Office Hours: How to Choose the Best Diet for Your Body

Welcome to Office Hours. This is our dedicated 101 space to go deeper, get clear, and explore what truly moves the needle for your health. I'm Dr. Mark Heim in and each week we're going to pull back the curtain and share the insights the research to lessons that don't always make it into our conversations with guests. As 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 and agency than you realize. I'm glad you're here. This episode is brought to you by Function Health, empowering you to live 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. Heimann. 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 therefore? 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 asks me, what should I eat? What's the best diet? Should I be keto? Should I be paleo? Should I be vegan? Should I 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 homogeneous 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. Let's see if you go for example, BB again, it'd 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 I apply to everybody. First, eat food. You know, real food, whole food, unprocessed food. I mean, some processing is fine. Obviously, if you can't, tomatoes, that's processed food, but it's actually something you can recognize. Canus, Ardien's process, 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, definitely food. It's a food like substance. The second principle, really important, is a food is medicine. Don't 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 used in 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 sulflorifane, and then been shown to actually bring cancer. So you really understand food is medicine. Everything you put in your body is a drug. 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 by where I'll biochemically individual and we all respond differently to 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 or high insulin, you know, a starch and carbohydrate, this is going to screw up your blood sugar and blood sugar and it's helpless. And the reason it's important is it connects 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 there's a whole field of metabolic psychiatry where they put people on a keto diet and curcuits of freiniar by politis use that approach. Next concept really important, as I mentioned ultra-process foods, what we used to call junk food, is 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 of a package and it's got 45 different ingredients and you don't recognize most of them and you wouldn't have them in your kitchen cupboard, just don't eat it. So be careful. So Michael Pollan said it very well. He said 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 gogurt, try to eat that or a pop tart and then what that was, right? Next, let's kind of get into some of the diets and the pitfalls, the benefits who tries 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 percent back. And this diet has 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. This will be 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 there's 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's clean burning fuel. That's like electric. You can think about it. Your body is 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 in your body. Now, it stabilizes your blood sugar. We use this insulin. It helps your body to happen to store fat for energy. It helps you lose weight. It's great for dementia, diabetes, or cancer, or 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, nods, seeds, olive oil, good quality protein, pasture-race eggs, fish that's clean, poultry. I hopefully pasture-race, organic, breast-fed meat. All these things are great. I'm not a start-you-beggies. You have to be, can you, those like broccoli, spinach, greens, paragas, whatever, you can have some berries, look a little bit of fruit, but not much. But you get no grains, no sugar, no beans, no start-you-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 quite amazing. And in not only weight loss, but significant weight loss. You can have a weight loss that I think is probably more effective than the G-Up who wants. This has been shown, for example, in these studies by Berda Health, which uses a keto diet for type of diabetes. And it's very powerful. It'll lower your blood sugar, it'll lower your insulin, improve your cognitive function, medical 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? We have diabetes type two. Even type one, it can be very helpful if you know how to manage it. PCOS, which is a condition of the women get that causes infertility, and waking, and having normal periods, and have you bleeding, and acne, and I just asked for one. In very effective pre-dibedies, diabetes brain fog, cognitive issues, dementia. We've used it in autism, we've used it in Alzheimer's, we've used it in depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, cancer therapies. I mean, it's quite amazing that Dr. Siddhartha Mukaji wrote The Emperor of Almalades 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. They can have crappy keto, right? You might be able to much dairy or not 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, the ultra-honor center, and we teach people about it, and you can also learn about it on our website, and a lot of content about it. So how do I know the keto is now working for me? You might just pay attention to how your body is 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, you're in slow-levels drop, and in slow-make sure you retain water and sodium, or as a salt, and you retain a lot of water. So you dump a lot of water, you get electric light and balances, and you can feel a little like the hydrated 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, now, this thing, 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. Now, if you can correct the problem that you're facing, great. Some people might need to be on it forever. For example, if you ever really significant condition like schizophrenia or 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 the only thing people do forever unless you have certain conditions like epilepsy or really serious conditions. But for many people, it's worth a try. And it's 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, paramedic pausal symptoms, weight gain, and they can be helpful. And short-term often works best, so don't be on forever. So maybe sickle, colquido, or modified keto rather than strict long-term keto. And if you know what I was helping, well, you'll have more energy, less cravings, improve cycles, reduce belly fat. But if it's hurting you, you also know good, you'll feel bad. And not just for the first few weeks when you get the keto flu, but after your death, which takes about three weeks to take care of loss, poor sleep, anxiety, wear 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 four to twelve weeks is where you often will see the most benefit. For example, if you're type your diabetic, you want to be probably keto until your diabetes are first, and then you can add in more carbohydrates when you're more in bed, and back to the 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, death function. But a lot of people do really well on it. Long-term better option would be we call sickle, colquido, or modified keto, which is a low-carb most of the time with some whole food carbs like sweet potatoes, fruit, squash, beans. But I don't really do keto. I don't check my ketones, but I do eat a pretty low-starch and sugar diet, but I will add a lot of sweet potatoes or some fruit, things like that. And if you 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 beat 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, or all about. And you can do other fats. I got macadas, 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 has more anti-inflammatory. Okay, next diet. We did keto. What about paleo? Well, most of us evolved with eating. We were hundreds of gatherers. We didn't grow grains. We didn't have beans. We didn't have a lot of starches. We did have roots. We had, you know, I went to the... Hads of 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 ate some of that. I'll start you stuff. But it was very low in sugar and starch. And basically it's a whole food anti-inflammatory eating and it's sort of how our ancestors should eat before we had any agriculture, right? We grew anything. Now obviously, way before the industrial revolution. And in these are foods of your body naturally designed to digest, to thrive on. And it avoids all of, you know, modern ultra-processed food and industrial agriculture is best you can. So what is a paleo diet? Well, it's unlimited vegetables, fruit, a good quality protein, grass fed meats, poultry, fish eggs, nuts and seeds, lots of good fats, avocados, olive oil, coconut, urban spices. The things you're going to avoid are obviously all the processed ultra-processed food. And find sugar, dairy, because we weren't milking woolly mammoths or saber-toothagres, grains, which we didn't regret. So we corn rice beans. And obviously a lot of the industrial seed wells, I don't think are great to eat because they're mostly oxidized. If you can get the expel or press 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 support scut healing, helps balance your blood sugar, helps energy, helps with autoimmune issues, other mentioned and metabolic issues. So it can be very helpful for a blood sugar. I feel that always paleo-too-restricted. Well, if you want to eat junk food, yeah. But it basically removes mostly industrial foods and just focus on quality food. What we should be doing, protein, veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds. And people who have gut issues, have autoimmune issues, have blood sugar issues, they do well on paleo. And the people who are doing it wrong may need too much meat and on the veggies, over doing copi-liotries as well. So there's a simple whole food that's anti-inflammatory. You gotta 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 relationship with farmers. This food cooked fresh every single day without 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, kiwi 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 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 misoglae salmon and avocado that's original mega-threased 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 Sweet Green or order at sweetgreen.com. And if you want to know what you need to work on, visit 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 a size marketing chain. Somehow the world believes that vegan diet is the most healthy diet. Unfortunately, that's not true. It can be a one-way 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 that to thrive. And you can be low in iodine, you can be low in iron, you can be low in 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, lentils, chickpeas, 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 to the stone and eat honey because bees make it, I guess. There's a lot of reasons people can be vegan. Be ethical. And I can't argue with that. If you feel sovically believe that you don't want to hurt animals, I respect that. You have to realize that when you're growing, and I wrote about this in my book, Food Fakes, if you're growing vegetables in America or anywhere and you're doing it at a 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, I was the insects, you're killing all kinds of animals. In fact, there's about seven billion animals estimated to be killed every year in the growing of vegetables. And again, again, I got a cycle of life that you're in. Environmental concerns, I think, is a long conversation. I wrote a lot about it in my book, Food Fakes, and I encourage you to check out the new version, which is coming out February, 2026 called Food Fakes Uncensored that I co-authored with my wife, I get a revised version of 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 that's inherently bad. It's how we do it. Someone said, it's not the cow, it's the how. So industrial, calf or feedlot farming and growing of animals is really bad. It's bad for you, it's bad for the environment, it's bad for the animals, it's just bad. But regenerally raised animals, regressive 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, all that stuff, versus a regenerally raised burger, which means you grow the animal in a way that's close to mimicking nature as possible, and living them around from different fields. And you know, basically almost wilding them. And then they 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. And you could see one regenerative burger to offset the carbon emissions of an abussel 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 function health slap, because you can be deficient in a lot of nutrients that we check, including B12, which is the most common iron, because plant-based iron is a 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, low in iodine, low in vitamin A. We a lot of things that are really important low in vitamin D. And vitamin D comes from things like fatty fish or the sun, which if you're in the sun, you'll get it. The opting can be low in protein and low in muscle mass, which is a problem. And low in colon. 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. You have to supplement, and you have to be a whole foods based vegan diet. 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 deficient in these people, which is B12, iron, omega-3, zinc, protein, coline, iodine, and a lot of others that can be a lower in sufficient. Now, some people actually feel worse on a vegan diet, and actually you 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-process vegan drunk 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. You're going to need your iron status, your omega-3 status, your B-vitamin status, B12 status, you can look at zinc, you can look at, you know, vitamin A, a lot of other nutrients that are really important. So, the key here is that a plant-based guys 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 dexascans. 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. And one patient was it was infertility, because she wasn't getting a new trend she needed. And she was able to actually start eating an old protein to get and got pregnant. Now, is it powerful 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 tempeh, where it's concentrated source 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 eat a being a diet, compared to an animal-based diet, or animal 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. Now, my opinion is 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 grains to actually get the protein. You need to really build muscle and less use supplement. And you want to get about 30 grams of protein per meal and quality protein. And plant proteins have a little loosing, 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 loosing, you're not going to grow muscles, which is really important for lung jeopardy. If you plan and you have whole foods, if you're a vegan, that's fine. Protein powders can be helpful for athletes or other people leaning higher protein. But some of these plant proteins are full of lead and other contaminants. So you really got to be careful what you're doing. And they're going to 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, you're tired, you weak, you're cabins, you have muscle loss, your hair thinning, how your nails. Like pay attention to what 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, tempeh, and mameh, miso, natto. These are fine. If you're eating like drinking galos, soy milk a day, that's not normal. Because people don't do that and 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, the study of the NIH showed that when you've fed animal rats, whole soy they were fine, prevented cancer. But if you increased the processed soy, it actually increased cancer and these were the best cancers. Whole food soys don't raise estrogen levels. They can actually help reduce cancer risk in women. They're home-related cancers. 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 estrusions we're exposed to. Both environmental chemicals, which are estrogen-like or from our own estrogen. So when you're choosing soy, have organic, whole food, soy, not processed soy oils or soy protein isolates or fake meats, those are bad. Now some people do have soy allergies so beware. Listen to your body, but otherwise they think it's fine. All right. Now, there's a couple more things we're going to cover. One is the Mediterranean diet. You hear a lot about this. It's the most researched diet in the world, but I want to do a caveat with that because it's the most researched diet in the world. It doesn't mean it's the best diet in the world. Now what is the Mediterranean diet? Who knows? It could be pizza and pasta or it could be fish and olive oil and vegetables. So countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, I love because they have really delicious food. People 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, lots of veggies, lots of good food, lots of extra-version olive oil, fish and seafood, nuts and seeds, lots of beans, lentils, herbs and spices. And they do have meat. They have whole grains, some and eggs and poultry. And they do have meat. I mean, I was in Sardinia. They serve lots of the poor, can pick the 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 the 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 Mediterranean is as much red meat, processed food, sugar, refined carbs, seed oils, too much dairy, fried foods. And when people follow it, they get better heart health. They have lower inflammation. They help with their weight, metabolic health. They're gut spedder. They support brain health, lung jeopardy. So that's it. That's it. It's very good. And it's a good foundation, but it really is about personalized diets and it's about an interesting one that's good for you. And 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 means it's the most study 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 lung jeopardy, heart health, metabolic health. And then you have bread, pasta, and wine. Well, I mean, yes, you can, but it's not what we mean when we say the best diet. You only be careful. It's a good baseline diet. It's sort of not too restrictive. It's quite good, but avoid refined flowers. That's key. And refined carbs is not good. So just don't go to the bakery, basically. All right. Let's jump into one of my favorite parts of these. I just want to mark anything episodes, rapid fire questions. These are diet questions I hear every day. We're going to hit them quick, clear, and straight to the point. No overthinking, no confusion. Just repract to answers to complietate. 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 in certain sugar. Doesn't have to be keto, but something like a paleo low carb 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, provided food for the microbiome. Next question. Do you really need as much protein as the internet makes this thing? It depends. If you're a bodybuilder, you're lifting lots of ways and you're very active, you need more protein. You're older, you need more protein. If you're younger, you may not need as much in terms of your middle 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. When there are dangers anywhere between 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight. That is what most people should shoot for. It's above what the RDA is. The RDA is the recommended diet to allow us. 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. When I'm talking about our vegetables, broccoli is a carb. Asparagus is a carb. Artechokes is a carb. These are all carbs. They're made from structure of carbohydrates, glucose molecules, and they are fine to eat. But they're in a matrix that's incredibly fibrous. It has lots of nutrients that slowly absorb. So it's not carbs themselves or the enemy. Carbs are going to be the majority of your diet by volume. Not by calorie content, right? Because fat is more calorie dense. But they are an important part of your diet. And by the way, you don't need them for life. You do need the essential amino acids. You need the essential fatty acids, but there's no such thing as essential carbs. That said, it's fine to have it. Just be aware that it's the refined starched in 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 cheat treat. You don't want to spend a whole day just stuffing yourself with hormone food. I 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 you're metabolically healthy and resilient. Next question. Can I switch diets seasonally? Yeah, sure. Some people, you know, switch your diets as summer comes, they eat more lightly and with your thing 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? Then three, what are your lab show? Your lab show that you're getting better or not. And you can check your labs with function health. It's going to function health.com. And you can see, but you know, I always say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body. All right. Next is how do we know which diet is right for you? I know you've cleared 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 just you can check in with yourself. How do you feel? Does your energy go up or your cravings down? Are you a pooping regularly? Is your mood more stable? Is your sleep better? Your lab is 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 sells 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-day detox at Drahymon.com or click the link in the description. 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 to them or we share this information, the health here 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 your 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. 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 wellness center.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.