Level 1: Aggressively remove the unanimously bad

If you had to do just one step with the maximum benefit, this is it. Removing the few things which have nearly unanimous consensus as “bad” will give you a bigger effect than adding every single “good” thing you’ve ever heard about. This list contains things where historical evidence, common sense, scientific consensus and differing points of view converge.

Foods: trans fats and hydrogenated vegetable oil, eating takeout/fast food everyday, added sugar above daily limit (including in iced coffees, fruit juices, sodas, sweetened yogurt, chocolate bars, cereal and many sauces), cheap processed meats, junk food (anything that involves the above foods is automatically junk food).

Habits: a sedentary/indoor lifestyle, binge drinking/multiple drinks a day, smoking cigarettes, drug addiction, chronic stress, depression, loneliness or chronic insomnia. These are treatable, though challenging. Get into therapy (CBT), meditation, practical philosophy (time-tested: religion, zen, stoicism etc.), walk outdoors more (try and get 10 minutes of sunlight), and make big life changes.

You will have the chance to reintroduce more sensible amounts of a few things here in the proceeding steps. Depending on individual factors, intermittent fasting may play a big role here, or later. 

Level 2: Minimize the possibly harmful

This is an optional step for easing into some diet changes. Turn things that are harmful only in excess into weekly or fortnightly treats, and daily indulgences into significantly smaller servings once a day. Prioritize the indulgences that mean most to you, and the rest won’t be so hard to avoid.

Daily category: More than 4 teaspoons of sugar or honey in a day, white bread, foods with additives, preservatives and poor quality controls, store-bought packaged condiments and sauces (mayo, ketchup, and anything sweet), more than two servings of white rice a day (if you’re sedentary), more than 3–4 tablespoons of vegetable oil daily (and new-age non-traditional vegetable oils in general.)

Weekly category: Deep fried food, puff pastries, elaborate desserts, packaged food, takeway/eating in restaurants, fast food (pizza, starbucks, and all fast food chains included), anything with lots of synthetic food colouring.

Bad Habits: Prolonged daily exposure to environmental/urban pollution, eating till it hurts, storing hot/acidic food in plastic containers (which may release BPA/Pthalates).

Want to bake a cake or pizza? Like your morning coffee with three teaspoons of sugar? Don’t skimp. Make it right, but make it a treat.

But whatever your treat, make sure that’s the only one from the list you have for that day and week. 

Level 3: Address negative systemic issues

Strongly suspect you’re allergic to something? Allergy tests are worth every penny. And if you suspect you have an autoimmune disorder, it’s well worth the trouble to find out.

Level 4: Traditional things that are very likely to be healthy

Add/maintain foods and habits that have a long history of human consumption, as close to its historical form as possible. Anything eaten regularly as part of a large population’s diet for more than a millienum is OK for this step. Organic is preferable, but not necessary. Use traditional preparation methods (like soaking legumes and beans), if possible. Find authentic recipes from the country of origin (ask anyone above 60), and follow them.

Apart from ethical exceptions, this is not the time to pick a diet. Look up recipes and learn to cook with the ingredients of your choice. Or, if you live in an urban area, find a service that will do it for you.

Foods: Lots of vegetable (triple your portions), fresh/unprocessed cuts of meat and traditional offal, seafood, fruit, fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, indian dishes like idli etc), dried beans and legumes, traditional grains,seeds, nuts, mushrooms, full-fat milk. Switch from new-age oils to much smaller servings of traditional oils (olive, sesame, coconut, mustard etc.) and butter/ghee, switch from store bread to sourdough/artisan.

Habits: Switching to organic produce and pastured animal products, where possible and if means allow.

Level 5: Traditional/natural things that are enjoyable and possibly beneficial

Optional. Do this for possible general health benefits and enjoyment. These should be foods and habits that have a long history of use, though with less clear evidence of benefit. They entail, at worst, no benefit but also no real harm, and at best, significant benefits worth the investment.

Foods: coffee, tea, really dark chocolate, moderate consumption of wine and quality beer, medicinal herbs and teas (only those which have more than a few centuries of multiple historical sources or a large population verifying safety).

Habits: basic intermittent fasting (12–16 hours nightly) OR two calorie-limited days per week (500 cals for two days every week) OR 1 day per week (make sure you can do this safely)

Level 6: Positive systemic interventions

Exercise, focusing on time-tested full-body routines: compound lifts, calisthenics, climbing, running/sprinting, hiking, sport, or manual labour.
Physiotherapy, if injured or muscles weak.
Martial arts, yoga and dance, but only with an experienced teacher.

Note: Walking is not “exercise”, it is an essential part of life, as much as sitting or standing. Hence, any exercise you do is over and above walking. If you can walk, do a lot of it.

Level 7: Optimize very conservatively

Everything else is an optimization. Optimizations are completely optional.

Don’t try to tweak and optimize your lifestyle and diet based on every new idea that comes out, unless your goal is to experiment. Don’t prize your intelligence, prize your ability to thrive in the long-term without risking catastrophy. Optimize only when you think you have a genuine need or belief that is not being addressed.

Very low risk optimizations, relatively time-tested, with evidence: If none of the above steps helped you, you might want to consider that your digestive issues may be related to FODMAPS, and as such, the FODMAPS diet may be an appropriate intervention.

Others steps: Intermittent fasting (strictly no calories 12–16 hours or 24 hours once a week), under proper supervision if diabetic. Eating smaller but more frequent meals. Supplements like b12, vitamin D, and fish oil. Whey (plain, no additives) or plant protein like hemp hearts, brown rice protein, pea protein etc. for strength training. Longer fasts. Bulk/cut, and other moderate caloric surpluses or deficits. Diets that don’t deviate too far from traditional foods and preparation (Paleo, Indian vegetarianism etc.) Using high-quality modern agricultural produce, as opposed to organic. (this post is not about environmental risks, it’s only about you. But similar reasoning can be useful for that too.)

Mastered your will power? Choose your rare vices. Enjoy occasional festival feasts (so don’t wet-blanket thanksgiving), late nights, drinking nights, fast food, junk and maybe even the occassional cigar (cigar smoke isn’t inhaled into the lungs). But never cigarettes or hard drugs.

More risky:

Less-known Diets (keto, high-carb, low-carb, new-age diets etc.). Modern agricultural produce (factory-farmed meat, produce improperly regulated for contaminants etc.) Herbal supplements (well-known ones with traditional backing and certification/regulation), Supervised 20+ day fasts,

If you’ve found something that works, good for you! If not, be honest about the failure, catch it quickly, and restart the protocol.

Moderate-high risk optimizations with specific payoffs:
Restrictive diets, experimental and new diets, self-experimentation.

Does it address your specific health problem in such a way that benefits of trying outweigh the potential harms of being wrong? If you’ve already tried all the steps above, then the decision is yours.

You’ll often notice that what is removed is more important to individual results than what is included. For instance, Paleo folks would argue that its because they remove grains, legumes and lentils that the diet is so healthy, and hope to one day include those three things in the list of “unanimously bad”.

Crazy:
Stuff like 30 bananas a day.

Experimentation is admirable, and the people who do them should be appreciated for their initiative and curiosity. A well-recorded experiment even where n=1 can give great insight into biochemistry and possible avenues to explore. A number of people often choose to participate in an experiment together, too. What differentiates an experiment from a scam is honesty about documenting factors and results, who stands to gain or lose from it, and whether it is honestly portrayed as a temporary experiment.

In the case of 30 bananas a day, it would have been an excellent experiment in the hands of someone sane and caring.

A Big Caveat on Optimizing:

Don’t experiment on others like your kids and pets, because the stakes are all on them, not you. Follow food traditions and ancestral knowledge as much as possible, deviate only if there are clear demonstrations of benefit or harm, especially systemic. Some examples:

• • Ovo-lacto vegetarianism has a long history in India, hence — safe, given that its properly followed. We know at worst, it might be harder to thrive on, and at best, of neutral to positive benefit.

• • Veganism, with supplementation and planning, tends to give great results, but without supplementation its results seem much more variable, right from amazing to pure disaster, for less clear reasons than its proponents claim. In my personal view, making kids and pets vegan without supplementation is unethical.

• • A popular example: Paleo. It removes many things, but what it leaves in is still traditional, balanced, time-tested and nutritious, and it does not innovate unnecessarily. This makes it seemingly safe despite leaving out traditional foods like grains, legumes and lentils
  • Something cool you read about on the net or some contrarian health book? It’s unethical to test that out on others.

Ingredients must scale and suit a chosen activity. A typical brahmin diet will fail a 6 foot athlete, but may be perfect for a small sedentary indian with traditional tastes.  

Level 7.5: Heuristics for New Information

No doubt you think there’s a lot of stuff missing or wrong in these lists. You will want to add/edit things, and you should.

You may have noticed a clear pattern to how specific recommendations have been arranged under each level. Those specifics can be changed, but only if certain conditions are met.

This method is designed to accept new information, but only with overwhelming evidence over a large amount of time, and under actionable categories. It is not designed to be “scientific”, it’s designed to help you deal with information sanely. This focus on time-testing filters out the dead ends, and prevents you and loved ones from falling for scams, silly ideas and harmful things. Make your own thumb-rules based on that simple rule. For now, here are a few.

Did you see it on the news or a random blog on the net? Ignore it.
Did you see it in one study? Ignore it.
Do you see conflicting evidence of benefit or harm in multiple studies and metareviews over a decade? It’s a completely optional optimization (level 7).
Do you see evidence of moderate-to-major harm in multiple studies and metareviews over 5+years, and it has tradition less than a hundred years? It belongs in level 1 or 2.
Did you see evidence of benefit in multiple studies and metareviews over multiple decades, and tradition less than a hundred years? It’s an optimization (level 7).

Does it have a tradition for safe use behind it, dependent on traditional preparation methods, longer than 500 years, verified by multiple historical sources? It belongs in level 4 or 5. You can safely ignore any studies till you reach level 7.

Does it have both historic and scientific backing, but no clear idea of how much can be consumed? Err on the side of history. Anything more than that is an optimization.

Is there a chance that a modern process/context has introduced new harm alongside benefit or vice versa? Depending on the type of risk (cosmetic, physical, internal), level of risk (low to lethal) and whom it effects (kids, adults, elderly), this can go in any section. Use the thumb rules above to judge.

For instance, iodized salt isn’t traditional, yet it is very unnatural to eat food that is lacking in Iodine. The use of iodized salt is supported across ideologies, except for fringe ones. Hence, unless you’re sourcing your food from iodine-rich soil and water, just have iodized salt. The effects of low iodine are terrible for growing children, so the benefits of iodized salt far outweigh any conceivable risk (and there doesn’t appear to be any over the decades of its use).