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!
Something to keep in mind always is that we are genetically very different by now, and people from different genetic backgrounds can handle different types of food. Here in Norway for example we take in dairy products at a rate that essentially few other people in the world would literally be able to stomach, because this is what we have been doing for generations, and same goes for wholegrain bread with butter and something like cheese or meat or nougat on it (this is very common here, yet an American team that did a report on our diet had no word for it and had to call it single-side sandwiches) and yet globally we rank fairly high on health. As we as a culture started introducing more and more sugar however that obviously started changing gradually (traditionally even fruit and berries are rare here due to the climate, strawberries, blueberries and cloudberries are the only common ones, fruit all has to be imported also, and in the hardier spots only tough root vegetables like carrots and potatoes can grow properly, so we never had all that much fructose sugar even), and even though I struggled with depression decreasing my sugar intake helped immensely.
The meat diet is the same manner, you give that diet to someone from Thailand for example and it could be physically dangerous to them, as dangerous as giving the same person the same amount of dairy products that Norwegians regularly consume. But on the other hand if you take someone of traditional Nordic stock and you swap them over to a vegetarian diet someone from Thailand could easily thrive on, then without some heavy vitamin supplements without access to the nutrition eating meat, fish and dairy products give us we can easily get very sick. I say this specifically because I have a Thai stepmother, who DID get that sick from most of traditional Norwegian food, and who also quickly realized she had to start putting more meat and less spices into her traditional Thai dishes if my father was to consume them.
And at the same time this is different within even such a relatively small subset as the population of Norway (around 5 million as of 2018 in the whole country that’s as long as Britain and Scotland combined, less than in many of the world’s large cities), we don’t all share the same diet, most don’t have any physiological (or psychological) changes in removing Gluten from their diet, some recover from all sorts of things by doing just that, and some have severe reactions to the dairy products the rest of the country consume without issue, and as our population becomes more diverse (we have been a very insular people traditionally) these variables just expand. This is why I think there’s never going to be made comprehensive all-inclusive scientific studies on the benefits of diet (beyond obvious stuff like limit your intake of sugar and saturated fat), because it’s not going to be applicable for everyone, and it’s going to be too hard to easily tell what food groups should avoid beyond personal experimentation, maybe some time in the future it’ll be possible to tell for sure what your diet should be from a blood test or the like, but until then trial and error seems like the best bet…
Personally I’m going to try just that, and try cutting out things one by one and see what improvements if any they make. Dairy is the first stop, drop it for a month (which will be hard, as I love cheese and butter and milk with a loaf of bread or a nice wild berry yoghurt, kinda hope this will do nothing so I don’t have to drop them lol), then see how I feel. Sugar and sodas and wheat products are the first thing to go though regardless.
Suffering is hard, changing is hard. I decided that I had suffered enough and would do whatever it takes to ease it, no matter what it would be. You have to ask yourself, what do I believe and why do I believe it. Then really explore the question. After months of experimentation and reading, I came to the conclusion that there is so much propaganda surrounding this issue you have no choice but to finally ask yourself,how did we survive as a species. When your most basic bodily functions don’t work, how did we get here? When I started changing things and got increasingly better results, that proved I was on the right track. The journey continues. Fasting? All meat? Why not? Results are all that matters. My health is better than it has ever been. I eat no grain, no sugar, no booze, no fruit, very small amounts of vegetables and the rest is meat. If this offends your ideology, that is your problem. At a very basic level, its about what you believe. Is this life worth living? Can I make it better? Who am I? What if I try everything and it fails? What if it succeeds? If the answers to these questions strengthen you”re resolve, then you’re going ahead. I’m 57 years old and I feel fantastic. Now what? That’s a question I’m working on. When I heard mikhailas story, I was touched by how open she is talking about very personal things. I’m very happy for you and your family. Be well. Life is a gift.
I feel like crying. I’m wondering if this carnivore thing could be an answer to prayer. I have suffered from horrible debilitating health issues since I was a child. my dad had them, also, and my mom. but theirs were more tolerable. My sis and I both have auto-immune issues and are debilitated and in bed on most days and we’re only in our 30s. her 2 kids have bad anxiety and adhd also. I wonder if this could actually help us? I’m so tired of my entire family being so sick and tired and all of the suffering. I want to try this. why not? 30 days? I can do this. is there a website that i can go to to see how much fat and meet and salt I need? I don’t know what this is so scary. I just want to be well. I want my family well.
It’s not that complicated, just cut out any non-veggie carbs. What you’re left with is meat and veggies. Another thing that has been known to have healing properties is fasting. Eating 2 big meals is better than having multiple meals. There are studies that suggest autophagy (your body’s breaking down of useless particles) is enhanced when within a fasted state.
If you are interested in what I said, the diet is called Keto (high fat, moderate protein, low to no carb). The fasting principle is called Intermittent Fasting. Take care.
Give it a go. Be prepared for about 3 weeks of transition symptoms (digestive, etc.) Check out zerocarbzen.com. I’d suggest spoiling yourself and eating a lot of ribeye (it has enough fat). Ribs are fatty too. And if you get tired on the diet, eat more. A lot of people don’t eat enough when they first start out.
Really well said – thank you for that. I feel quite the same as you. I’m 65, been a total carnivore for 5 months, and I’ve resolved several health issues that have been with me for decades. We can sling ‘studies’ and ‘meta-analyses’ back and forth until we’re 90. But if you really want to know for your self, get off the intellectual fence, and do an actual experiment. The rest is just academic head-spinning.
And congratulations to both Mikhaila and her dad for being open and vulnerable enough to risk all the inevitable negative feedback.
I’m 22 and interested in doing this diet to prevent any disease that may come my way. Have you done any blood tests after being on this diet for a while? How did they come out?
Thanks!
I’m doing blood work in June and I will update everyone then. I’m assuming everything will be normal except my cholesterol, but I strongly believe being healthy and having a high cholesterol isn’t a bad thing. We’ll see soon
Are you not worried about the cholesterol at all? I have recently scored positive in the rheumatoid factor blood test and I am strongly considering going on the diet but I am scared if it will not just kill me in another way 😀
Hey so I’ve done Keto and all meat and green diets before and had real issues with low energy and muscle weakness. Pretty much Keto flue symptoms. I tried supplementing with magnesium, potassium, calcium, and sodium but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I also started getting nauseous at the thought and smell of meat after like a week when doing all meats and greens. I want to try all meat but I’m afraid of running into the same problems. Am I just mentally weak or is this something other people have dealt with and if so is there anything you did that helped you overcome these issues?
It’s a process from what I can tell. I don’t know how long it would take if you are healthy to start with. It took me about a year to get to where I am now. I have had episodes of low energy, but salt turns that around quickly. I was slow recovering for quite awhile, but fine now. I’m surprised anyone can follow a strict diet, with the amount of pressure that is applied at every turn. Keep trying, watch your results, feel good about improvements. Don’t get down on yourself, there is always lots of people ready to do that for you.
I would look into Nora Gedgauda’s material. She written about supplements and strategies for making the transition. Primal Body, Primal Mind is a good start. If you’re older (say 40-ish and up) it does take longer to switch your metabolism over than a 20-year-old. You might want to start by removing gluten, then dairy, then sugar, then gradually lowering your carb allowance to keto levels. That’s how I worked into it, and the transition was fairly smooth. You may not need to go to that extreme either. Most folks seem to do well at the 70 gms per day of carbs as opposed to hard-core 20 or lower. Also remember it’s ***not the meat*** that provides energy, it’s the fat. A lot of folks up their meat too much and overdo the protein content. Fatty meat is what you’re after. Chuck steak, oxtails, bacon, beef shanks, pork belly etc. You may need ox bile or some other supplement that will support your liver/gall bladder while it adjusts to making higher levels of enzymes to metabolize fat. It took me about a year to make friends with my gall bladder after decades of low-fat eating. Remember to stay away from vegetable oils too. They are terrible for you. Lard, butter, and tallow provide the lipids the body needs for creating strong, flexible cellular walls, the bricks of your structure.
Excellent and informative note. I went to carnivore via keto, and also needed some time for my gallbladder to handle the fat. I’m better off with carnivore (I’m 65), mostly beef, than with keto, but I second the recommendation to work up to it and LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. Way too much noise out in the blogosphere – you could wring hands and ‘research’ forever. Give it a fair try and don’t confound with other foods, and see what works.
Can you talk more about salt intake. Why does salt help your energy? My arthritis and inflammation are doing great on ZC diet but I still get deep episodes of “wizard of Oz” sleep during the day which lasts about 20-50 minutes. Sometimes my energy improves after the sleep, sometimes it doesn’t.
Carbs cause the body to retain water and salt, less carbs = less salt retained. That is why you should supplement salt. Take care Steven.
Are you sure you’re eating enough? Fat especially? People sometimes do this diet and eat 1.5-2 pounds of meat a day, and as a man you’re going to need more than that. Most of the people I’ve spoken with who experience fatigue aren’t eating enough. Also beware of bacon and cured meat – it generally added sugar that can give you a crash.
We’re all biochemically unique (with some clumping around ethnic populations), so you must listen to your body more than any doctor. I had actually read about all-meat diets before, so I’m sympathetic to the idea. I’ve only read a couple of articles on this site, so I’m not sure if it’s been covered yet, but do you concern yourself with meat quality? There is ENORMOUS difference between factory-farm beef and 100% grass-fed beef….it’s like they’re different animals. Same for poultry, maybe more.
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