I have experimented a lot with nutrition and also know a lot about the science behind it. This is how I have come up with a diet plan, which as I personally find, is vastly superior to any other. One thing to note about ketogenic diets and meat-based diets is, that people often report magical effects such as a dramatic increase in mental clarity and decrease in tendencies towards mental and physical diseases, such as anxiety, depression, IBS or other autoimmune conditions. I can only confirm this myself. The most extreme difference I had was between the vegan diet, which fairs almost as bad as eating just fast food and alcohol. On the other hand the "standard diet" is very bad itself, which is why anyone should see substantial improvements. Most remarkably is the mental clarity, and why I originally started eating what I eat today since over 15 years. I don't think it is actually ketogenic, but almost.
Unfortunately there are a lot of misconceptions about nutrition, such as that meat is bad, which are simple non sequiturs and not actually supported scientifically. I wrote a seperate article about this.
basic principles of this diet
- no processed foods (exception are traditional pure fermented foods as seen on this list)
- only whole cuts and whole pieces of food (i.e. "not processed")
- no simple sugars, little carbohydrates
- a lot of meat
- very strict "exclude most of everything" approach
- increases physical as well as mental health and performance
This calculation is for a 180cm tall person. If you are substantially shorter, you need to eat less accordingly.
breakfast
- slice of pure whole grain rye bread with butter, slice of cheese (such as gouda) and ham
- 0.2L of aged kombucha (sugar-free) or 20ml of apple cider vinegar
snacks in between
- 0.2-0.5L self-made Kefir (supermarket buttermilk and kefir are not as good)
- 65g soused herring (without canola oil, without any sort of sauce, just salt)
dinner
- 500g of fresh pure muscle meat from large mammals (whole cuts, virtually no white parts) fried very briefly in olive oil
- 50g chicory 50g other lettuce (or just 100g chicory)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 50g of potatos, sliced and fried
- 50g of zucchini, sliced and fried
- 1 onion, sliced and fried
- 300g yoghurt
I put small amounts of vitamin C in my water, but you could also put lemon over your meat/lettuce.
This diet has all the micro nutrients you need, so you can eat it every day.
You must not eat other foods such as bread, cake, chocolate, noodles, etc. and not switch out anything, especially not the meat. You must check the packages if it is really a "pure" food. E.g. yoghurts must not have added sugar or aroma, and "pure rye bread" must only be made from rye without wheat added. This diet only really works if you stick to it 100%. If you were to e.g. eat less meat and more potatos, it might no longer be so healthy anymore, as you e.g. increase your gout risk by combining a lot of meat with a lot of carbohydrates (but not if you consume just either or). The herring contains lots of of vitamin D, much more than any other food. Leaving it out our substituting it with other fish would be a very bad idea. Similarly chicory contains vitamin A, which would otherwise be somewhat lacking (but you still get 30% of the RDA without it). If you leave out the kefir, you don't really get enough calcium and so forth. In short: don't change the plan, because you prefer to eat differently, or you have heard other things to be better. A lot of common wisdoms are misleading, such as that meat causes gout, and are actually not true if you follow a balanced and thought-through diet plan. If you were to tip the balance, because you follow conflicting simplifications and dogma about nutrition, which would only be true within a different diet scheme, then it will not work out well.
Ideally you should not eat for 5-6 hours before the large meal in the evening, so that you feel quote hungry for 1-2 hours before. Feeling hungry cleans the liver, at least a little bit. Eat at most 3-4 hours before going to bed.
After 3 days you should already feel much much better in general. But it might take up to 7 days for you to adjust, especially if you have never eaten large meals and if your diet before relied heavily on carbohydrates, or if you have medical issues such as IBS. It takes time for your fat metabolism to ramp up and your body to derive energy from fat, rather than sugar in your diet. If you do a lot of physical activity you might feel low on energy at first or get cravings for bread, candy and such. This goes away after a while. If you do extreme sports, such as running marathons, you cannot just eat this diet, as carbohydrates are necessary for extreme amounts of physical activity. Most people however should already feel much better after just the first day.
Other foods that are safe to eat for me and healthy: tomatos, peppers, most fruits (up to 200g at a time, ideally 100g), zucchini, pumpkin, other kinds of unprocessed meats, certain nuts and seeds but not all. If you want to try this diet for health reasons, ultimately after a few weeks you could try out other foods multiple times and see if they make you feel worse again. But don't do this right away. There is no need to eat tomatos or anything else, it would be just for the taste. This diet is absolutely complete with just the 3 meals listed, and can be eaten indefinitely without any sort of malnutrition.
Another important thing is to source high quality and fresh meat. It should be tasty if eaten raw, not apprehensive or slimy to the touch, not smelly in any way, that's how you know. It is always best to buy pieces sold inside oxygen-removed atmosphere, not loose pieces without proper packaging. I found that vacuum packaged and frozen meat is often very old for some reason, hence rather something to avoid. If you want to get into eating liver and kidneys, those should never be bought from the supermarket and need to come from animals which are not farmed industrially. Some countries have very poor meat quality, such as the USA, and you might need to pay a little extra to get somewhat reasonable quality. However in Germany, you can find common supermarkets which sell high quality meat regularly at half the price, so that you only pay 4-5 Euros per Kilo.
Troubleshooting
- low energy, fatigue -> wait at least a week for metabolism to adjust, do more exercise on the long run to get more competent at metabolizing fat rather than carbohydrates
- dinner is somehow too stressful/painful to digest -> might be a sign of very poor health if it persists beyond 7 days. In this case, divide the meal into two or cut out 1/3 of the meat from your plate and eat it the next day as snacks.
- meat too fatty chewy/dry if fried -> fry on maximum heat and only for 90 seconds each side
- heart issues after eating -> meal contains too much fat, choose even leaner cuts, work with less oil - or poor health -> divide meal
- too much weight loss -> drink more kefir, buy slightly fattier cuts for dinner, put more butter on bread, eat more herring, or worst case fry bacon as snack food
This page or post was last modified on 2023-05-26 .