If you’ve banned high fat foods such as egg yolks, butter and beef from your diet and can’t lose weight, a nutritional therapy practitioner (NTP) says she knows the reason: You’re missing out on the fat-burning benefits of healthy fats. In an exclusive interview on Feb. 25, we talked with Liz Wolfe, NTP, about what she’s discovered when it comes to permanent weight loss and health.

Why the epidemic of obesity in our nation? Liz links it to “decades of the Standard American Diet, which leads to hormonal imbalance and out-of-control hunger.”

She’s convinced that our tendency to avoid fat is a large part of the problem. Our hormones need fats such as butter, beef and eggs, says Liz. And her new book’s title sums up her philosophy: “Eat the Yolks: Discover Paleo, fight food lies, and reclaim your health” (click for details).

Modern science proves that we need both fat and cholesterol, and “fat and cholesterol from ethically raised animal products, along with the fat-soluble vitamins that come with them, are vital to our health,” Liz told us.

And when it comes to the ideal diet for weight loss and health, Liz is a Paleo plan proponent. However, she does modify the traditional Paleo approach slightly by adding certain types of dairy.

“Paleo opens the door to a world of nourishing, delicious, appetite-regulating foods that many of us eliminated out of fear or simply forgot as a result of our standard diet rut,” she explains.

In contrast, “the standard American diet is based on restricting calories, restricting fat, eliminating fats and cholesterol from properly raised animals, and ignoring real food in favor of the profitable, nutrient-poor products we’re sold as if a so-called “whole grain” with a long ingredients label was somehow a true health food.”

Liz offers this insight on the benefits of whole grains: “That’s propaganda, pure and simple.”

So what really works for weight loss? To become what Liz calls an “efficient fat-burner,” dish up “healthy fats and cholesterol, properly-raised animals and the fat-soluble vitamins that come with them, and whole vegetables and fruits of all kinds. ”

A typical day in Liz’s own “Eat the Yolks” diet includes:

A ginger-lemon tea or glass of beet kvass.
Breakfast is eggs from our free-range flock, over sweet potato or taro root with a dollop of goat cheese or butter from grass-fed cows.
Lunch is quick: wild-caught sardines straight from the can – a fantastic, budget-conscious, low-food-chain source of Omega 3, calcium and protein – with leftover sautéed rainbow chard and other veggies, like roasted carrots or beets left over from dinner the night before.
Dinner might be soup or stew, made with homemade broth in the pressure cooker (another time-saver), or tomato sauce with ground beef over spaghetti squash, a favorite ten-minute meal.

For those who are vegetarians, Liz suggests modifying the traditional approach by incorporating “the right types of dairy products, eggs, and bivalve seafood like oysters.”

Liz feels that “eliminating processed grain products and packaged foods is 95% of the battle for most of us; from there, it’s simply tweaking to achieve our goals while paying close attention to how we feel.”