Were your ancestors fat? Most probably weren’t. But their diet consisted mostly of whole-fat dairy, butter and meat. We’ve been told that vegetarian or vegan diets are the supreme path to health and that cutting out fat is critical to well-being. However, at the risk of voicing a differing viewpoint, I would like to advise that if one wants to live a long, healthy life and lose weight in the process, eating heartily with plenty of meat-based animal protein and good healthy fats is the way.

The people who have told the public to stop eating red meat, butter and other nutritionally vital foods might be wrong. Where did this idea come from? It certainly wasn’t from science.

Down The Rabbit Hole

A lot of it, as it turns out, came from research on rabbits. Researchers fed large quantities of oxidized and purified cholesterol to rabbits who, not surprisingly, suffered severe damage to their hearts and arteries. Of course there’s one problem—rabbits eat grass and plants. They don’t consume foods with cholesterol and don’t naturally have any mechanism to handle and control cholesterol. However, we do.

It’s amazing that researchers used rabbits—and this experiment’s evidence—to try to understand a human’s requirement for animal fats and cholesterol and their mechanism of action. The new low-fat diet was born with no scientific evidence that it prevents heart disease or strokes. And this has been a health disaster ever since!

If we just look back to the kinds of diets that our grandparents and great-grandparents ate 60 to 80 years ago, according to medical beliefs everyone should have been overweight. And we know that’s not true. Even a casual glance at older photographs or old movies shows how much thinner people were in the past compared to where we are now with our high-carbohydrate diets mistakenly recommended by medical experts in the interest of avoiding fats.

The result isn’t just people being overweight and out of shape, but also feeling sick and exhausted all of the time, experiencing high blood pressure and possibly succumbing to the explosion of Type 2 diabetes. It’s no wonder; without animal proteins and fats, the body just doesn’t get the nutrients it needs to survive and thrive. Whole foods and whole fats are what we are supposed to be eating! It’s not a surprise that people feel hungry when they try to get by on processed, refined and “lite” diets—there’s a huge nutritional deficit.

Obese Future

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overweight and obesity rates have risen to 25% or more in 33 states—and in 10 of those the rate is over 30%! So far, no statistical reversal of this trend is on the horizon. How could this be when we’ve been told so often that perfectly healthy, wholesome, life-enhancing foods are the enemy?

This does not paint a good scenario for the future. It was recently predicted that by 2030, the obesity rate will increase another 8% to include 42% of Americans. This means almost half of Americans will be at least 30 pounds overweight. The percentage of those who are severely obese (more than 100 pounds overweight) is expected to be 11% by 2030—double the current rate. Unfortunately, we learn habits—good and bad—early in life. With obesity, that’s sadly the case all too often. In fact, 50% of those who are severely obese as adults were also obese as children.

42% of Americans predicted to be obese by 2030

25% or more of people in 33 states are currently obese

11% predicted to be overweight by 100 or more pounds by 2030

Satisfying Taste

If you think there has to be a way to stop this spiral, you’re right. There’s a much better way to eat that satisfies our nutritional needs and our taste buds. It centers on real, whole, traditional foods that were the mainstay in the early 1900s. The diet of our ancestors included a satisfying, hearty breakfast, high in all the vitamins and minerals. It was the Traditional Diet or what we also refer to as our Ancestral Diet.

But today, because foods are refined, processed and stripped of nutrients, they convert to sugar at a high rate. This causes us to eat more and, in turn, secrete more insulin, which then causes the body to produce and store more fat. Anyone who is overweight is carrying the same fat that medical experts say we should avoid. The Traditional Diet was simply what we all ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner for two million years. Needless to say, there was not much processing going on. It included a lot of animal protein (which most likely helped our brains grow and adapt), high animal fat and low carbohydrates.

This original diet was approximately 30% animal protein, 60% animal fat and 10% non-starchy carbohydrates primarily from fruits and vegetables.

Giving up refined grain—and sugar-based carbohydrates—is an absolute must to stop weight gain, insulin resistance and inflammation. If one is used to carbs, letting them go can be tough, no doubt about it. But with discipline and gradually seeing healthy benefits, one will be amazed how easy it can be to adopt a new diet. The bottom line is to consume no more than 72 grams of carbohydrates daily.

Does all of this sound challenging? Yes, it can be. But the results are far more gratifying and it’s an extremely satisfying way to eat. Consider the delicious foods we can enjoy on this diet: grass-fed beef, bison, poultry, lard, butter, whole-fat cheese, nuts, whole-fat dairy products, vegetables and berries of all kinds, eggs, fish, olive oil and coconut oil—to name just a few tasty dishes. As people switch over to the Ancestral Diet, they find that after just a short time, they have more energy, a trimmer body, a better waistline and feel more vibrant and healthy overall.