Ahhhh, it’s that special time of year again… when the weather starts to warm and we take stock of the effects the winter and the last year in general had on our bodies and start to panic scroll Google for quick fix diets and detoxes to start the new season fresh and finally reach all those pesky health and weight loss goals we’ve been striving for since… well… since forever. It’s all a bit exhausting, isn’t it? I know, I’ve been there too.
This time of year, my client load in my holistic nutrition practice literally doubles as people feel that desperate need to start the diet to end all diets once and for all. And I get it! Before I got into this line of work, I used to go through this same cycle myself. But it’s a cycle for a reason. Fad diets just don’t work in the long term. You may get great success from doing keto or eating raw or doing the Cabbage Soup Diet or Grapefruit Diet or Air Diet or whatever for a month or two… but then, inevitably you either stagnate or backslide. Because these are not sustainable, long-term approaches to eating, however effective they may be in the short term. Sure, there’s the odd Keto Bro out there who will tell you he’s been doing the diet for years and feels great, and maybe for some people that may be the case! But having done a modified version keto myself for about 3 months to tackle some stubborn insulin resistance and hormonal imbalance I was dealing with, I’ll be the first to admit that it is not a diet designed for the long-term health (physical or mental). It’s super restrictive, it promotes metabolic inflexibility, it requires eating much more animal protein than is healthy for our bodies (and our planet!), and… well… it just kind of sucks.
So what, then, is the diet to end all diets?
It is so much simpler than we’ve been led to believe. Human history, epigenetics, and extensive scientific research have proven again and again that the Mediterranean diet is the most sustainable, healthiest diet in the world, bar none. And it’s EASY. And enjoyable. And intuitive. And you feel like a normal person, who can eat normal food.
“Remind me, what is the Mediterranean Diet again?”
Let me give you a quick refresher.
The Mediterranean diet involves eating primarily these foods:
- Vegetables, lots of them, in a rainbow of colors
- Beans and legumes as a primary source of protein
- Low-mercury, wild-caught fish and seafood at least twice a week
- Eggs and Poultry a couple of times a week (preferably free-range and organic)
- Healthy fats like avocado, olive oil, nuts and seeds
- Whole grains like brown rice, quinoa (yes, I know it’s a seed, but we use it as a grain), and millet
- Whole fruit in moderation — the dessert of choice!
- Small amounts of full-fat dairy, preferably from sheep or goat’s milk, in moderation (and only if your gut is ok with it)
And drastically decreasing these foods:
- Red meat
- Processed meats
- Processed/refined grains
- Refined sugars
Sounds simple enough, right? Guess what? It is! Eating this way is intuitive, easy, sustainable in the long-term and feels great.
Need some inspo? Here are some of my favorite Mediterranean diet recipes.
But hold on, what if we made the Mediterranean Diet even healthier?!
Being a society obsessed with progress and perfection, we are really never ones to leave well enough alone. So trust our favorite researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel to find a way to make the healthiest diet in the world even better. Introducing The Green Mediterranean Diet (or Green-Med).
Basically Green-Med is the Mediterranean Diet with a few important tweaks that take it from great to absolutely stellar on a variety of fronts (weight loss, metabolic health, heart health, and liver health).
In addition to the guidelines above, the Green-Med Diet includes:
- Drinking 3-4 cups of green tea a day (increasing the metabolic, antioxidant, disease-prevention and weight loss benefits)
- Eating 1 oz of walnuts per day (for their omega-3’s and healthy fats)
- Completely eliminating red meat and refined sugar, as opposed to just decreasing
- Adding a daily green shake made with 100 g of Mankai (Wolffia Globosa), an ancient, tiny, super nutrient-rich, green plant protein that grows in Thailand and is primed to be the next big superfood (important to note that in the studies, the shake was consumed instead of dinner)
The study participants who were in the Green-Med group versus the standard Mediterranean diet group experienced greater weight loss, decreased insulin resistance and blood sugar, lower blood pressure, healthier cholesterol levels, and decreased inflammatory markers across the board. All with just these few added tweaks.
“So wait, is this the diet I need to start now?”
Listen, I’m not one to push any one diet on anyone. If you’re still eating sugar and processed foods, I would recommend starting with a simpler approach to just leaning into Mediterranean style eating without worrying too much about measuring out walnuts and finding where to source this mysterious Mankai from. Just that shift alone — reducing (or eliminating) sugar, processed carbs and red meat, and eating more veggies, beans, fish, whole grains and fruit will yield amazing results for about 90% of people.
But if you’re already eating Mediterranean-style and are looking to increase your results even further, go for it! Making these simple(ish) additions to your healthy mediterranean style of eating will certainly bring on some extra scientifically-proven results. You can source Mankai from here (one of the only places to get it so far, but just wait, I’ll sure it’ll be everywhere within a year), or if it’s prohibitively expensive or a hassle to obtain, you can try using other superfood greens like moringa and/or spirulina for now, until the market catches up.
Either way, the science is irrefutable (as is the anecdotal evidence provided by Blue Zone regions that follow this sort of diet), a Mediterranean style of eating is the simplest, healthiest, more sustainable way to eat for the rest of your life, without ever needing to Google “quick fix diet” (or whatever it is you’re googling) ever again.
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