A Brief History of Food, What Went Wrong, And How To Get Healthy Again

Hey guys. Bit of a switch up here, no trading talk for the moment, but I want to talk about something much, much more important. Your HEALTH! All the money in the world is useless if you're in poor health. I've discovered some unbelievable things over the past few months, and this has inspired me to write about it and share with you all some very powerful tools to fix yourself. So I hope you enjoy the read and that you learn something today. I'm obviously not a doctor or nutritionist, just sharing with you some information that has personally helped me, and things I've found in my own research. If you can implement some of these dietary suggestions, I believe you will drastically, and I mean drastically, improve your overall feeling of well-being and quality of life.



Let's start with a thought.



Think about the entire rest of the world and all living creatures outside of the human race.

Do you see any overweight or obese animals anywhere, besides those fed by our moronic race?  (Pets, Livestock etc) Kind of a random thing to think about I know, but it's true, isn't it? The entire rest of the animal kingdom manages to completely control and regulate their weight & avoid obesity with zero knowledge of nutrition, and without doing anything but what Mother Nature intended for them to do. So, what is our problem?

I've done countless hours of research over the past few months on diet and nutrition - in a quest to heal my own issues, which I'll discuss more below. The things I've found have been nothing short of amazing. I'm going to do my best to summarize them all for you in this article, and do it in an easy to understand way, giving you a number of actionable things you can do and change right now to improve the way you feel.

This is going to be lengthy, but I hope you'll take the time to read it all, as I'm going take you on a journey from beginning to end of everything I've learned recently, and every piece of this is important to understanding the full picture. However, if you don't care for a history lesson, you can skip to "Part III" where I get into the actual diet information.

Let's dive in.


Part I: The Philosophy and the History of the Modern Western Diet (The American Diet) And Where It All Went Wrong



Everything starts with context. Understanding the situation. So let's start with a little history lesson, and go back about 40 years to the 1970's. This is when the obesity problem began to arise, and eventually spiral out of control to where we are today - in a full blown epidemic as a morbidly obese, disease ridden, pill-popping nation. It's pretty disgusting.

Between 1970 to 2000, the amount of Fitness Club and Gym memberships in the US had doubled, which is a good thing. Yet, the obesity rate ALSO doubled. So more people were exercising, yet the country just keeps getting fatter, to the point that today, nearly every 2 out of 3 Americans are somewhere on the spectrum of either overweight or obese. Does this sound right to you? What are we missing? What's the smoking gun here? What the hell happened in the 1970's that sparked such a dramatic and growing trend of obesity and health problems we face today?

In January of 1977, something called The McGovern Report was published. This was a message from Senator George McGovern recommending the first dietary guidelines to the American people. The report essentially said "The American diet has become too rich in fatty meats, sugar, saturated fat and cholesterol, and these things needed to be reduced." Naturally, the Meat, Dairy and Sugar Associations went ballistic, as this was a direct threat to their products and their profit, so they forcefully opposed and rejected the McGovern Report. These Associations were some of the most powerful groups of people in the food industry, with extremely deep pockets and connections, and they lobbied their way into getting the McGovern Report to revise the claims about it's dietary guidelines for Americans. The wording of "reducing intake" of those so-called bad food items was removed from the report, and instead, it now just urged people to buy leaner products, and more food with "less fat." It was all about reducing fat now, that was the new angle. (This is important)

As the 1980's rolled around, there was a new campaign launched where all the foods sold in grocery stores were marketed and labeled to be "low fat" products, and inherently deemed "healthy." However, there was a problem. When you take the fat out of food, it no longer tastes good, and you can't market and advertise poor tasting food that tastes like cardboard, right? So what did they do?

They substituted this absence of fat - with sugar. Yes, all these "fat free, reduced fat" products were loaded with sugar now to improve the taste and make food palatable. Processed foods. This is the genesis of the problem, which I'll get into more later in the article, but SUGAR is the root of all evil. It is the single most destructive thing you can put into your body, and now big food companies are dumping it into our diets by the truckload to replace fat, since fat is so "unhealthy" for you (spoiler alert: it's not. Fat is actually very beneficial when you use the right kinds and right quantities)

Anytime you see stuff like those labels above? You should think twice. The LOUDER they are and the more they try to throw it in your face how HEALTHY it is- chances are it's probably total crap. Ever see any "Heart Healthy! or "Fat-Free!" advertisements in the Produce section of the supermarket? "Broccoli....HEART HEALTHY! LOW FAT! GREAT SOURCE OF VITAMINS!" Of course not. The quieter the packaging or product is, probably the better it is for you. That's a general rule of thumb I've come to notice. (And stay the hell out of the middle of the grocery store, that's where all the garbage is. Shop around the outskirts. That's the good stuff.)

So now you've got all these products hitting the shelves with "Half the fat!" (and twice the sugar...) flooding the American diet. Our dietary intake of sugar since the 1970's has well more than doubled, and you can look no further than that to find the cause of a huge majority of the issues we face today. Diabetes, heart disease, strokes, cancer, gut problems, hormonal imbalances, mood swings, these things are all being driven and caused in one form or another, by sugar. Isn't that nice. Big corporations are "looking our for our health" by removing fat from foods, and loading it up with literal poison by the truckload into almost everything we consume. 80% of all food items in a typical grocery store have added sugar in them. Sugar is a drug. It triggers the same pleasure centers in the brain as cocaine and heroine or any other drug. People are literally addicted to sugar.

Talk about an "Oh. My. Fuck." moment, huh? Sorry for the language, but it's that bad. These companies could care less about your health. They care about their bottom line and their profit.

You probably think this all sounds insane. In the sense "if this is so bad and so true, how has it not been fixed yet? Why is the problem of obesity and disease still so prevalent?" And there is a simple answer to that. The people who make all the processed foods, the soft drink companies, the big pharmaceutical companies, the healthcare industry....all of these groups pay hundreds of millions of dollars to have "scientific research" done by doctors whom they "buy" - to produce research showing that things like sugar and processed foods aren't that harmful for you, or get them to show a lot of the data is "inconclusive".

Of course they'd do that, right? The food industry makes a ton of money from all the cheap processed food they produce, the pharmaceutical companies make a ton of money from all the medications people need because they're so sick from these sugar-laden processed foods, and the healthcare industry makes a ton of money from all the inpatient and outpatient care everyone needs. WHY would they want to see anything change? A sickly and obese America is a highly profitable America - it's a genius business model. They've lobbied and brainwashed everyone into believing the things they do and eat aren't that bad, when in reality most of it is just downright terrible for you.

Ever heard of Purdue Pharma? They did the same thing in the pharmaceutical industry with opioids in the 1990s, and single-handedly caused the opioid epidemic this country now has. They came out with an extremely aggressive marketing campaign that "Opioids are not addictive!" - when they knew damn well that they were, they just had so much money and paid so many people to do "selective research" to show otherwise, because they knew exactly the potential this situation had. Why? Because it's profitable!!! Purdue and many others made an absolutely massive amount of money by doing this and getting people addicted to opioids, and still do to this day!!!!!! It's DISGUSTING!!!!!!! I'm doing my best to keep the blog professional and avoid profanity, but some things are just so sickening, you need to feel my emotions.

My point is none of this is about your health. Nobody cares about your health, and the only person who is going to look out for you, is YOU. All big corporations care about is what they can do to generate massive profits and exploit the American people as efficiently and as cheaply as possible to keep the gravy train rolling. And if that comes at the expense of your health, well then too bad for you - plus that generates even more profits for them. That's the business model.

This stuff happens. It's all very real. Massive Corporations across the nation have designed America to be fat, sick and diseased, and set you up to fail. Because it's profitable. Sugar, refined carbohydrates and processed foods are extremely cheap to make - food companies make a ton of money off of selling them. Then, you get sick, now all those other industries like Big Pharma and Healthcare make a ton of money too, and that is exactly, and I mean exactly, the way it's been designed to happen.

If you dig deep enough, you can find every single one of those big players like Coca Cola, General Mills, Mondelez, Kraft, Nestle, all of them - contributing funding to "bought" research that disputes the fact that sugar/refined carbs/processed foods are bad for you. They aim to get the message across "well, they might cause some harm, but it's all very inconclusive, circumstantial, and there's other factors too" - that's the general idea they want to portray. They try to muddy the waters, and they spend billions to make you think these things really aren't that bad for you. But they are.

If that doesn't make you want to puke, I don't know what does.

So that's a brief history of food, and why America is so obese. Because we're eating tons of processed foods, refined carbohydrates, and hidden sugar packed into things that are marketed as "low fat" and "healthy," and we don't even realize it.

I know I'm being repetitive, but that's intentional, I really want to make this clear.



So Wait....What? 


We've been conditioned to believe we should be eating a low-fat, high-carb(which really means high sugar) diet, but that is the very cause of almost all the common disease and discomfort we encounter? Yes. Diabetes. Heart Disease. Stroke. Asthma. Cancer. Alzheimer's Disease. Lupus. Liver Disease. Joint problems. Back pain. Chronic fatigue. Depression. Inflammation, and many more. Almost all of these can either be completely avoided or largely reduced/reversed if you change the way you eat and avoid the hidden sugar and processed foods.


The Ketogenic Diet was initially created in the 1920's to help cure epilepsy. Children who ate an extremely high fat /low carb diet drastically reduced or completely eliminated their seizure episodes.

I understand your skepticism. I'm a skeptic by nature as well. Hence why I've buried my head in endless research of my own to try and learn more about all this once I started personally experiencing the benefits.

It's important to note also - I'm not saying all carbs or a high-carb diet are inherently bad or evil. They aren't. They become bad when we over-consume them and they end up being converted into the arch enemy, sugar, and stored in our body as excess fat, which leads to inflammation, and the circle goes round and round. We'll get into all this shortly.

If you experience or deal with any of those issues above and are on a bunch of medications to manage them, chances are you can get off almost all of it. I'm dead serious. Obviously there are exceptions to predisposed disease and things outside this realm that are not diet related or fixed that way, but you would be absolutely shocked just how many of your problems that you've been "damned" with have nothing to do with your genetics and heredity at all, and are completely and totally self-inflicted by your diet.

Even if you don't have any of those problems yet. you can bet if your diet is poor, you can only outrun Father Time for so long. There will be the occasional genetic freaks that will live a long life regardless. For example, my late grandfather smoked, drank, ate anything and everything he wanted, didn't care about any of this stuff, never had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, nothing -and lived to almost 90. Also, he died to cancer, his heart was healthy as an Ox, so without that event he'd probably still be here aggravating us all into his 100s. Good for him - he had amazing genetics. As for the rest of us, I wouldn't take that gamble if I was you, because by the time you find out if you're one of the lucky ones or not, the damage has already been done and it's likely too late.
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So lets just quickly backtrack for a moment - why am I talking about all this? Well, there's two reasons.

Firstly, if you didn't know, I've had two open-heart surgeries already in my life. Nothing diet related or heart-disease related caused this, it's a congenital defect I've had since birth called aortic stenosis. So my heart is healthy, but my aorta wasn't functioning properly, think of it like a plumbing problem, it can be repaired, it was repaired, and now we're all good! However, I still need to be more cautious than the average person moving forward because of this.

This is all something I decided to dive into when I was experiencing some of those symptoms above recently, and I couldn't find a solution. I was getting extremely tired in the middle of the day for no reason. I would take a nap EVERY day after the market closed, not because I love naps, but because I was just straight up tired and needed one. I woke up every morning with chronic back pain and general stiffness and lethargy. Also I had a nagging Achilles injury that wouldn't go away.

I tried to get a new bed for the back pain, that didn't work. Went to a chiropractor, that didn't work. Tried resting my leg for weeks to heal my Achilles, but I just kept re-aggravating it. That didn't work. (I like to jump rope during the trading day, it's a pretty sedentary profession, so I get up every 20-30 mins and jump rope to get the blood flowing, and I couldn't do that anymore, because my Achilles tendon would start throbbing after 30 seconds.) I'd drink a ton of coffee all day, and still be exhausted.

So I'm sitting here thinking.... "I'm an otherwise healthy 29 year old guy, I should not be having ANY of these issues, so what is going on?"

Sure enough, it was all related to my diet.

Part II: A Few Common Things We Don't Realize

Going to start with a general statement: Inflammation and insulin resistance are the root causes of a huge majority of our issues and the discomfort/lethargy/sluggishness/aches and pains we encounter. If you can figure out how to reduce inflammation in the body, most of your current issues will magically start to go away. Our bodies are incredible machines and excellent at self-healing themselves, provided we give them the chance to. If you continually feed the machine the wrong things, you deprive that of happening. However if you put the right things in the machine, it will self heal, and run extremely well.

Below is a general guideline of what the USDA recommends we eat as far as macro-nutrient breakdowns. Give or take, they recommend roughly 10-15% fats, 25-35% protein, and 50-60% carbohydrates. And if people adhered to this properly, in theory, that isn't so bad (I still don't think it's right, but nonetheless, not so bad). Except almost nobody adheres to this properly - we overeat, and it's very easy to do so - as the average American consumes over 3500 calories a day, most of those calories coming in the form of excess carbohydrates and empty sugar.

It's recommended we eat such a carb heavy diet, because carbs and sugar are extremely cheap for food companies to manufacture and pump out onto the shelves - again, we're back to that whole profit thing - cheap, empty, processed food and carbs are by far the most profitable cash cow for the food industry, so naturally that's why our grocery stores are flooded with them and why fast food is so cheap, and why this stuff is aggressively marketed and pushed all around us.

Why is it so easy to overeat carbohydrates and sugar? I'm not going to get overly scientific or detailed here because it's not the point of this article, but here is a brief summary.

One of the main reasons is because of the way carbohydrates work as you digest them. Simple carbs (sugar) are processed very quickly by the body because they are low in fiber, like table sugar, white bread, white rice etc. You want to avoid these at all costs. When these foods enter your body, since they are broken down so quickly as there is no fiber to slow the process down, they instantly turn into glucose and spike your blood sugar levels. This gives you a burst of energy, what we commonly refer to as a "sugar high" or "sugar rush." This rush of glucose into your bloodstream sends your body into overhaul, and the pancreas has to secrete a hormone called insulin to help shuttle the glucose out of your blood, and into your muscles to be used as energy. However your muscles can only hold so much glucose at a time, the liver can hold some as well, but once these two gas tanks get filled up, the rest of the glucose has nowhere to go, so your body converts it into fat, and it gets stored in the form of body fat. Nothing about this is inherently bad, except the part where we so easily overeat carbs, and this fat storage part happens far more often than it should. The burst of energy you get from simple carbs is great for a little while, but it's fairly short lived - and once you deplete the glucose tanks in the muscles and liver, your brain sends you a signal "hey...that was great, got any more of that stuff? Can you go find some please?" Aka, the signal of hunger, and then you are triggered to go eat again to refill those gas tanks (but don't forget there was all that extra from the first time that got stored as fat - you don't burn that for energy, insulin prevents that from happening. So, you have to go get more fresh fuel, where the process starts over again, you refill the gas tanks, great, but the overflow is again stored as body fat. The excessive repetition of this process is how obesity, and in turn, disease & health problems, arise.

The biggest issue with this excess glucose being stored as fat, is that some of it gets stored as visceral fat. Did you know there are two different types of fat in your body?

Visceral fat is the fat in between your organs, and this is the extremely dangerous one of the two. You see the other form there in the picture, subcutaneous fat - that is the visible fat on our bodies, like a "beer gut" or "love handles" - but that fat is relatively harmless. It's the visceral fat that is the issue. So just because you aren't physically "fat" on the outside, you may still have higher levels of visceral fat if your diet is poor - which leads to inflammation, which contributes to heart attacks, type 2 diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and more - these things almost always originate from inflammation and insulin resistance - are you seeing the general theme yet. 

So if you remember back to the first statement: we can link a massive majority of our issues to inflammation in the body. Visceral fat disrupts our normal system functions, it disrupts our hormone balance, and it essentially pumps out inflammatory substances that wreak havoc on our bodies that make us tired all the time, hungry when we shouldn't be, mood swings, body aches and pains, etc. So while subcutaneous fat is maybe not so aesthetically pleasing, it's the visceral fat that is the real danger to our health. There are other things that contribute to hormone imbalances and inflammation like stress for example, but that is a big one.

Now we know that's our target. To eliminate as much fat in general, but specifically visceral fat, which will in turn help reduce inflammation, stabilize hormone levels, and improve our health in general.

I can't drive this point home hard enough. We need to be finding ways to reduce inflammation in our bodies at all costs. It will do wonders for you. W-o-n-d-e-r-s.

This leads to the final stage of this article, and it's where you come in. We're going to discuss the current diet I found, it's anti-inflammatory properties and benefits, and how you can start incorporating it into your own life to see huge improvements in your overall well-being and health.



Part III: The Amazing Benefits of the Ketogenic Diet

So from the above discussion, I mentioned that the presence of too much insulin prevents us from being able to burn fat and causes weight gain, therefore excess fat accumulates in our bodies (especially visceral fat). This introduces inflammation, which causes us to have those feelings of being overly tired and unwell, body aches and pains, we're unmotivated, depressed even - these are all symptoms of hormonal imbalances and inflammation - which are the precursors to disease most of the time.

So again - too much insulin and high blood sugar = bad. What spikes insulin the most? Sugar, processed foods, and excess simple carbohydrates. So our goal would be to find a diet regiment that keeps insulin levels down and stable, burns fat, and allows us to have low levels of inflammation in the body. This is key. That environment would be the holy grail to achieving a balanced mood, stable hormone levels, high energy levels and cognitive function, and just feelings of overall well-being and good health.

There are multiple ways to achieve this environment in the body, but today I'm going to talk about the one I've chosen, and one that has proven to be extremely effective in doing all those things just mentioned above - The Ketogenic Diet. I say this not only because of information out there on the diet - but because I have personally experienced all of those benefits since following the diet myself. That's why I'm writing this insanely long article and talking so passionately about it - because I know it works, it's doing wonders for me, and when you find something great and you have a voice, you should share it and try to help others as well. 

Since switching to a Ketogenic diet, I have been dropping body fat faster than anything I've ever tried before (I'll explain why that is in a moment). I no longer have ANY of that chronic back pain I mentioned, and my nagging Achilles injury has completely gone away as well. (These were both caused by inflammation from my diet. Removing inflammation = feel amazing) I have extremely high energy levels, higher than I've ever had in my entire life, and a feeling of complete mental clarity - that's one of the coolest benefits to me. My brain just straight up works. better. My mood is more stable. My hunger levels are way down. It's wonderful. This is due to my body running primarily on ketones instead of glucose, and having stable blood sugar and low insulin levels. Again, I'll cover all of this shortly don't worry.

The magic of the Ketogenic diet is not that it's not some miracle diet - the miracle comes from what it does to your body and your brain chemistry - it very effectively suppresses your appetite, which makes it very hard to overeat (fats and protein are very filling, carbs are not) So once you get adapted to this diet, your body will naturally require much less food, you will lose a ton of weight without even trying, you won't feel like you're starving yourself, and here's the kicker - On the Ketogenic diet, you use your own body fat as energy - far more effectively than any other diet. A lot of the foods we normally eat spike blood glucose levels and insulin levels, so you are unable to use your body fat stores for energy, and you just continually require more carbs and more sugar, which is why we get fat. Since Keto promotes low blood glucose and insulin levels, it allows you to access your own body for energy, melts fat off your body, all while giving you extremely high levels of energy and mental clarity. NUTS.

Most people fail at dieting because what they do is not sustainable. They eat "healthier" foods that they don't like. Or they try eating foods they do like, but insanely small portion sizes of these foods to create the caloric deficit required to lose weight. You have to burn roughly 3500 calories to lose one pound of body fat. They are constantly hungry, constantly tired, and just feel crummy. Which eventually leads to a "screw this" attitude, and you fail at your diet attempt.

You don't have to deal with any of that on the Ketogenic diet. You will be able to eat foods that taste great, you will not be hungry all the time, you will not feel tired, and all the while, you will effortlessly lose body fat because of eating less food and your body burning it's own fat stores for energy. Doesn't that sound nice?

Another cool thing about the Ketogenic diet? Since we're starving our bodies of glucose, that inherently implies a reduced risk of cancer. Much research shows that cancer feeds off of glucose. It needs glucose to grow. If you deprive your body of glucose, you are essentially starving your body of potential cancer growth. I'm not suggesting Keto cures existing cancer obviously, but it very well may aid in preventing new cancer cells from growing, and keep current ones at bay. A Keto diet is often administered for cancer patients. Here is a really cool story about a kid named Logan Snead who was diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago, and has been using a Ketogenic diet to fight it, and successfully at that. Skip to 8:30 in the video. 



Listen. I know this may sound sales-pitchy, and "too good to be true." But it's not. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I could care less if you try the Ketogenic diet or not, I'm simply here telling you it works, and I think you'd very likely love it if you  gave it a chance. If you're struggling with your weight or health, this is a fantastic solution. Plain and simple. It's not the only solution, but it is a very good one in my opinion.



What is the Ketogenic Diet? How does it work? Why does it work? What do I eat? What do I not eat? 

Slow down soldier, we're getting there.

The Ketogenic diet is a diet that is vastly different than the normal dietary recommendations. If you remember from above we said the USDA suggests we eat 10-15% fat, 25-35% protein, and 50-60% carbohydrates. Keto completely flips that conventional wisdom on it's head, and suggests you eat 70-80% fats (yes, fats), 20-25% protein, and 5-10% carbs.

Are you looking at me like I have 10 heads yet? That's okay. I laughed at first too. That sounds clinically insane. A diet of 70% fats??!?!? Crazy, right? I'm sure it sounds like way too much, and you're probably thinking "how is that even possible anyway? And won't that give me heart disease and clog my arteries and cause all kinds of issues??" No! It won't.

It's actually a lot easier to do than you think, and it's wildly effective at maintaining extremely stable blood glucose levels and low insulin levels, incredibly effective at burning body fat, lowering blood pressure, and this all creates an environment of very low inflammation in the body, and in turn, less problems, and less disease.



OK! Now onto the meat of the article - everything about the way this works, what to do, and what not to do. 


Think of your body like a hybrid engine. It can run on two fuel sources, either glucose (aka carbs/sugar, which you've been running on your entire life), OR, it can run on fats. Yes, your body can use fats as a primary source of energy. Actually, you can make a great argument that your body actually prefers to run on fat rather than glucose, using something called ketone bodies as fuel instead, hence the name Ketogenic. Ketone bodies are molecules present in your blood, produced in the liver and are a byproduct of burning fat. When you deprive your body of carbohydrates and glucose, you will naturally start to burn the next available thing, fat, and start to produce more of these ketones in the blood, and they will be used to break down fat and use it as a primary energy source. When your body is in this fat-burning state for energy, it's known as being in "Ketosis". That's where you want to be. And you get into Ketosis simply by eating a very low carbohydrate diet, 30-50g or less.

There are very few parts of your body that need glucose to function. The most important part is the brain, but it only partially requires glucose, and your body can make all the glucose it needs from proteins without you ingesting any through your diet, in a process called gluconeogenesis.

You've heard of essential fatty acids (fats). Essential means...well, exactly what you think. Essential. Necessary for life. If you don't consume fats, you will die. You've also heard of essential amino acids (proteins). If you don't consume protein, you will die. But have you ever heard of essential carbohydrates? No, you haven't, because they don't exist. You actually don't need any carbohydrates from food to survive. If you don't consume any carbohydrates, you will not die. Not only will you not die, but you will actually thrive. Again, your body is capable of making all the glucose it needs internally. That's pretty interesting.

Now - I'm not saying the Ketogenic Diet is the only diet that you can feel great on. This is just one way. And again, before people freak out, I'm not saying carbs are bad, or useless, or anything like that. If you're a high energy individual, then they are likely very useful to you, assuming you are burning them off effectively.

If you are for example, a body builder or someone trying to build a lot of muscle, or someone who does high intensity/heavy workload activity of any kind, carbs are great. They're an extremely potent energy source and great for building muscle and high energy expenditure activities of any kind. All I'm saying is that for the majority of Americans (most of us) who aren't doing that large amount of physical activity - it's a tall order to burn off all those carbs we eat before they get stored as fat, since we typically overeat (or over-drink) them, talking to you - beer and soda lovers. That's when they create huge problems and we start to feel shitty. Carbs inherently are not bad, they just become bad when over-consumed and we don't burn them off.

And also - you can still do plenty of high energy things while on a Ketogenic diet. The diet is not known for it's strength-inducing properties, but it has been known to improve endurance and things of that nature. You'll see a lot of marathoners and guys in MMA (mixed martial arts) doing Ketogenic diets, because of these increased endurance properties. So don't think you can't build muscle or perform well on a Keto diet. You can. You just won't be squatting 800lbs or benching 450 anytime soon.


What You Can and Can't Eat, and How Much to Eat on The Ketogenic Diet

So let's talk about some of the foods you can eat on the Ketogenic diet, and I'll go over what a typical day of eating looks like for me. If this stuff sounds a bit confusing at first, I promise you it really isn't, and you will get the hang of it pretty quickly once you get started. It gets very easy. It will also look a lot simpler when I give you an example day of what I'm eating and how to keep track of it all - and you'll definitely get the feeling of "Oh. That's simple enough." So just process as much of this as you can for now.

What you CAN eat:
Foods that are high in healthy fats, moderate in protein, high in fiber, and low in carbohydrates.

1) Protein Sources: You won't need a ton of this,  as Keto is a moderate protein diet, but definitely some. These will include:

Grass-fed beef, Steak, Pork, Chicken, Turkey, Lamb, Bison, Fish and Seafood/Shellfish, Organ meats, Eggs, Bacon (yes, bacon!), Sausage, Whey Protein, nut butters like peanut butter, almond butter, etc - all of these things are Keto friendly. You should try to go for more full-fat meats over lean meats, aka less chicken and turkey, and more of the others, but they are all okay. You'll want to get about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass you are. I'll explain what that means quickly. To figure out your lean body mass, first you'll need to determine what your body fat % is. Doesn't have to be exact, you can use this picture below to get an estimate for yourself.

So let's say you used this picture to guesstimate, and you believe you are 200lbs, and about 20% body fat. Your lean body mass is the other 80%. So 200lbs * 80% = 160lbs of lean body mass. 0.7 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass, 160 * 0.7 = you should be eating about 100-110g of protein a day on this diet, and it should come from any of those sources just described above.

And again, you don't need to go super crazy with this stuff and be exact, it just should be close. So those are your options for protein, and that should make up about 20-25% of your daily calories.

2.) Fat Sources: The star of the show, and the most important one to focus on. Remember, once you get into the groove of this, fats are going to be your main energy source, and it feels amazing.

Types of Fat you want: You are primarily going to be consuming poly and monounsaturated fats, and very small amounts of saturated fats. These will include:

Fats from the fatty meat protein sources, grass-fed butter, coconut oil, MCT oil, fish oils (Omega 3s), extra virgin olive oil,  full-fat salad dressings (sparingly), avocados (thats a big one, very high in Potassium), nuts (macadamia and almonds are best imo), nut butters again, I like almond butter. Things like that.

For example, a serving of almond butter contains about 18g of fat, but only about 2g of saturated fat and the rest is mono and polyunsaturated, so that's a great choice. We want to limit the amount of saturated fat to as little as possible, and absolutely no trans-fats.

Types of Fat you don't want: hydrogenated vegetable oils, corn oil, canola oil, stuff like that. These are the types of fats that lead to inflammation, the very thing we want to avoid. Cooking with PAM or other canned cooking spray? I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? All that stuff - Garbage. Throw it out. Cook with coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil instead. Much healthier.

I mention grass-fed products so often because most livestock are fed soy and corn products to fatten them up, and soy and corn oils are higher in Omega 6's, which are the bad Omegas -they increase inflammation. We want more Omega 3s, and less Omega 6s.

I'm not personally a fan, but you can have dairy (not milk, but mainly cheeses and low/no sugar yogurt) as well, good source of protein and fats, but I try to avoid lactose altogether.

3.) Carbohydrate Sources: This will be the smallest part of your day, and you should get most of your carbs from greens like spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts, asparagus, zucchini, celery, mushrooms, romaine lettuce, things of that nature. Also they'll come from things like avocado, nut butters (peanut butter & almond butter).

Managing this macro-nutrient is the most important part of the diet, and the part that allows you to remain in Ketosis, the fat burning state that is responsible for making you feel great and energetic all day. You want to shoot for 50 grams of total carbs,  and 30 grams of net carbs a day. Net carbs = total carbs, minus fiber. For example, one medium avocado has about 12 grams of carbohydrates, but it also has 9 grams of fiber, so you would only count that as 3 grams of net carbs. Keep net carbs under 30 grams a day, and you will do a solid job of remaining in Ketosis and feeling great. 

4.) Liquids: What you can and can't drink
You can drink water, coffee, seltzers, zero-calorie drinks with no carbs (there's some debate on whether or not sweeteners are a big deal or not. I really think it's okay to have some, and if you're going to use them, try and stick with Stevia, Truvia, a drinks with sucralose, like Powerade Zero. Avoid diet soda and artificial sweeteners altogether in a perfect world for best results.

One of my personal favorite drinks on the diet is Keto Coffee, which you may have heard of, it's also referred to as "Bulletproof Coffee" - this is a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of coconut oil or MCT oil in it, and some heavy whipping cream or light cream. It's absolutely delicious, and a great source of healthy fats. The MCT oil gives you a great boost of energy. This essentially acts as a meal replacement drink. I usually have one mid afternoon every day.

Can you drink alcohol on the Keto diet? Yes, you can. However, you'll have to say goodbye to the beer for the most part though. You can have any of the normal liquor drinks, like a Vodka soda, Jack or Captain and Coke zero/diet coke, things like that. Just make sure the liquor you're drinking has no carbs, and neither does the chaser. Most liquors are no carbs, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila, scotch, all zero carbs, all allowed. (Note...if you drink a ton, this diet isn't going to work. Of course. You can have these things..but you really shouldn't, and if you do, make sure it's in moderation.)


Example Ketogenic Diet: Full Day of Eating 

I choose to do the Keto diet along with Intermittent fasting, which I believe adds to the fat burning benefits. Plus I just love the way I feel and the way my brain functions in a fasted state all morning. You may enjoy it, you may not, try it out and see. Everyone is different.

Intermittent fasting in this case just means eating within a 6-8 hour window every day. As in I'll consume all my food for the day between noon and 6pm, then fast for 18 hours. This is pretty easy to do on a Ketogenic diet, because of how effective being in Ketosis is at suppressing your appetite.

Daily eating schedule is as follows:

Wake up 7am: Black coffee, no sweeteners or cream/milk. You can use a small amount if you want, it's just better if you don't. Will have one or two cups throughout the morning, and water. I fast until about noon.

Noon: 3 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, an avocado, and either some almonds or macadamia nuts.

2:30pm: A mixed greens salad with 2 tbsp (1 serving usually) full fat dressing, yes the one's that taste good, dressings are ok - if you like blue cheese, ranch, Italian, whatever - these are all ok, just make sure they're the full fat version, and there is very little or no sugar in them. Fat we're not afraid of, sugar is what we're trying to avoid. (Sometimes I'll skip the avocado at my first meal, and chop it up into my afternoon salad, just to switch things up, but make sure you're eating an avocado every day)

I'll also make a Keto Coffee (Coffee with 1 tbsp of butter, 1 tbsp coconut oil or MCT oil, and some light cream, and a little cinnamon on top) You'll have to blend it to mix everything up, so use a blender, or I just use one of these, much easier and no clean up from the blender.

5:30pm: 8oz of some sort of meat, I always switch it up. 80/20 ground beef, or bison, salmon, steak, porkchop, whatever you want, along with a veggie of your choice again, asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts, zucchini, a small salad again.

And that's it! For me, it ends up being about 1800-2000 total calories a day. Which may not sound like a ton, but when you're eating a lot of fats, it's very filling, and you won't want any more. (I'm 8 weeks in now currently, and I'm eating even less than that. I'm legitimately not hungry for any more.) You'll see what I mean once you get into it. You'll have to play with it to figure out your specific numbers, but most people should be roughly around there - that will keep you in a good caloric deficit, and you should consistently lose weight every week, especially if you're incorporating some exercise in there as well.

Also remember, once you are in ketosis, you will start to use your own body fat for energy. So normally it's hard to access that body fat when you have a lot of insulin present from ingesting sugar/carbs, so your body signals to your brain that it's hungry much more often. In ketosis, your insulin levels will be very low, and you'll feel that hunger sensation much less because you're able to tap into that body fat instead of needing more "fuel" (carbs/sugar).


If the nutrient breakdown seems a bit confusing - no worries. There's an app for that. Jump on your phone and download MyFitnessPal, and you can easily track all your food. My macros end up looking this most days, this is a screenshot from the MyFitnessPal app. I'm 5'11 and weigh 200 lbs currently, for reference.

Some things to note looking at my macros. 1) 49g of carbs. That's total carbs, not net carbs. There's about 20g of fiber in my diet as well so that number is actually about 29g "net carbs."

Secondly, and this is extremely, extremely important. You adjust your macros based on what you're trying to do. For example, I have decent muscle mass already, so I'm specifically trying to drop body fat right now. If you are trying to drop body fat at a faster rate, then reduce the fat on your plate. Remember, being in ketosis, your body wants to use fat for energy. So if you reduce the dietary fat coming from your plate, it will start to use your own body fat instead as energy. But if you eat a ton of dietary fat like 250+ grams a day, then you'll be burning that instead. So this is and always will be a HIGH FAT DIET, but the lower you can get the dietary fat, the better, for burning body fat purposes. If you're trying to gain muscle or gain weight, then you would increase the fat and protein levels and probably eating 200+ grams of fat now, maybe even introduce carb days, there's a lot of things you can do from there. I'll just say if you're super skinny and trying to grow, Keto probably isn't for you. You should be looking into the right carbs to eat (complex carbs), how to get into a healthy caloric surplus to grow, and still avoiding sugar and processed foods, and grow that way.

Play around with it! See what works. For me personally, getting about 150g of fat and 100g of protein, I'm losing 1.5-2lbs a week, it's pretty incredible, so this is good for me. When I hit my goal weight, I will slowly increase the fat and protein levels until I am no longer losing weight, this is called your maintenance levels, where you will roughly stay the same weight.

I've lost about 18 pounds now in roughly 8 weeks, barely even trying. This is pretty awesome if you can adhere to it properly, and I promise you won't be starving yourself.

And that's how this works! Carbs always stay the same, and play around with fat and protein, maintaining roughly a 60-70% fat intake and 20-25% protein at first, and adjust from there.




So I've told you the types of foods you should be eating on this diet, and about how much of each you should be eating of each one, you'll have to play around with it to find your personal numbers, but as long as you're around roughly 10% total carbs(50g total, 30g net carbs), 20-25% protein, and about 70% fat, then you will be just fine and will achieve Ketosis.

You keep talking about "Ketosis" - what is it, how long does it take to get into it, and how do I know when I'm in Ketosis? 

Ketosis is the state where you have low insulin, and a heightened presence of ketone bodies in your blood in response, in the form of acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybuterate. These ketone bodies allow you to tap into that body fat, and burn it off as energy.

Generally, as soon as you start to restrict your carb intake to the proper amount, which is 30g of net carbs or less), you will be on your way to Ketosis. It varies in everyone on how long it takes to reach, but on average, you can expect it to take anywhere from 2 to 5 days to fully deplete your body and muscles of glucose.

There are two ways to tell if you are in Ketosis. One is "alright" and fairly accurate, it's done with urinalysis test strips, something like these which you can find all over Amazon or at your grocery store probably. That's one way to tell. But the best way is through a blood test, the way a diabetic checks their blood glucose levels. I use this one called Keto Mojo - it's the cheapest I think, and this is the most accurate way to test. You'll get a reading of Ketone levels in mmol/L in your blood, it looks like this:

And this is obviously the sure fire, guaranteed way to make sure you're doing this right. anything over 0.5 mmol/L is considered to be in dietary Ketosis, and levels of 1.0-2.5 are ideal for fat burning and optimal energy usage. People vary on those numbers a little, but I've found I feel the best when I'm around 1.5 - 2.0.

Again, you don't have to do this. You can just get the test strips from the grocery store or online, and if you know you are 100% being strict and keeping your net carbs under 30g/day, then you don't need to really test at all. You will be in Ketosis, and you will feel it. I test simply because I like to play around with different foods, see which ones affect me how, what I can and can't eat, etc. But in the beginning, just try and eat the diet as it's intended and see if you like it and it feels sustainable for you, that's most important. This isn't meant to be a 4-week crash course quick fix diet, it's meant to be something you can permanently change to, lose a ton of weight, and feel great. It's a lifestyle change. Which some people are in dire need of. 


I know this feels a bit overwhelming...but I promise you, just try to digest it, and think really all we're doing here...is avoiding carbs and sugar! That's pretty much it. If you can handle that, then you've already got 90% of the battle down. The other 10% is just understanding the rules and tweaking the fat and protein numbers that work best for you.



 "I'm Going To Give This a Shot, What Should I Expect To Happen from Day 1?" 

Alright. You've digested what this is, and you want to give it a shot. Here's what you should expect.

The first few days will be a little weird. You have to know that going in, and not give up on it. Because you need to remember - your body has been running on carbs/glucose for your entire life. Now all the sudden you're going to change that. Your body is going to say "wtf dude" for a couple days. Remember we talked about how sugar and carbs trigger the same pleasure sensors in the brain as drugs do, so essentially what you'll be doing here is taking a drug away from yourself and going into a withdrawal of sorts - it's commonly referred to as "The Keto Flu". This sounds scary, but it's avoidable. 

And I promise you, I promise you, after a few days, you will adjust, and not only will you not feel like shit, but you will feel amazing, and you will not even crave the sugar and the crap anymore. And I'm going to give you a bunch of tips here how to avoid the Keto Flu. To be honest, the way I did it - I didn't feel terrible at all. I never went through the "Keto Flu" period.

Avoiding the "Keto Flu"

There's one very important thing you need to do in those first few days you're trying this -and that is make sure you're getting plenty of electrolytes. I did this by drinking a lot of Powerade Zero, which has a lot of the key things you need keep your body feeling well - such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and sodium, while also helping give a little taste of "sugar" in the form of sucralose. Powerade Zero helped a lot, as well as a few other supplements I take, which I'll tell you all about below.

You have to remember your muscles are used to running on glucose. You also hold a lot of water in your muscles, so in this transition, you'll be flushing out a lot of fluids. So when you drain them of that, which you'll be doing in the first few days of going very low carb - there's another thing muscles do - they hold water. And along with water, they hold electrolytes and other essential nutrients that keep you feeling well. So when you deplete your body of glucose, you're essentially (initially) depleting it of everything else, water, electrolytes, etc - so you have to make sure you're 1) drinking plenty of water and 2) replenishing electrolytes - and if you can do those two things - you should be able to largely, if not completely, avoid the keto flu. I know I did. And within a week, you'll begin to feel not only back to normal, but at levels much better than "normal", you should experience heightened mental clarity and increased energy, everything just seems to function better. That's the effect I've noticed, and the effect that is advertised just about everywhere when you research the Ketogenic Diet.

It works.

Supplements I'm Taking While Doing the Ketogenic Diet

Drinking a lot water and either adding some extra salt to your food/drinking an electrolyte beverage is important.

1) Pink Himalayan Salt - adding salt to your diet is very important when on Keto. On a low carb diet, your kidneys excrete sodium at a much higher rate, and when you combine this with drinking a lot of water and fluids, it can lead to low sodium in your blood and cause you to feel dizzy, lead to headaches etc, so I know historically we're told "salt is bad. too much salt is bad" Well on the Ketogenic diet - we want more salt. Salt is good, its an essential electrolyte that's going to keep you feeling great. So I add Himalayan salt to my breakfast and dinner. You can find Himalayan salt or really just any mineral salt at your grocery store.

2) Daily Multi Vitamin - doesn't have to be fancy.

3) Magnesium supplement. Don't get regular Magnesium oxide, that's not very bio-available. The best two kinds to get are Magnesium Glycinate or Magnesium L-Threonate. I take both, but you can probably get away with just one or the other. Can use any brand or get them from a pharmacy sometimes, but I just use Amazon for everything, it's easier.

4) Turmeric pills. REALLY good at reducing inflammation in the body, which is our #1 goal. You feel great and stay disease free when there's very low levels on inflammation in the body, so turmeric is key. Some people like to cook with the powder - I think it tastes like shit and hate cooking with it, so I take the pill form, but either is fine.

5) CoQ10 - really important antioxidant in the body, plays a role in the metabolism and good digestion as well.

6) Fish oil supplement - need to get as many Omega 3's as possible.

7) Vitamin K2 - This is an extremely important supplement if you choose to not eat a lot of meat, which some people do. You can make arguments both ways if meat is overly harmful, I think it's fine, but if you choose to eat lower quantities of it and supplement with another form of protein, make sure you're getting enough Vitamin K2, because you can only get this from animal products and meats. K2 helps regulate where calcium ends up in the body, aka it helps get it out of your arteries and prevents clogging them. (When you hear someone's arteries have been "calcified", that's what they're referring to, a build up of calcium deposits causing blockages or hardening of the arteries which leads to heart disease, stroke, etc.

I also supplement with two products from American Metabolix, called Keto Greens as a greens shake, and Keto Lift as a preworkout.

Final Comments

Ok - well I'm sure you're about as exhausted reading this as I am writing it! So let me wrap it up.

This article was not meant to be overly scientific, please doesn't respond with "Well this isn't true! or Well that's not technically right!" because...I don't care lol. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but keep it to yourself if you disagree with Keto or anything like this, I'm sure your better, superior diet is is great too, and that's awesome. Do whatever works for you. The purpose of this article was just to get you thinking. Before starting any diet, I suggest you do your own thorough research on it to see if it's right for you. I personally find this one fits my needs, and I think it's sustainable, which is the most important part, where I still get to eat delicious food that I like and not feel starved all day. Hence why I decided to write all this for you - I'm passionate about the benefits, and can say from first hand experience - it works. 

One thing we know through research is basically fact at this point: Following a diet full of antioxidants and nutrient-rich foods with low sugar and low carb intake, and higher in protein, colorful veggies and healthy fats - is an extremely powerful tool to improve your health. There are endless studies linking this type of dieting behavior to all kinds of benefits, you can do your own research, but that should be common sense. So aim to do that - in any form you want. This is just one way to do it. There's plenty of plant-based solutions out there as well.

The Ketogenic diet is a low carb, high fat diet that sounds scary at first, but it isn't. The magic comes from what it does to your body and brain chemistry, not from the actual food. Eating a high fat low carb diet and producing blood ketones allows you to feel much more satiated (not hungry, full), and it allows you to use your own body fat as fuel, sending less hunger signals to your brain that you need more carbs before you crash again, therefore you will eat less food, and still feel satisfied. Between eating less, and burning body fat for energy in a low-insulin environment - that combination is very powerful for losing weight particularly easily. Again, I've only been doing it for about 8 weeks, and am down about 18 pounds. (I wasn't exactly fat to begin with either, a few pounds to lose? Sure, don't we all.) But this diet is a straight up fat burning machine. It's cool.

And the benefits are pretty incredible if you can follow through with it, like I mentioned a few times about the mental clarity - that's probably my favorite part, how clearly I am thinking and how well I'm processing information and how much sharper I am.

 Yes it has it's downsides, like no pasta, no bread, no beer, I absolutely miss those things, sure, but the additional benefits gained by cutting them out of my life far outweighs them, as I've never felt better, mind and body. So it's up to you, if you're really feeling like shit - there's probably a reason for that, and you're going to have to give a few things up to improve the situation. I think this is the easiest way to do so, personally. So that's why I'm doing it.

And again....this doesn't have to be SUPER STRICT! Like if you go out with friends and have a few beers one night or a bowl of pasta or whatever, that's FINE! It will knock you out of Ketosis for like a day, and then you'll be right back in 24 hours later, sometimes not even, and all is well. So don't drive yourself crazy. Like any diet, cheating once in a while is fine.


The bottom line is this. Food. Is. Medicine. You don't have to do Keto if the fat thing bothers you, but at the very least, eliminate sugar and processed foods from your life and you will thank yourself handsomely. Trust me. 

And you'll be getting rid of a heck of a lot of your meds if you can do this, or any whole-foods clean diet properly.


GOOD LUCK! 



You can DM me if you have questions but please, please, only contact me if you've read this article in it's entirety and attempted to look online for the answers to your questions. I deliberately made this article extremely long and detailed in an attempt to do just that - cover everything and leave you having no questions.

If you feel like watching some really good documentaries on the real problems with our food and our past, I recommend these:

1) The Magic Pill (on Netflix) which is specifically more Keto focused.
2) Fed Up with Katie Couric
3) In Defense of Food (also on Netflix)

Also Two of my biggest inspirations for starting the Keto diet were Jason Wittrock and Logan Delgado, you can find their Youtube channels below if you want to learn more about Keto and how they do it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOfJHaFLpfbi87xPoAa_NbQ - Jason

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfLrsGeU0MJNw8o5aDdt5Bw - Logan

These resources all do a great job of portraying everything I just discussed in this article today.

Enjoy - hope this article was helpful!


- D