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Dr. Rhonda Patrick is one of the more popular experts in the areas of health and wellness these days, and has become a leading voice on things like time restricted eating, the negative impact of refined grans and sugars, and number of other health-related topics.
She may be most well-known by man for her many appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience, but she’d actually been a highly-respected researcher long before she first appeared on Rogan’s show over 5 years ago.
Because so many well-known people truly value Dr. Patrick’s opinion on this broad spectrum of health issues, many people want to know if there’s a specific diet or health plan that she follows.
In this article, we’ll dig in to what Dr. Rhonda eats, drinks, and avoids, so you can decide if you want to make some of these changes to your own diet.
So with these things in mind, let’s take a look at some of things Dr. Rhonda Patrick has recommended for making your diet healthier.
How the Dr. Rhonda Patrick Diet Works
1. Ultimate Micronutrient Smoothies [w/PDF]
According to Dr. Patrick, she drinks a power packed micronutrient smoothie every morning [1]. This is one of the biggest components to her diet plan, and she even shows you exactly how to make them.
Here’s one recipe that she shared recently.
Dr. Patrick’s Original Micronutrient Smoothie Recipe
- Makes 64 Ounces – She Drinks Half, and Her Husband Drinks the Other Half
- Put These Ingredients in a Blender:
- 8 Kale Leaves
- 3 Cups Flax Milk
- Pre-Blend the Flax Milk and Kale
- Add 4 Rainbow Chard Leaves & Stems
- 3 Cups Baby Spinach
- 1 Medium Tomato
- 2 Carrots
- 1 Apple
- 1 Large Avocado
- 1 Cup Blueberries
- 1 Banana
- Blend All of the Ingredients
- Now Add 1 Shotglass of Flaxseed
Why She Says it’s Healthy
According to Dr. Patrick [2], all of the leafy green veggies she adds to her micronutrient smoothie are high in magnesium.
This is a good thing, she says, because around 45% of the U.S. population doesn’t get enough magnesium in their diet.
Rhonda’s 64 ounces smoothies has about 588 milligrams of magnesium, which is much more than the recommended 350 to 400 recommended milligrams per day.
Considering you’re splitting the smoothie with a loved one, you should each get a nice healthy dose of magnesium when drinking her smoothie.
On top of that, over 300 different enzymes in the human body require magnesium to function properly, so it’s important to make sure you’re getting enough of it every day.
In addition to the magnesium, here are some of the other vitamins and minerals that can be found in her micronutrient smoothie:
Vitamins & Minerals
- Magnesium 588 mg
- Calcium mg 2,116 mg
- Potassium 5,883 mg
- Vitamin K 5,239 μg
- Vitamin C 630 mg
- Vitamin E 9 IU
- Vitamin A 4,530 μg
- Vitamin D2 600 IU
- Beta carotene 53.5 mg
- Vitamin B6 3 mg
- Pantothenic acid 4.4 mg
- Vitamin B12 1.8 μg
- Thiamin 0.6 mg
- Riboflavin 0.9 mg
- Niacin 10 mg folate 480 μg
- Manganese 9.6 mg
- Phosphorous 700 mg
- Zinc 4.5 mg copper 1.9 mg
- Selenium 10 μg iron 10.8 mg
- Sodium 985 mg lutein + zeaxanthin 390 mg ALA 4,684 mg
- Fiber 49 g
The numbers listed above are an estimate of the amounts of vitamins and minerals you can expect to find in every 64 ounces of this smoothie.
New Smoothie Recipe
Dr. Patrick recently made some changes to her classic smoothie recipe, which you can learn about here:
2. Intermittent Fasting / Time Restricted Eating
On one of her more recent appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience, Dr. Patrick introduced Joe to a new eating concept. It’s called time-restricted eating [3], and according to Dr. Patrick, it has a bunch of different health benefits.
At first glance, it sounds a lot like intermittent fasting, but it’s a little more strict than that, as she pointed out to Rogan.
Here’s Rhonda explaining time restricted eating in more detail:
This time-restricted form of eating is basically a form of intermittent fasting, but here’s how it works:
How Dr. Patrick Uses Time-Restricted Feeding
- 10 Hour Eating & Drinking Window (at most 12 hour): This means anything you put into your body besides water.
- Fasting the Rest of the Day and Night
Just like intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating involves a “feeding” window, and a fasting window.
The big difference between the two, though, is that during the fasting window of time-restricted eating, you can only put water into your body.
On a regular IF schedule, you drink things like coffee and tea during your fasting period – basically anything that doesn’t have any calories.
On time restricted eating, you only drink water while you’re fasting – basically anything that gets metabolized by your body.
Time-Restricted Feeding Benefits
According to Dr. Patrick, there are a number of different health benefits that have been linked to this stricter version of intermittent fasting.
These may include:
- Better Weight Management
- Reduced Body Fat
- Profound Effects on Muscle Mass
- Better Health and Metabolism
- Better Insulin Response [4]
- Works Best with a Good Diet
3. Ditch Refined Sugar & Carbs
This almost goes without saying, but most diets these days recommend cutting way back on processed sugars.
This doesn’t always mean you have to stop eating fruit, or things with natural sugars, but things with added sugars – think soda, juices, candy, candy bars, etc. Pretty much all of the things you know you shouldn’t be eating anyway [5].
Here are some of the problems Dr. Patrick says are caused by refined sugars:
- Inflammatory Biomarkers Go Up
- Small Dense LDL Biomarkers Go Up
- People Who Eat Refined Sugar Have Biomarkers for Aging that Look 10 Years Older
- Men’s Testosterone Can Drop
- Can Effect Your Brain in a Negative Way
Here’s Dr. Patrick talking about refined sugars and carbs on Rogan:
When it comes to refined sugar, and your health, Dr. Patrick gets straight to the point. You need to get rid of most of them:
The one thing that they [the standard American person] could do to have the biggest impact on their health is to cut out refined sugar. That’s probably the biggest thing…the easiest thing.
Eliminating refined sugar and carbohydrates is a big part of the keto diet.
4. Sulforaphane
In addition to some of the things we’ve mentioned above, Dr. Patrick is also a big proponent of adding sulforaphane to her diet. This is a compound that comes from brassica vegetables:
Where You Find it
- Kale
- Broccoli
- Broccoli Sprouts
- Cabbage
- Brussel Sprouts
- Bok Choy
- Wasabi
The interesting thing is, sulforaphane isn’t actually in these plants, rather she says it forms once you’re chewing them, or when they’re crushed, blended, or chopped.
Dr. Patrick says broccoli sprouts are probably the best source for getting your daily intake of sulforaphane, because they actually contain 100x the amount than regular broccoli.
Why it’s Good
Here’s Dr. Patrick talking about the power of sulforaphane:
According to Dr. Patrick, sulforaphane has been shown to make brain improvements in people with autism and even schizophrenia. But, it also has positive impacts for other folks too.
In fact, it’s even been found to be a power anti-depressant in mice.
The bottom line is, she says, is this: It has a very profound effect on inflammation, which is a good thing for the human body, and the way our brain works.
On top of all that, it’s also been shown to prevent cancer, so this is pretty powerful stuff.
Final Thoughts
Dr. Rhonda Patrick has a lot of great diet tips, and is someone worth following if you’re passionate about health and wellness. The diet tips we’ve shared above, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of the health knowledge and research that she shares.
You can keep up with her, and get much more health advice at her official website, FoundMyFitness.com
Resources
- Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Rhonda’s Micronutrient Smoothie Guide, Found My Fitness. Retrieved from https://www.foundmyfitness.com/reports/micronutrient-smoothie.pdf
- Rhonda’s Ultimate Micronutrient Smoothie, YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys86ZgjQQYg
- Megumi Hatori, et al, Time-Restricted Feeding without Reducing Caloric Intake Prevents Metabolic Diseases in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet, Cell Metabolism. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413112001891
- Elizabeth F. Sutton, et al, Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves Insulin Sensitivity, Blood Pressure, and Oxidative Stress Even without Weight Loss in Men with Prediabetes, Cell Metabolism. Retrieved from https://www.cell.com/action/showMethods?pii=S1550-4131%2818%2930253-5
- Cindy W. Leung, et al, Soda and Cell Aging: Associations Between Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption and Leukocyte Telomere Length in Healthy Adults From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, American Journal of Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4229419/
- See our list of top-rated diets
