What are the four fixes, and does the order matter?

Yes, the order matters. They are listed in the sequence that produces the least friction: the first one is usually the constraint everything else is waiting on, and starting at number three while number one is still broken is why previous attempts stalled. Run them in order, give each one long enough to actually take hold, and resist the urge to add a fifth. The shortest list you will still be following in three months beats the complete one you abandon in two weeks.

How long before I see anything change?

Different markers move on different clocks, and knowing the order in advance is most of what stops people quitting in week three. Subjective things — sleep, energy, appetite stability — usually shift first. Strength follows. Waist and bloodwork are slower and considerably more informative. We do not publish weight-loss figures or timelines, because honest ones do not exist for an individual. What the research does show consistently is that adherence predicts the outcome better than which framework you picked.

Do I need blood work before I start?

You can start the structural parts — sleep window, protein floor, resistance training, reducing ultra-processed food — without any test at all. None of them require a diagnosis to be sensible. Bloodwork earns its place when it changes what you should do, or when a marker needs watching while you change your diet. If any of the items on the right apply to you, get the labs first and involve a clinician.

Can I run this while I am on medication?

Usually, but not unsupervised. Dietary change alters how much medication some conditions need — glucose-lowering drugs in particular — and that adjustment belongs with the person who prescribed them. Tell your prescriber what you are changing and when. It is a two-minute conversation that prevents the one genuinely risky failure mode in an otherwise low-risk protocol.

What happens if I miss days?

Nothing structural. This is a protocol, not a streak — the physiology responds to what you do most weeks, not to an unbroken chain of perfect ones. Missing a training session or a bedtime does not reset anything. The pattern to watch is not the missed day but the missed fortnight. If one of the four fixes keeps sliding, that usually means it was too big a change to start with, so shrink it until it is boringly achievable and rebuild from there.

How is this different from the paid programme?

The research is identical and none of it is held back. What the free protocol cannot do is sequence twelve weeks for you, read your bloodwork, or notice that your logs stopped matching your plan three weeks ago. Most people should run the free protocol first. If it holds and you want structure and human review on top of it, the programme is there — and if the free version is working on its own, we would rather you kept your money.

Starter protocol · free

The UPF Saturated Protocol

Ultra-processed food dominates your day. The single biggest lever.

Is this my profile?All 12 protocols

Fixes first

Week-one actions

Citations

01The mechanism

What is actually happening

Ultra-processed food (UPF) — packaged snacks, frozen meals, fast food, sugary drinks, most cereals and bread — is engineered for hyperpalatability. The Hall 2019 inpatient trial demonstrated this directly: adults randomized to ad-libitum UPF eating consumed ~500 kcal/day more than the same adults on matched whole-food eating, and gained 0.9 kg in two weeks. The Dicken 2025 UPDATE trial showed even UPF aligned with national dietary guidelines drove more weight gain than minimally processed equivalents. Lane 2024's BMJ umbrella review found convincing evidence that UPF intake is associated with cardiovascular mortality, type-2 diabetes, depression, and certain cancers across 32 health outcomes. The mechanisms are multiple: low fibre and protein density, fast eating rate driven by texture engineering, additive load, low satiety per calorie, and replacement of nutrient-dense whole foods. The lever is structural — you can't supplement your way around this; you have to eat less of it.¹²³⁴⁵⁶

Who this fits

Ultra-processed food is the dietary variable with the strongest evidence base for driving overeating. Removing it produces ~500 kcal/day spontaneous reduction without calorie counting.

Evidence base

This protocol rests on 6 peer-reviewed sources, listed in full further down the page. Where the evidence is mechanistic rather than outcome-based, the text says so.

02Highest leverage first

The four things to fix first

In this order. The first one is usually the constraint everything else is waiting on — starting at number three while number one is still broken is how previous attempts stalled.

01
Replace one anchor meal at a time
Don't try to fix everything at once. Identify your highest-frequency UPF anchor (breakfast cereal? fast-food lunch? evening snacks?) and replace it for 4 weeks before moving to the next.
02
Stock the kitchen for failure
When you're tired, you'll eat what's nearest. Keep eggs, Greek yogurt, hard cheese, frozen wild-caught fish, frozen vegetables, nuts, and quality protein bars stocked. Make whole-food eating the path of least resistance.
03
Run the UPF Score Calculator weekly
Paste your week. Watch the number drop. The visibility itself is a behaviour-change tool. Aim for under 30% UPF within 8 weeks.
04
Restaurant strategy
If you eat out frequently, learn 3–4 reliable order patterns at your most common spots. Most major chains have at least one acceptable pattern (grilled protein + vegetables + side salad). The Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and Cava model — protein + greens + olive oil — works almost everywhere.

03Start on Monday

Week one to two

Not a diet plan — a short daily list. Tick them off as you go; the point is to see how much of the protocol you are actually running before you judge whether it works.

Tick as you go

0 of 6 done today

Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere — it resets when you leave the page.

What to track

Evidence about your own body

01UPF % from the calculator (weekly)
02Weight (weekly average)
03Energy 1–10 each evening
04Sleep quality 1–10

Eight weeks of this gives you data about you, rather than an average from a study population.

04Where to go next

When to consider the full programme

This gets you from zero to functional

The starter protocol is designed to be self-run for two to four weeks. If you want the structured twelve-week curriculum — daily sequencing, meal guidance, lab interpretation by a clinician and a mentor who reads your logs — that is what the Ancestral Reset is.

See the programme Pricing

Related on this site

Other archetypes

All 12

05The receipts

Every claim, sourced

These are the papers this protocol rests on. Follow any of them — we would rather you checked than took our word for it.

References

1.Hall KD et al. (2019). Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism. PubMed 31105044
2.Dicken SJ et al. (2025). Ultra-processed or minimally processed diets following healthy dietary guidelines on cardiometabolic health (UPDATE trial). Nature Medicine. Source ↗
3.Monteiro CA et al. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition. PubMed 30744710
4.Lane MM et al. (2024). Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ. PubMed 38418082
5.Fiolet T et al. (2018). Consumption of ultra-processed foods and cancer risk: results from NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort. BMJ. PubMed 29444771
6.Srour B et al. (2019). Ultra-processed food intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study (NutriNet-Santé). BMJ. PubMed 31142457

06Before you start

Running this protocol

Questions people ask first

Ultra-processed food dominates your day. The single biggest lever. If that sentence describes the last year or two of your life more accurately than it describes anyone else's, you are in the right protocol.

Archetypes overlap on purpose — most people recognise themselves in two or three. The assessment resolves that by weighing the whole combination of your answers rather than one keyword, and tells you which pattern to work on first.

Check with the free assessment

Ultra-processed food is the dietary variable with the strongest evidence base for driving overeating. Removing it produces ~500 kcal/day spontaneous reduction without calorie counting.

Timelines shown are the typical order in which markers move, not promises. Individual response varies with starting point, adherence, medication, age and sex.

Free · 2 minutes

Not sure this is your profile?

The Metabolic Assessment maps your specific answers to the right protocol — including the cases where two patterns overlap.

Take the assessment Browse all 12 protocols

Educational only, not medical advice. This protocol does not diagnose, treat or cure any condition. Consult your physician before major dietary changes or altering prescribed medication. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Individual results vary; no outcome is guaranteed.