Have You Ever Seen a Skinny Hippo?

I respect the cause of vegans and tip my hat to their dedication, but if you want to get truly lean, you have to eat animal protein. It’s a fact that carnivores are the leanest creatures on the planet, and I have yet to find a single scientific study that shows a carbohydrate dominant diet (vegan) creates a leaner body than a diet dominated by protein and fat.

All the studies I have researched unanimously conclude that diets which restrict calories and include carbs, fail miserably in the long term. These are the mainstream diets of today, and are also the cause of the frustrating yo-yo dieting phenomenon. Studies prove that high protein/low carb diets succeed more than 50 fold over the calorie restrictive diets that include carbs.

Protein and fat diets are the easiest to stick with because they satisfy hunger, while carb diets actually cause hunger to increase. Studies even show that people lose fat faster on a higher calorie diet consisting mainly of protein than those people who eat carbs as a predominant component and take in only half as many calories.

The calorie-in calorie-out theory was debunked long ago, and the low fat diet has failed miserably, yet people are still trying them, and the large medical and nutritional associations are still promoting them! Doctors and dieticians just assume the diet isn’t working because their patients must be “cheating”, but this usually isn’t the case. It’s our physiology that is to blame for the failure of the calorie restrictive diet which includes carbs as a component.

Don’t take my word for it. You can see this for yourself with your own objective survey. The next time you are at the grocery store, find someone who is obese (this should be easy) and look in their shopping cart. You will find that it is full of carbohydrate rich food. Then look for someone who is in great shape (this might be hard) and look in their cart. Things that make you go “Hmmmm.”
Look at the animal kingdom for another example. I bet you can’t think of many fat wild animals, but elephants and hippos might come to mind. What do they eat? You got it – they are vegans! Now think of all the carnivorous wild animals and you won’t be able to come up with a single one that is fat.

The digestive systems and teeth selection among the carnivorous animals are vastly different from the carb eating animals, and guess what? Our teeth and digestive system is much more similar to the carnivores than the vegans. We are of course suited to eat vegetables as well as meat, but in certain populations of humans like the Eskimos and Inuit tribes of the past, over 95% of their dietary calories came from meat and animal fat. They not only survived, they THRIVED, and had the lowest incidence of disease and nutritional deficiencies as well.

We were created to eat mostly meat and some vegetables, nuts and berries. If we were meant to be strict vegans, we would have a mouth full of molars and multiple stomachs to more effectively process the vegetation. Before we had ovens that could bake us carbs, and before the farming revolution which allowed us to grow carbs, we were primarily carnivores. So why are we fighting our natural tendency and physiology?

Some people are addicted to carbs and have a very hard time reducing them. The good news is that I’ve got a solution for them as well. My book Cracking Your Calorie Code includes specific mental techniques to not only bust the carb cravings, but to also reprogram your brain so you actually want to eat the way you should without the need for willpower.

The bottom line is that if you want to lose fat and look fit, you must get the majority of your calories from animal products. If you are on a quest to be strong, toned and lean, but also want to be a strict vegan, you’ve got a conflict. You just can’t have it both ways, so you will simply have to pick one or the other.

BRAIN TRAINING TIP FOR THE DAY: Visualize the body you want. Imagine your end goal as if it has already happened. Close your eyes and feel what this feels like in the present tense. Doing this short exercise every day will form new nerve pathways to create the thin you and change your habits without even knowing you are making those changes! For more details on this and other techniques to create new and permanent fit body, see my book "Cracking Your Calorie Code."