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6 Month Carnivore Update

By Mikhaila

I love this diet. I am never going back. 

Updates:

Baby:  I’ve caved and gotten a nanny, and she’s starting in 2 weeks. I wanted to do the stay at home mom thing (which is what I’ve been doing for the last 10.5 months) but I can’t do it. There are too many things that I want to be able to do that I can’t do with a baby. Serious kudos to people  (like my own mom) who could do it. Taking care of a baby is a full-time job. And it’s incredibly rewarding but it’s hard when there are other things you’re missing out on. For me, that’s work, that’s the blog and writing. So a nanny it is, even though it makes me incredibly nervous. I realize how lucky I am to even have that option. We met someone who seems really bright and really kind and I think Scarlett will love her. She also speaks Russian so Scarlett can learn her dad’s language. We’ve only introduced meat and she’s still nursing a lot. I haven’t figured out what I want to do, but I’m thinking I may consider some vegetables and just see what she’s interested in. I haven’t decided yet.

Ankle: I need surgery. I don’t need to get it re-replaced (THANK GOD), but I do need surgery. After my ankle replacement my fibula was subluxed (slightly dislocated) and so I couldn’t bend my ankle well. Scar tissue grew in really quickly, and bone, and now there’s so much scar tissue that even though my wonderful physio fixed the dislocation, I can’t move my foot. The muscle on one side of my body is wasting away which is horrifying so I need to deal with this ASAP. That’ll be much easier with a nanny as well. Flying out to see a surgeon at the beginning of July, hopefully can do the surgery ASAP after that.

Jordan Peterson: Dad is thriving on the diet. He’s cut out salmon and is mostly eating beef but also some chicken. He told me salmon gives him back pain and makes his voice a bit shaky. Even after all the food weirdness, I’ve been through I had a hard time believing him. But I don’t eat it, and chicken makes me dizzy, so who the hell am I to judge? He has no depression, no anxiety, and no doom in the mornings. If you follow him on Twitter you might notice he’s not as volatile. Last week my mom texted me and said “Jordan woke up with James Brown’s “I Feel Good” in his head. If that isn’t a fantastic sign I don’t know what is. I’m going to get him to drop the chicken and I think his mood will improve even more. This all-meat diet is the bomb.

Mikhaila Peterson: I’ve been doing it for six months now and I swear it just gets better. I have no cravings for other foods, my brain is the fastest it’s ever been, I don’t even mind the sleep deprivation that comes with a baby (she wakes up at night still), I’m energized, happy in the morning, happy all day, and raring to go. The only thing stopping me is my ankle and that should get fixed hopefully soon. I’m getting my micronutrients tested and cholesterol this month. Comment below if you’re interested in certain markers and I’ll add them to the list. This is purely for people’s curiosity, I’m not concerned in the least, I feel great. I’m going to start doing consults (so keep an eye on the blog). Switch it to a pay per consult instead of Patreon. People who have been speaking with me feel better fast enough that we don’t have to keep talking which is amazing. My face is also thinner on this diet (even just eliminating salad). I don’t have as much puffiness in my cheeks. It’s lovely. I look so much more attractive. I was looking through pictures of myself in Montreal in 2012 and I look like a different human.

Hangovers: Hey! Good news, I don’t react negatively to alcohol (only bourbon and vodka – nothing else). It turns out that the minor reactions I was getting were to those hangover pills!!! Which work really well but were giving me symptoms. But my response to alcohol has changed. It used to fill me with energy and now it just kind of makes me slower. So that’s a downer but maybe I’m so fast normally that it’s starting to work like it should, it is a depressant after all. WARNING: This diet is NOT good for hangovers. My tolerance is down, not just because of breastfeeding, and the hangovers are killllllerrrr. Be careful. Go slowly with alcohol. Stick to bourbon and vodka (they have nothing else added – the colour from bourbon is from the cask).

I’ll be updating the blog much more frequently when the nanny starts, and I may even start a YouTube channel! I’m also writing a book (18 000 words in so far!) Exciting times. Doing great. Thanks for the support.

UPDATE: 2023 – Regarding hangovers I eventually made my own supplement I don’t react to that works reaalllyy well if you want to give it a shot. fullerhealth.com (more pure supplements will be launched soon that don’t have fillers, and are third party tested for mold, etc.)

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248 Comments

  1. Hi Mikhaila,

    I have a lot of autoimmune disease symptoms. So I am considering trying carnivore for a month.
    Quick question though, what do you use as a cooking agent; olive oil? Cocunut oil? Butter (no right?) water or nothing at all?

    Thanks you helped me a lot

    1. Carnivore is everything coming from an animal. So that would be meats, dairy and eggs. Some people are intolerant to dairy and eggs even if raw (the milk), so you can cut them out for a month and then try to reintroduce them again. When it comes to cooking agents you can use tallow (from beef or mutton), lard (from pig), duck fat or goose fat. Or else ghee (from cow), butter from cow, sheep or goat, or just grill the meat without anything or use water in the pan.

  2. Mikhaila, I’m giving this a go in August — I’ spent most of 2017 on what you’d call an elimination diet which helped a lot, but not completely ; but this same idea of 100% meat has been in my mind somehow for several years, and your testimony about this (and your father’s) is probably the most helpful input I’ve ever had from anyone on the subject.

    Also of great help is the extremely el cheapo Portuguese butcher I’ve found, which means that for the very first time ever, the plan is in practical terms affordable.

    My first attempt in this direction was actually in the early 90s, but that was more of a starvation diet supplemented with massive steaks every few days and intensive hiking.

    One point though which might interest you —

    I don’t think that your lactose intolerance is necessarily a “feature” of your syndrome, but the truth in most cases is that adult lactose tolerance is a rare mutation among mammals which has become rather common among humans, within historical times rather weirdly, and my best guess would be that you simply lack the mutation.

    Lactose intolerance typically manifests in “adolescence” (in the classical sense of the word which is between ages 15 and 25), and my best guess is that it developed in you not as a consequence of the diet, though that might have been a trigger, but as a synchronous event when you started the diet.

    I’m in my 50s and I’m not lactose intolerant, though I am finding that I need to be increasingly careful with the cheese (but there are times when I seem to need it). I only drink milk when I feel that I need some, which is quite rare. Maybe once in a three month period. I have become somewhat less lactose tolerant in the past 3-4 years.

    Anyway, I think this is basically why some people can do the meat plus dairy, but you can’t — those people have the mutation, but you don’t.

    Bummer about the olives — if you can’t eat even the purest olives, it is extremely likely that there will be no fruit whatsoever that you can eat.

    PS I filled in your questionnaire. Got the depression, weight problems, skin problems, osteo-arthritis combination.

  3. erm, avoid ALL meat which is on sale except from a VERY trustworthy butcher’s who has over-ordered — I’ve done the computer programming for a meat distributor, and in very many cases, the cheaper the meat is, the longer it’s been in industrial deep freeze storage ; where it continues to be attacked by bacteria even when frozen, so that it actually starts to rot.

  4. Hey Mikhaila,

    I started carnivore on June 18th for my RA after spending the prior year doing low carb/keto. Other than digestive issues, I felt great the first couple of weeks and inflammation reduced pretty much completely, but on week 3 i seemed to regress. I suspect maybe it was a colloidal mineral supplement i had introduced but I’m really not sure? Ingredients were citric acid, fulvic acid, potassium sorbate and potassium benzoate. Some other variables I can think of were that I had started working out, and had introduced some grain fed meat on week 2. It sucks to not know why I improved so quickly then stopped and went backwards. Anyway its been just about 4 weeks since things took a turn negatively, (the week of July 4th). I was just wondering, do you find that this diet increases your sensitivity to things you weren’t as sensitive to? Also how long after you introduce something that triggers your symptoms before things get back to normal? I’m worried because by now I feel I should be feeling good again. Thanks!

    1. I’m much less sensitive to many things than Mikhaila, and Sodium Benzoate would put me in bed for a week with a terrible headache. You may have sensitized yourself to chemicals by getting off all of your other triggers.

      Eating this way will probably mean getting rid of chemicals in your diet – including all of the preservatives, both in preserved meats and other processed foods/supplements. If you want to take a mineral supplement, I’ve been on Total-Mins Iron Free from Country life for years and never had a problem.

    2. Yes the diet increased my sensitivity to anything I messed up with. Are you just eating beef? I would try that. Make sure it’s beef, salt and water and see what happens. I don’t really think you should be regressing so it might be the mineral supplement. I’ve never had an issue with grain fed meat but I do react to chicken or anything that isn’t beef. It takes about 3 weeks to recover from a wrong introduction for me

    3. I decided to do a couple days of water fasting for an immune system reset then I’m stripping things down to just beef, salt, and water to see if that gets me back on track. That’s what I’ve basically been doing the past few weeks although I’ll admit I only just gave up coffee a couple of days ago. I was fine with coffee at the beginning but perhaps I’ve developed a sensitivity to even that. I guess time will tell. Thanks for all the info you share! It gives me hope to hear your success!

  5. Thanks! Yeah I think you are right about the chemical sensitivity. Now I’m just doing beef, salt, and water and waiting to see if my immune system will back off.

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