What about a plant-based diet?

Short answer: It's great, but I also happen to believe that meat is made out of plants and you should eat plenty of it. Also, eat lots of pre-meat plants for sub-micronutrients and fiber.

Longer answer... it depends what you mean by “plant-based”:

• Plant-only? I'm against it.
• Plants making up more than half your calories? That would probably be a whole lot more plants than you're thinking.
• Plants making up a significant portion of what you eat, and usually most of your plate? Love it.

While some plants can actually cause health/digestive issues in some cases, generally speaking they have a ton of benefits that I break into two categories:

1) Micronutrients
- Plants of different colors and types provide a wide variety of vitamins and minerals that are essential for us. This is actually a less important benefit of plants, in my opinion, because animals can eat plants and then fill their muscles and fat with all of those vitamins and minerals. This is why well-sourced meats provide an incredibly dense and varied profile of vitamins and minerals. You can meet (or meat) most or all of your micronutritional needs with proper meat intake, but that's probably something you are not doing, so keep eating lots of plants, too.

2) Sub-micronutrients and fiber
- "Phytochemicals" is a more accurate term than "sub-micronutrients," but I find it helpful to imagine them as the third level of nutrients, i.e. macro, micro, sub-micro. A short list of the potential benefits of phytochemicals includes:

• reducing inflammation
• preventing platelet aggregation (clotting)
• lowering blood pressure
• protecting against exercise-induced oxidative stress
• increasing insulin sensitivity
• reducing cholesterol
• promising effects against many terminal diseases

Some of the thousands phytochemicals that you might have heard of include curcumin, resveratrol, or lycopene.

These phytochemicals, plus the fiber offered by whole plants, seem to be of great benefit when ingested by humans. And from what I can see, it's something we miss out on when we skimp on plants.

Sorry to any upset carnivores—I think your dietary approach would be perfect if you would just include a bunch of plants.

NOTE: I understand carnivores have a long list of additional arguments about why we should stop eating plants and why we don’t need them, but preemptively responding to all of these arguments was not the point of this brief article.

Having said all of that, I have worked with both carnivores and vegans that have good reasons for what they are doing, even if it’s just personal. But for most people, I help them develop a diet rich in a variety of foods to achieve their health and fitness goals. Small, sustainable changes moving in the right direction is the key. Too much change, too many rules, forbidden foods, fad diets, and such things only result in frustration and failure. If you are interested in an online health and fitness coach to help you slowly and surely build habits in an easy way, feel free to read more about my program here or to apply for a consultation here.