For those who have known me before health and fitness became a major part of my life, you know that I was very skinny. I was not the “fit” kind of skinny that some athletes carry as a result of their sport, rather I was skinny fat with no muscle definition, no flexibility, no mobility, and no real strength.
Growing up in New Orleans, I never truly understood what it meant to eat healthy, nor did I understand how profoundly impactful a healthy diet could be on my life. I had no concept of living a healthy lifestyle which translated to me eating an atrociously terrible diet that led me to become skinny fat.
At the time I didn’t realize it, but my poor diet contributed to years of suffering from extreme bouts of depression, anxiety, and a general sense of unwellness throughout my early adulthood. In addition to feeling unwell both mentally and physically, I also suffered from extreme lack of confidence and insecurities due to having such a small frame and stature.
However, as my 30s began knocking on the door, I reached a point where I knew I wanted to make a substantial life-change by becoming as healthy and as fit as possible… and food would play a significant role in helping me make this transformation.
So this marked the first time in my life that I began paying very close attention to my diet. I began doing all of the things that the health and fitness industry tells people to do – counting calories, tracking macronutrients, drinking protein shakes, eating lots of chicken, broccoli and rice, etc.
And what was the result?
It worked…
I saw drastic changes to my body. I began to build noticeable muscle mass and definition. My health and general sense of wellbeing improved. My confidence shot through the roof.
I began to identify as a very fit person, and other people noticed too. But even more importantly I enjoyed the psychological benefits of knowing that I am in control of my situation….
But with all of this came an unwanted side effect – an unhealthy relationship with food.
You see, when you obsessively measure and track everything you eat, and when your health and wellbeing becomes contingent on you sticking to a formulaic concoction of rigid and rather unnatural dietary practices, I believe you set yourself up for failure.
This is because the traditional health and fitness guidance around food not only misses the forest for the trees, but also requires people to assume unnatural behaviors and eating patterns that most will find to be impossibly difficult to sustain in a healthy way over the long-run. I found that these rules either lead people to give up and resort back to old habits, or to become obsessive to the point where their eating interferes with their lives in an unhealthy way.
For me, it was the latter. Every time I missed a meal, or didn’t get enough protein for the day, I obsessed over it and it drove my stress levels up much higher than they deserved to be.
This is when I started to feel that requiring people to pay such close attention to their caloric and macronutrient consumption for their whole life is unreasonable and unnatural.
Expecting people to consume protein shakes to meet some numerical target based on their bodyweight is unreasonable and unnatural.
Expecting people to limit portion sizes and stop eating before reaching satiety literally goes against our own natural cues.
So in my observation, most people are unsuccessful at sustaining their healthy eating goals because the eating protocols they are following are too far removed from the nuances of the natural human experience.
If you know anything about me then you’d know that I am a minimalist. You’d know that I genuinely believe in the “less is more” approach to life. That is, better results tend to be achieved when complexities are removed, and processes are broken down to their simplest parts.
You may also know that I am deeply philosophical, because in my eyes, philosophy searches for answers to life’s dilemmas through intentional and focused thought which leads to breakthroughs of understanding that otherwise may never be achieved.
Lastly, I enjoy compiling knowledge from seemingly disjointed topics and stitching them together to create a bigger-picture and more comprehensive understanding of something.
And that’s exactly what I did with my understanding of human nutrition, particularly as it relates to being applied practically to people’s everyday lives.
When considering the realities of human anthropology, the evolution of civilization, psychology and human behavior, the history of the medical industry, and more, I’ve come to some basic conclusions regarding the issue that many people struggle with when it comes to eating for better health and wellness.
I realized that literally no other living creature on earth counts calories, tracks macronutrients, or follows a formulaic eating structure that goes against their own primal inclinations,
I realized that we casually use terms like “Greek Statue” to describe an ideal aesthetic, although the Greeks, and all other ancient peoples for that matter lived long before the concept of calories and ultra-scientific explanations of diet even existed.
So I had to ask the question…
“If for the majority of human history, formulaic and rigid eating patterns that go against natural instincts didn’t exist in animals or humans, and if all living creatures in nature are able to be strong and healthy without elaborate scientific studies, then why modern humans in western society approach diets so differently?”
These revelations is what led me to shift away from the traditional health and fitness dietary practices, and begin mimicking a diet that looks more like what our ancient ancestral relatives would have eaten 10,000 years ago before the rise of mass agriculture and industrial food processing.
This shift has enabled me to eat intuitively with no regard for portion sizes, caloric intake, or macronutrient profiles. I’ve effectively eliminated the cognitive demands that serve as barriers to success for many. By taking the minimalist approach and removing these aspects from my process, I spend far less cognitive energy trying to will myself to live and eat in a way that goes against my own primal inclinations.
Furthermore, it has saved me time and energy by freeing me from the shackles of relying on protein shakes and other artificial lab supplements to meet my nutritional targets.
I think you can see for yourself that the results are undeniable. Rather than following some obscure advice from people who oftentimes seem to be the opposite of healthy, I experimented on myself over a 10 year period of trial and error, and I’ve found a minimalistic style of eating that produces real results.
That style of eating is what I call the “Ancestral Diet,” as it attempts to mimic the eating patters of our prehistoric ancestors long before modernity messed everything up.
And the best part is that this eating style doesn’t require engaging in a laundry list of food consumption activities that are rather unnatural, and potentially leads to unhealthy relationships with food.
This explains my biggest gripe with both the medical world, big food, and the fitness industries.
In my opinion, all three are complicit in lacking connectivity to nature and incessantly pushing the masses towards weird solutions that are completely misaligned with our natural behaviors and food consumption patterns.
So in short, my health and fitness evolution led me to three core conclusions:
Standard dietary guidelines promote profits over people
The modern world unnecessarily overcomplicates nutrition
Eating in alignment with nature produces the best results
So based on these conclusions, I’ve decided to give you my decade of understanding boiled down into five general takeaways about eating that can make a huge difference on your life:
1) Supplements are for the most part not necessary – Although useful when used for added benefit, RELYING on supplementation is typically a glaring red flag that one’s diet is incomplete and possesses gaps.
Even when supplements are used…natural and whole foods (or whole food derivatives) can be taken as supplements. For example, drinking kefir or bone broth in place of a powered or pre-packaged protein shake can help to give a person an added influx of protein.
It is also possible that some rules of thumb in the fitness industry such as needing to consume exceptionally high levels of protein to build muscle are marketing ploys to elevate demand for protein and other supplements.
I have substantially cut back my protein consumption by either removing protein powders from my nutrition. I typically go without any supplements, or in limited cases I’ll drink bone broth or kefir as a natural protein “supplement.” In either case, I have only seen my strength and physique improve despite not spending money or effort taking a concoction of supplements.
2) Make sure your foods pass the history test – A very simple question helps to quickly decipher between ancestral and non-ancestral foods. And that question is “if I were alive 10,000 years ago, is this something I would have been able to eat?”
Looking at it this way will quickly eliminate many foods – pop-tarts, pastries, foods with refined sugars, foods with gums and emulsifiers, foods with refined vegetable oils, etc… What you are left with is a wide assortment of produce, animal products, and very lightly processed foods such as cold pressed olive oil, fermented foods, etc.
This simple rule means you’ll be eating less cheerios and more butter. This means you’ll be consuming WHLOE eggs including the egg yolk rather than buying a bottle of pre-made egg whites from the store.
This means you’ll be eating more burgers made with sourdough bread buns and 100% meat rather than burgers made with enriched buns and veggie patties.
This also means you’ll be eating more foods that are in season, and locally produced rather than foods that are out of season and transported over long distances.
This isn’t a fool proof method however, as there are still some nuances .. but this leads to the next principle.
3) Pay attention to what happened to your food – Even fresh fruits and vegetables can be sprayed with all kinds of hormone disrupting chemicals and animals are often fed terrible diets and raised in unhealthy conditions.
It is not necessary to be an expert, but having a general knowledge of what happens before your food arrives at the store or market goes a very long way.
For produce I like to stick to organic when I can. For animal products I try to make sure the animal either lived in the wild, or was raised in conditions that emulate the wild. For example, choosing pasture-raised beef over standard feedlot beef.
Also for pre-packaged foods, this means trying to stick to foods with extraordinarily simple ingredient lists. Take these two labels for peanut butter for example.
4) Find an eating rhythm that is natural and intuitive to you – If and only if you nail down the ability to decipher between whole and processed foods and you eat a wide variety of these foods, then you eliminate the need for calorie counting, nutrient tracking, or dietary restrictions. The foods you eat will be more aligned with reducing inflammation and supercharging the metabolism in a way that will let your body find its natural weight and a body composition that favors less fat and more muscle.
5) Pay attention to your lifestyle and mental health – While many harp on controlling your portions and counting your calories, few talk about the profound impacts that your lifestyle and mental health play on your appetite and your ability to properly digest food.
For example, lack of sleep triggers the body to release hunger hormones that increase appetite… And chronic lack of sleep can lead to insensitivities towards satiety hormones in the same way a diabetic is insensitive to insulin, meaning even when eating a sufficient amount, your body struggles to pick up on natural cues to stop eating.
Additionally, stress from poor lifestyle habits can send many different bodily functions and hormones out of balance which will cause the body to process food differently. As is the case for many people living the fast-paced western lifestyle, these mood and hormonal imbalances contribute significantly to unwanted weight gain and other negative health effects triggered by diet.
If you believe you have room to improve your diet, or if you really want to go all in on a totally different and more natural way of eating then you’re in luck. I’ve recently released an e-book on the basics of Ancestral Eating, which you can purchase directly from my website for $9.
And for those who are looking for more than what can be provided in a book, I offer one-time consultations as well as a 6-month health and fitness coaching program that helps people make true transformational change for once and for all.