I've accumulated a lot of body fat over the past 15-20 months. I am aiming to get back to a healthier body shape (lower body fat percentage, more muscle).

I'm thinking about what the optimal diet, or range of diets, would be:

• Emphasis on foods in their natural state.
• Emphasis on meeting the body's needs for known and unknown nutrients (macros, vitamins, phytonutrients, probiotics, etc).
• Macro breakdown ranges are 50-80% fat, 10-20% protein, 5-30% carbohydrate (approximately).
• Focus on meat, including fat and organ meats; green, leafy vegetables; pastured eggs; safe starches like white rice, taro, or sweet potatoes; good fats like coconut, butter, tallow, olive, etc.
• Eat fermented foods to provide probiotic bacteria.
• Remove all industrially-processed seed oils (falsely named "vegetable oils") from the diet. Examples of these undesirable oils include soybean, canola, corn, cottonseed, etc.
• Reduce or eliminate processed or manufactured foods.
• Minimize or eliminate grains except for safe starches like white rice.
• Minimize or eliminate sugar and sugar alternatives (syrup, honey, etc).
• Drink only healthy beverages like water, coffee, tea. The simple rule is "don't drink calories".
• Eliminate artificial sweeteners, whether in foods or beverages, because these train the palate to expect a high level of sweetness. It's easier to adapt to less sugar or no sugar in your diet when you remove artificial sweeteners.

This list is inspired by various other approaches, many of which have significant overlap with each other: the Paleo diet, the ketogenic diet, the Perfect Health Diet, and Whole30.