Skip to contentAre you surprised to hear the average person tries 126 fad diets during their lifetime? The reason so many fail is because they rely heavily on your dwindling willpower to keep it up. That’s exactly how Mindvalley’s Wildfit by Eric Edmeades claims to be different.
This program is an anti-crash diet — replacing it with a sustainable alternative, based on sound nutrition and solid behavioral change.
The promise: you’ll lose weight by learning to love what you eat and discover lasting results without all the struggle.
If you’re a serial yo-yo dieter who is wondering if that’s really possible for you, check out my comprehensive review of WildFit to find out.
My verdict summed up
Is this 100% definitively the most ideal diet for humans? Who knows?! Science has a habit of changing its mind about these things.
Either way, if you really are ready to shift your relationship with food for good, then this program does work.
It’s knowledge, not magic pills that will get you results. WildFit exposes illusions in the food industry, empowers you to make intuitive, educated decisions, and reprograms your way of thinking about what you eat.
What is WildFit?
Wildfit is a 3-month long health program available on Mindvalley that focuses on effortless weight loss through “food freedom”.
But what does that actually mean? Rather than restrict what you eat, you will actually want to make food choices that are better for your body.
If you can’t envisage ever happily opting for celery sticks over chocolate cake, this is why WildFit combines nutritional science and behavioral psychology.
It’s about tuning in and becoming hyper-aware of how your food makes you feel. I mean really feel — not just that first bite — but the impact it has on your body, energy levels, and mood long after you’ve finished scoffing.
WildFit is built around the principle that a natural diet does exist. We all have certain nutritional requirements that need to be met. For example, it’s not that fruit and vegetables fight disease, it’s the absence of them that makes us susceptible to illness.
When we meet these standard requirements, our bodies can operate more optimally — with us looking and feeling better in the process.
On top of the nutritional education you receive during this program, there is an equal focus on reversing the habits you’ve built up over your life.
It delves deep into the cultural conditioning we’ve been bombarded with around food and seeks to undo the brainwashing from the food industry that has trapped you for so long in unhealthy patterns.
That may sound melodramatic, but trust me, when you start to learn about all the underhand tricks big businesses use to get you hooked on their junk food — you’ll understand what I mean.
Just imagine for a moment that your body intuitively knows what is best for it. How much easier would it be? Well, according to WildFit, it does. We just need to learn to listen to it.
Rather than simply giving you meal plans to rigidly follow or strict one size fits all rules, this program aims to teach you to give your body what it specifically needs without feeling restricted.
Who is Eric Edmeades?
In terms of his professional credentials, Eric Edmeades is an international speaker, author, and pioneer in the field of evolutionary biology and nutritional anthropology.
Perhaps more significantly, on a personal level, he himself spent much of his younger life dealing with excess weight, acne, chronic fatigue, as well as constant throat and sinus infections.
It wasn’t until he experimented with diet changes that he stumbled upon some magical results. Within one month of eating better, the physical ailments that had plagued him had all started to clear up.
Driven by a desire to understand how his food could have healed his body so dramatically, he set out on a quest to live with bushmen in Africa. There he studied eating habits and combined what he observed with nutritional data and functional anthropology research.
After years of study — WildFit emerged from an accumulation of everything he has discovered.
What is Mindvalley?
WildFit is hosted on Mindvalley, so it may be useful to briefly explain what exactly Mindvalley is.
Mindvalley is an online education platform that hosts a range of programs centered on personal development.
The mission of the founder — Vishen Lakhiani — is to give people tools that teach them how to live better lives.
Whilst we’re busy learning long division or 19th-century poetry at school, we’re not taught how to become good parents, how to have stronger relationships, or how to best care for our body, mind, and soul.
Mindvalley has 30+ programs — which they call “quests” — on a wide variety of topics to help you master life.
You’ll find everything on there from improving your memory to healing your chakras and developing your networking skills.
Why I wanted to do WildFit
Like most people, I get the basics — eat “good stuff” and you’re healthier, eat “bad stuff” and you put on weight and don’t feel so great.
But after those widely accepted basics — plenty of fresh vegs, drinking lots of water, avoiding processed foods, etc — I’ve always found the wellness industry is a total minefield of conflicting advice.
Everywhere you turn there is scientifically-backed “evidence” for totally contrasting theories and opinions on what is best for us.
For example, eggs were originally marketed as super healthy, but then we were told they’re high in cholesterol and need to be eaten in moderation, before yet another U-turn when experts finally decide cholesterol isn’t such a big deal after all and eggs are once again back in the good books.
Quite frankly, it’s exhausting trying to figure out the facts from fiction. Still, I’ve always been truly fascinated by how what I eat affects me — my moods, energy levels, and overall health.
Not long ago I really committed to taking better care of myself. For a few months, I’d noticed mood and energy levels dips which I’d suspected could be down to hormone fluctuations. I wanted to see how becoming stricter about how I was fuelling my body could change that.
Honestly, the results were far more instantaneous than I would have imagined. After just a couple of weeks of cutting out junk food and eating healthier, I felt great.
My energy levels really improved and my moods completely stabilized. It made me realize what a disservice it is that our society focuses so heavily on weight as the sole motivator for healthy eating.
The biggest rewards by far were how eating better made me feel — both in my body and my mental health.
I had the proof now. A croissant may make me feel good for the 5 minutes I’m eating it, but what about the other 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day? Is the long term impact worth it?
I was also quite surprised how little I missed foods that had become more of a habit than a real pleasure. Because the food I was eating was nourishing me, I actually didn’t crave anything “naughty” anymore.
Given this glimpse into just how powerfully my food choices had been affecting my entire life, I was already hooked and wanted more.
Who will like WildFit
This program is for anyone who wants to go deeper than superficial diet information on what to eat or what not to eat. If you want to embody a healthy lifestyle from the inside out, I think you will find WildFit a far more balanced program than others on the market.
Because of the strong focus on why we eat the way we do, it’s particularly a great fit for people who already know or suspect that their relationship with food needs to change. For example, emotional eaters or those stuck in bad habits. We all have a relationship with food whether we realize it or not and this helps you get to the root of that relationship to create a healthier one.
If you’re sick and tired of the false promises from the latest “miracle” fad diets, you’ll love the more down to earth and back to basics approach offered here.
Basically, WildFit is for those people willing to recognize that their dream body is unlikely to come from living off cabbage soup for 6 weeks and are prepared to invest the time and effort in a complete lifestyle change rather than a quick-fix.
Who won’t like WildFit
My biggest issue with WildFit was that I don’t eat meat or fish. I’m not incredibly strict and I do allow for some flexibility. For example, I don’t buy or cook it myself, but I have been known to eat it if I’m at somebody’s house for dinner and it’s what they’re serving.
If you are a strict vegetarian or vegan you may find some of what is taught in WildFit conflicts with your principles or current choices.
This program takes the stance that humans have evolved to eat meat. Eric Edmeades says that whilst the program does accommodate vegetarians, many end up changing their mind after taking this course and become meat-eaters. He himself was once vegan for 7 years, before giving it up.
He uses the analogy of getting dung beetles to stop eating dung because it seems unpalatable, but the problem is they’d end up malnourished because they evolved to eat it. So too, he believes we evolved eating meat and it’s, therefore, necessary in an optimal diet.
But to me, it’s another of those situations again when science doesn’t feel so clear cut. I’ve seen conflicting research that argues chronic diseases, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes, can be prevented and often reversed by adopting a whole-food, plant-based diet.
Regardless of the science, vegetarianism and veganism have seen a huge uptake in recent years, with 26% of millennials now identifying as one of the two. If your lifestyle choices are for ethical reasons, prepare to find certain elements of this program confronting.
Just to be clear, it isn’t going to try and make you eat meat if you don’t want to — but it will present you with evidence for why they believe meat is part of the diet best suited to humans.
I hope it’s already clear by now that this isn’t a quick-fix fad diet program. Don’t sign up for this quest looking for magic results that require zero effort. You are about to learn how to embark on a lifetime shift in your eating habits.
How much does WildFit cost?
WildFit is available to buy online through the Mindvalley platform, but it’s not one of their programs, it’s a so-called “partner program”. That means it’s not included in the Mindvalley All Access Pass.
The All Access Pass unlocks over 30+ quests on Mindvalley for the entire year for $499. Usually, it’s the best option if you know you’ll do more than just one program on the website, as it works out cheaper than buying them individually.
The cost of this 90-day program is $899 for lifetime access — including any upgrades if the content is updated over the years.
It’s definitely a financial commitment but it’s also Mindvalley’s best-selling food and body program on the platform.
Other Mindvalley programs that you might like
The WildFit program is pretty unique in its focus on diet rather than exercise. However if you are keen to discover other programs that will help you improve your overall health, then you might also like these other Mindvalley quests:
10x Fitness: Want an optimal workout routine to go with your optimal eating? This quest is designed for busy people who want to increase strength, build muscle mass, and improve their physique fast. It promises big results with very little exercise.
The Longevity Blueprint: is a 7-week program that focuses on up-leveling your health and longevity. Rather than grueling workouts, it promotes 5-20 minutes a day to recondition the body and improve your overall wellness.
What does WildFit teach you? Here’s how the program works
There’s a lot of content in this 90-day quest. As well as daily videos, there are also live coaching calls, Q+A’s, a WildFit community, bonus video training, and practical guides and recipes as extra resources. Everything about the structure of the program is clearly intended to set you up for success.
To start with, before you make any changes, you are simply encouraged to really look at your relationship with food. You’ll then be gradually introduced to what your body naturally wants. Then finally, you will be given ways to make sure these changes really stick for the long haul.
Everything you learn and do is ultimately designed to rewire your brain by:
1) Psychologically reframing your relationship with food. Rather than fearing food or restricting, you understand your relationship with food to make better choices that are also satisfying.
2) Eating as nature intended. The foundational building blocks of what they call a “natural diet” is based on ancient hunter-gatherer societies. Their diet was one of instinct, which this program says was how we were meant to eat before the food industry confused us.
3) Challenging the lies peddled by the food industry. Instead of fighting food cravings, a focus on mindset and behavioral change techniques means you can eliminate those cravings in the first place.
The pros and cons of WildFit
Pros:
This program offers a far more effective combination of diet and behavioral change together. So many diets fail simply because they don’t address the root causes and are unsustainable long term.
It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense. Rather than focusing on clever tricks, this course is based on simple principles of healthy eating.
It encourages you to become more conscious of what you eat. There’s a lot of observation of how things make you feel to increase awareness. Awareness is one of the most fundamental starting points of any life change. Even the language that we use around food like “treat”, “reward” and “cheat” — asks us to question whether those foods really are rewarding for our body and whether we want to be a “cheat” in life.
It is one of the very few diet programs that doesn’t seem to rely on willpower alone — which no matter how long you manage to keep up, will fail at some point.
This is a really holistic diet program that factors in things like breath and hydration as fundamental to how your body processes food.
It shines a bright light on the manipulative marketing and tactics used by the food industry. Arming you with this knowledge empowers you to see through their tricks.
It encourages you to stop using exercise instead of diet to lose weight. It highlights how exercise is a way to go from healthy to healthier and not the starting point.
Cons:
As I’ve already discussed, some vegetarians or vegans may not like the arguments made in this program.
The fact that the course is not available on the All Access Pass, and that it is also slightly more expensive than the average Mindvalley program.
Most of the other Mindvalley programs I’ve done have required less of a daily time commitment. The video content — whilst very high quality — seems longer in comparison. This isn’t a con if you are enjoying the content, but it’s worth being aware of the time required.
This program runs for 12 weeks, which again, is longer than the average Mindvalley quest. On the flip side of that, it means you are getting 3 months worth of full training for your money, which could explain the slightly higher price tag of this program.
Does WildFit work and is it worth it?
Ready to swap fad diets for truly nourishing eating habits? In that case, WildFit will most probably work for you.
To integrate healthy eating into your life long term, it’s not enough to simply change what you eat.
You need to change your entire relationship with food or it will always feel like a constant internal battle to make the right choices.
This is where so many diet programs go wrong and where WildFit goes deeper.
Only you can decide if the $899 price tag and effort of learning are worth the rewards you’re seeking — whether that’s weightloss, ridding yourself of pain and illness, or simply feeling healthier and happier in your own skin.