I’m a HUGE fan of Dr. Champ, aka The Caveman Doctor. He’s leading the charge on healthy eating in an ironically new, yet prehistoric way. His primary goal is to provide simple methods for analyzing the available literature and following a healthy lifestyle. Through his research, he has concluded that mimicking many aspects of the caveman lifestyle and diet, one that the human body has adapted to over millions of years, may have the greatest potential to fight obesity and chronic disease. He is currently completing his specialty training in radiation oncology and has a keen interest in the dietary effects on the prevention and treatment of cancer. The Dr has prescribed…

The Do’s of The Caveman Diet:

• 1. Eat bold-colored fruits, like berries, and leafy vegetables that would have caught the eye of a caveman (ideally that can be consumed with the skin on, as skin on = more nutrients and more fiber than sugar).

• 2. Eat good sources of fat: grass-fed beef, eggs from pastured chickens (which means they roam the pasture, unlike caged or even cage-free chickens), butter from grass-fed beef, and non-vegetable oils (olive, coconut, macadamia, etc.).

• 3. Aim to eat 75% of your weight in grams of protein (i.e. if you weigh 200 pounds, aim for 150 grams of protein a day). A simple rule of thumb is to aim for a quarter to a third of your diet (in grams) as protein. Bodybuilders and heavy lifters may try to get a little more. However, if you are getting good sources of animal fat with your meals, you are likely getting enough protein and don’t need to count.

• 4. Aim to limit your daily intake of carbohydrates to a maximum of 150 grams, though depending on your goals, you can fluctuate in-between 50-150 grams. Be your own natural insulin sensitivity meter: If you are losing too much weight, eat closer to 150g. If you are gaining too much weight, eat closer to 100g or even 50g. Depending on your goals, you can go less than 100g frequently, however if you go below 50g in a day, you will likely enter ketosis. While there is nothing wrong with this, at first you should be closely followed by your physician. See how your body responds, but ideally aim to rarely go over 150g of carbohydrates per day. However, if an infrequent day over 150g (a cheat day) happens, don’t beat yourself up over it. Frequent days less than 50 are fine and Caveman Doctor has them very often, but remember, you may go into ketosis. While it may be annoying to count carbs, after a couple days it becomes pretty easy to know how many carbs you are getting based on instinct. Since this lifestyle favors limiting carbs by eating satisfying and filling fats, it is much easier than you think.

• 5. Eat animals (and animal products) that are fed diets that generally follow this list (i.e. avoid beef from grain-fed cows and chicken and eggs from grain-fed and caged chickens). The animals we eat should also be eating the diets that their bodies have been programmed to process.

• 6. Eat foods that you can control and eat in moderation. For example, if eating one cookie makes you eat the entire dozen, you likely lose control when eating cookies – so try to avoid them and recalibrate your sweet tooth to crave non-sugary foods.

• 7. Remember that you are decreasing your amount of daily carbohydrates, much unlike what you have eaten in the past and unlike many modern dieters. As a result, you will need to replace these carbohydrates with good sources of protein and especially fat. This is not a diet of starvation and the only thing to limit is carbohydrates. If you are not replacing them adequately, you will likely feel run down!

• 8. Just as we like to get adequate sleep and not be stressed, eat animals that are also treated humanely with less stress. While packing animals in small spaces, feeding them unnatural foods, and giving them antibiotics is clearly unethical, it is also unhealthy for these animals and unhealthy for anyone who eats their eggs, meat, etc. It is also unhealthy for the environment, which needs these animals roaming around and fertilizing the ground and providing nitrogen for the soil and minerals.

• 9. If you find yourself hungry, you most likely need to increase your protein intake a little, and your fat intake a lot.

• 10. If you find yourself feel run down and have switched to a low of very low-carb lifestyle, you are probably losing more sodium through your kidneys and need to eat more salt. This can be done through broths or bouillon. Give it a try and you may perk right up.

• 11. Finally, for those that are hardcore, fast every once in a while for at least 12 hours, but up to 18 or more if tolerated. Also, drop your carbs to less than 50 for a couple days every once in a while (or more often if you like). Cavemen did it all the time when food wasn’t around, and it actually causes our cells to recycle or get rid of their garbage through autophagy.

For his full of interesting facts post click here.

And to top it off, Dr. Champ is Grey’s Anatomy’s dreamy, how could you not believe him???