What You’re Getting Into
- How to lose fat, gain muscle, without making huge sacrifices
- Three rules that should be non-negotiable in any diet
- And they don’t require you to completely get rid of any foods
There’s no way to get an open-and-shut universal diet, because everyone’s so different and crazy. Whoever attempts a diet is coming in with their own special motherboard. And then there’s the environment that adds its own noise. So even though I think the carnivore diet will be the best option for most, it’s not always going to work out. Unfortunately, but also inevitable.
So carnivore isn’t necessarily going to work out for you, even though it seems to tick all the boxes. But the fact also remains, you can still transform your diet into something drastically better…
- 1. Without eliminating carbs
- 2. Without skipping breakfast
- 3. Or religiously tracking calories
You Can Build A Great Diet Without Having To Go Keto or Carnivore
Carb restriction and fasting are key principles in the diet I practice and recommend to clientele. But they’re not quite non-negotiable. That’s reserved for a few other rules that can be fitted into almost any diet. Nearly all of them, but not quite. You’ll see.
And I’m not going to beat you over the head with the obvious ones. Protein, portion control, exercise… these are all tactics that anyone with a brain is already practicing.
Instead, I’ll give you steps that people generally aren’t using, and their progress is suffering for it.
1. Make Red Meat Your Diet’s Priority
By ensuring that red meat is the first and largest thing on your plate, you’ve instantly been brought up to the one percentile of dieters. That’s not really an exaggeration. Ruminant animals are walking all-in-one nutritional powerhouses, and people still tend to pick poultry and pork instead. That’s a big issue, as I’ll cover in the next point.
2. Restrict Omega 6 Fats / Processed Vegetable Oils
Omega 6 is the unhealthy half of the polyunsaturated fats, exerting pro-oxidative effects to oppose Omega 3’s anti-inflammatory benefits. At least it used to be half, Omega 6 now dominates the western diet by a 15:1 margin. We started off at 1:1, for a comparison. This unfair contest is causing untold issues in the body, not the least being insulin resistance, the biggest driver of weight gain.
Even sugar has not increased as much as vegetable oils in the modern diet, all while the obesity epidemic continues to hit new critical levels. So there’s a case to made that consuming the likes of soybean and corn oil makes up a bigger health risk than the sweet stuff.
What caused us to get to 15:1? It’s largely been a huge increase in vegetable oils, which has replaced saturated fats like butter, lard, and animal fat. And it because it’s so cheap and easy to manufacture, animals like chicken and pigs are also fed these oils. Which means that even animal fat now contains large quantities of omega 6.
Luckily, ruminants like cows have a different digestive system to ours, enabling them to break down the polyunsaturated fats and convert them into saturated fats. It’s a trick that further elevates red meat as the go-to food source.
Notable Omega 6 Sources – Vegetable Oils
Processed Food
Corn And Soy-Fed Chicken & Pork
3. You Should Still Moderate Carbs
Even without outright elimination, you’ll benefit hugely from slowing down the sugar rollercoaster. Along with restricting Omega 6, controlling your carb intake will be a surefire way to beat insulin resistance and rescue the metabolism.
The pros are much more than just fat loss. As I’ve written in this article on brain health, you can gain a host of cognitive boosts by reducing sugar. This leads to a system that’s far less stressed, and now able to divert its focus away from the constant rescue mission. Inflammation is a natural response, it’s not inherently damaging. But when the switch is always on, as is the case with the blood sugar swings, then you’re going to be in a suppressed state.
Just like that, with three levers for quality control, you’re going to see big shifts in your physiology. You’re eating fewer inflammatory foods, while prioritising the single best nutritional source on the planet. I don’t see how this can’t lead to better results in the gym and the mirror.
There are still more options, further levers that you can use to speed up progress, and I’ve already mentioned three that would be quite serviceable. I’ve written plenty of guides on each of those topics, and you can check them out here.
