Chapter 4 of 12 — The Lion Diet Guide
Personal

Chapter 4 — Getting Started

May 24, 2026

This is the practical chapter. By the end of it, you'll know what to buy, what to expect in the first few weeks, what supplements to consider, and how to handle the most common early problems. Most of this is condensed from the Get Started page and How to Wean Into the Lion Diet — both of which go into more depth than I have space for here.

Cold turkey vs weaning in

Starting the Lion Diet cold turkey is possible, but it'll come with harsher cravings and transition symptoms than weaning into the diet over a period of one to three months.

If you prefer the gradual transition, the standard weaning approach is two steps. Step one: eat only meat (any kind), salt, and a small list of low-reactivity plant foods — sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, pears, apples, berries, honey — for about a month. Step two: drop the plant foods and the non-ruminant meat, leaving you with the Lion Diet. How to Wean Into the Lion Diet walks through this in detail and lists exactly what's in the weaning-stage allowed-foods list.

I personally went cold turkey because my symptoms were severe enough that I couldn't afford the extra month. If your symptoms are severe — daily debilitating depression, full-body inflammation, IBD flare — cold turkey is reasonable. If your symptoms are moderate, weaning in is more sustainable.

The first 48 hours

Expect to feel worse before you feel better. The body has been running on a high-carb intake; it has to retool to run on fat and protein. Common symptoms in the first 48 hours:

The single most important thing you can do in the first 48 hours: get your electrolytes right. Sodium is what your body is dumping as it lets go of stored water. Potassium and magnesium are the other two that matter. If you don't replace them, you'll feel awful and you might quit before you find out the diet works.

Electrolytes — the most important thing in the first month

Buy or make electrolytes. You'll probably need extra sodium, potassium, and magnesium at the beginning of this diet.

The cheapest path: salt your meat heavily. Drink salted water if you feel headachy. For potassium, lean cuts of beef have a reasonable amount; for magnesium you may need a supplement.

The premade path: there are a number of electrolyte powders sold specifically for keto and carnivore diets. LMNT is the one I've used most, but there are many. Just make sure whatever you buy is unflavored or naturally flavored — many of the cheaper ones have artificial sweeteners and colorings that can themselves cause reactions.

If you're getting headaches, leg cramps, light-headedness when standing up, fatigue, or irritability in the first few weeks — the first thing to try is more salt. Most of these symptoms resolve almost immediately with sufficient sodium.

What to eat (the very short version)

For the first three weeks, keep it simple. Pick three or four cuts of beef or lamb you like, salt them, cook them, eat to satiety. Don't try to follow recipes. Don't try to be clever. The whole point of this phase is to give your immune system a break — and "simple" is what gives it the break.

A typical day for me looks like:

That's the whole day. There's a more detailed walkthrough of typical eating in What Does A Typical Breakfast Look Like?

Cuts of meat — what to buy, what to avoid

Best cuts to start with — flavorful, forgiving, easy to cook:

Cuts to avoid or be careful with early on:

Salt — which kinds and how much

Use a real salt — unrefined sea salt or Himalayan pink salt are good defaults. Iodized table salt is fine if that's what you have, though it's stripped of trace minerals and contains anti-caking agents some people react to.

How much: salt to taste, but be generous. Most people undersalt their food on this diet because they're used to mainstream nutrition advice that says less salt is healthier. On a low-carb diet, you genuinely need more salt — your kidneys excrete it faster.

Cookware and equipment

The full equipment list lives in Products for a Heavy Meat Diet. The short version of what's worth buying:

What you don't need: fancy knives, sous vide setups, a smoker. Maybe later, but not to start.

Where to source meat

The honest answer: anywhere you can afford it. Costco bulk-pack ground beef is fine. Grocery store ribeye is fine. You don't need grass-fed or grass-finished to make the diet work — although if you can afford it and you have access, grass-finished meat is generally lower in inflammatory linoleic acid and is what I prefer.

Online sources I've used and trust:

Avoid: anything labeled "grass-fed" but not "grass-finished" (most are actually grain-finished); anything labeled "natural" or "all natural" (those terms are meaningless); anything pre-marinated, pre-seasoned, or in a sauce.

Weeks 1–2: what to expect

The transition symptoms (headaches, fatigue, cravings) usually peak in the first week and resolve by the end of the second. You may also notice:

For me, I stopped crying in the morning at the two-week mark — that was my first sign that the diet was actually doing something to the depression. More on the depression and anxiety timeline.

Weeks 3–6: the diet starts working

This is when the early symptoms typically start clearing. Joint inflammation begins to subside. Skin issues start to fade. Depression begins to lift. Brain fog clears. Digestion stabilizes.

Specifically:

Beyond month 1: the slow improvements

After the first month, improvements continue but they're often smaller and more gradual. Energy keeps climbing. Sleep keeps improving. Skin keeps clearing. Brain fog continues to lift. Some of the longer-tail symptoms — anxiety, certain autoimmune presentations, long-standing fatigue — can take three to six months to fully resolve.

If you're not seeing improvement by week 6, the most common reasons are: (1) contamination — eating out, processed seasonings, supplements; (2) environmental triggers (mold/biotoxins — see Chapter 9); (3) untreated psych med withdrawal; (4) some other driver (thyroid, hormones, sleep disorder) that needs separate evaluation. More in the FAQ.

One last thing before you start

Avoid eating out at least the first 3 weeks. Restaurants use seed oils, marinades, seasoning blends, and "natural flavors" that can all contain things you react to. You don't have to forever, but for the diagnostic phase, you want to know exactly what's in your food. "I'm too busy to eat like this, it's too expensive," and other excuses addresses the most common reasons people skip this — none of them hold up.

Chapter 5 covers what your daily cooking practice actually looks like — recipes, meal patterns, and the small kitchen habits that make this sustainable.