Dietary views of the elephant

Today’s multitude of weight loss diets, each claiming to be the best, is similar to the Indian story of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each touches a different part such as a leg or a tusk. Each man feels part of the elephant, and believes he understands the whole elephant.

In the Buddhist version of the tale the men can’t agree with one another and come to blows over what an elephant is. Buddha compares them to preachers and scholars who stubbornly stick to their own narrow views:

1. O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
   

2. For preacher and monk the honored name!
   

3. For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
   

4. Such folk see only one side of a thing.
   

In the Jain version a wise man explains to them: "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned..." illustrating the ‘manysidedness’ or manifold multidimensional nature of truth.

The story is used to indicate that reality is viewed differently depending on one's perspective, suggesting that what seems an absolute truth from one angle may be relative due to the deceptive nature of partial truths – while one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the whole truth. Denying something you cannot perceive merely reveals a perceptual limitation.

"It is impossible to properly understand an entity consisting of infinite properties without the method of modal description consisting of all viewpoints, since it will otherwise lead to a situation of seizing mere sprouts

(i.e., a superficial, inadequate cognition)."

Mallisena on considering all viewpoints to get a full picture.

"Due to extreme delusion produced on account of a partial viewpoint, the immature deny one aspect and try to establish another. This is the maxim of the blind (men) and the elephant."

Mallisena using the parable to argue that immature people deny various aspects of truth. Deluded by the aspects they do understand, they deny the aspects they don't understand.

“In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.”

John Stuart Mill

A holistic view of the dietary elephant

How do you choose from the bewildering number of weight loss diets? One popular diet website would have you try each diet one at a time until you’ve tried them all before picking one that seems to work best.

This would not only take a long time, it also ends up being a partial approach because you end up following one while ignoring the others, though every healthy diet has something to offer because each is based on a partial truth that needs to be included in a larger integral approach that honors the contributions of each.

Asking which is the best diet presupposes that there is one best diet. What if each diet is the best at what it does? What if the best diet for you is a customized combination of the best diets?

Which is the best diet? All of the above.

An integral approach to diet integrates the partial truths of the various lines of nutritional research, each true but partial, into a unified whole so that every evidence-based dimension of nutrition is included, replacing the multitude of apparently conflicting one-dimensional diets with a multidimensional diet right for you. The result is the most comprehensive integration and customization of healthy weight loss diets in the world.

This integration of the world’s best weight loss diets customized for your various nutritional types can only be done with software, so Santa Fe Way adds the best evidence-based weight loss diets to the best nutritional software through custom programming.

The All-in-One Diet™ integrates the best weight loss diets customized for your metabolic type, endocrine type, blood type, Ayurvedic type, food allergies, digestive intolerances, and vegetarian or cultural preferences.

Diet Santa Fe Style: A holistic systems approach

using multidimensional software.

Your customized eating plan is then used in a different way than the old medical weight loss dieting paradigm:

• Proactively pursue health, fitness, & wellness instead of short-term yo-yo dieting and harmful self-deprivation.

• Satisfy your appetite with real fresh whole food instead of starving yourself or eating manufactured food.

• Get back in touch with your appetite instead of counting calories; listen to your body, not arbitrary numbers.

• Speed up your metabolism and create a favorable hormonal environment for smart sustainable weight loss.

Diet Santa Fe Style: The All-in-One Diet™ integrates the best weight loss diets computer customized for your dietary types.

What to Eat

The All-in-One Diet Integrates:

1. 
   

2. Weight Loss Factors*
   

3. • Scores foods by energy density and satiety according to the Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan
   

4.     (Volumetrics was rated highest by Consumer Reports; Jenny Craig recently based their diet on it)1
   

5. • Scores foods by their glucose response according to the Glycemic Index Diet
   

6.     (the South Beach Diet, Nutrisystem, and diabetic diets are based on this)
   

7. • Scores foods based on how they affect your hormones (the Zone Diet is based on this)
   

8. • Increases foods that help prevent or reverse insulin resistance, type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome
   

9.     (The Paleo Diet and diabetes diets are based on this)
   

10. • Increases foods that support healthy thyroid function (the thyroid gland controls metabolism)
    

11. • Increases foods that support healthy pancreatic function (the pancreas controls blood sugar)
    

12. • Increases foods that mildly suppress the appetite naturally
    

13. • Eliminates foods with estrogen-like chemicals that contribute to weight gain (“hormonal disruptors”)
    

14. * Custom programmed by Santa Fe Way.
    

15. 
    

16. Dietary Types
    

17. There are 80,640 permutations/combinations of dietary types!2
    

18. • Your metabolic type (the Metabolic Typing Diet is based on this)3
    

19. • Your endocrine type (Dr. Abravanel’s Body Type Diet is based on this)
    

20. • Your ABO blood type (the Blood Type Diet and Biotype Diet are based on this)4
    

21. • Your Rh blood type (the Blood Type Diet and Biotype Diet are based on this)4
    

22. • Your Ayurvedic type (Ayurvedic diets are based on this)
    

23. • Your Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) type (if recommended by a Doctor of Oriental Medicine)
    

24. • Your gender (there are gender differences in blood type/food allergy correlations)
    

25. • Your age (there are certain foods children should avoid that are ok for adults)
    

26. 
    

27. Customization Variables
    

28. • Your food allergies (such as gluten as in the Gluten Free Diet)5
    

29. • Your digestive intolerances (such as lactose intolerance)
    

30. • Foods that provide nutritional support for up to 32 tissues, glands, or organs
    

31. 
    

32. Optional Vegetarian or Cultural Preferences
    

33. You can exclude any of these categories.
    

34. • No red meat
    

35. • No poultry
    

36. • No fish or seafood
    

37. • No eggs or egg products
    

38. • No dairy foods
    

39. • No non-Kosher foods
    

40. • No non-Muslim foods
    

41. • No non-Hindu foods
    

42. 
    

43. General Health Factors
    

44. Increases:
    

45. • Foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids (Paleo Diet, Omega Plan Diet, South Beach Diet are based on this)
    

46. • Foods high in monounsaturated fat (the principle component of The Mediterranean Diet)
    

47. • Foods high in fiber (a component of the Paleo Diet and Volumetrics Diet)
    

48. • Antioxidant-rich foods (high ORAC foods; recommended by the World Health Organization)
    

49. • Phytosterol-rich foods (based on growing evidence of the benefits of phytosterols)
    

50. • Immune strengthening foods (featured in immune boosting diets)
    

51. • Cancer preventing foods (featured in cancer prevention diets)
    

52. • Detoxifying foods (featured in environmental health diets)
    

53. 
    

54. Decreases:
    

55. • Foods high in saturated fats (the Paleo Diet, American Heart Association Diet, and South Beach Diet)
    

56. • Foods high in sugar (recommended by the World Health Organization, DASH diet, Sugar Busters Diet)
    

57. • Foods high in corn syrup (World Health Organization, DASH diet, and Sugar Busters Diet)
    

58. • Medium glycemic foods (Glycemic Index Diet, Glycemic Load, and diabetes diets)
    

59. • Foods that contain goitrogens that suppress thyroid function (the thyroid gland controls metabolism)
    

60. • Foods high in oxalic acid (oxalates bind with minerals preventing their absorption and causing stones)
    

61. • Foods high in phytic acid (phytates bind with minerals preventing their absorption)
    

62. • Foods with artificial sweeteners (artificial sweeteners can ironically cause weight gain)
    

63. 
    

64. Eliminates:
    

65. • High glycemic foods that make you fat (recommended by the Glycemic Load & Glycemic Index Diet)
    

66. • Foods that contain carcinogens (recommended by the World Health Organization)
    

67. • Foods contaminated with mercury (recommended by the World Health Organization)
    

68. • Foods containing trans-fatty acids (a component of the South Beach Diet)
    

69. • Foods with known toxins (recommended by the World Health Organization)
    

70. • Foods high in heavy metals (recommended by the World Health Organization)
    

71. • Foods with nitrates and nitrites
    

72. • Foods with phenolics and aflatoxins
    

How to Eat

Conscious Eating Integrates:

1. 
   

2. Healthy Eating Practices from Modern Science*
   

3. •Increase your lean/fat ratio
   

4. •Eat a high quality diet
   

5. •Emphasize protein
   

6. •Get your carbs from fresh fibrous fruits and vegetables
   

7. •Avoid starches
   

8. •Graze, don’t gorge
   

9. •Eat before you get hungry
   

10. •Chew well
    

11. •Eat slowly
    

12. •Stop just before you’re full
    

13. •Drink filtered water
    

14. •Drink plenty of water
    

15. •Drink frequently
    

16. •Avoid cold fluids with meals which inhibits digestion
    

17. * Summarized by Jeff Nailen based on research and experience in healthy weight management.
    

18. 
    

19. Intuitive Eating Practices from Western Psychology*
    

20. • Reject the Diet/Starvation Mentality.
    

21. • Honor Your Hunger. Feed your body to prevent overeating.
    

22. • Make Peace with Food. No more deprivation, cravings, bingeing, guilt.
    

23. • Challenge the ‘Food Police.’ Stop feeling guilty for nourishing your body.
    

24. • Feel Your Fullness. Learn to recognize when you are full and it’s time to stop eating.
    

25. • Discover the Satisfaction Factor. “If you don’t love it, don’t eat it, and if you love it, savor it.”
    

26. • Cope with Your Emotions without Using Food. Resolve your emotional issues without using food.
    

27. • Respect Your Body. Honor your body while improving it. Don’t be overly critical of your body.
    

28. • Exercise — Feel the Difference. Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel good, enjoy it.
    

29. • Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition. Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds
    

30. while making you feel good. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.
    

31. * Adapted from Tribole, Evelyn; Resch, Elyse. Intuitive Eating, 3rd Edition, 2012. St. Martin's Press.
    

32. 
    

33. Mindful Eating Practices from Buddhist Psychology*
    

34. • Allow yourself to become aware of the positive nurturing opportunities that are available through food.
    

35. • Choose to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses.
    

36. • Acknowledge responses to food (like, neutral or dislike) without judgment.
    

37. • Learn to be aware of hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin eating and to stop eating.
    

38. • Acknowledge that there is no right or wrong way to eat but varying degrees of awareness.
    

39. • Accept and honor that your eating experiences are unique.
    

40. • Direct awareness to all aspects of food and eating on a moment-by-moment basis.
    

41. • Honor the interconnection of earth, living beings, and cultural practices and the impact of choices.
    

42. * Adapted from The Center for Mindful Eating 2013.
    

43. 
    

44. Holistic Eating Practices from Postmodern Systems Thinking*
    

45. 
    

46. Principles
    

47. •Realize you are an open, complex, adaptive, dynamic, growing, autopoietic (self-organizing) living system in relational exchange with your physical, psychological, social, cultural environment, affecting while being affected by it in bi-directional causation. You have awareness, free will, willpower, a conscience.
    

48. •Enhance your awareness, free will, willpower, and conscience through regular exercise and practice.
    

49. •Manifest purpose from the inside out:  thoughts > words > actions > practices > habits > lifestyle > body
    

50. Create cognitive dissonance: Lead the will with strong vivid goals to create strong willpower.
    

51. Strengthen willpower with small private victories to give you confidence for bigger public goals.
    

52. Create positive feedback loops to reward and reinforce successful goal behavior.
    

53. Program the subconscious by habituating healthy practices into automatic habits.
    

54. Create a whole network of reinforcing healthy habits to create a healthy lifestyle.
    

55. Create a healthy lifestyle to create a healthy body and sound mind.
    

56. •Be aware of the two control systems and four energetic subsystems of the bodymind:
    

57. Nervous system (consciousness)
    

58. Endocrine system (hormones)
    

59. The four metabolic subsystems that they control:
    

60. The energy intake subsystem (inflow/input: ‘calories in’ or hunger and nutrition)
    

61. The energy metabolism and regulation subsystem (throughput: transformation)
    

62. The energy storage subsystem (throughput: energy stock/fat storage dynamics)
    

63. The energy expenditure subsystem (outflow/output: ‘calories out’ or activity)
    

64. •Flow with, don’t fight your body: Work in harmony with your nature instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature. Not mind over matter but mind in matter; not mind over body but mind in body.
    

65. •Create a favorable hormonal environment and a faster metabolism for smart sustainable fat loss.
    

66. •Use smart sustainable standards for evaluating options and adopting practices:
    

67. Topical: Is it hormonally/metabolically smart? Will it speed up my metabolism or slow it down?
    

68. Temporal: Is it emotionally/psychologically sustainable over time? Is it a long-term practice/solution?
    

69. •Make the journey enjoyable so it’s sustainable: Long-term sustainability over short-term quick-fixes.
    

70. 
    

71. Practices
    

72. •Proactively pursue purposeful wellness not short-term yo-yo dieting and self-deprivation; proactive sustainable lifestyle practices over reactive medical interventions – holistic solutions over partial patches.
    

73. •Prevent getting too tired or hungry to make wise choices. Willpower is diminished when we are tired and/or hungry. Self-deprivation of sleep or nourishment is stressful on the body and weakens the will.
    

74. •Emphasize sustainability: Avoid short-term counter-productive self-deprivation of sleep or food.
    

75. •Choose real natural whole food over processed manufactured food products made in factories.
    

76. •Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full: Your appetite is nature’s barometer for letting you know how much to eat. It’s the product of almost 8 million years of hominin evolution. We have become dissociated from our own appetite and fullness signals from years of calorie counting. Get back in touch with it and learn to listen to it. Stop counting external calorie estimates and conforming to arbitrary guidelines. Listen to your own body and enjoy eating healthy again!
    

77. •Exercise healthy discipline to be aware of your hunger and fullness signals and the discipline to honor them. Unhealthy ‘discipline’ ignores these signals which causes dissociation from or lack of awareness of the body’s own feedback mechanisms. It's these very feedback mechanisms that allowed us to adapt to long winters, ice ages, famines, droughts, etc., by storing energy. Now we must adapt to an abundance of food and lower levels of activity.
    

78. •Honor your appetite instead of ignoring or repressing it.
    

79. •Get back in touch with your appetite with mindful conscious eating rather than mindless calorie counting.
    

80. •Count on your hunger instead of counting calories; listen to your body, not arbitrary caloric estimates.
    

81. •Satisfy your appetite by nourishing your body with real fresh whole food instead of starving it.
    

82. •Eat at regular intervals at about the same times each day to keep blood sugar and insulin stable.
    

83. •Eat for energy as well as taste; discover the foods that give you energy and avoid energy robbers.
    

84. •Eat in peace for better body awareness and digestion.
    

85. •Get back in touch with fullness: Learn to honor your body’s satiety signals that it has had enough to eat.
    

86. •Allow yourself to satisfy your appetite: This makes it easier to stop eating when you’re full.
    

87. •Practice getting back in touch with your appetite and fullness. Conscious eating practices:
    

88. Plan ahead, don’t let yourself get hungry which slows the metabolism and leads to poor choices.
    

89. Drink a glass of water before each meal: This is proven to contribute to low calorie density eating.
    

90. Eat when you’re hungry: Tune in to your hunger & eat slowly to satisfy your appetite with healthy food.
    

91. Stop when you’re full and you’ve satisfied your appetite: Don’t keep eating out of habit or taste.
    

92. Don’t starve or stuff yourself, avoid both extremes!
    

93. Take your smart supplements after your meals, they will help you lose weight and stay healthy.
    

94. Don’t become a Nutrition Nazi: These are merely best practices, not rigid rules!
    

95. * Developed by Jeff Nailen based on research and application of systems thinking to weight management.
    

96. 
    

Eat different in The City Different

Which is the best diet? What if each diet is the best at what it does? What if the best diet for you is a combo of low Glycemic, low Volumetrics, high fiber, high omega-3, heart healthy, cancer preventing, nutrient-dense foods that are also compatible with your various dietary types?

The idea that just one of these diets is ‘best’ for everyone is mass-production Industrial Age thinking. Why choose just one of these great diets when you can have them all? We are now in the Information Age. Computer software can slice and dice the variables and integrate or synthesize their partial truths into a whole complete diet customized for you.

When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

Max Planck

If you are not motivated by the conventional medical weight loss starvation and stomach stapling approach, then you have a clear alternative: The All-in-One Diet™ is the first multi-diet integrating the best evidence-based weight loss diets computer customized for your metabolic type, endocrine type, blood type, Ayurvedic type, TCM type, food allergies, digestive intolerances, and your vegetarian or cultural preferences.

The ideal diet

Making dietary recommendations is perhaps the trickiest aspect of a healthy weight loss program, but one of the most crucial. It’s tricky for several reasons, not the least of which is that we form intimate relationships with food because of the way food affects neurotransmitters in the brain, the so-called ‘food-mood’ connection, so that some people become emotionally addicted to certain foods that become comfort foods eaten especially under emotional stress in what is commonly called emotional eating.

People also often develop very strong belief systems about diet that can become rigid ideologies. These emotional addictions and intellectual fixations can lock people into patterns of behavior that lead to imbalance and illness because they tend to narrow the diet too restrictively thereby robbing them of a rich varied diet that human beings thrive on. This can be avoided if we broaden our view to include more information from more sources.

There is much confusion regarding the ideal diet. One reason is that knowledge in the field of nutrition is doubling every five years, and that knowledge is exploding in many directions simultaneously. As the field progresses and specialization sharpens, nutritionists become increasingly specialized in their own area of research sometimes at the expense of their knowledge of the good work being done by other researchers. The best way to keep up with it and apply it to people with different needs and goals is with an inclusive epistemological approach and multidimensional software.

Food-based diets

One result of this age of specialization we are living in is the tendency of some researchers to build an entire dietary system around a single discovery regarding a single nutrient, factor, or dimension of diet to the exclusion of the accumulated store of knowledge that their new discovery builds upon as well as new discoveries by other researchers. There are entire diets based on a single truth that are inherently imbalanced because they ignore the other dimensions or partial truths discovered by other researchers.

We have entire diets based on the benefits of a high carbohydrate diet (the Pritikin and similar diets), the benefits of low-glycemic index carbohydrates, the benefits of a high fiber diet, the benefits of a high protein diet (Protein Power, Atkins, and similar diets), the benefits of foods containing the ‘good’ fats (the Omega Plan and Mediterranean Diet), the affect that certain foods have on our neurotransmitters (‘food/mood’ diets), the hormonal/eicosanoidal affects of foods (the Zone Diet), and the benefits certain foods possess in preventing degenerative diseases (heart disease and cancer prevention diets).

In addition, there are entire diets based on the avoidance of a single factor that is thought or known to be potentially harmful such as no- or low-cholesterol diets, no- or low-saturated fat diets, no- or low-fat diets, no- or low-sodium diets, no- or low-oxalate diets, no- or low-phytate diets, no- or low-lactose diets, no- or low-gluten diets, etc.

There are also a number of diets designed to achieve certain goals such as diets designed to lose weight, diets designed to gain weight, macrobiotic diets, and a host of other temporary conditional diets that may have beneficial therapeutic value to alleviate certain problems at certain times, but generally don’t make for healthy long-term maintenance or lifestyle diets.

One man's meat is another man's poison.

Lucretius

Person-based diets

All the diets above might be considered ‘food-centered’ diets because the attention of the diet is centered on the foods or nutrients ingested or avoided. A recent welcome development is the customization of diets based on our biochemical individuality, acknowledging the wide variation among individuals, which design diets according to individual needs in contrast to recommending the same diet for everyone because it happened to work for the author of the diet book.

These might be called ‘person-centered’ or ‘person-based’ diets, in that they’re based on the person consuming the foods. There have been several criteria from several traditions proposed as bases for customizing diets. There are several typologies in the Western tradition: metabolic type, endocrine type, body type, blood type, as well as Ayurvedic types from Indian Medicine and elemental types from Traditional Chinese Medicine.

While each of these systems is based on a line of evidence, a diet based on just one of any of these factors alone is partial and could lead to imbalances. For example, a ‘blood-type’ diet will ensure that you avoid the harmful lectins for your blood type, which is good, but again, this is one-dimensional as it doesn’t address all the other factors one should look at in designing a sound, healthy diet.

This relatively new information about the lectins found in foods is a great contribution in building a healthy customized diet, but does not negate other discoveries about oxalates or phytates in foods, nor the glycemic index of foods, nor the energy density of food, nor the different needs of the six metabolic types, etc. These diets don’t conflict with each other because they apply to different dimensions of nutrition and are integrated into a larger inclusive diet that honors each of these discoveries.

Diet Santa Fe Style: The All-in-One Diet™

Santa Fe Way uses these person-based typologies within the context of the entire body of nutritional knowledge, including the various food-based approaches mentioned above. The approach is integral with an emphasis on applying the recommendations of evidence-based diets while avoiding fads, pseudoscience, and unproven ideas lacking evidence. It’s evidence-based but includes evidence from all sources and traditions East & West, premodern, modern, and postmodern, not just modern Western science which is a 400-year old paradigm.

The All-in-One Diet™ is a multidimensional holistic systems or integral approach that integrates nutritional research from every tradition: modern Western science, postmodern systems holism, Indian Ayurvedic science, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's radically inclusive because it integrates every line of dietary research for which there is falsifiable evidence created by communities of scholars. These dimensions are integrated by the software custom programmed by Santa Fe Way to include all the healthy weight loss diets for which there is solid evidence.

The epistemology and philosophy of science behind this approach, including while transcending the dietary dimension, is explained in detail here: Compare the Best Weight Loss Plans in Santa Fe

The All-in-One Diet™ Story

Everybody is right. Everybody has a grain of truth that has to be included ... No human mind can produce 100% error. Or, we might joke, nobody’s smart enough to be wrong all the time. Therefore, every single major approach to human knowledge has some degree of truth, and the integral approach insists upon honoring those truths. The tricky part then is how they all fit together, and that’s where the game gets interesting. But it’s an entirely different kind of game to play. Usually if you go to school in philosophy, or go to school in psychology, or in any of the disciplines – if you take up a school of psychotherapy, for example, they’ll spend a great deal of time telling you why the other schools of thought are mistaken ... We don’t take that approach. For us, every single approach has to have some grain of truth, and so now you’re asking a different question and you’re playing a different game, and the game here is: how do they all fit together into a larger coherent structure that honors all these important insights?

Ken Wilber

The same reducing narrowing tendency Wilber describes occurs in the empirical sciences due to the unconscious assumptions and cognitive biases of reductionistic classical science. We see it in the field of nutrition: diet books written by highly qualified nutritionists, as well as physicians venturing outside of their expertise in disease into the field of nutrition, who tend to think they’ve discovered the most important dimension for losing weight – while ignoring or downplaying other lines of research by other researchers.

Line absolutism

This is an example of line absolutism whereby one line of research or one dimension of reality illuminated by it is believed to be the only real or the only true or important aspect or dimension of nutrition to the exclusion of others which are deemed wrong, bad, or not real. Absolutism results in excluding, rejecting, dismissing other aspects of nutrition and is therefore faulty thinking from the perspective of inclusive network logic and systems holism.

This is one of the main reasons I started my holistic weight loss practice: after gaining weight while working long hours on Capitol Hill I read all the latest diet books in grad school to get a handle on my weight while getting back in shape. I was amused at how diet book authors each tend to think they’ve found the holy grail of weight loss. They typically build an entire diet around a single dimension of nutrition while ignoring the others. What’s wrong with this picture? We end up with a bunch of partial approaches and we go about trying to integrate their recommendations which takes a lot of time.

The science of the whole – “All of the above”

I intuited that each of the healthy diets makes a valuable contribution, has a grain of truth, and that their contributions need to be integrated into a larger whole that honors them all. Shouldn’t we eat foods low on the Glycemic Index as well as foods low on the Volumetrics Index as well as foods that have favorable affects on our hormones since each helps us lose weight?

Shouldn’t these foods also be compatible with our metabolic type as well as our endocrine type as well as our blood type as well as our Ayurvedic type since eating foods compatible with our various types helps us lose weight faster than a one-size-fits-all diet? Shouldn’t they also be heart-healthy and reduce our risks for cancer and be low in toxins so we lose weight in a healthy way? Aren’t each of these diets important for different reasons?

Instead of picking the ‘best’ one, if there is such a thing, I wanted to use all of them. So I started integrating them systematically for myself, and then for family and friends, and eventually for clients. Introduced in 1997, the original BioFit Diet integrated 11 dietary dimensions into a multidimensional diet:

Food-based General Dietary Factors good for everyone:

• The Paleolithic Diet (nutritional anthropology, evolutionary

   medicine)

• The Food/Mood Diet (how foods affect brain neurotransmitters)

• The Zone Diet (based on how foods affect our hormones)

• The Glycemic Index Diet (how foods affect blood glucose levels)

• The High Fiber Diet (makes you feel full, reduces calories eaten)

• The Mediterranean Diet (known to be heart-healthy)

• The Sports Nutrition Diet (used by athletes for sports performance)

Person-based Customization Variables according to types:

• The Metabolic Typing Diet

• The Blood Type Diet

• The Body Type Diet

• The Food Allergy Diet

The Volumetrics Weight Control Plan was added later for a total of 12 integrated components. The four customization or typological variables formed a multidimensional matrix providing 4,140 permutations for a highly customized diet. In those days the integration was done manually in a word processor and took two days to customize a diet! I longed to add other typologies to the matrix, such as Ayurvedic types and Traditional Chinese Medicine types, but it would have been too unwieldy to do manually.

Inclusive methodology

Six years later I discovered Ken Wilber’s integral framework for methodical comprehensive integration, a rigorous epistemological foundation for such a massive integration project. This was a turning point because it provided a framework for fleshing out my intuition about the need to integrate all these approaches to diet in a systematic and responsible way.

An evolutionary, integral epistemology does just that: it makes room for the findings of each of these approaches in a larger map or model of human nutrition, excluding no legitimate approach or dimension of total experience, only their exclusive claims to absoluteness. This is the methodology for the integration. I now had my epistemology.

The word integral means comprehensive, inclusive, nonmarginalizing, embracing. Integral approaches to any field attempt to be exactly that – to include as many perspectives, styles, and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of the topic. In a certain sense, integral approaches are "meta-paradigms," or ways to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching.

Ken Wilber

Foreword, in Frank Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought As Passion

Multidimensional software

Six years after that I discovered and licensed state-of-the-art nutritional software with a multidimensional database and cross-interference logic to ensure compatibility among integrated components that could handle this massive multidimensional integration. It already had the general nutritional dimensions and typologies included.

I have custom programmed it to also include the best weight loss diets as well as my own extensive research on the hormonal affects of foods and nutrients, especially on testosterone and estrogen, two key hormones that regulate body fat and belly fat. This is the technology for the integration. I now had my technology.

After custom programming the best nutritional software to include the best weight loss diets as well as the hormonal affects of foods and nutrients and 18 years of experience helping clients lose weight safely and effectively the result is The All-in-One Diet™, what I believe to be the most integrated, most customized weight loss diet in the world because it includes yet transcends all others as components of a multidimensional diet covering all the bases: the world’s first truly integral weight loss diet.

Nutrition Santa Fe Style™

Does Dieting Work?

Well, yes and no. It depends on what’s meant by ‘diet’ and ‘dieting.’ These terms have both qualitative and quantitative dimensions.

Dietary Dimensions: Quality and Quantity

Research indicates that both the quantity or amount as well as the quality or composition of food affects energy and energy storage in the body. Quantity and quality are both important. The old-school belief that it’s merely quantity that counts, variously stated as ‘calories in = calories out’ or ‘a calorie is a calorie’ despite the quality of food is no longer accepted because the evidence doesn’t support it.

The other extreme belief that only quality is important is also dubious. If you eat only the highest quality low-glycemic, low-Volumetrics, etc., foods in quantities exceeding your body’s needs you won’t lose weight and will probably gain. How is the evidence supporting weight loss diets like the Glycemic Index Diet, Volumetrics Diet, The Mediterranean Diet, etc. reconciled with the evidence that dieting doesn’t work found in the no-diet, non-diet, anti-diet approaches such as Intuitive Eating and Mindful Eating?

Say Yes to ‘Diets’ and No to ‘Dieting’

Looking carefully at the research trends it’s becoming clear that dieting, or low-calorie semi-starvation diets, do not work over the long-term (over 5 years) for several reasons. Calorie restriction at odds with natural hunger does not work and is not healthy. The no-diet/non-diet/anti-diet movement is based on this research showing that excessive reduction in the amount or quantity that we eat does not work in the long run. Low calorie starvation diets that tell us how much to eat don’t work.

Qualitative isocaloric diets like the Glycemic Index Diet, Volumetrics Diet, Mediterranean Diet, etc., that recommend improving the quality or composition of our diets without advocating calorie restriction or starvation are the only diets showing long-term healthy weight loss. Qualitative diets that help us make better food choices regarding what to eat seem to work.

Form and Substance, Structure and Content

These apparently opposing approaches can be integrated when it’s realized that they’re not contradictory but complementary: The research-based qualitative diets inform us about what to eat while the research-based Intuitive Eating and Mindful Eating approaches are about how and how much to eat. What to eat is about substance or content, how to eat about its form or structure.

Nutrition Santa Fe Style™: Form and Substance

‘What to eat’ and ‘how to eat’ are inseparably correlative: What to eat without how to eat is unintelligible; how to eat without what to eat is empty. How to eat gives intelligibility to what to eat; what to eat gives content to how to eat. The Intuitive Eating/Mindful Eating non-starvation approach complements qualitative isocaloric diets. Say yes to better quality diets, no to starvation diets; yes to qualitative dieting, no to starvation dieting.

Your All-in-One Diet™ Includes:

1. •Your Color-Coded Eating Plan
   

2. The heart of your customized diet. Your 350-item color-coded food list details the best foods for you based on your various types and identifies the foods to avoid.
   

3. •Nutrient Ratios for your Metabolic Type
   

4. For getting the right balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates for your metabolic type. It’s as important to eat the optimal ratios of proteins, fats, and carbs for your metabolic type as it is to eat the right foods for your types. It makes a huge difference in correcting energy and mood swings, cravings, and any ‘sweet-tooth’ you may have for sweets or stimulants.
   

5. •Fine-Tuning Your Diet
   

6. A tool for calibrating your diet for optimal satisfaction, energy levels, and mental and emotional wellbeing.
   

7. •Weight Loss Eating Guidelines
   

8. General eating and drinking guidelines for healthy weight loss.
   

9. •Shopping Guidelines
   

10. Take the guess work out of grocery shopping. Good nutrition begins when you buy food. Learn how to choose fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and other healthy foods and how to avoid deceptively labeled and cleverly disguised poor quality foods.
    

11. •Meal Planning
    

12. Guidelines for creating natural healthy whole food meals according to your diet.
    

13. •Food Preparation and Storage
    

14. Guidelines for washing and storing fruits and vegetables.
    

15. •Cooking Guidelines
    

16. Learn good cooking practices that can enhance the nutritional value of your food. Prevent common food preparation mistakes that can undermine good health.
    

17. •Cooking Beans and Legumes Tutorial
    

18. Legumes can be a great source of fiber and low glycemic carbs as well as providing some protein.
    

19. •Cooking Whole Grains Tutorial
    

20. Grass seeds aren’t for everyone, but whole grains aren’t as bad as processed grain products like bread. Learn how to select, prepare, and cook whole grains if you choose to include them in your diet.
    

21. •Cooking with Fats and Oils Tutorial
    

22. Essential fatty acids are necessary for good health, including brain and heart health. Learn which ones become unhealthy when heated, which can tolerate high heat, which need to be refrigerated, and which ones are unhealthy.
    

23. •Smart Supplements
    Recommended supplements for losing weight in a healthy sustainable way.
    

24. 
    

Footnotes:

1. 1.The Volumetrics Weight Control Plan was developed at Penn State University by Barbara Rolls, Ph.D. Rated highest of all weight loss diets by Consumer Reports, it has been endorsed and recommended by the Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter, The Washington Post, Newsday, and others. Based on research done at Penn State, it maximizes the amount of food available per calorie by scoring foods based on their energy density regarding how full foods make you feel according to the latest research on satiety – it is food bulk that makes us feel full, not how many calories food contains, and bulk is largely a result of a food's fiber and water content. So the Volumetrics score is the ratio of bulk divided by calories. After evaluating all the evidence on commercially available diets Consumer Reports concluded: "Recent clinical trials show best overall weight loss of any diet evaluated." Jenny Craig recently scrapped their old diet and adopted the Volumetrics Diet (but the Jenny Craig diet does not integrate the Glycemic Index Diet nor is it customized for you according to your metabolic type, endocrine/body type, blood type, Ayurvedic type, specific health issues, etc.). I've been using it with my clients since it came out in 2000 as an important dimension of a multidimensional diet which also takes into account the Glycemic Index, the hormonal affects of food, and all the other general dimensions of diet listed above, which is then customized for each client based on your metabolic type, endocrine type, blood type, Ayurvedic type, specific health conditions, etc.
   

2. 2.There are 6 metabolic types, 4 endocrine/body types, 6 ABO blood types and subtypes, 2 rhesus blood types, 2 gender types, 10 Ayurvedic types, 7 TCM food qualities according to your health issues, and 2 age types for 80,640 permutations of dietary types. Your diet is further customized according to any food allergies or intolerances you may have, and targeted support to 32 tissues, glands, and organs of your choice, making The All-in-One Diet™ the most customized weight loss diet in the world. The cross-interference logic of the software custom-programmed by Santa Fe Way ensures compatibility among integrated components. Each of the typologies is optional, so you can choose not to include any of them in your Diet Customizer form.
   

3. 3.Of all the typological variables I have used in my 18 years of practice in Santa Fe I have found one’s metabolic type to be the most important for reaching weight loss goals, much more important than blood type which has received attention disproportionate to its importance (although blood type is still an important factor that is included as an integrated component among many others).
   

4. 4.Based on data from renowned allergy expert Laura Power, Ph.D., on her original research studies spanning over 20 years showing statistically correlated ABO blood types to three kinds of food allergies (IgE, IgG, and T-cells). This data also includes A1-A2 subtypes, Rh type, and gender specific allergies. Her Biotype Diet research is published, patented, and licensed. Blood group based IgG, IgE, and T-cell allergy options are very useful for people who appear to be suffering from food allergies but cannot afford expensive laboratory testing to identify the allergy inducing foods, people with weight management problems, and people with extremely compromised health or disease conditions of unknown etiology. See her peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine, Volume 16, Issue 2 May 2007, pages 125 – 135. The blood type options in The All-in-One Diet™ are not based on literature presented by Peter D’Adamo, ND, summarized in his popular, interesting, and persuasive Eat Right for Your Type books (that I have also studied) and do not highlight foods that are hypothesized by him to be beneficial or harmful to the various blood types based on his concept of ‘polymorphism.’ His research continues to be highly controversial and has not stood up very well to communal confirmation/rejection and falsifiability by other researchers, and he has decided not to share his own research data with others for such confirmation or rejection. Most of his claims have not been reproduced by other researchers, many of whom are open to leading-edge alternative and holistic concepts; opposition to his research is not confined to conventional medical researchers but also from broad-minded holistic researchers as well. Only proven lectin research data is used. Research shows that 95% of potentially troublesome lectins are destroyed in cooking, so only foods that contain blood type specific lectins that are usually eaten raw (like blackberries for blood type A, for example) are reduced; to restrict cooked foods containing lectins (like lima beans for blood type A, for example) is not supported by the evidence and would be unduly restrictive, unnecessarily reducing the variety of your diet.
   

5. 5.No blood work is required. Dietary types are assessed by questionnaire. Food allergy blood tests are optional.
   

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