How to Personalize Your Diet (Step by Step Approach included)

Before You Start:

Before personalizing your diet, it’s important that you have the fundamentals of a healthy diet down. That is:

• Eat real whole foods and no processed foods
• Consume very little to no white sugar, artificial sweeteners, and grains (except white rice is fine)
• Use healthy cooking fats and no vegetable oils (More info here: “Lies You Are Told About Fat By Mainstream Nutrition,” “The Real Bad Fats,” and “Which Fats Are Healthy”)

I would advise focusing on mastering these before personalizing your diet.

Beyond these basic principals of healthy eating, different things work well for different people. We all have different genetics, lifestyles, and preferences all of which affect which eating habits will work best for us.

How to Personalize Your Diet:

Step 1: Experimentation

Pick a category (or a few) from the list below or come up with your own to experiment with.

For example: Say I pick the “Meal Times, Number of Meals, and Fasting” category and decide I’m going to eat 3 meals a day between 10am and 6pm, Breakfast around 10, Lunch around 1, and Dinner around 5. I would then try this for about 3-4 weeks.

During this time try to stay as consistent as possible. However feel free to make small changes as you see fit. For example, say I was struggling to get dinner made by 5 and be done eating by 6. I could shift my eating window to 11am-7pm and move all my meal times back 1 hour.

Keeping a food journal where you write what you eat, when you eat it, how it makes you feel, and your macros (optional) can be extremely helpful for personalizing your diet. If you want to learn how to keep a food journal, check out this post! Also, It’s important not to change too many things at once, or you won’t know what change caused which effects. It’s also important to try your changes for a minimum of three weeks because many of these changes require an adaptation phase before you see or feel the results.

Step 2: Analyze

After 3-4 weeks of experimenting, analyze the changes in your body. Ask yourself these questions:

• Has your energy increased or decreased? Do you crash or is your energy consistent?
• How is your digestion?
• Are you eliminating regularly? (regularly means at least 1x a day)
• If you’re an athlete, have you gained muscle? Has your performance increased?
• Have you gained or lost weight?
• Do you feel bloated or light after you eat?
• Have you had any health problems arise, worsen, or improve?
• If you are a women of menstruating age, are your cycles regular?
• Do you feel satisfied after you eat?

If you are keeping a food journal, it may be helpful to look back through it to answer these questions. After you have asked yourself these questions reflect and analyze how this dietary change has affected your body.

Step 3: Make Adjustments

Use the questions above to find the areas you are struggling with and make adjustments. Maybe you are waking up really bloated, try not eating heavy foods late. Maybe you are not the making progress in the gym, try increasing your protein. Maybe you have digestive issues after eating gluten, try cutting it out. Maybe you haven’t had your period in several months, try increasing your healthy fats (particularly cholesterol).

Step 4: Repeat

This is a cyclical process. Your conclusions from step 3 will often lead to a new experiment in step 1, whether it’s in the same category, a new one, or something entirely different. As you learn more information and become more in tune with your body, your diet will naturally become more and more specific. This is the result of repeating this process over and over again. This might initially sound daunting, but as you repeat it it becomes second nature. You also don’t have to follow this specific process step by step, this is meant to be a more of a guideline to help you. Each time you try something new, you will learn and tweak your diet, over time you will learn what works best for you personally.

Categories For Personalizing Your Diet:

1) Calorie Intake-

Your height, weight, age, muscle mass, activity level, and weight goals all affect how many Calories you need. If you want to track your Calories follow the steps below to calculate your estimated Caloric needs. If you prefer a more intuitive approach, skip ahead to the intuitive section below.

Step 1: Calculate RMR (resting metabolic rate, which means how many Calories you burn at rest)

RMR (for men)= (9.99 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) – (4.92 x age in years) + 5

RMR (for women)= (9.99 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) – (4.92 x age in years) – 161

Step 2: Calculate TEE (total energy expenditure, how many Calories you need to eat to maintain weight)

TEE = RMR x activity factor from chart below

Step 3: Experiment and Adjust

Try eating this amount of Calories for 2 weeks and track your weight. If your weight stays the same then that’s your maintenance. If you lose weight, increase your Calories and if you gain weight, decrease your Calories to find your maintenance Caloric intake.

Step 4: Adjust According to Your Goals

Once you have a clear idea of your Caloric maintenance, adjust your Calorie intake according to your goals. To stay the same weight, keep Calories the same. To gain muscle and size, add about 200-400 Calories. To lose fat, subtract about 300 Calories. Experiment with this new Caloric intake while tracking your weight and adjust as you see fit.

Intuitive Section:

If you prefer a more intuitive approach that doesn’t involve tracking Calories try this. Start by accessing your current weight. If you are happy with your weight and feel energized, just keep doing what you are doing. If you would like to lose or gain weight, brainstorm changes to your dietary habits that you will do to lose or gain weight. See examples below.

2) Protein Intake-

I recommend you get about 20-30% of your Calories from protein. If you are an athlete I would definitely aim for the higher end. Never the less protein is extremely important for everyone. Adequate protein is vital for strength and muscle growth, immunity, digestion and absorption, structure and movement, hunger and satiation, healing, and fluid balance. (2)

I recommend you focus on meat and other animal sources of protein. Animal sources are much higher in protein and are complete proteins (meaning they contain all the amino acids in the correct proportions). This is crucial for promoting muscle growth and for preventing muscle and tissue breakdown. (3, 4, 5, 6) See the chart below for suggestions on good protein sources.

To calculate your protein macros:

1. Take the % of Calories from protein that you want and convert it to a decimal (Ex: 25 % -> 0.25).
2. Multiply this by your total Calorie intake (Ex: 0.25 x 2,000 Calories = 500 Calories from protein).
3. Divide this by 4 because 1g of protein = 4 Calories (Ex: 500 Calories/ 4 = 125g protein per day).
4. Your answer is your daily protein target in grams (Ex: 125g protein per day).

3) Carb Intake-

I recommend you get about 10-40% of your Calories from carbs. This is one you can really experiment with. Low carb diets (≈10%) can be extremely beneficial for becoming fat adapted, mental clarity, reversing diabetes and insulin resistance, and healing chronic GI issues.

However, very low carb diets can be very stressful on the body, cause thyroid issues, cause hormone and fertility issues, and decrease athletic performance. Therefore including some healthy carbs is often best for optimizing health. See the chart below for suggestions on healthy carb sources.

To calculate your carb macros:

1. Take the % of Calories from carbs that you want and convert it to a decimal (Ex: 20 % -> 0.20).
2. Multiply this by your total Calorie intake (Ex: 0.20 x 2,000 Calories = 400 Calories from carbs).
3. Divid this by 4 because 1g of carb = 4 Calories (Ex: 400 Calories/ 4 = 100g carbs per day).
4. Your answer is your daily carb target in grams (Ex: 100g carbs per day).

4) Fat Intake-

Once you have set targets for fat and carbs, the remainder of your Calories should come from fat. I recommend you stick within the 30-70% range. See the chart below for good sources of fat.

To calculate your fat macros:

1. Take the your total Caloric intake and subtract the Calories from carbs and protein that you already calculated (Ex: 2,000 Calories – 500 Calories from protein – 400 Calories from carbs = 1,100 Calories from fat).
2. Take your calculated Calories from fat and divide it by 9 because 1g of fat = 9 Calories (Ex: 1,100 Calories from fat / 9 = 122g fat per day)
3. Your answer is your daily fat target in grams (Ex: 122g fat per day).
4. In this case since protein was 25% and carbs were 20%, fat would be 55%.

5) Fiber Intake-

Fiber is found in plant foods like vegetable, fruits, grains, legumes, and nuts. There are two types of fiber soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber “blends with water in the gut, forming a gel-like substance. It can reduce blood sugar spikes, and has various metabolic health benefit.” (7) It can also help clear the body of old cholesterol/bile, preventing oxidation of these fats, and promote a healthy microbiome. While Insoluble fiber adds bulk to our eliminations. (7) Many people find that fiber helps them have regular eliminations, however some do not.

A study of people with idiopathic constipation (chronic constipation with an unknown cause), revealed that “Forty one patients who completely stopped fiber intake had their bowel frequency increased from one motion in 3.75 d (± 1.59 d) to one motion in 1.0 d (± 0.00 d) (P < 0.001).” (8) These 41 people also found their previous symptoms of anal bleeding, bloating, strain in bowel opening, and abdominal pain to completely go away. Experimenting is the best way to figure out if more or less fiber works best for you.

6) Meal Times, Number of Meals, and Fasting-

I recommend eating 2-4 times a day. If you practice intermittent fasting, then set an eating window that works well for your lifestyle. For me that is 10am – 6pm. Intermittent fasting is beneficial for many people (you can read more about it here), however if you have a high stress life, are pregnant or breast feeding, or are very thin then fasting might not be in your best interest. (9)

I find that after establishing the number of times you eat and if you have an eating window, the times of day you eat naturally fall into place. I do recommend keeping at least 3 hrs between meals and refraining from snacking to allow your body to fully digest and to keep your metabolism healthy.

7) What Foods You Eat?-

For this part I highly recommend you keep a food log. In your food log write down what you eat and how you feel after. This will help you start to get an idea of which foods work well for you and which do not.

What foods work well and which do not can vary drastically between people. While some people may have food sensitivities to oxalates, night shades, certain FODMAPs, anti-nutrients, gluten, beans, histamine, dairy, etc. Others handle these things fine.

To figure out which foods work best for you, really tune into your body and see how certain foods make you feel. If you have severe food sensitivities, an elimination diet like the carnivore diet or FODMAPs can be very helpful in determining which foods cause a reaction and which you can tolerate.

8) Plant to Meat Ratio-

I strongly encourage you to eat lots of animal foods (as they are the most nutritious foods). However feel free to experiment with how many plants you eat. While some people (especially those with GI issues and autoimmune issues) feel best eating nearly all animal foods; others feel better with a little more plants in their diet. If you do choose to eat more plants, I recommend getting high quality local seasonal organic fruits and veggies and consuming organ meats (or organ supplements) and shellfish to increase your nutritional intake.

9) Dairy Consumption-

Dairy is incredibly nutritious. It’s high in bone building nutrients like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and more.

However, dairy can be difficult to digest due to its beta glycosidic bond and the lack of adequate lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose). Approximately 70% of people have some degree of lactose intolerance.

If this is the case, you may be able to have hard cheeses, butter, yogurt, or raw milk, depending on the severity of your intolerance. Lactose intolerance can sometimes be caused by illness and can be reversed when you are cured of the illness.

If you do not tolerate lactose or have a milk allergy then I would suggest avoiding it and getting plenty of bone broth and bone marrow to insure adequate calcium intake.

If you have no issue with lactose, then I highly suggest incorporating dairy. Especially organic raw grass fed dairy because it’s the most nutrient dense way to consume dairy.

10) Caffeine Consumption-

Caffeine can help increase energy, aid in fat loss, help you eliminate regularly, prevent iron toxicity, and can make you feel better when sick. However it can also cause energy crashes; inhibit nutrient absorption (primarily calcium and iron); increase anxiety; get you addicted to it; cause withdraws and headaches; can contain harmful chemicals, pesticides, and mycotoxins; can interfere with sleep; and can harm feti (plural of fetus) and infants. (10) (You can read more about the pros and cons of caffeine in this article). Experiment to find out if you do better with or without caffeine, but remember if you’ve been drinking caffeine for a while, ease off to reduce the intensity of the withdraws.

* If you want help personalizing your diet and would like to dig deeper than what’s covered in this post, I can help you with that in my 1 on 1 coaching service: Ancestral Nutrition Coaching. If you’re interested, you can find out more here!

Works Cited

1. Angela Harter Alger, MS. “Energy Balance.” Nutrition and Physical Fitness Class. August – December 2019, Chico State University, Chico, CA. Power Point.

2. Dr. Lauren Housley, Ph.D., R.D. “Protein.” Human Nutrition Class. January- May 2020, Chico State University, Chico, CA. Power Point.

3. Woolf, Peter J et al. “vProtein: identifying optimal amino acid complements from plant-based foods.” PloS one vol. 6,4 e18836. 22 Apr. 2011, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018836

4. de Koning, T J. “Amino acid synthesis deficiencies.” Journal of inherited metabolic disease vol. 40,4 (2017): 609-620. doi:10.1007/s10545-017-0063-1

5. M.C.G. van de Poll, et al. “Amino Acids: Specific Functions.” Science Direct. Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition (Third Edition), 2013. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ medicine-and-dentistry/amino-acid-deficiency.

6. “Here’s What Happens When You Don’t Get Enough Amino Acids.” Amino Co. 22 March 2018. https://aminoco.com/ heres-what-happens-when-you-dont-get-enough- amino-acids/

7. Leech, Joe. “Good Fiber, Bad Fiber – How The Different Types Affect You.” Healthline. 4 June 2017. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/different-types-of-fiber#TOC_TITLE_HDR_3

8. Ho, K. S., Tan, C. Y., Mohd Daud, M. A., & Seow-Choen, F. (2012). Stopping or reducing dietary fiber intake reduces constipation and its associated symptoms. World journal of gastroenterology, 18(33), 4593–4596. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v18.i33.4593

9. Berg, Eric. “Amazing Benefits of Prolonged Fasting.” drberg.com. 18 October 2018. https://www.drberg.com/blog/amazing-benefits-of-prolonged-fasting

10. O’Brien, Kayley. “Pros and Cons of Coffee and Caffeine.” Hearttokitchen. 25 June 2020. https://www.hearttokitchen.com/pros-and-cons-of-coffee-and-caffeine/