Here are my new thoughts about the carnivore diet since Dad’s improvement
1. If you are quite sick (by quite sick I mean you have an autoimmune disorder or autoimmune symptoms, or mental health issues) – going straight carnivore might save you a lot of pain and suffering. I went extremely low carb and basically fixed my issues and dad’s, and my husbands, but basically, everything we reintroduced made us incredibly sick, and the last 3 years have been hard. Not as hard as being really ill, but quite emotional, and quite frustrating. I never lost hope that food was the answer (and it is), but it was difficult. If you’re really ill, you might want to start with: meat and water and salt for at least 30 days. Then see how you feel, and decide what to do next. You need to get healthy before you can start listening to your body and learning what you need. I really believe all meat can do that the quickest. 30 days isn’t much if a time commitment to solve something seemingly unsolvable.
Obviously, there are no scientific studies on an all meat diet, not really anyway. You’re not going to be able to go to a doctor and have them tell you it’s a good idea. They’ll probably tell you you’ll die. Who knows. Everyone will judge you. Everyone judges you when you stop eating gluten or dairy, try not eating vegetables and see what kind of judgment you get.
But it’s only a month, and man is it effective. Then you can reintroduce different plants (I’d probably start with berries and greens I guess), wait a couple of days and see how you feel. But I think this is the fastest way to stop suffering. You can do step by step elimination – gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, etc. But honestly, fuck being sick. Get rid of it fast. Who cares about the foods you like.
2. If your only symptom is weight gain or problems gaining weight, I also think the easiest thing to do is to go carnivore and see how you feel. But this seems to be less of a complicated issue than mental health and autoimmune problems. Going low carb should help you lose or gain weight anyway.
3. I’ve been worried about suggesting an all meat diet to people (for obvious reasons). All I can tell you for sure is: I feel great, Dad is getting better, mom’s arthritis is gone, and it seems to be extremely effective for basically any health problem. Check out meatheals.com to see a ton of testimonies. There are no studies to back this up, so going the science route isn’t going to help. Maybe in the future, there will be. I believe there’s a company in Hungary testing out the meat diet to treat autoimmune disease so hopefully those studies will be available asap. I’m not worried about cholesterol. I was worried about dying from the multiple autoimmune disorders I had. I was worried about suicide from the depression that runs in my family. I was worried about my mom eventually needing her knees replaced. I was worried about my skin basically falling off my face. Idgaf about cholesterol, and I don’t think there’s enough evidence anywhere to claim any health problems related to eating meat. (Feel absolutely free to comment below with links to articles that show what your concerns are.) Being sick is horrible. Being alive is amazing. Not being exhausted all the time, not trying to cover up acne, not being miserable, bloated, overweight, arthritic, angry, and hopeless is awesome. Not waking up and laying in bed waiting for the doom to envelope you is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. You can try it out and go back if you want, but if you’re suffering, what is there to lose?
4. For those of you who have had only moderate success with removing things from your diet, I see absolutely no downside (except socially) to eating meat for a month.
5. All this being said, I do believe you can solve most (and some people may be able to solve all) of your food problems going low carb. I’m going to write a post roughly outline what I believe are the worst foods to the least damaging foods. Cutting out the top ones will improve you. I’m just starting to believe that carnivore might be best for really sick people.
Thanks for the support. It’s so nice to hear from people who have managed to fix their anxiety. Going the food route is a hard road, and you get a lot of flack for it. So good for you guys. Keep it up. And if it’s not working, try carnivore. Good luck to everyone.
Also, I will post more testimonies, if yours isn’t up, it will be.
More soon!
Really looking forward to the ‘best to worst’ list! Thank you for your work and making it public.
Mikhaila,
I SO appreciate your deep cutting honesty..your laying your soul and “journey” bare for us to see and learn from…
Abundant blessings to you!!!!
Upward and Onward!
Kathy Miller
That’s why we try it for ourselves. Carnivore for 5 months now. Able to drop all meds, sleep better, exercise stronger, mood stable. Benefits are many. Try it and see or keep believing dogma and confirming bias by reading ‘studies’. We are all responsible for ourselves.
Here are the different options for eating healthy:
Plant-Based:
– No Meat
– No Sugar
– No Dairy
– No Eggs
– No Nuts
– No Oil
– No processed, GMOs, Preservatives or anti-biotic based food.
*Vegan diets are different. You can eat sugar and processed foods. Plant-Based is a removal of the processed food.
A study from Australia showed cleary wild game meat is 3-4 times healthier than factory farmed meat.
curious; when you say meat diet, does that include all animal based protein ? including poultry and fish? and i suppose other animal based proteins present in non-western diets ?
also, have you tested for differences of effects from “organic meat” ? and non-organic meat ?
when my son was a pre-schooler he was placed on a yeast candida diet for a year; then an elimination diet for a year. he was finally given a food sensitivity blood test. it revealed that he was sensitive to 16 out of the 18 foods tested. he was also allergic to almost all contact items e.g. fabrics except soft 100?% cotton, natural items e.g. grass, expected items e.g. soaps (even non-allergenic soaps). etc. we had one book that helped, to make sense of the relationship between diet and physical e.g. eczema , emotional, physiological and behavioural symptoms, by Dr. Doris J. Rapp, M.D. titled Allergies and the hyperactive child. this experience was 30 + years ago. a much more recent diet i found interesting is the GAPS diet by Dr. Barbara McBride. associating a broad range of symptoms to gastro intestinal health. very interesting . this diet literally saved the life of a friend. also it gives guidance on elimination of foods and symptoms of toxin die off. i imagine that any person that has researched diet and allergies or sensitivities has also explored environmental effects on health and well being. for me the latest is the Irlen Syndrome. how the brain processes light spectres and the effects on a person when their brain processes, or does not process, all light spectres . it is difficult to identify the root reason when our amazing bodies do not function within the expected norms. certainly a good thing that you are helping to bring awareness to living/eating outside the box.
Here is my favorite video on “how not to die”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ
Google? – no thanks…
Jay – The presentation was to the Google employees. The Dr. has nothing to do with Google. Your reaction tends to point to an inability to learn.
…no thanks.
A total meat diet is environmentally unfriendly because the carbon footprint of cattle in particular is highly polluting. Eat veggies to save the planet.
Herbivores like cows on pasture create healthy grassland soil which sequesters carbon. Plowing the soil and planting annual monocrops like corn, wheat and soy destroys topsoil. Look into the work of Allan Savory. It is common sense that producing food in an ecosystem that has been naturally occuring for thousands of years ( herbivores on grasslands ) is better for the environment than producing food in an ecosystem that has never occurred in nature. ( thousands of acres of monocrops )
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
Glen –
– Animals eat enough harvest to feed 3 billion people.
– 61% of the deforestation in the world is for the factory farming.
– 70% of the probiotics are injected into factory farm animals to keep them alive.
– Pigs eat dead pigs.
– Preservatives enable a two-year-old Bigmac to look the same.
– 68% of the USA is obese (The USA has the highest consumption of meat on the planet)
– Japan and countries with low meat consumption, live much longer.
– The longest recorded lifespans are in areas with a 90% plant-based diet.
I can go on, while the facts do not have feelings.
If you are unable to stop eating meat. At least be honest enough to compare factory farming against game meat. Not all meat is equal.
Associational (rather than causal) and cherry picked statistics. India eats about 1/10th as much meat as Japan, but is ranked 125th in life expectancy. Australia, 2nd leading meat eater, is fourth. But everyone will ‘explain’ these anomalies in terms of their own confirmation biases. Not science.
Factory farming is just shit in general for all sorts of reasons, I try to as much as possible support “ethical farming” such as farmer’s marked, local farms and hunters (where that is possible) and similar.
It was a bit of a shock to find out that cows are producing an inordinate amount of the gases (among the highest portion of producers) due to how their multiple stomachs work. While I do not support factory farming (until basically we need it to feed an overpopulation, which is still a long ways off if we even get there) I do support genetic engineering to for example figure a way to alter that process as long as it does not have an adverse effect on either the animal or the meat. The modern domestic cow and sheep wouldn’t really exist as we know them (nor would dogs or cats) if not for selective breeding after all, the primitive version of just that. At the same time it’s important to be vigilant and take it step by step and see long term consequences rather than rushing, in case that altered cow is suddenly passing on secondary detrimental effects via the meat or milk. Fortunately such safety precautions are becoming better and better.
For more information on those walking tasty sacks of methane most of us love, check out this; https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm
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