As humans, we are meaning making machines. We always want to know why something is happening and will search for answers, whether they end up being based on facts or just some story we tell ourselves.

This I find to be true when people think about their diet choices.

I was recently speaking to a client who a number of years ago made a drastic change to their diet. For a number of years they were a vegetarian. They bought in to the whole low fat idea and that meat was the devil’s work and so they became a vegetarian in their late teens.

At some point things weren’t going so well. A friend was doing the Atkin’s diet or some low carb, high fat diet and started raving about it. So they leapt on board. Despite going completely against their previous eating style, they jumped ship and embraced this new diet.

And remarkably, things got better. Their cycle improved. They had more energy. Their skin and sleep and concentration all changed for the better.

They became a convert. They would tell all and sundry about this new diet and why it was the thing to do. They started reading about the dangers of carbohydrates and grains and how these foodstuffs been the downfall of our evolutionary history. They wondered how long it would be before the whole world caught on and discovered “the truth”.

The day before I was speaking to another client. They had a similar revelation in terms of their diet but their conclusion couldn’t be more different.

For them, food was something they’d never paid much attention to. They’d go to the supermarket and buy the cheapest stuff they could find or the things that would be the easiest to make. This meant eating lots of white bread sandwiches, breakfast cereal at all times of the day, ready meals and deli meats.

As they were getting older they noticed things weren’t going so well health wise. They were having digestive upset. They were feeling tired all the time. Their hair and skin and nails weren’t great. Their cycle was a painful mess. They struggled with sleeping through the night.

One day they were flicking through Netflix and saw a documentary all about health. It wasn’t the normal thing they’d watch but after a particularly tiring day they thought maybe it could give them some tips.

The documentary talked about the benefits of a plant-based diet. It explained how damaging meat and diary was and that these things lead to cancer. It showed people who’d turned their life around by changing to a vegan diet based around fruits and vegetables and protein sources like beans and pulses (that could be soaked and prepared in special ways to help with digestion).

So this client decided to give it a go. They started spending more time doing their own cooking. They bought more plant-based food and made this stuff the centrepiece of their diet.

And just like the documentary promised, their health was transformed. Their digestion started to pick up and in no time they were going on a daily basis, something that had never happened to them before. Their hair and nails started to grow quicker and thicker, people were commenting on the health of their skin. They finally started sleeping better.

And so they became hooked. They started telling friends about their experience. They encouraged everyone to start watching the documentary and joined Facebook groups that were supportive of their newfound passion.

Now in both instances you are probably thinking that these people have found the golden ticket. That if they just keep up doing what they’re doing, that things will continue on.

Unfortunately this isn’t the case and it’s why they’d contacted me. While in the beginning their new habits had been amazing, now problems had started to arise again. Despite following their diet with the same diligence as before, they weren’t getting the results.

So what should they do?

This scenario (and there are many permutations of this that I regularly see) reminded me of something I learnt when I studied NLP many years ago.

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. It is a terrible name for a very effective form of treatment; it looks at how language, stories and beliefs affect how we behave and the outcomes that we see. It was founded in the 1970s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler.

Bandler and Grinder studied the work of Fritz Pearls, Virginia Satir and Milton H. Erickson. Each of these individuals were therapists who were renowned in their fields but each had different ways of working.

Now the way that most people would approach this would be to ask these experts exactly what they did, take lots of notes and then started doing as they instructed you to do.

But this wasn’t the approach that Bandler and Grinder took. Instead of asking them for advice, they instead just observed them. They took notes of everything that these experts did and through trial and error started to figure out what were the important parts and what was the “fluff”.

What they ended up with was a refined list of phrases and processes. These were the things that made the difference. And when they implemented this with their own clients they could get the same results as the experts.

If they had asked the experts why they were so successful and what were the things that made the most difference, they would have probably got this long list of things to do and this winding explanation about how this and that relate to one another and this is why they do these things in some specific order.

Some of this would have been true, some of it would have been false, but in the expert’s eyes this is what they would have believed was important.

So how does this all relate to the clients I mentioned earlier?

In their mind they had created a story about why their new diet was working. Some of this may have been true, but some of it may have been false. And if their story meant they were now missing out on foods that were needed to help them, in the long run this was going to catch up with them.

So in the first instance, the person switching from a low fat vegetarian diet to a high fat low carb diet. The probably felt better because they were getting more protein in, something that would help with their cycle, blood sugar, detoxification and many other things. The extra fat would have also helped their cycle, mood, skin and other symptoms.

So getting these extra nutrients in would have been the thing that made a huge difference, especially after missing out on it for so long.

But in their mind they tell themselves it was largely because they were avoiding those pesky carbs. That if they wanted to continue to see improvements, carbs needed to be avoided and strictly limited.

And unfortunately, it was this restriction of carbs that started to create their problems. While in the beginning they needed more fat and protein to make up for the historic shortfall, they probably didn’t need these high levels for that long. And by keeping them high, while avoiding carbs (which over time they started to need even more) they found themselves in a situation where their health was faltering again.

Now in the second example, the person switched from a beige diet of cheap and nutrient deficient foods. They probably felt better from the eating more fruits and vegetables. They were spending more time cooking and giving the food they ate a higher preference in their life. They also slowed down to eat their meals.

But in their mind, the real benefit was because they had cut out all those “acid” foods like meat and eggs and diary and were now “alkalizing” their body.

But unfortunately it began to be this restriction of animal products that was their downfall. These products provided for them protein in quantities they needed. They were also high in things like cholesterol, fat soluble vitamins and other vitamins and minerals that are essential to health. By cutting out these foods over the long haul, they became more and more deficient in specific but important nutrients.

So in both incidents the individual’s change in diet had provided them with benefits. It had increased the amount of specific foods or nutrients that they were missing out on. But the downside was that it started to cut out things that they actually needed. And in the end they just switched one deficiency for another.

People need to be aware of the assumptions that they are making about why they are getting the results that they are getting. Because too often these assumptions are false. And rather than helping someone find the middle ground where they are getting benefits across the board, they end up in an extreme place with a diet ideology that they are vehemently following that’s slowly pulling the rug from under them.

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