Diet Tips for Healthy Aging & Longevity (Breather Episode with Brad)

The most important changes you can make right now in your diet are simple and easy, broken down into four categories: 

•  Ditch grains and sugars: Refined grains and sugars are pro-inflammatory, accelerate aging, and promote fat storage. Cutting grains and sugars will minimize insulin production, which is unfortunately the #1 health risk of the Standard American Diet.  
• Ditch industrial seed oils and processed boxed/packaged/frozen foods:  Consuming industrial seed oils, along with any kind of “food” that still doesn’t resemble food in its natural form (this goes for anything processed, things that come already made/packaged, and the food you’ll find in the frozen section) has the same effect grains and sugar have on your system: because they’re pro-inflammatory, ingesting them causes free radical reactions in your body, accelerated aging, and cancer. 
• Emphasize primal foods: Primal foods are abundant, fresh, nutritious, and most importantly – delicious! On a primal diet you can enjoy meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. The key is keeping it comparatively very low carb (definitely no sugars or grains, but if you’re female, you probably need a little more carbs, like sweet potato, than the average dude will, for health/hormonal purposes) and high in healthy fats (in comparison to Standard American Diet). 
• Stay flexible: When you become fat adapted instead of carb dependent, your meal habits can become more sporadic. A lot of people simply find that their appetite won’t emerge until around noon. Listen to your body. If you don’t want breakfast, don’t break your fast.   If you’re hungry for food, then by all means, eat! But if you feel like you should eat just because you’ve been told “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” then consider yourself off the hook. Intermittent Fasting is hardly a new concept (break-fast, get it?) and it’s a practice that optimizes fat metabolism, enhances cellular repair, and delays aging. 

The Primal Blueprint lifestyle and ancestral eating philosophy is a powerful game-changer because it truly counters the “diet” concept of prescribed meals and regimented schedule. It is freeing and empowering for people to realize that they don’t need to overthink things and stay metaphorically chained to their old-school ideas of what a healthy diet means. When you switch over to an ancestral diet, your caloric intake and meal choices can vary wildly each day. Meals become predominantly fat-based and stimulate minimal insulin response, which keeps your energy, blood sugar, and appetite stable all day, even when meals are skipped/missed. Eating nutritious, fatty, whole foods that your ancestors ate allows you to enjoy your food and look as good as you feel. 

Thankfully, it’s quite easy to find primal friendly breakfast options. There are so many ways you can start your day, and if you don’t feel like fasting, then how about a smoothie with coconut milk, protein powder, avocado, fresh produce, frozen fruit – an easy to make, quick process with no cleanup, that also tastes delicious, and is macronutrient balanced and high in antioxidants. For smoothie inspiration, check out this video on my YouTube channel where I show how I make my favorite super nutritious morning smoothie. 

Then, there’s classic, satisfying and still so healthy options like, eggs and bacon: you can simply fry them up, or make an omelet with cheese and fresh herbs, or onions, mushrooms and bell peppers – get creative! On cold mornings when you find yourself craving something comforting, you’ll see there are so many fun ways to make primal style oatmeal, like Mark Sisson’s that uses coconut flour and assorted soaked nuts and seeds here or this chia-flax-hemp seed concoction from Healthy Sweet Eats.  

Snacks are also easy on a primal diet. There’s definitely nothing wrong with a little chocolate macadamia nut bark busted out around midday – tasty, healthy, and definitely necessary as a mid-afternoon pick me up! 

For afternoon or evening meals, go-to’ s can include large salads with vegetables, meat, nuts, and a simple olive oil dressing. Making an effort to find sources of grass-fed or organic animals, wild caught fish, locally grown or organic produce is not only good for the planet and for your community, but the food also just tastes better, and tests as healthier because of the integrity of the environment that it’s been grown in. Animals that aren’t pumped full of hormones and produce that hasn’t been doused in pesticides are shown to have higher nutrient and antioxidant levels than their mass-produced, chemically laden counterparts, so sourcing high-quality food will make a huge difference on the state of your health. 

Next up is totally eliminating all grains (wheat, rice, pasta, corn, and all derivatives), sugars/sweets and sweetened beverages. Water is an amazing beverage to drink all day, but if you’re feeling something more fun, then try a Kombucha sparkling probiotic drink.  

PS I should note that currently I’m in the keto-ish, carnivore-ish category right now – which is under 50 grams of carbs per day, or less than 10% of my daily total calories –  and enjoying eating mostly veggies and nuts and dark chocolate for my carb sources. 

If you wonder if you are eating too many carbs, chart what you eat on a notepad for a day or two, trying to measure or estimate quantities as best you can, then visit fitday.com myfitnesspal.com and input your data. It will generate a nice report with macronutrient and caloric breakdowns and allow you to evaluate what you’re doing in your diet now, and how you’d like to change it going forward. The nice thing about a Primal diet is that the foods you eat primarily, like fat and protein, are so delicious and satisfying that it’s easier to not even worry about carbs as much as a lot of dieters do. People can be so obsessed with (and yet scared of) carbs, and a Primal diet really allows this fear and fixation to go away, because you’re getting the bulk of your nutrition from really satiating things like fat and protein, and then having much smaller amounts of healthy sources of carbs, like chocolate or root veggies. Ditching the Standard American Diet for an ancestral diet will blow your mind when you discover how rapidly you start feeling good, and looking good, all while eating delicious things that heal you from the inside out, like bone broth, bacon, avocado...the list goes on. Nothing is off limits (except for junk, but you don’t want that in your body anyways). This is a zero-deprivation diet, with an emphasis on what whole foods work best for you. Try it out, and witness how miraculously and quickly your life changes when you start implementing a sustainable, easy to follow lifestyle that helps you enjoy yourself and feel good in your body as you age as healthily as possible.