During a recent Instagram Q&A, one question made me pause and reflect on how complicated the wellness world can feel. Someone asked how I avoid getting swept up in health fads and remain true to my own food philosophy. I answered briefly in my Stories, but this is a topic worth exploring more fully.
The Truth About Wellness Fads
To be honest, I haven’t dodged every wellness trend. I’ve tried several short-lived fads over the years. Most diet trends ended up pulling me away from my intuition and locking me into rigid rules that didn’t genuinely serve me.
From Keto and Paleo to Carnivore, low-fat, time-restricted eating, calorie counting, and macro tracking — none of those “life-changing” diets produced lasting, meaningful change for me. That said, certain dietary approaches can be helpful for short-term goals like healing the gut, losing weight, or identifying food sensitivities. But as a long-term strategy, strict diets rarely provide sustainable, balanced health.
My Food Philosophy
Nutrition doesn’t need to be complicated. My core advice is to focus on a variety of whole, minimally processed foods from quality sources. Choose foods that support a lower-inflammatory state and aim for a rainbow of colors to boost the range of bioavailable vitamins and nutrients.
My typical diet emphasizes:
- High-quality animal proteins (organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised, wild-caught)
- Organic fruits and vegetables — I try to make half my plate plants
- Healthy fats like avocado, extra-virgin olive oil, nuts and seeds, ghee, and grass-fed butter
- Unpackaged, minimally processed foods — the closer to nature, the better. I don’t follow this rigidly; there are many high-quality packaged options worth using
- Minimal added sugar. If you struggle with sugar cravings, an introductory plan to cutting added sugars can be very impactful
- Avoiding industrial vegetable oils
Why I’m Anti-Diet
I’ve found that eating home-cooked, high-quality meals most of the time allows me to honor hunger cues and choose foods I actually want — not what a diet insists I should eat. This approach helps me maintain a healthy weight, supports digestion and gut health, contributes to brain health and fertility, and helps hair, skin, and nails thrive.
Diet trends routinely promise dramatic results and then fade away, leaving you to chase the next big thing. Constantly following someone else’s rules isn’t healthy for your body or your mental well-being. A more sustainable path is to focus on nourishing, high-quality food as fuel.
Learning to read labels, cooking more at home, and making wiser choices when eating out takes time, but it pays off in how much better you’ll feel every day.
For a deeper dive into how I eat and why, I cover my food philosophy at the start of my cookbook, which includes grocery lists, meal plans, and more than 110 recipes — including sweets. My approach doesn’t require eliminating major food groups, so you can move away from fad diets and toward an enjoyable, sustainable way of eating.