how to lose weight

MY OWN TRANSITION FROM FAT TO FITI went to medical school in the early eighties, in the heyday of the low-fat craze. I avoided fat and
recommended my patients do the same in order to lose weight and prevent heart disease. I became a
vegetarian, and for ten years I avoided any animal products except low-fat yogurt and egg whites. I
kept oils to a minimum and ate lots of bread and pasta (then promoted as a health food). I knew too
much sugar wasn’t that good for you, but I ate plenty of whole-wheat low-fat cookies and low-fat
frozen yogurt because I craved sugar and carbs. I was young and a runner, so I burned a lot of it off,
but as I got older I noticed my body change. I developed love handles, my belly got a little bigger, my
pant size increased two inches, and my body seemed flabby and less muscular. By the time I was
thirty-five, I’d gained fifteen pounds. I studied nutrition and followed a healthy balanced diet—the
same one I recommended to my patients—so I thought it was just normal aging. I didn’t eat junk food;
I never had soda or processed food. I ate a whole-foods diet rich in grains, beans, fruits, and veggies
and didn’t go overboard on sugar. I ate little fat. But my body just kept getting flabbier.
As the research started emerging on the dangers of sugar and refined carbs (even whole wheat
bread), I cut down on sugar and carbs. But still, I feared fat, especially saturated fat, which I “knew,”
as a doctor, was the cause of heart disease. If I exercised a lot (like riding my bike thirty-five miles a
day), I thought I could keep some of the excess weight off, but it wasn’t sustainable.
Then, over the last ten years, as the tide turned, I began to change my own eating habits and my
recommendations to my patients. I saw people lose one hundred or more pounds and reverse type 2
diabetes. I saw my patients get off insulin and optimize all their cholesterol levels not by eating lessfat, but by eating more fat.
The changes in my own body were remarkable. Not only did I have more mental focus and clarity,
but I lost the fifteen pounds, the love handles, and two inches off my waist, and at fifty-five years old I
am more muscular and fit than I’ve ever been, while working out less; I feel younger and more
energetic than ever.
Now I eat fat for breakfast without fear or guilt, with a big smile on my face and a deeply satisfied
tummy. Sometimes I have whole eggs cooked in grass-fed butter or extra virgin coconut oil (high in
saturated fat but super healthy), or a “fat” shake with a bunch of nuts, seeds, and coconut butter. For
lunch I have a big salad with fatty sardines or wild salmon, doused in olive oil and sprinkled with
fatty pumpkins seeds or pine nuts; and for dinner I might have grass-fed lamb without the fat cut off,
and three or four veggie dishes cooked in olive oil, lemon, and spices and salt.
When I traveled to Tibet in my twenties, I was invited into the yurts of nomads and fed salty yak
butter tea (actually it is dri butter—from the female yak), which was deeply satisfying and kept me
going for a long time at high altitudes. And sometimes now I have the American version created by
my friend David Asprey, Bulletproof Coffee—coffee blended with butter and MCT oil from coconut
(a super fat that is a super fuel for your brain and your body). One close friend in medical school was
an Arctic explorer who cross-country skied to the North Pole while living on sticks of butter for fuel.
He was remarkably healthy and way ahead of his time.
Eating a high-fat diet—especially a diet high in “dangerous” saturated fat—sounds crazy, and up
until ten years ago, I would have told you it was a health hazard. But my own body, my own blood
work, and thousands of my patients and tens of thousands of others who have followed this approach
in my online community all tell the true story. They all report the same benefits from welcoming fat
back into our diets. And the emerging research on fat and health, which we will nerd out on in this
book (sorry, I love the science… I can’t help myself!), supp