs and stay in keto. So why would I want to eat no carbs, just because it's theoretically not on the diet? So really it's all about testing ,and it's all about finding what's right for you and for each individual person that you're working with. 

So what's clean and green keto? You'll see that I talk about it a lot. Dr. Anna Cabeca talks about it a lot in her menopause programs.

It's where we include a lot of greens. We keep the body burning ketones, and we test to see if the body's in ketosis. For everybody, it's going to be a little different, right? I can eat a lot of vegetables and stay in ketosis. Someone else might not. And maybe you can eat broccoli but not cauliflower. 

So it's all a matter of having a finger prick test. I don't believe in the urine tests all that well. They're not that great, but I think that the finger prick tests are great to check to see are you really in ketosis? 

Dr Ritamarie (04:58)

What's Paleo? Paleo is short for Paleolithic, and it focuses on eating like our Paleolithic ancestors, our hunter gatherer ancestors. So it eliminates grains and dairy and legumes and all processed foods. 

That's the upside, right? It eliminates all processed foods. So it's whole food focused, it's anti-inflammatory and it removes a lot of the gut allergens and gut irritants, right? The cons though? It often overemphasizes meat and saturated fat, and a lot of people don't get enough vegetables on it. And it can lack variety if it's not balanced. 

But who's it for? Well, it does well with people with autoimmune disease and gut inflammation, because it helps calm that stuff down. People with a lot of food sensitivities. It needs to be adjusted often for those food sensitivities. Also, people with cholesterol and kidney concerns may need to be super careful, right? Because the acid waste products from all of that meat can be a strain on the kidneys. And certainly there's evidence that all the extra saturated fat and cholesterol can raise LDLs and be problematic. Although some people will argue with that. 

Dr Ritamarie (06:05)

So let's look at plant-based, sometimes called vegan, but I like to call it plant-based, because not everybody's 100% vegan that follows a plant-based diet. Somebody may follow a plant-based diet, which is just plant forward, plant strong, lots of plants. And once or twice a month, they eat some fish. So they're not vegan, but they're plant-based. And I like to distinguish between whole food plant-based and just plant-based or vegan, because there's a lot of vegan junk food out there.

So what's a plant-based diet? It's a diet exclusively of plants or almost exclusively plants. Fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds with no animal products or just an occasional animal product. The advantages are usually it’s high in fiber and antioxidants and phytonutrients that support the system. But it can be junk food vegan, and that's not going to support it, right? So we have to watch that.

It supports detox pathways and inflammation reduction. Again, the whole foods version, not the junk food version. Often it lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, but again, there's cautions there. The junk food version versus the whole food plant-based version. And also the other thing you have to watch for is the sugar content, the starch and the sugar content, because that can often affect blood sugar, which affects blood pressure.

Dr Ritamarie (07:27)

So what are the cons of a plant-based diet? Well, and who should avoid it? So for anybody who's very sensitive to sugars, lots of family history of diabetes, genetic factors that lead them towards blood sugar imbalances and diabetes, eating a plant-based diet that's typically high in grains and legumes and fruits can be problematic. That doesn't mean that plant-based is problematic. You just have to do a more vegetable and nut and seed based diet, plant-based diet. 

People who are at risk of deficiencies, right? So people who have low iron may have to be watching carefully for those iron rich foods, omega-3, zinc, protein, all of these things are possibilities and certainly B12. So we have to watch for those things. 

What else? Well, the blood sugar dysregulation. It's not to be sneezed at, because it's a really important thing. People who have different kinds of sensitivities have to be careful. People who have grain sensitivities, don't digest them well, don't have the enzymes for it, may not do well on a plant-based diet if it's a grain-based plant-based diet. 

My diet, my plant-based diet, is focused on vegetables, nuts, seeds, avocados, things like that with a little bit of fruit and occasional grain or legume. 

So who benefits from this kind of a diet? Well, people who have cardiovascular risk. People have been shown to, and I've seen it myself and my clients, where they go on a plant-based diet and their cholesterol and their triglycerides and everything drops dramatically. And their risk goes down as a result. You can see the reversal of some of the plaques when you do the CIMT test. You see plaques, soft plaques. You can see the reversal of that on a plant-based diet. So these are people who do really, really well with a plant-based diet. 

A lot of people have chronic kidney issues where the kidneys are inflamed and the kidneys aren't processing well, do very well on a plant-based diet, because it takes away a lot of the toxicity and a lot of the acid byproducts that the kidney needs to deal with. People with chronic inflammation often do really, really well. And of course, people who are environmentally motivated, and they want to make sure they're saving the planet and doing whatever they can. Those people do really well on a plant-based diet. 

Dr Ritamarie (09:34)

So let's talk about a very strict version, a very restrictive version of a plant-based diet, which is a frugivore diet. Some people call it a fruitarian diet. So what is it? It's a raw foods diet that emphasizes mostly fruits. Some people eat a small amount of greens, some people add a little bit of fat, but most people who are considering themselves frugivores or fruitarians are just eating fruit and lots of it. Now they will be getting fat if they buy into the fact that botanically, avocado is technically a fruit and even though it's high in fat. So you get some fat if you throw in avocado with your fruit.

Quite frankly, avocado and mango makes a great mix, slows down the absorption of the sugar in the mango and tastes phenomenal. So that's my two cents. 

There are folks that do very well. It's really good for cleansing. It's short term in my opinion. I don't see people staying on it or thriving on it long-term. It's very high in enzymes and water-rich foods. So it's very cleansing and healing, with very low toxicity for the liver.

Some of the other problems that people get into are teeth problems. I see that long-term, that they're not getting enough minerals in the fruit, because fruit is a great source of vitamins, awesome source of vitamins, but very low in protein and very low in minerals. And a lot of people over time on a long-term fruit only diet end up with problems with their teeth. They also can end up with problems with their bones. Blood sugar instability, that's a definite one.

I tried doing this kind of diet for two days, and all I did was crave sugar all day long. I just wanted my next mango. It didn't work for me. My blood sugars were out of control. So it doesn't work for everybody, but some people do well on it. 

I recently saw somebody on YouTube who got up and said they eat sugar on a fruitarian diet. Like, literally 16 tablespoons a day of sugar and thinking that that's healthy. So there's some really extreme diets out there. And whenever somebody gets out there, and they tell you to eat a certain way, because it worked for them, run away. Because it may be the complete opposite of what you need. I don't come up with, “this diet works for me, so everybody should do it.” Now we need to find what works for each individual. 

Dr Ritamarie (11:52)

Some people find that they're fatigued, and they're weak, and they become nutrient depleted over time. The minerals and B12 and omega-6 and omega-3s, things like that. And muscle wasting is common as well. You know, you see a lot of the fruitarians look very gaunt and have bad teeth. Not everybody. It could be working for some people, but be careful with really extreme diets. So it could be beneficial if you need a gentle cleanse, you have a lot of food sensitivities, and you just want to get it cleaned out. 

Dr Ritamarie (12:24)

So the next one is the Mediterranean diet, which of the diets we've looked at is

balanced in a traditional way. It's got lots of vegetables and some fruits and some grains and some animal products, mostly fish, maybe a little bit of meat every now and then. And it was really studied well for reversing heart disease. So it's common in Mediterranean countries. 

So there's not a lot of bad fats, but they do eat a lot of olive oil. Like they promote just pouring olive oil on anything. Again, I'm not a big oil fan, right? Some people may need it and do well with it, but just oil is a lot of calories, and we all need a lot of nutrients. And when you get just fat from your calories rather than a plethora of other nutrients, you can be missing out on things. 

So the advantages of the Mediterranean is it is great for heart health. There's been a lot of studies on it. They emphasize polyphenols and olive oil and plant diversity. It's moderate, it's sustainable and it's well studied. It's easy to follow, relatively. I mean, of course, you're not eating Cheetos and M&Ms, but it can be too high in carbs for those with insulin resistance, so you need to be careful on the grains. It doesn't address food sensitivities or unique metabolic needs. There's gluten and dairy and other things like that on it, although not extreme. 

So who is it for? A lot of people. It's a great base, because it's relatively easy to do, and it can be personalized with lab data. That's an important piece that I want to emphasize. 

Dr Ritamarie (13:55)

So let's look at intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is not eating, it's fasting, but really it is a pattern of eating. It's a pattern of eating where we cycle between periods of fasting and eating. And quite frankly, this is what we should be doing, right? We're sleeping eight hours a night, plus a couple of hours before and a couple of hours after. We should be fasting at least 12 hours every day. That's not considered intermittent fasting. To me, that's just considered a good rule.

But a lot of people do 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating, which is a little bit more restrictive. It's doable still, a lot of people do it, but it's a little bit more restrictive. Some people do 20 and four. That's the way to do it. Some people will actually do five days of intermittent fasting and two days of regular eating. So there's a lot of ways to do it. 

And you can pick up some books and look online and learn all about it. We have a really good guide. I'll put the link in the show notes that is a guide to fasting, all the different kinds of fasting. It's like 18 or 20 pages long. So download it. You can learn all about fasting and water fasting and full fasting and long fasting and short fasting and intermittent fasting. 

So what does it do that's good? Well, it promotes insulin sensitivity. It promotes cellular repair on something called autophagy, which is a gobbling up of damaged cells. So it helps you to detox.

It can reduce inflammation and promote fat burning. So those are all good things. And what we see is lowered glucose and lowered insulin during these phases of intermittent fasting. 

The cons, it can be stressful with people with adrenal fatigue or hormone imbalances. Women need to be especially cautious with their cycles. There's certain hormonal patterns in their cycles that might be better or worse. 

It could trigger binge eating, if you have anorexia or are a binger or bulimic or whatever, and you start this intermittent fasting, those periods of deprivation can actually trigger binge eating. But I've heard people say that it was the opposite for them. It gave it clear rules and boundaries. So just be careful if you have a history of an eating disorder. 

So it's good for people who are metabolically healthy and want to become even more healthy. It's good for people who have insulin resistance. It's good for people who have that extra belly fat and want to get that insulin under control, as long as you match it to your cycles and how you feel, and you don't push it too extreme.

Dr Ritamarie (16:14)

So finally, let's talk about the carnivore diet. The carnivore diet is our most extreme diet. And it's like an extreme form of an elimination diet that you get rid of everything except animal products. And there's different variants on the carnivore diet. Some people just eat steak, meat, free range meats. And some include fish and eggs and sometimes even dairy in their carnivore, but no plant foods, except I've heard people say, “Well, you can put on some or sprinkle on some basil or some salt or pepper.” So these people make the diets their own, and that's the truth of it, right? We find a diet plan but then you customize it for what works best for you or for your client if you're working as a practitioner. 

The pros, it reduces gut symptoms. It's the ultimate elimination diet other than fasting. Fasting is the ultimate elimination diet, obviously. But this gets rid of everything, because most people when they have irritable bowel, or when they have food sensitivities, it's usually to some sort of plant based or dairy or eggs, things like that, but usually not to meat. So it reduces symptoms like that. 

It can reduce inflammation, and some people do really well for a while. I think that we haven't studied it long-term enough to know what is the long-term risk of increased risk of cancer, heart disease, blood pressure problems, et cetera. So I think it just needs to be used with caution and like the fruitarian diet, right? As a temporary way to get it. Because I'm concerned about that much meat, not enough fiber to yank out the toxins, and getting into an acidic state, but also the LDLs. 

You know, a lot of the carnivores will argue that meat does not raise, and they didn't raise their LDLs, but I'm seeing a lot of reports on YouTube and other social media platforms that are people talking about their LDLs being super through the roof. And then they'll say, well, it doesn't matter. That's not important. 

But, if you look at the evidence out there, it is important. And maybe it's not important for some people. And maybe it's important for people with certain genetic factors. And maybe somebody with an APOE4,4 genetic variant shouldn't be considering carnivore, because your body just doesn't process the saturated fats very well. 

Dr Ritamarie (18:21)

So it's all these things that need to be taken into account to pick the best diet for you and to advise your clients on that. 

A lot of people who follow a carnivore diet say they don't get constipation, but we're not hearing from everybody, right? So lacking fiber, lacking phytonutrients and microbial diversity, the microbes need fiber. They need the colorful fibers to create diversity. And when we don't have microbial diversity, a lot of things fall apart, from brain health to gut health to immune health. 

So there's long-term risks we don't know about yet related to cardiovascular health. We know that those numbers go up in the direction that usually implies risk, and it's just all up for grabs. So we really need to look at this. 

I wouldn't consider a carnivore diet. I just think the risks are too high. Some people are so desperate that everything they eat causes a problem, and they go on a carnivore, and they do well. 

So everybody, like I said at the beginning, every diet has a piece of the truth. For some person at some life stage, and we just have to be open to what is the YOU diet. I call it the you diet, helping you to discover what's the personalized plan that's going to give you the optimal health. 

And as a practitioner, I'm looking at the people I'm working with, and they all do best on different types of diets. Some person doesn't do well with fruit, some person doesn't do well with grains. Some don't do well with greens. We have to identify how that person thrives, follow it up with, of course, what are their symptoms and how they feel, but follow it up with lab testing and help people to get to the YOU diet. 

So short-term use of the carnivore diet as an elimination diet, I think is really the best strategy to follow if you're going to consider it. 

So instead of asking which diet is best for any particular person, what if we asked a different question? What if instead we ask, what are your current goals right now? Is it fat loss, hormone balance, weight loss, mental clarity, building your muscles, digestive healing, and what is your body telling you? What is your body saying? What is your client's body saying? Are you having crashes after certain foods, certain meals? Are you getting bloated? Do you have stable moods or erratic moods? How is that affected by the food, and how's the energy affected? And what do the labs and genetics say? 

Metabolism, microbiome, nutrient, all those needs need to be taken into account. And if you're adjusting your diet over time, then are you adjusting to it? Is it serving you over time? A lot of folks get into the religion mode. I'm going to follow this diet religion, and I can't eat that no matter how bad I feel on it. It must be a detox reaction. 3 years later? No, we should be evolving the diet with your life stages, with how you feel, and adjusting it over time. 

That's my opinion. I follow, personally, a 100% plant-based, whole foods plant-based diet. It's low glycemic, high in vegetables, and a tiny bit of fruit. And I follow my blood sugar, and I follow my ketones, and I stay in a mild nutritional ketosis most of the time. My blood sugars stay steady.

I'm healthy. I'm vibrant. I can run. I can exercise when I lift weights, which is almost every day. I do see my muscle tone increasing. My immune system is great. So to me that says, my diet's serving me. And if it starts to not serve me, then I'm going to ask questions, right? And that's what we should be doing. That's what we should be doing as practitioners, and that's what you should be doing as your own self healer.

When we say this is the right diet, this is the perfect diet, we ignore all those personalized things, the hormones, the genes, that gut health, the history. We have to take that into account. We don't want to promote short-term fixes that cause long-term dysfunction and a disordered relationship with food. 

Food phobia is real, guys. People are afraid to eat, because this guru over here says don't eat things with oxalates in it. And this one says don't eat nightshades. And this one says don't eat meat, and this one says don't eat plants, and this on and on and on, and people are afraid to eat. 

We need to remove the food phobia by helping people to find the diet that's right for you. It's called the You diet in my book. So food is information, and our job is to learn how the body responds, and listen to how the body responds. Pay attention and make changes based on that.

Dr Ritamarie (22:49)

Every diet holds a piece of the truth. Gandhi once said that about religion. I say that about diet or food plan. Every diet holds a piece of the truth. Your job is to assemble the pieces to figure it out and fit the diet that fits you. And if you're a practitioner working with other people, that fits that person in front of you. What worked in the past may no longer serve because of life stages, because of different situations, because of different stressors. What works for one person might harm another.

So there's no one perfect diet. Every one has a piece of the truth. There are diet wars, and there are times and the place. You know the song to everything there is a season? Each person needs to become their own nutrition detective and build a plan that restores their personal vitality and balance. That's the truth that I will hang my hat on.

Dr Ritamarie (23:38)

So if you want support in designing your own personal eating plan or helping your clients or patients to design one, check out the show notes. I've got some specific links and our Wellness Reset Weekend, if it's past, you can always get the materials, if it's coming, join us. 

Download the Eat Thrive Guide. I'll have that in the notes, because it's a guide that was developed for people with metabolic imbalances and for people who just want a starting point of how to eat on a regular basis, really pretty pictures. So download that, and you can use that with your clients.

Functional practitioners are the future of health care. Those of us putting the care back into health care, putting health back into health care, and not disease management and replacing the outdated focus on symptoms suppression and disease management. I've dedicated my life to empowering people to take back their health, and to supporting health practitioners, and getting to the root causes of chronic illnesses that their clients are facing.

I would recommend that if you're ready to take your practice to the next level, check out what we have over at inemethod.com. And if you want to learn more about protein, about food plans, be sure to visit the show notes and check out the video replay of our recent, I think it went over two hours, talk that went really deep on this subject on the various diets.

Together, let's continue the movement to reinvent this broken healthcare system. And until next time, shine on.