Diet
614 protocols, ranked by how often the world’s top health podcasts mention them.
- Avoid Fat-Sugar Starch Combinations
Keep saturated fat or other added fats away from refined starches and sugars, especially in the same meal. The practical rule is to skip combinations like butter on a bagel or sugary, fatty desserts, and instead pair fats with non-starchy vegetables. This pattern is meant to reduce the inflammatory and overfeeding effects that seem to be triggered when fat and refined carbs are eaten together.
▶ 2 - DASH Diet
A diet pattern centered on fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, low-fat dairy, and generally more plant-based foods, with less emphasis on highly processed or salty foods. In the cited study, women whose eating patterns more closely matched the DASH diet were less likely to have insomnia three years later, suggesting this heart-healthy style of eating may also support sleep quality.
▶ 2 - Protein, Fat, and Carb at Every Meal
Build meals and snacks around a protein source, a healthy fat, and a quality carbohydrate, often alongside vegetables. This simple composition helps create more filling, nutritionally complete meals and can make it easier to stay satisfied between meals.
▶ 2 - Zero-Calorie Drinks Only
In the early phase of a slow-carb approach, stick to beverages without calories: black coffee and unsweetened tea are fine, but juice, soda, milk, alcohol, and other caloric drinks are avoided. The point is to keep liquid calories from sneaking in and blunting fat loss or appetite control, since drinks can add energy without making you feel full.
▶ 2 - Chamomile Tea After Meals
Drink chamomile tea after eating, rather than avoiding tea at mealtimes. The practice is presented as a gentle post-meal beverage that can be used routinely, with the main point being that tea after meals is not inherently harmful and can be part of a normal digestion-friendly routine.
▶ 2 - Macadamia Nuts as a Morning Snack
A simple morning snack of a handful of macadamias when hungry. It’s used as a light, supportive way to take the edge off hunger without turning into a full meal, likely because the nuts are filling and easy to tolerate.
▶ 2 - Stevia as a Non-Caloric Sweetener
Use stevia in place of sugar or other sweeteners when you want sweetness without meaningful calories. It is generally treated as having little to no effect on blood glucose and, based on the cited recommendations, does not appear to harm the gut microbiome. The appeal is a naturally sourced sweetener that can reduce sugar intake without the usual metabolic downside.
▶ 2 - Avoid High-Glycemic Foods Most of the Time
Generally keep high-glycemic and high-sugar foods out of your regular diet, especially away from the post-workout window. The idea is to reduce repeated large insulin and blood-glucose spikes, which may help lower acne-promoting signaling through pathways like mTOR, androgens, sebum production, and keratinocyte activity.
▶ 2 - Fruit in a Whole-Food Diet
Include fruit as part of an overall whole-food diet, rather than avoiding it outright. For people at higher risk of tooth decay, it may be wise to limit fruit intake or be more mindful of frequency because its fructose exposure can contribute to dental caries risk.
▶ 2 - Vitamin A-Rich Foods
Eat naturally occurring vitamin A sources such as dark leafy greens and carrots, ideally in as close to their raw form as practical. This helps preserve nutrient content while supporting adequate vitamin A intake, which is important for maintaining healthy vision and preventing deficiency.
▶ 2 - Coffee or Tea Caffeine During Travel
Use small, non-excessive amounts of caffeine from coffee or tea during the afternoon after westward travel to help you stay alert until the local bedtime. The goal is to push through the post-travel sleepiness barrier so you can remain on the destination’s eating and sleep schedule more easily.
▶ 2 - Peppermint Scent Sniffing
Sniff peppermint or other minty scents to give yourself a quick boost in alertness, attention, and arousal. It’s a non-ingestion tactic: simply inhaling the scent appears to stimulate wakefulness, though the effect is generally milder than ammonia smelling salts.
▶ 2 - Beet Juice Before Long Efforts
Drinking beet juice before longer-duration exercise, especially runs or swims, is used as a performance aid. It’s thought to work by boosting nitric oxide and vasodilation, which can improve blood flow and help sustain effort during extended bouts of exercise.
▶ 2 - 1–3 Grams of Ginger
Take about 1 to 3 grams of ginger to help reduce nausea. This is a simple anti-nausea protocol with evidence from multiple peer-reviewed studies, and it appears to work by calming the digestive tract and reducing the nausea response.
▶ 2 - Water and Electrolytes During Long Fasts
During multi-day fasting, people continue drinking plenty of water while deliberately replacing electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, and magnesium. This helps preserve neural signaling, muscle function, and overall bodily stability when calories are absent, reducing the risk of feeling depleted or unwell.
▶ 2 - Meat and Fish
Emphasizes eating meat and fish as natural food sources of phosphatidylserine. The idea is to use these foods to raise phosphatidylserine intake, which is thought to support neuronal function and brain cell signaling.
▶ 2 - Egg Yolks
Prioritize eggs, especially the yolks, as a regular food source because they are one of the richest dietary sources of choline. This supports brain health by supplying a key nutrient involved in neurotransmitter production and overall cognitive function, while also delivering a dense package of other brain-supportive nutrients.
▶ 2 - Non-Animal Choline Sources
For people who avoid eggs, this recommendation is to get choline from plant foods such as potatoes, nuts, seeds, grains, and fruit. These foods provide smaller amounts of choline than eggs, but they can still help support intake when animal sources are not used.
▶ 2 - Anthocyanin-Rich Dark Berries
Choose thin-skinned dark berries such as blackberries and black currants as a regular fruit option, often in portions around 1 to 2 cups. They’re favored because they’re especially rich in anthocyanins, the pigments linked to the berries’ deep color and antioxidant activity.
▶ 2 - 16 Ounces of Ice Water
Drink a modest amount of cold or ice water, around 16 ounces, to help lower body heat when you need cooling. The effect is only partial, so it should be used as a small aid rather than a strategy for chugging large volumes. Avoid drinking liters at once, since that can dilute the blood and cause other problems.
▶ 2 - Morning Coffee With a Splash of Milk
During a fasting window, some people still drink morning coffee with a small splash of milk rather than keeping it strictly black. The idea is that this tiny amount is unlikely to meaningfully disrupt the fasting-related longevity pathways being targeted, while making the routine easier to stick with.
▶ 2 - 16 Ounces of Water Per 10 Minutes in the Sauna
Drink at least 16 ounces of water for every 10 minutes spent in the sauna, with the fluid taken before, during, or after the session. This helps replace sweat losses and reduce dehydration risk while supporting safer, more comfortable heat exposure.
▶ 2 - Broccoli Sprouts
Eat broccoli sprouts as a concentrated source of sulforaphane, often highlighted as containing far more of this compound than mature broccoli. The practice is to include the sprouts regularly in meals or salads to leverage sulforaphane’s ability to activate cellular stress-response pathways, including heat shock proteins.
▶ 2 - 1 Gram Mustard Seed Powder with Cooked Broccoli
Add about 1 gram of ground mustard seed powder to cooked broccoli. Cooking reduces broccoli’s own myrosinase activity, and the mustard seed powder helps restore it, boosting sulforaphane production by roughly fourfold.
▶ 2 - Green Apples
This recommendation is to eat green apples as a simple dietary habit. The key rationale is their higher malic acid content, which is the specific compound people are aiming to get from them. The practice is framed as a targeted food choice rather than just a generic fruit recommendation.
▶ 2 - Avoid Casein and Gluten
Remove dairy casein and gluten from the diet when prolactin is elevated or dopamine balance is a concern. The rationale given is that these proteins may act as mu-opioid receptor agonists in the gut, which could push prolactin higher and worsen dopamine-related symptoms.
▶ 2 - Plate Method
Build meals by visually dividing the plate instead of counting calories: fill most of it with fibrous vegetables or other non-starchy carbs, add a solid protein portion, and keep starchy carbs to the smallest section. This simple proportioning tends to improve fullness and blood-sugar control while making portions easier to manage without tracking.
▶ 2 - Sustainable, Non-Exclusionary Eating
Choose an eating pattern you can realistically maintain over the long term rather than a short-term extreme diet. Avoid cutting out entire food groups unless there is a clear individual reason to do so, since more flexible approaches are generally easier to sustain and less likely to create new problems.
▶ 2 - Decaf Coffee as a Morning Cue
Drink decaf coffee in the morning as part of a consistent start-of-day routine, using its taste, warmth, and familiar preparation as a cue that it is time to begin. This can help create a sense of readiness and momentum even when you want to avoid caffeine or cannot tolerate it.
▶ 2 - Skip THC Before Bed
This practice recommends not using THC as a nighttime sleep aid, even if it can make some people fall asleep faster. The reason is that THC is said to worsen sleep architecture, so sleep may be less restorative than sleeping without it.
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