6 Diets Tested
When planning content that we thought would be valuable to our users in the New Year, we instantly thought of diets. Not because we promote any specific one, but because so many people start them at the beginning of the year.
Now, our nutrition team isn’t one for diets. We like moderation and think all food can fit into a healthy diet. We want people to make mindful choices and eat more fruits and vegetables, but we also don’t want to assign morality to food or cause vicious restriction/binge cycles. That being said, we also always try to stay open-minded.
We know there are a lot of factors when it comes to food choices and diet preferences—budget, convenience, culture, environmental impacts, family impacts, taste preferences, and more. So we decided that we’d be able to speak better to each diet if we experienced them from all the angles, and not just what nutrients each one may or may not provide.
To fully experience each diet, a group of us are setting off on a diet exploration. For the next six months, we’re going to be trying six popular diets. We’ll be journaling every day and recording not only our food, but our weight, mood, hunger, energy, how much time we spent shopping, prepping, and thinking about food, as well as what impact it had on our families, budget, and overall life.
At the end of each diet, we’ll conclude with a write-up about the diet. It’ll include the highs and lows, pros and cons, as well as an in-depth nutrition analysis. Then, at the end of the six months, we’ll finalize our journey and reflect on our experiences, discussing our takeaways in detail. We hope that, in the end, we can give a whole picture view and help our users make informed decisions.
So to recap, the plan is six diets in six months. We are planning to do each for three weeks at a time, with one week in between (except for Whole 30 and the cleanse). That way, we can determine how we feel after going back to normal eating and if the results lasted past a week.
These are the diets we’ll be doing, in this order:
- Whole 30 (30 days... obviously)
- A cleanse (3 days)
- Ketogenic (3 weeks)
- Paleo (3 weeks)
- Vegan (3 weeks)
- Mediterranean (3 weeks)
We will be sharing recipes and tips as we go, but for day-by-day progress, you can follow the explorers on Instagram. Just look up:
- @meganjanesplate
- @refuelwithmichelle
- @han.mann
We’ve already started Whole 30 and are feeling excited about what we have already learned about the diet and ourselves. So wish us luck and follow along if you are interested!
