Ironman Triathlete, 79, Credits Low Carb Paleo Ketogenic Diet For Excellent Health.

Triathlete Jay Lehr, 79, has followed a low-carb, high-fat diet his entire life.

Dr. Jay Lehr is a 79-year-old Ironman triathlete and physician who credits a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic-style Paleo diet for his incredible health.

Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute in Chicago, has bucked conventional diet wisdom for most of his life and followed a low-carb, high-fat diet and has rarely been sick.

“I’ve never been inside a regular doctor’s office,” Jay told the High Plains Journal. “I have lived my entire life on high fat — dairy, eggs, butter and lard — which, as you all know has not been the recommended diet for the last 50 years.”

Lehr said the idea that saturated fat was unhealthy and caused heart attacks began in the mid-1950s, shortly after President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack.

Eisenhower’s famously doctors put him on a low-fat diet following a controversial study by nutrition professor Ancel Keys touting the purported health benefits of a low-fat diet.

Since then, the U.S. government has continued to promote a low-fat diet to treat heart disease and obesity despite scientific evidence showing no link between unprocessed saturated fat and heart attacks.

Lehr, a Princeton University alum with a Ph.D. in hydrology, said it’s time for the public to embrace the health benefits of low-carb, high-fat diets such as the ketogenic, Paleo and Atkins diets.

More on this story here.

Eddie