What Should I Actually Eat?

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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 Doctor Mark Hyman, and each week, we're gonna 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 and agency than you realize.

I'm glad you're here.

Christine from Pennsylvania
Hi, Doctor Hyman. This is Christine from Pennsylvania, and I really wanna 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?

Dr. Mark Hyman
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 homogenous 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 on 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 would say don't let your ideology run over your biology, which a lot of people do. I see the old, 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 gonna answer the top questions that we get about diet. We're gonna hopefully provide some clarity for people feeling overwhelmed by all these conflicting advice. And we're gonna 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 eat a can of tomatoes, that's processed food, but it's actually something you can recognize. A can of 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 a 140,000, as some people say, 3,000,000 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 then curcumin, which is the molecule in there, is anti inflammatory. That's food as medicine.

You might be told to eat broccoli because there's molecules in there that help with detoxification, like sulforaphane, and they've been shown to actually prevent cancer. So you really understand food is medicine. Everything you put in your body is a drug and it's gonna 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 to different diets. So really important. 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 of starch and carbohydrate, this is gonna screw up your blood sugar and blood sugar metabolism. 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 this whole field of metabolic psychiatry where they put people on a keto diet and cure schizophrenia or bipolar disease using that approach. 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, they're the real issue. And it's 60% of our diet. It's 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 those are things we should be eating. The next is 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 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 sayings. Like, if your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it, you know, probably don't eat it.

But what's a Lunchable or a Go Gurt? She probably eat that or a Pop Tart. Didn't know what that was. Right? Next, let's kinda get into some of the diets and the pitfalls, the benefits, who thrives on it, who's 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 one diabetics back before we had insulin because it basically helped them stay alive. It's what we used to treat epilepsy when no drugs would work. So it's been using medicine for a long time, but now it's getting a lot more play as something that can reverse diabetes. They can help with mental health issues.

There's whole fields of metabolic psychiatry now that focus on this. And amazingly, when you eat a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet, it shifts your body from burning sugar to burning fat for fuel. So 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 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 into stored fat for energy. It helps you lose weight. It it just it's great for dementia, diabetes, or cancer, or mental health issues. It's quite 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, nuts, seeds, olive oil, good quality protein, pasture raised eggs, fish that's clean, poultry, hopefully pasture raised organic grass fed meat. All these things are great. Nonstarchy veggies, you gotta be can eat those like broccoli, spinach, you know, greens, asparagus, whatever. You can have some berries, like a little bit of 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. This is quite amazing. And in in not only weight loss, but significant weight loss.

I mean, you can have weight loss that I think is probably more effective than the GLP ones. This has been shown, for example, in these studies by Virta Health, which uses a keto diet for type two diabetes. And it's it's very powerful. It'll lower 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 two, even type one, it can be very helpful if you know how to manage it. PCOS, which is a condition that women get that cause infertility and weight gain, abnormal periods, and heavy bleeding, and and acne, high testosterone, and very effective prediabetes, diabetes, brain fog, cognitive issues, dementia. We've used it in autism. We've it in Alzheimer's. We use it in depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, cancer therapies.

I mean, it's it's quite amazing. Doctor. Siddhartha Mukherjee, who wrote The Emperor of All Maladies, is 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 eating too much dairy or not a fiber or other issues. So I think I'd be careful to 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 we we we show what that's like in my practice, Delta Wellness Center, and we teach people about it.

And you can also learn about it on our on our website. We 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 when you go keto, what happens is you 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, get electric light imbalances, you can feel a little like dehydrated and achy like the keto flu. But you you can mitigate that by taking electrolytes, by drinking a lot of water, and that'll really help. But you can get, you know, these things if you're if you're not working, you might be feeling tired, you might be constipated, you might have sleep issues, hormone issues. So just kinda 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 severe bipolar disease and your body responds really well, you probably don't wanna go back to doing what you're doing.

So it's really a great reset for short term metabolic reset. It 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 it's very helpful for controlling a lot of issues. One of the questions that came up with listeners who 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 cyclical keto or modified keto rather than strict long term keto. And if you no one else is helping, well, you'll have more energy, less cravings, improved cycles, reduced belly fat. But if it's hurting you, you also know because 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 four to twelve weeks is where you often will see the most benefit.

But for example, if you're type two diabetic, you want to be probably keto until your diabetes refers, and then you can add in more carbohydrates when you're more and better, but they're 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, gut 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 the time with some whole food carbs like sweet potatoes, fruit, squash, beans. That's kind of what I do. I 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 and but I will add a lot of sweet potatoes or some fruit, things like that. And just 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, irritable bowel, and you can, you know, do other fats like avocados, olives, olive oil, coconut products, nuts and seeds, eggs, fatty fish, fatty meats, nonstarchy 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're hunters and gatherers. We didn't grow grains. We didn't have beans.

We didn't have a lot of the starches. We did we did have roots. We had, you know I went to the Hadza 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 starchy 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 and these are foods that your body is naturally designed to digest, to thrive on, and it avoids all of, you know, 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 oil, coconut, herbs and spices.

The things you're gonna avoid are obviously all the processed, ultra processed foods, 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, lot of the industrial seed oils, I don't think are are great to eat because they're mostly oxidized. If you can get the XPELLER 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 it reduces inflammation, it supports gut healing, helps balance your blood sugar, helps energy, helps with autoimmune issues, as I mentioned, and metabolic issues. So can be very helpful for blood sugar. I feel like, oh, is paleo too restrictive? Well, if you if you wanna eat junk food, yeah. But it basically removes mostly 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 blood sugar issues, they do well on paleo. And the people who are doing it wrong may may be eating too much meat, not enough veggies, overdoing paleo treats as well. So this is simple whole food that's anti inflammatory. Alright.

What about vegan? It's about two percent of the population, although they have probably outsized marketing changes. Somehow the world believes that a vegan diet is the most healthy diet. Unfortunately, that's not true. It can be a 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. You if you are consistently vegan and you don't take the right supplements, you will become deficient in iron, in many nutrients that that you need that to thrive. And you can be low on iodine, you can be low on iron, you can be low on b twelve, you can be low on omega three fats, so you want to be really careful. What do you eat if you're a vegan?

Well, it's just plant food. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, legumes, know, lentils, chickpeas, black beans, nuts and seeds, plant based oils, herbs, spices, plant based protein powders. You don't eat meat, you don't eat poultry, you don't eat fish, don't eat seafood, you don't eat eggs, you don't eat dairy. And honey, some of you are gonna still eat honey because bees make it, I guess. And there's a lot of reasons people can be bee.

It can be ethical, and I can't argue with that if you philosophically believe that you you don't want to hurt animals. I 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, more anywhere, and you're doing it at scale, you're using machines, you're killing the soil, you're using combines to to pick things, and you're killing a lot of animals. You're killing rodents.

You're killing birds. You're killing, obviously, insects. You're killing all kinds of of of animals. In fact, there's about 7,000,000,000 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 it in my book Food Fix, and I encourage you to check out the new 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 kinda 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 or feedlot farming or 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 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 is made from soy, and industrial soy specifically, which is, you know, GMO soy, pesticides, herbicides, all that stuff, versus a regeneratively raised burger, which means you grow the animal in a way that's as close to mimicking nature as possible, moving them around from different fields and, you know, basically, almost wilding them. Tell me how do you 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 regenerated 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 it's it's there's ways of raising these animals that can be done at scale in a way that that's very, very important. Now if you're vegan, I encourage you to do functional health lab because you can be deficient in a lot of nutrients that we check, including b twelve, which is the most common, iron, because plant based irons are really hard to absorb, omega three 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. You know, a lot a lot of things that are really important, low in vitamin D. And and, you know, vitamin D comes from things like fatty fish or the sun, which can you know, if you're in the sun, you'll get it.

They often can be low in protein and and low in muscle mass, which is a problem, and low in choline. And these are all important nutrients for 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 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 efficient in these in these people, which is b twelve, iron, omega three, zinc, protein, choline, 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 spikes, And they often are having to rely on ultra processed vegan junk food, which is not good. And it's hard to to go out and be in the world and be a vegan.

When you do your function health labs, you're gonna check a lot of the things that you need to know. You know, your iron status, your omega three status, your b vitamin status, b twelve status. You can look at zinc. You can look at, you know, vitamin a and a of other nutrients that are really important. So the key here is that a plant based diet can work, but only when it's real food and real plants not processed fake food.

And and be aware of what what you need to supplement and make sure you're getting a protein and your muscle mass is good. You want to do DEXA scans. You don't want to be just kind of hoping it's gonna be good for you. And knows how you feel. A lot of people don't feel well.

I had one patient who was was had infertility because she wasn't getting the nutrients she needed, she, you know, was able to actually start eating, you know, 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, lentils, seeds, whole grains, and probably a lot of things like tofu and tempeh, 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 eat a vegan diet compared to an animal based diet or animal diet that a diet that includes animal food, you are not gonna 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 wanna 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 unless you supplement. And you wanna about get about 30 grams of protein per meal and quality protein. And plant proteins have low leucine, 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 gonna grow.

And if you don't have leucine, you're not gonna 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 for athletes or other people needing high high protein, but some of these plant proteins are full of lead and other contaminants, so you really gotta be careful of what you're doing. And they're be full of other added ingredients and weird stuff, so really be careful. And just listen to your body, you know, like, how how are you feeling?

You know, you're tired. Are you tired? Are you weak? You're cravings? Your muscle loss?

Your hair thinning? How are 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. If you're eating whole traditional soy foods, tofu, tempeh, edamame, miso, natto, these are fine. If you're eating like drinking gallon of soy milk a day, that's not normal.

Most people don't do that and never did that historically. And on the industrial soy, also, I would stay away from a lot of industrial hydrolyzed proteins in soy quite harmful and can be can be carcinogenic. In fact, a study of the NIH showed that when you fed animal or 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 soys don't raise estrogen levels.

They can actually help reduce cancer risk in women. There are hormone related cancers, so don't worry about it. They they have something called phytoestrogens or selling estrogen, but they're basically more like blockers. They block the stronger harmful effects of the estrogens 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 foods soy, not processed or 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, I think it's fine. Alright. Now there's a couple more things we're gonna cover. One is the Mediterranean diet, and you hear a lot about this.

It's the most researched diet in the world, but I I wanna kinda do a caveat with that. Because it's the most researched diet in the world, doesn't mean it's the best diet in the world. Now what is a Mediterranean diet? Who knows? Right?

It could be pizza and pasta, or it could be fish and olive oil and vegetables. Right? So countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, love because they have that really delicious food. And 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 would be lots and lots of veggies, lots of good fruit, lots of extra virgin 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 and they do have meat. I mean, I was in Sardinia. They they serve, you know, lots of pork and pig, and they had prosciutto and all kinds of stuff.

So they they do eat that stuff. Red wine is optional. I don't think wine or alcohol is a health food. I think the 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 metronidazole 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 low inflammation, they help with their weight, metabolic health, they their guts better, supports brain health, longevity. So that's it. That said, it's very good, and it's a foundation. But it really is about personalized diets, and it's about understanding what's good for you. You know, 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 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 it's not what we mean when we say the Mediterranean diet.

You wanna be careful. It's a good baseline diet. It's it's sort of not too restrictive. It's quite good, but avoid refined flours. That's key.

And for fine carbs is not good, so you just don't don't go to the bakery, basically. Alright. Let's jump into one of my favorite parts of these ask Mark anything episodes. Rapid fire questions. These are diet questions I hear every day.

We're gonna hit them quick, clear, and straight to the point. No overthinking, no confusion, just real practical answers to 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 in starch and 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, provides food for the microbiome. Next question. Do we really need as much protein as the Internet makes us think?

It depends. If you're a bodybuilder, you don't think lots of waste, and you're very active, you need more protein. If you're older, you need more protein. If you're younger, you may not need as much in terms of your midlife. 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 point seven to one gram per pound of ideal body weight. And and that is kind of what most people should shoot for. It's above what 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 what I'm talking about are vegetables. Broccoli is a carb. Asparagus is a carb. Artichoke's a carb.

These are all carbs. They're made from, you know, structure of of carbohydrates of glucose molecules, and and they are fine to eat. But but they're in a matrix that's incredibly fibrous. It has lots of nutrients that's slowly absorbed. So it's not carbs themselves are the enemy.

It's in it's you know, carbs are gonna be the majority of your diet by volume, not by not by calorie content. Right? Because fats are more calorie dense, but they are are an important part of your diet. And by the way, you don't need them for life. You know, you do need the essential amino acids.

You need the 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 that's the enemy. Is it okay to have a regular cheat day? I I wouldn't say have a cheat day.

I'd say occasionally cheat treat. You You know? Don't wanna spend a whole day just stuffing yourself with horrible food and think that's okay. It's just not okay. But if you wanna 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. I mean, well, you know, switch your diets as summer comes, they eat more lightly, and once you eat more heavily.

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 do your labs show? Does your labs show that you're getting better or not? You can check your labs with Function Health. Just go to functionhealth.com, and you can see. But, you you know, I always say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body.

Alright. Next is how do we know which diet is right for you? Now that we've cleared up some of the biggest myths, I wanna 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? Are your cravings down? Are you pooping regularly?

Is your mood more stable? Is your sleep better? Do your labs improve? 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 ten 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 ten day detox at doctorhymen.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 wanna keep these episodes as relevant and useful as possible.

So tell me, what do you wanna 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.

Dr. Mark Hyman
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 Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor 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 Doctor 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 guests' 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 ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.

It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed health care 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.