The Dr. Hyman Show - Office Hours: How to Choose the Best Diet for Your Body

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

What Should I Actually Eat? Diet confusion is everywhere. But the truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all diet. The best diet is the one that works for your biology. In this Office Hours episode, I answer your most common diet questions and break down the core principles everyone should understand before choosing how to eat. In this episode I break down: • Why the “best diet” is personalized—and why ideology should never override biology • The universal principles everyone should follow, regardless of diet • Why ultra-processed foods—not carbs, fat, or protein—are the real problem • How blood sugar dysregulation drives chronic disease, including mental health issues • Keto, paleo, vegan, and Mediterranean: who they help, common mistakes, and what to watch for • How to tell if your diet is working—using symptoms, energy, digestion, mood, and labs Your body is the smartest doctor in the room. The key is learning how to listen. Visit ⁠functionhealth.com⁠ for 160+ lab tests at just $365 a year. Helpful Resources: Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Have a question you’d love answered on Office Hours? Submit it here 👉 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNF2y4lFWEOMLlzVNlFDpJ4xl7oOpH9NlImMoHr5mHggL_Ww/viewform?usp=header

Welcome to office hours. This is our dedicated one-on-one space to go deeper, get clear, and explore what truly moves the needle for your health. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and each week we're going to pull back the curtain and share the insights, the research, the lessons that don't always make it into our conversations with guests. Because at the end of the day, you are the CEO of your own health. And for many of you, your family's health too. And you might not feel it all the time, but you have far more power in agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. This episode is brought to you by Function Health, empowering you to live with.

100 healthy years with over 160 lab tests at just $365 a year. Sign up today at functionhealth.com slash mark and use code Mark 2026 to get $50 towards your membership. Hi, Dr. Hyman. This is Christine from Pennsylvania. And I really want to start 2026 making better choices with food. But there are so many diets out there. I just don't know which one is right for me.

There's so much conflicting information. Can you just break down what the best diets are and who they're for? Thanks for your question, Christine. Funny enough, a few years ago, I wrote a book called food, What the heck should I eat? I wanted to call it what the F should I eat, but my publisher wouldn't let me. But it's the question that pretty much everybody asks and ask me,

what should I eat? What's the best diet? Should I be keto? Should I be paleo? Should I be vegan? should they eat Mediterranean. What's the truth about food? What's the best diet?

Well, the truth is, the best diet is the one that works for your biology. We're all different. There isn't one size fits all. And the beautiful thing about functional medicine is it's personalized. It's personalized. It's about you and your unique biology.

You're not a homogeneous human. And that's how medicine studies things on homogenous humans. you're an individual with individual needs, genetics, issues, health concerns, all which need to be taken into account when deciding what's the best diet for you. So functional medicine helps you understand how food affects your body. It's not based on ideology or belief. It's based on biology.

So I always say don't let your ideology run over your biology, which a lot of people do. For example, be vegan and be really unhealthy and miserable. Other people can thrive on it. So really it's important to understand what's going on for you. So we're going to answer the top questions that we get about diet. We're going to hopefully provide some clarity for people feeling overwhelmed by all these conflicting advice. And we're going to get into the foundational principles first of what you should understand about food.

What should everybody understand before choosing a diet? And there's some universal principles that apply to everybody. First, eat food. You know, real food, whole food, unprocessed food. I mean, some processing is fine. Obviously, if you had a can of tomatoes, that's a point. processed food, but it's actually something you can recognize. Cana sardines is processed, but minimally processed. So minimally processed or whole food, very, very important. Definition of food is something

that helps support the health and development and growth of an organism. And honestly, what most people are eating in America today is not definitionally food. It's a food-like substance. The second principle, really important, is that food is medicine. It's not like medicine. It is medicine. We call this a dark matter of nutrition. There are anywhere from 140,000 to some people say three million different molecules in food, in different plants and foods that have biological effects on our body and regulate our health and well-being. You might have heard of saying, you know, take turmeric, which is like a spice that's using Indian cooking

and curcumin, which is the molecule in there is anti-inflammatory. That's food is medicine. You might be totally broccoli because there's molecules in there that help with detoxification like sulflorophane and they've been shown to actually prevent cancer. So you really understand food is medicine and everything you put in your body is a drug and it's going to hurt you or harm you. The third principle is really, really important is that we're all different. So personalized nutrition is really important. We're all biochemically individual and we all respond differently different diets.

So really important. A few other key importance concepts here is regulating your blood sugar is such a key concept. if you don't have a balanced blood sugar, if you have high blood sugar, high insulin, you know, a lot of starch and carbohydrate, this is going to screw up your blood sugar and blood sugar metabolism. And the reason it's important is it connects to almost every known chronic illness. And not just heart disease, not just obesity, not just diabetes, not just cancer, dementia, but also mental health. We're now finding this whole field of metabolic psychiatry where they put people on a keto diet and cure schizophrenia or bipolar disease using that approach.

The next concept really important, as I mentioned, ultra-processed foods, what we used to call junk food, it's the real problem. It's not actually food. Technically, definitely, it's not food. It's a deconstructed science project that's reassembled into things that look like food that are highly engineered to be addictive, and they're the real issue. And it's 60% of our diet is almost 70% of kids' diets. And that's the real problem.

It's not real food. It's not carbs or fats or protein or plant foods or animal protein. Those are things we should be eating. The next is focus on quality. Like, quality matters. And, you know, if you're looking at something, make sure you know what it is. Like if you pick up some, a package,

and it's got 45 different ingredients, and you don't recognize most of them and you wouldn't have it in your kitchen cupboard, just don't eat it. So be careful. So Michael Pollan said it very well. He said, if it grows on a plant, eat it. If it's made in a plant, don't eat it.

Skip it, right? Yeah, lots of great things. Like, if you're a great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it, you know, probably don't eat it. But what's a lunchable or a go-grom? should probably eat that or a Pop-Tart. I don't know what that was, right? Next, let's kind of get into some of the diets

and the pitfalls, the benefits, who drives on it, which diet may be helpful for different people. So we got a lot of questions about keto. Let's talk about keto. What is keto? Keto essentially means a extremely high-fat diet, which is low-carbohydrate, moderate protein. Usually about 70 to 75% fat.

And this diet's been around in medicine for quite a while. It was actually the diet that was used to treat type 1 diabetics back before we had insulin, because it basically helped them stay alive. It's what we used to treat epilepsy when no drugs will work. So it's been using medicine for a long time. But now it's getting a lot more play. As a something they can reverse diabetes,

they can help with mental health issues. There's whole fields of metabolic psychiatry now that focus on this. And basically, when you eat a low-carb, high-fat, moderate protein diet, it shifts your body from burning sugar to burning fat for fuel. So you think about your body like a hybrid. You can have gas or electric. So gas is dirty. fuel, that's carbohydrates. That, that's clean burning fuel. That's like electric. So you can think about

your body as being able to switch back and forth. When you switch into fat burning, that's called ketosis. And when you cut carbs low enough, usually below 20 to 50 grams a day, your liver starts making ketones and you basically get this incredibly clean fuel source for your brain and your body. Now, it stabilizes your blood sugar, reduces insulin, helps your body tap in a stored fat for energy. It helps you lose weight. It just is great for dementia. for cancer, for mental health issues, it's quite a therapeutic diet. And so what do you eat when you're on a keto diet? Well, a lot of fat. So avocados, not seeds, olive oil, good quality protein, pasture raised eggs, fish that's clean, poultry, I hopefully pasture raised organic, grass-fed

meat. All these things are great. Non-starchie veggies. You can eat those like broccoli, spinning, you know, green, sparagas, whatever. You can have some berries, like a little better fruit, but not much. But you get no grains, no sugar, no beans, no starchy foods. And what happens when you get on a keto diet is people will lose weight and reduce cravings. It immediately shuts off the sugar craving. It's just quite amazing. And in not only weight loss, but significant weight loss. You know, you can have a weight loss that I think is probably more effective than the GLP ones. This has been shown, for example, in these studies by Berta Health, which uses a keto diet for type of diabetes. And it's very powerful. It'll lower your

your blood sugar, it'll lower your insulin, it'll improve your cognitive function, mental clarity, focus, it'll reduce inflammation, it'll improve your energy, so many things that it benefits from. So what is it actually good for? If we have diabetes, type 2, even type 1, it can be very helpful if you know how to manage it. PCOS, which is a condition of the women get that cause infertility

and waking and abnormal periods and heavy bleeding and acne and testosterone, drone, a very effective pre-diabetes, diabetes, brain fog, cognitive issues, dementia. We've used it in autism, we use it in Alzheimer's, we use it in depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, cancer therapies. I mean, it's quite amazing. Dr. Siddhartha Mukugi, who wrote the Emperor of All Malities, is doing a lot of research on keto diets and cancers and finding extraordinary benefits. When people do keto, they can make mistakes and it can be bad. You can have crappy keto, right? You might be able to too much dairy or not. on a fiber or other issues.

So I think you'd be careful to eat a healthy keto diet, and it doesn't have to be bacon and steak and cream. It can be a very, very healthy version. And we show what that's like in my practice, it's the Ultra Wellness Center, and we teach people about it, and you can also learn about it on our website. I have a lot of content about it.

So how do I know that keto is not working for me? You might just pay attention to how your body's feeling. The first few weeks, you get what we call the keto flu, but you can mitigate that by taking electrolytes and having a lot of fluid. Because when you go keto, what happens is you stop having all these carbohydrates, your insulin levels drop.

And insulin makes you retain water and sodium or basically salt, and you retain a lot of water. So you dump a lot of water. You can get electric light and balances. You can feel a little like dehydrated and achy like the keto flu. But you can mitigate that by taking electrolytes, by drinking a lot of water, and that'll really help. But you can get, you know, there's things.

If you're not working, you might be feeling tired, you might be constipated, you might have sleep issues, hormone issues. So you just kind of watch what's happening with your body. Should we be on keto forever? I don't think so. You know, if you can correct the problem that you're facing, great. Some people might need to be on it forever. For example, if you have a really significant, you know, condition like schizophrenia or a severe bipolar disease and your body responds really well, you probably don't want to go back to doing what you're doing. So it's really a great

reset for short-term metabolic reset. It shouldn't be something I think people do forever unless you have certain conditions like, you know, epilepsy or really serious conditions. But for many people, it's worth a try. and very helpful for controlling a lot of issues. One of the questions that came up with listeners who submitted questions was, is the keto diet good for women dealing with hormone issues? Well, it can be, but you have to be nuanced about it. It's good for stabilizing blood sugar and insulin, which are the major drivers of hormone dysfunction like PCOS,

perimenopausal symptoms, weight gain, and it can be helpful. And short term often works best, so don't be on forever. So it may be sick-cocal keto or modified keto rather than strict long-term. Keto. And if you want to it's helping, well, you'll have more energy, less cravings, improve cycles, reduce belly fat. But if it's hurting you, you also know, you'll feel bad. And not just for the first few weeks when you get the keto flu, but after you adapt, which takes about three weeks,

fatigue, hair loss, poor sleep, anxiety, weird periods, and then maybe a sign it's not good for you. What about long term? Is it okay to do long term keto? Well, for most people, it's a tool, not a permanent lifestyle. So 4 to 12 weeks is where you often will see the most benefit. but for example, if you're type of diabetic, you want to be probably keto until your diabetes first, and then you can add in more carbohydrates when you're more in bad and bachly resilient, but you have to be careful to watch what's happening. If you are on keto long term and you're strict, it can cause issues with your thyroid, cortisol levels, that function, but a lot of people

do really well on it. Long-term better option would be what we call cyclical keto or modified keto, which is kind of low-carb most of time with some whole food carbs like sweet potatoes, fruit, squash, beans. That's kind of what I do. I don't really do keto. I don't check my my ketones, but I do eat a pretty low starch and sugar diet, and, but I will add a lot of sweet potatoes or some fruit, things like that. And please pay attention to your body. If you feel bad, it's not working for you. So pay attention. Can you do keto and avoid dairy? Yeah, you can do keto and be vegan. You can do keto and avoid dairy. And often a lot of people do better on dairy-free keto, right? You can have dairy driving inflammation, acne, cravings,

digestive issues, you're a bowel, and you can do other fats like avocados, olives, olive oil, coconut products, nuts and seeds, eggs, fatty fish, fatty meats, non-starchy vegetables, all that clean keto can be done without dairy, and it often is more anti-inflammatory. Okay, next diet. We did keto. What about paleo? Well, this is kind of what most of us evolved with eating. We were hunters and gatherers.

We didn't grow grains. We didn't have beans. We didn't have a lot of the starches. We did have roots. We had, you know, I went to the Haza tribe and visited them in Africa. And, you know, we dug up some really fibrous root under a tree that was like a yam or something that they ate. So they eat some of that.

Stargey stuff, but it was very low in sugar and starch. And basically, it's a whole food anti-inflammatory of eating. It's sort of how our ancestors should eat before we had any agriculture, right, before we grew anything. Now obviously way before the Industrial Revolution. And these are your foods that your body is naturally designed to digest, to thrive on, and it avoids all the modern, ultra-processed food, industrial agriculture as best you can. So what is a paleo diet?

Well, it's unlimited vegetables, fruit, good quality protein, grass-fed meats, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds, lots of good fats, avocados, olive, coconut, herbs and spices. The things you're going to avoid are obviously all the processed and ultra-processed food, refined sugar, dairy, because we weren't milking woolly mammoths or saber tooth tigers, grains, which we didn't grow grains, so wheat, corn, rice, beans, and obviously a lot of the industrial seed oils, I don't think are great to eat because they're mostly oxidized. If you can get the expeller-pressed ones, I think they're fine, but mostly industrial processing, I think it should be avoided. And when you are in paleo, you'll see a lot of benefits.

There's actually a diet that's called the autoimmune paleo diet, which is really good for autoimmune disease, particularly inflammatory bowel disease because they reduce inflammation and supports gut healing, helps balance your blood sugar, helps energy, helps with autoimmune issues, as I mentioned, and metabolic issues. So it can be very helpful for blood sugar. I feel, oh, is paleo-too-restricted? Well, if you want to eat junk food, yeah. But it basically removes most of the industrial foods and just focus on quality food, what we should be eating, you know, protein, veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds. And people who have gut issues, have autoimmune issues, have bloodshary issues, they do well on paleo.

And the people who are doing it wrong may be eating too much meat, none of the veggies, overdoing, quote, paleo trees. So basically simple whole food that's anti-inflammatory. You got to eat like your health depends on it because it does. Food is medicine. And that's why I partnered with function health and with sweet green, you create a limited time menu. Now, I've always loved sweet green because they make delicious food,

pack with flavor, without compromising their values. They have real relationships with farmers. It's food cooked fresh every single day with avocado and olive oil only and absolutely nothing artificial. I looked at the data. Hundreds of thousands of function members have showed the same nutrient camps everywhere. Magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3s, key B vitamins. These nutrients affect your energy.

They affect your mood. And they affect how your body handles inflammation. And many people's levels are just off. So we built five new menu items where every single ingredient has a purpose. For example, the nutrient has a purpose. and power plate, the spicy reset bowl, the iron boost bowl, the steady energy bowl, plus my favorite, it's my personal favorite, the omega salad. It has miso-glazed salmon and avocado that's rich in omega-3s to support calming down inflammation. And it's got leafy greens, raw carrots,

chickpeas to boost fiber and antioxidants. Try the function menu now at your nearest sweetgreen or order at sweetgreen.com. And if you want to know what you need to work on, visit at functionhealth.com for over 160 lab tests at just $365 a year. That's a dollar a day. This is how we get to 100 healthy years. Start now. All right, what about vegan? It's about 2% of the population, although they have probably an outsized marketing team.

Somehow the world believes that a vegan diet is the most healthy diet. Unfortunately, that's not true. It can be one way of eating for some people that do well with it and other people do not. and we have to be very careful and understand what to supplement with. And by definition, it's a deficient diet. If you are consistently vegan and you don't take the right supplements, you will become deficient in iron, in many nutrients that you need to thrive. And you can be low in iodine, you can be lower in iodine, you can be lower on B12,

you can be low in omega-3 fats. So you want to be really careful. What do you eat if you're vegan? Well, it's just plant food, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, legumes, you know, lentils, six piece, black beans, nuts and seeds, plant-based oils, herbs, spices, plant-based approaching powders. You don't eat meat. You don't eat poultry.

You don't eat fish. You don't eat seafood. You don't eat eggs. You don't eat dairy. And honey, some of you go and so need honey because bees make it, I guess. And there's a lot of reasons people can be vegan. It can't argue with that. If you philosophically believe that you don't want to hurt animals, I respect that.

But you have to realize that when you're growing, and I wrote about this in my book, Food Fix, if you're growing vegetables in America or anywhere, and you're doing it, and at scale. You're using machines, you're killing the soil, you're using combines to pick things, and you're killing a lot of animals. You're killing rodents. You're killing birds. You're killing insects. You're killing all kinds of animals. In fact, there's about 7 billion animals estimated to be killed every year in the growing of vegetables. You can't get out of the cycle of life that you're in. Environmental concerns, I think that this is a long conversation. I wrote a lot about in my book, Food Fix, and I'd encourage you to check out the news.

version, which is coming out February 2026 called Food Fix Uncensored that I co-authored with my wife, I get a Revised version, Brianna. And it's quite disturbing when you kind of look at, you know, what is the truth about environment? It's not actually animal agriculture itself. It's inherently bad. It's how we do it. Someone said it's not the cow, it's the how. So industrial CAFO or feedlot farming or growing of animals is really bad. It's bad for you. It's about the environment. It's better for the animals. It's just bad. But regeneratively raised animals,

or grass-fed animals, very different, very different impact. And they've been shown to actually reduce carbon emissions. If you look at a regenerative, this was a life cycle analysis done by an independent company, looked at Impossible Burger, which made from soy and industrial soy specifically, which is, you know, GMO soy, pesticides, herbicides,

or besides all that stuff, versus a regeneratively raised burger, which means you grow the animal in a way that's close to mimicking nature as possible, moving them around from different fields and, you know, basically almost wilding them. Found out you had to eat one impossible burger. If you did that, you would add three and a half kilos of carbon to the atmosphere. If you ate a regenerally raised burger, you would remove three and a half kilos of carbon

from the atmosphere. So you have to basically eat one regenerative burger to offset the carbon emissions of an impossible burger. So it's really important to understand that there's ways of raising these animals that can be done at scale in a way that's very, very important. Now, if you're vegan, I encourage you to do functional health health, because you can be deficient in a lot of nutrients that we check, including B12, which is the most common, iron, because plant-based irons are really hard to absorb, omega-3 fats, and you get some from plants, but not really converted well and not the forms we need. Low in zinc, be low in iodine, maybe low in vitamin A. We have a lot of things that are really

important, low in vitamin D. And, you know, vitamin D comes from things like, fatty fish or the sun, which you can, you know, if you're in the sun, you'll get it. The option can be low in protein and low in muscle mass, which is a problem, and low in colon, and low in chlorine. And these are all important nutrients for your health, for the brain, for your body. Now, if you're looking at the question of, can you be healthy on a vegan diet? Well, the answer is yes, but you have to supplement and you have to be a whole food-based vegan. You can't be a chips and soda vegan. You have to really know what you're doing, and it's a lot of work. And you need to look at the nutrients that are really efficient in these,

in these people, which is B-12, iron, omega-3, zinc, protein, chlorine, iodine, and a lot of others that can be a lower insufficient. Now, some people actually feel worse on a vegan diet and actually can gain weight because they're eating a lot of carbs. They're eating lower protein. They're having higher blood sugar spites. And they often are having to rely on ultra-processed vegan junk food, which is not good. And it's hard to go out and be in the world and be a vegan. When you do your function health labs, you're going to check a lot of the things that you need to know, your iron status, your omega-3 status, your B-Vitamin status, B-12 status, you can look at zinc, you can look at, you know, vitamin A and a lot of other nutrients that

are really important. So the key here is that a plant-based size can work, but only when it's real food and real plants, not processed, fake food, and be aware of what you need to supplement and make sure you're getting a protein and your muscle mass is good. You want to do dexta-scan, so you don't want to be just kind of hoping it's going to be good for you. And notice how you feel. A lot of people don't feel well. At one patient who was, it was in for because she wasn't getting a nutrients she needed and she, you know, was able to actually start eating inal protein again and got pregnant. Now, is it possible for vegans to have great bodies without protein powders? This is a great question. It can be possible, but it takes a lot of work

and you need to combine a lot of different plant proteins, beans, lentil seeds, whole grains, and probably a lot of things like tofu and tempe, which are concentrated sources of protein to meet your needs for amino acids in the right balance so that you can actually build muscle. The data is really clear. If you need a being a diet compared to an animal-based diet or a diet that includes animal food, you are not going to be able to build muscle as well on a plant-based diet compared to a diet that includes animal protein.

It's just what the science shows. Not my opinion, it's just a fact. Now, what happens is a lot of people who want to do muscle building will use protein powders. And you can't probably get enough beans and lentils and brains to actually get the protein, you need to really build muscle unless you supplement. You want to get about 30 grams of protein per meal

and quality protein. And plant proteins have low lucene, which is a really key amino acid that stimulates muscle synthesis or muscle growth. So if your muscles aren't being stimulated, then you're not going to grow. And if you don't have leucine, you're not going to grow muscles,

which is really important for longevity. If you plan and you have whole foods if you're a vegan, that's fine. Protein powders can be helpful, who are athletes or other people leaning high higher protein, but some of these plant proteins are full of lead and other contaminants, so you really got to be careful of what you're doing. And they're kind of be full of other added ingredients and weird stuff.

So really be careful. And just listen to your body, you know, like, how are you feeling? You know, you have tired, are you weak, your cravings, your muscle loss, your hair thinning, how your nails? Like, pay attention to what's your body's telling you. It's the smartest doctor in the room. Now, what about tofu, soy? Does that affect estrogen?

Big question. Basically, no. You're eating whole traditional soy foods, tofu, tempe and mamay, miso, nato, these are fine. If you're eating, like, drinking gallon of soy milk a day, that's not normal. Those people don't do that. I never did that historically. And all the industrial soy also, I would stay away from a lot of industrial hydrolyzed proteins and soy quite harmful and can be carcinogenic.

In fact, a study of the NIH showed that, you know, when you fed animal rats, whole soy, they were fine, prevented cancer. But if you increased the processed soy, it actually increased cancer, and these are breast cancers. Whole food soy don't raise estrogen levels. They can actually help reduce cancer risk in women. They're hormone-related cancer. So don't worry about it. They have something called phytoestrogens, which sound like estrogen, but they're basically

more like blockers. They block the stronger harmful effects of the estrogens who are exposed to both from environmental chemicals, which are estrogen-like or from our own estrogen. So when you're choosing soy, have organic, whole food, soy, not processed oil, or soy protein isolates, or fake meats, those are bad. Now, some people do have soy allergies, so beware, less in your body, but otherwise I think it's fine. All right. Now, there's a couple more things we're going to cover. One is the Mediterranean diet.

And you hear a lot about this. It's the most research diet in the world. But I want to kind of do a caveat with that. Because it's the most research diet on the world, doesn't mean it's the best diet in the world. Now, what is the Mediterranean diet? Who knows, right? It could be pizza and pasta, or could be fish and olive oil and vegetables, right?

So countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, I love because they have that really delicious food. And people who eat in this way, in a traditional way, have a longer life, they have better health, they have lower inflammation. So in a good Mediterranean diet, not a pasta and pizza diet, but a good Mediterranean diet be lots and lots of veggies,

lots of good fruit, lots of extra version of olive oil, fish and seafood, nuts and seeds, lots of beans, lentils, herbs and spices. And they do have meat. They have whole grains and eggs and poultry. And they do have meat. I mean, I was in Sardinia.

They served, you know, lots of pork and pig. And they have prosciutto and all kinds of stuff. So they do eat that stuff. Red wine is optional. I don't think wine or alcohol is a health food. I think everything else they do is so good. And they drink wine and they live long, but it's not because of the wine.

What you don't eat on a metatronite is as much red meat, processed food, sugar, refined carbs, seed oils, too much dairy, fried foods. And when people who follow it, they get better heart health, they have low inflammation, they help with their weight, metabolic health, their guts better, supports brain health, longevity. So that's said, it's very good and it's a good foundation, but it really is about personalized diets and it's about understanding what's good for you. There's a lot of evidence because it's been studied, but again, because it's been studied

doesn't mean it's the best diet, it just means it's the most studied diet. and there may be ways of optimizing that or personalizing it. And really, there's really good evidence for this way of eating around longevity, heart health, metabolic health. Can you have bread, pasta, and wine? Well, I mean, yes, you can, but it's not what we mean when we say the Mediterranean diet. You don't need to be careful. It's a good baseline diet.

It's sort of not so restrictive. It's quite good. But avoid refined flowers. That's key. Refined carbs is not good. So you just don't go to the. the bakery, basically. All right, let's jump into one of my favorite parts of these Mark Anything episodes. Map and Fire questions. These are diet questions I hear every day.

We're going to hit them quick, clear, and straight to the point. No we're thinking, no confusion. Just real practical answers to you comply today. What's the best diet for weight loss? For most people, it's a low carbohydrate diet. It's high in good fats, quality protein, low and starch and sugar. Doesn't have to be keto, but something like a paleo, low-carbous, diet will be very helpful. What's the best diet for gut health? Again, it's just a whole real food diet with lots of good fiber and phytochemicals. Plant-rich diet, not plant-based, but plant-rich provides food for the microbiome. Next question, do you really need as much protein as the internet makes us think? It depends. If you're a bodybuilder and you're looking lots of weights and you're

very active, you need more protein. If you're older, you need more protein. You're younger, you may not need as much in terms of your mid-life. When you're growing, you need more protein. So you really need to look at where you are in your life, what you want, and the range is anywhere between 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight. And that is kind of what most people should shoot for. It's above what the RDA is. The RDA is the recommended dietary allowance. This is the minimum required to prevent a deficiency disease. This isn't actually what's optimal. It's just minimal so you don't get protein deficiency. Next question. Are carbs the enemy? Well, I jokingly have said that carbs are the most important

food for longevity and health and weight loss. And when I'm talking about are vegetable broccoli is a carb asparagus is a carb, artichokes of carb. These are all carbs. They're made from, you know, structure of carbohydrates of glucose molecules, and they are fine to eat. But they're in a matrix that's incredibly fibrous that has lots of nutrients that's slowly absorbed. So it's not carbs themselves or the enemy. It's, you know, carbs are going to be the majority of your diet by volume, not by calorie content, right? Because fat's more calorie dense. But they are an important part of your diet. And by the way, you don't need them. for life. You know, you do need essential amino acids. You need essential fatty acids, but there's no

such thing as essential carb. That said, it's fine to have it. Just be aware that it's the refined starches and sugars, the flour, the sugars in all forms. It's the enemy. Is it okay to have a regular cheat day? I wouldn't say have a cheat day. I'd say occasionally a cheat treat. You know, you don't want to spend a whole day just stuffing yourself with horrible food and think that's okay. It's just not okay. But if you want to have an occasional ice cream or cookie or whatever. I don't see any issue with that as long as your metabolically health can resilient. Next question, can I switch diets seasonal? Yeah, sure.

I mean, well, you know, switch your diets as summer comes. They eat more lightly and what you're thinking more heavily. It just depends on where you are in the world, what your climate is and what your preferences are. And that's fine. How do I know a diet's working for me? That's a great question. One, how do you feel? Two, what symptoms are going away or not going away?

And three, what are your lab show? your lab show that you're getting better or not. You can check your labs with Function Health. You go to FunctionHealth.com, and you can see. But I always say the smartest doctor in room is your own body. All right. Next is how do we know which diet is right for you? Now that we clear up some of the biggest myths,

I want to bring it back to the functional medicine approach, personalization. How do we know which diet is the best diet and the best match for your body? So you can check in with yourself. How do you feel? Does your energy go up? Are your cravings down?

Are you pooping regularly? Is your mood more stable? Is your sleep better? Your labs improved? These are things you can do to check what's going on with yourself. Just how do you feel? Listen to your body. The smartest doctor in the room is always your own body.

Your biology always tells the truth. Just listen to how you feel. You're still feeling overwhelmed by all these diets and just want to reset, clean slate? Well, that's exactly why I created the 10-day detox. It's a simple, structured way to calm your cravings, to stabilize your blood sugar, to lower inflammation, and to reconnect with real food. Think of it as a metabolic reboot that helps you figure out what way of eating works best for your body. And you can learn more about the 10-D detox at Dr.heimen.com or click the link in the show notes. If this helps you cut through some of the noise of diet confusion, pass it along to a friend or family member who could use a little clarity too.

the more we share this information, the healthier we all will become. Thanks for joining me for office hours. I love diving into these topics with you. Remember, you are the CEO of your own health. And every choice you make can move you closer to healing and vitality. I want to keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible. So tell me, what do you want to explore next? What questions are you wrestling with? What breakthroughs are you chasing? Share your ideas in the comments on social media or through the link in the show notes. I'm listening. Until next time, keep taking charge, keep asking questions, and keep showing up for your health.

If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast. and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland

Clinic and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at Ultra WellnessCenter.com, and request to become a patient.

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