Well, it’s been a long damn time since I first dove into this whole thing via a low-carb Paleo diet back in 2007 or 2008, sometime around there. I did damn well with it. I lost about 50-60 pounds, and serendipitously, I became somewhat of a dietary influencer. My blog grew—this very blog, FreeTheAnimal.com—and it was a good ride for a few years because it was based on evolutionary principles. It was flexible, but it was also about, well, what did we evolve to eat?

The problem with the whole thing is that people wanted to make money. They wanted to maintain their influence, they wanted to write books, and so they needed cash. Rather than saying, “Well, let’s refine this and try to really make it good and solid,” no, they went off and made diet books, Paleo candy, Paleo cookies, Paleo brownies, and it just got ridiculous. So I suppose it was about 2013 or so—maybe 2014—where I started being more of an iconoclast, you know, a curmudgeon or something like that. I was more often pushing back than I was embracing. Before, I was just helping to get everyone into this dietary idea, but then came the invasion of the low-carbers. I’m gonna call it the invasion of the low-carbohydrate diet, which now has so many iterations: you have low-carb, you have keto, you have ketogenic, you have carnivore. It’s never enough because it doesn’t work for people. None of it ever works for people long-term—not easily. People hate it eventually; it’s just not practical. That’s been my observation amongst thousands of people. Sure, there’s people who’re like, “I’m on it for 20 years, never been better.” Okay, good for you. Good for you. That does not apply to the other 7 or 8 billion people on the planet.

The siren song for that side—the low-carb side—it’s always about metabolic pathways, electron transport chains, hormonal things, enzymatic things. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Nobody—very, very few people—are ever going to glom onto that, and what does it matter anyway? What people need is a decent way to eat without all of these dogmatic restrictions or dogmatic additions. I’ve thought about it a lot, and when I come down to it, I’m like, this really is more of a war between nutritional density and energy density. Low-carbohydrate diets are always touting energy density—why? Because they want you to eat high-fat. Fat is more than two times as energy-dense per gram as all others. Read that again: two times more energy-dense. And guess what? Fat by itself has almost no micronutrition—almost no vitamins and minerals. I’ve sourced that and given proof 100 times; I’m not gonna do it again. If you disbelieve me, go to an AI or go to Google and say, “How many vitamins and minerals does butter have? Or coconut oil? Or any of the others?” It’s high in energy; it’s very low in micronutrition. This is simply a fact.

So a lot of bad comes from them. People actually get more fat—a lot of people get fatter—on low-carb diets. That’s a fact, too. And vegan is also nutritionally vapid—very low in micronutrition—on vegan diets unless they are very, very, very careful, because they avoid animal foods, and the most nutritionally dense foods are animal foods. So that’s my brief introduction, and now I have kind of an interlude.

Living in Thailand for almost 6 years, I have been surprised that Thais like whole milk a lot. This was not the case with the Japanese when living there for 5 years in the 80s. Spending enough time with a gal, and most of them drink milk sometimes (and eat eggs every day).

My gal now, Far, drinks milk every morning and night (about a cup each). Last night, she asked if I needed anything from the market as she was on her way back from her little food shop. I told her I’d finished the milk, so she walked in the door with a half gallon and a dozen 6-oz each fresh-squeezed OJ with massive pulp. Perfect serving size.

I maintain that whole milk and whole eggs are the most nutritionally dense foods you find everywhere, even in convenience stores. Everyone is all on about energy density. I think targeting nutritional density makes you consume less energy density overall.

And then I wonder about health outcomes. In an epidemiological / observational study, who’s healthier generally? Those who consume whole milk and whole eggs vs. those who consume none?

Far is crazy healthy and energetic and 45 years old, with 3 kids done. She has lived a life of eating to nutritional density, never to energy density. As such she only weighed over 100 pounds in her life when she was pregnant. She maintains at 43 to 45 kilos, about 95-100 pounds.

She never cooks with much oil (and when she does, palm oil, the forgotten one with a good fat profile…high saturated, low poly unsaturated). She NEVER adds fat to food.

Far Out

Just over a week ago, Far says to me, “my auntie died, I have to go home.” 12+ hour bus ride. Only 58, beautiful, taken early from cancer, and Far’s grandfather (87) cried his eyes out. “My daughter cannot die before me.”

Far didn’t just go home to pay respects, but to be chief chef to cook for 200 people for 3 days in a row. Different from Western, Christian culture, where a funeral is a couple of hours at the church and an hour at the cemetery…Thai funerals are family reunions, lasting 3-5 days. Full days. People come from all over the country, where they’ve spread out over the years, to reunite with family.

I did this little video. It’s Far as master chef. Those cooking pots feed 50. Each time, she had to do four rounds of them to feed 200.

The little bit at the end is the homestead we’re planning to move to around May ’26 where I will once again take up the role of rural expat. I’m excited. Many plans. Stay tuned.

Obesity Ain’t No Mystery: Low-Carb Gurus Are Full of Shit

My overall point is that obesity is no mystery to me whatsoever. I’ve been coming here to Thailand since 1986, when I was 25 years old, and you could not find a fat person anywhere—nowhere. And they ate even more rice, starch—carbohydrates—than they do now.

So, I want to tell you something: when you see millions and millions and millions and billions of people eating very, very high-carbohydrate diets and living long lives without getting obese and fat, what does it tell you?

No shit: It tells you that every low-carbohydrate imperative, every low-carb authority on the planet, is 1,000,000% full of shit. They are all dishonest.

So why listen to all their metabolic biochemistry and their hormonal signaling and all of this bullshit? It’s bullshit. There’s something else going on, and I’ll let you know what it is over time, because I’m fucking done with them. I’m not going to call any of them out or call them names—I’m not. I’m over that.

You know, I used to be the big shit-stirring pitbull kind of guy, but it’s just not my thing anymore. But what I am going to do over time is give you 1 million reasons why every single person who talks about low-carb and ketogenic and blah blah blah blah… I agree that they can be decent therapeutic programs, but to assert that that’s why people are obese—because they eat carbohydrates or something? And they’re like, “Oh, Ice Age? Well, you know what? Below the Ice Age, there were tropical regions where people evolved to eat fruit off the tree all over.” All low-carb advocates are fundamentally dishonest—fundamentally dishonest—because they ignore everything that falsifies what they put out. Every single falsifiable thing, they ignore. Low-carb always ignored the rice-eating Asians—always. They never even talk about it. If you bring it up, they ignore it. This means they are fundamentally 100% dishonest people.

… I have a very soon to follow on post.

It’s what I’m going for from here out, and it involves deadly snake venom.