How to Create Your Own Perfect Personal Diet (And Stop Dieting Forever)

Guest Contributor: Dr. Alex Orton, ND

This guest blog post was written by Dr. Alex Orton, a naturopathic doctor with over 10 years of experience in holistic health.

Dr. Orton believes that true health isn’t created by chasing symptoms or rigid protocols, but by building a sustainable daily foundation where healing can happen naturally. He also places a strong emphasis on food quality both professionally and personally, and incorporates Nourish Food Club products into his own diet as part of a sustainable, real-food approach to health.

Dr. Orton is the co-founder of Haven Holistic Health, a personalized, doctor-led holistic health consulting practice for people who are tired of guessing, starting over, and managing symptoms without real progress. Through one-on-one guidance, advanced biomarker and food intolerance testing, and clear, realistic plans, Dr. Orton helps individuals create lasting health without extreme or unsustainable approaches.

------------------------------------------------------------

The Problem with Diets

Be honest with yourself: you don’t actually know what you should eat.

You may be health-conscious and follow nutrition accounts online. You buy organic and shop at farmers markets. Maybe you even drink bone broth or raw milk.

But you don’t know (as in actually understand) what you should eat.

How could you? 99% of people in the nutrition space still have no idea what they’re talking about.

Most fad diets promoted in health circles are just a collection of rules based on a theory:

• - Vegan: avoid animal foods because they are bad for you and the planet
• - Paleo: eat like our paleo ancestors because that’s how we evolved
• - Keto/Carnivore: carbs are poison, so use fat for fuel instead
• - Primal Diet: cooking destroys your food, so eat everything raw

Isn’t it strange that none of these theories have to do with improving health?

They just reduce nutrition down to rules for restricting behavior based on sometimes dogmatic thinking.

That’s why, for many people, nutrition is more of a religion than an actual science.

When you follow a diet based on a bad theory, you often end up eating in a way that is unnatural and antithetical to health.

That’s why I finally got wrecked eating a keto diet.

I was anxious, cold, bloated, constipated, tired, and hopeless, eating a diet that was unenjoyable and totally impractical.

Around the same time, I stumbled on the work of Dr. Ray Peat.

Unlike the diets above, he approached nutrition from a biological perspective.

For Peat, nutrition is about increasing biological energy, also known as bioenergetics.

In contrast to dogmatic diets that restrict your behavior, bioenergetics is about increasing your potential by optimizing your metabolism.

That’s a radically different way of thinking about nutrition.

It’s also common sense. What is food if not to give us energy?

When I was sick, what I needed was more energy.

But the keto diet was doing the exact opposite: conserving energy at the expense of my health.

Once I began to eat for energy, I felt better than I had in years almost overnight.

Overtime, the principles of diet became clear to me, and as my health continued to improve, I never needed to follow a diet again.

The Principles of Good Nutrition

Principles are like compasses, pointing the way to your goal. When you get lost, you can refer back to your principles to lead the way.

The same goes for nutrition principles. They help orient you towards the ultimate goal of nutrition: to increase energy.

These are the four principles of good nutrition:

1. Low toxicity
2. Pro-metabolic (supporting metabolism)
3. Nutrient-density
4. Gut supportive

These principles are universal yet flexible. And they’re common sense.

Since they are universal, many diets attempt to address one or more of these principles. Many other diets ignore them completely, leading to disastrous results (ex. long term vegan or carnivore).

But all the principles are required to create your own Perfect Personal Diet.

A few things to note before we dive in:

I want to emphasize the flexibility of this nutritional framework. While I do provide guidelines and examples, everything can be adjusted to your individual needs and context.

There are no serving sizes. Neither fats nor carbs are demonized, though this framework does emphasize carbs, which are particularly therapeutic in increasing biological energy. The optimal macro breakdown can vary widely from person to person.

No food groups are prohibited, besides fake processed foods. No foods are absolutely required. If there is a food that you don’t like, or you react to, then don’t eat it.

This guide is not meant to be read like a recipe or a protocol.

It’s important to note that many people who follow bioenergetic nutrition make it into just another rigid diet with rules.

This is not a diet. It’s a set of principles to guide your eating. If you get the big things right (increasing your energy, supporting your gut, etc.), then you don’t have to worry about all the little things.

You just need to take the time to really internalize these principles. Then it will become automatic and you won’t have to think about it anymore.

Let’s go through each of these principles one by one. Then we will put it all together.

1. Low Toxin:

❌ Avoid:

• - Processed / packaged foods of all kinds
• - Industrial foods: seed oils (PUFA), white refined flour, soy, factory-farmed, conventional meat

✅ Eat:

• - Homemade as much as possible
• - Organic, wild-caught, grass-fed, pasture-raised, regenerative foods

This one doesn’t need much explanation. And it’s the only place where I will talk about prohibited foods.

You want to avoid toxic, unnatural, chemically laden foods. It’s counterproductive to eat food that is going to perpetuate toxicity and inflammation in the system, which will ultimately decrease your biological energy.

Since the FDA is captured by corporations, there are now +10,000 additives allowed in the USA food industry, when Europe only has around 300.

Making your food homemade is huge health hack so you can avoid the chemical additives and preservatives in pre-made packaged foods. Meal preparation does not have to be complex. Learning to cook simple things like eggs, rice, broth, potatoes, and meat will get you very far.

2. Pro-Metabolic

• 🍉 Carbs: moderate to high amount (40% - 60% or more)
  • - Around 200g carbs a day or more
  • - Carbs (sugars + starches) = primary cellular fuel source
  • - Choosing carbs you do well with

• 🥩 Protein: moderate amount (~20%)
  • - 0.6 to 0.8 grams protein per lb of ideal body weight (~80-120g daily)
  • - Animal protein > Plant protein
  • - Balance amino acids with collagen/gelatin

• 🥥 Fat: moderate (20 - 30%)
  • - Saturated Fat > Polyunsaturated (PUFA)
  • - Animal fats, coconut oil, butter, tallow, olive oil, avocado

• ⚖️ 3 Balanced Meals Daily: protein + carbs + fat
  • - No intermittent fasting. 10hr feeding to 14hr fasting split max.

These macro percentages are just a general starting point and may be significantly adjusted to each individual.

The organism is an energy generating system. Our food is designed to provide the raw materials to make that energy, which comes from the macronutrients: carbs, proteins, and fats.

I don't regularly track macros. It can be useful if you want to get a ballpark and gather data, but it’s not something that you need to obsess over.

Here is the way I think of it:

Eat animal protein at every meal, complemented with carbohydrates, and then use vegetables, condiments, and seasonings for flavor and variety.

From a bioenergetic perspective, carbohydrates are the best fuel source (when used properly) because they increase the metabolic rate most effectively.

The optimal macro ratio for each individual can vary widely, but you need some carbs for optimal metabolic function. Many people would probably benefit from eating more carbs than they think. Since we have all been endlessly propagandized to view carbs and sugar as poisons, it can take some unlearning to accept this.

Some people do better with sugars (ie fruits, honey, etc.), while others do better with starches (ex. potatoes and grains). Experiment to find out what works best for you.

Most of my clients are not eating enough protein.

Animal proteins are ideal because they are utilized much more efficiently by the body (ie more anabolic) than plant based protein.

Bone broth and collagen are highly beneficial proteins due to their unique amino acid profile, balancing out the amino acids found in muscle meats and other proteins. Adding collagen to your diet is an easy hack to increase your daily protein intake.

The best fats are the stable fats, including saturated or monounsaturated fats, which support a high metabolism and proper carb oxidation. Coconut oil is particularly useful due to its high concentration of medium chain fats (MCTs), which the body can rapidly absorb and use for energy. PUFAs are most susceptible to oxidation (ie breakdown), poisoning the metabolic systems.

In the context of eating for energy, maintaining adequate blood sugar is paramount. Intermittent fasting can be harmful by lowering blood sugar and initiating a biological stress response. Eating 3 regular balanced meals a day (like we have for hundreds of years) or more solves that problem.

3. Nutrient-Dense

Some nutrient-dense foods:

• 🥛 (Raw) dairy: calcium, magnesium, trace minerals, fat-soluble vitamins ADK
• 🥚 Eggs: choline, vitamin A, vitamin K2, selenium, B vitamins
• 🫀 Organ meats, especially liver: vitamin A, B vitamins, zinc, trace minerals
• 🦪 Seafood, especially oysters: zinc, copper, iodine, trace minerals
• 🍊 Orange juice and fruit: vitamin C, potassium, trace minerals
• 🥬 Cooked leafy greens: calcium, magnesium

Beyond macronutrients, our diets need to provide our bodies the required micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies create metabolic bottlenecks, preventing our bodies from functioning optimally.

Most people just think about food groups and macros. But you should also start thinking about eating particular foods for their micronutrient density.

Supplements are helpful and often necessary, but strive to fill as much of your nutritional needs as possible through your diet. The quality and bio-availability of nutrients in food is superior than the refined nutrients in supplements. Liver and oysters are some of the most nutrient dense foods, better than any supplement you could buy.

Animal foods are generally far more nutrient-dense than plant foods, with more bio-available nutrients, especially in the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.

There is no reason to believe that vegetables are somehow healthier for you than animal foods. And vegetables can be difficult to digest, as we will cover next.

Dairy is unique in its high concentration of calcium, among other things. Calcium helps to balance the high amount of phosphates in meats, grains, and vegetables. An optimal Ca:P (calcium-to-phosphorus) ratio is anti-stress and improves the metabolic function of the system. It’s hard to fill your daily calcium needs without dairy. If you don’t eat dairy, consider calcium supplements.

Cravings typically come from a physiological need for something that’s missing, including both macro and micronutrients. When you aren’t restricted by diet rules, you can actually follow your cravings to optimize your nutrition and increase your biological energy.

4. Gut Supportive

Includes:

• 🫘 Limit hard to digest foods (ie “birdfood”): improperly prepared grains, beans, nuts/seeds
• 🥘 Cooking food helps digestion, especially vegetables
• 🥕Anti-septic fibers to bind toxins: raw carrot, cooked mushrooms, oat bran, fiber
• 🦴 Bone broth, collagen, gelatin: improves gut lining and protein assimilation
• 🍜 Simple meals with whole ingredients
• 🍕 Avoiding food intolerances

Digestive problems are one of the biggest obstacles to optimal nutrition. Many people hop from diet and diet in an attempt to solve their digestive issues. Even one food that you react badly to can throw off your digestion and prevent results.

If you are having digestive problems, you should always prioritize fixing that first.

Our digestive tract is the center of our entire physiology, responsible for breaking down and absorbing our food. When our gut is dysfunctional, our food is malabsorbed, leading to nutritional deficiencies and toxemia that can perpetuate systemic inflammation.

Good Digestion → Less Inflammation + Greater Absorption → Higher Metabolism

So we need to eat specific foods that support our gut and avoid foods that don’t.

Besides the toxic foods that we discussed above, limit difficult to digest foods, like certain grains, beans, nuts/seeds, and raw vegetables.

Grains, beans, nuts/seeds contain enzyme inhibitors like phytic acids that impair digestion. They need to be prepared properly, via soaking or sprouting, or simply avoided. The safest, most digestible grains are white rice, oats, nixtamalized corn (masa harina), and sourdough.

Fiber, found in high amounts in vegetables, acts as a binder for toxins in the gut, aiding in their removal. But fiber can often perpetuate digestive issues by feeding bad bacteria, leading to endotoxin. Adequate cooking mitigates this risk, but some do better with less vegetables, at least temporarily. There are functional fibers that are well tolerated by most: raw carrot, cooked mushrooms, oat bran, and bamboo shoots.

The amino acids found in bone broth and collagen are protective of the gut lining and aid in protein digestion.

Sometimes, just eating simpler meals with less ingredients can significantly improve gut function. Your meals do not have to be complex to be healthy.

Finally, food intolerances represent foods that certain individuals cannot digest appropriately. Even high quality foods that would otherwise be health-giving can wreck havoc on someone whose intolerant to it. Identifying and avoiding your food intolerances can be the missing piece when designing your Perfect Personal Diet.

Final Thoughts:

At the end of the day, this guide is to help you return to common-sense, normal eating. It’s about de-conditioning you from the black and white thinking of diet rules to a more intuitive, practical relationship with food.

Opposed to diet dogmas that demand perfect compliance, nutrition is better understood as a self-experiment to improve your health and increase your potential. These principles are simply a framework to do that.

So play around with this. Identify foods that may be impacting your digestion. Experiment with more protein or more carbs. Go out of your way to incorporate nutrient-dense foods. Make more homemade food and move away from packages.

Most importantly, find out for yourself whether these principles hold up in your own experience, and throw anything out that doesn’t work for you personally.

Your Personal Perfect Diet will develop naturally over time. And then you can drop it all together.

It’s actually really straightforward.

------------------------------------------------------------

Learn more and contact Dr. Alex Orton at havenholistichealth.com