Are you at your ideal weight? Is your head clear, your mind sharp? Do you have all the energy you need to get through the day?
If so, this post is not for you.
This post is for everyone who’s frustrated because they’ve tried to do things right, and haven’t gotten the expected results.
Last week I posted Pt. 1 of My Weight Loss Story: My Decades-Long Nightmare with the Calories In, Calories Out Model of Weight Loss.
I tried various weight loss diets and workout programs to achieve the coveted goal of being in a calorie deficit. And I spent months at a time burning more calories than I was consuming. At 5’4” and in my 30s, my recommended calorie intake, accounting for exercise and my weight loss goals, would always come in between 1250 and 1400. I would follow the recommendations. Except I could never lose more than 5 or 10 pounds, even though I was more than 30 pounds overweight.
I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice. I think everyone deserves to get help for their weight loss from a health care professional. This is just my personal story.
So here’s my second installment of this three-part series, which describes how my life went from infuriatingly and miserably mysterious, to weirdly and wonderfully strange...
A tender morsel of delicious, scrumptrulescent steak held the key to my losing weight.
The Carnivore Diet
I’ve always been a reader.
My favourite place when I was a kid was the library. I actually still kind of tear up when I’m in the stacks.
My second grade teacher called my mom once, concerned that I read “too much.” My mom laughed it off.
I still read a lot, about nutrition, health, music, psychology, parenting, politics, philosophy, falconry, you name it.
So it’s not surprising that I don’t remember what I was reading that day, but in May of 2018 I read something about a kind of elimination diet called the carnivore diet.
I will say straight off that I’m not going to say the carnivore diet is for everybody.
I think if you feel great eating what you’re eating, whether that be vegan, vegetarian, Paleo, Keto, or a mix of whole foods, then that’s fantastic. You’re listening to your body and giving it what it needs. Keep doing that. I’m a huge advocate for keeping an open mind, and tuning in to our body’s signals and becoming attentive to its messages. There’s also not a lot of research that’s been done on the carnivore diet, so there’s a lot we still don’t know.
From my perspective, what’s interesting about the carnivore diet is that it’s a kind of elimination diet that, for some people who haven’t had success with other approaches, can be doable and, as in my personal experience, yield pretty impressive results.
For years I had suspected that my health problems might have something to do with not just how much I was eating, but the kinds of foods I was eating. What if I had an undiagnosed allergy that was making my body go haywire? It’s estimated that up to 1 in 10 adults in Canada have food allergies [1].
Or maybe I didn’t have a full-blown allergy, but rather a sensitivity, which is defined as an “adverse physical response to a certain food” such as indigestion, fatigue, or headache. Or an intolerance, which is when you lack the enzymes needed to break the food down (for example lactose intolerance) [2].
Removing plant-based foods removes proteins found in plants that are common culprits for food allergies and sensitivities, such as oxalates, alkaloids, salicylates, and lectins [3].
And like the popular ketogenic diet, which is very low-carb and high-fat, you naturally end up eating a ton of protein and fat, with very few carbs (unless you’re drinking a lot of milk, which most who practice this way of eating avoid because it makes their prior symptoms return or persist). So your body goes into ketosis, which means it’s burning fat instead of carbs for fuel.
The basic idea of a carnivore elimination diet is that you strip your diet down to the foods that tend to be the least allergenic and inflammatory for most people -- which happens to be meat [4].
Then, after you establish a baseline, as with other elimination diets, you can slowly reintroduce other foods and track your reactions. If a reintroduced food elicits no negative reactions, it stands to reason that your body can tolerate it. If other foods cause a reaction, such as indigestion, fatigue, headaches, a rash, or mood changes, it means that you should continue avoiding those foods.
Here was something that sounded crazy — but doable. The body, it seems, can be provided with everything it needs just from meat and animal products (such as organs and collagen, and, for some people who can don’t have allergies, sensitivities, or intolerances, eggs and dairy). The nutrients from meat are readily absorbed by the body, and most people don’t have bad reactions to most meat, especially mammalian and avian meat such as beef, chicken, and pork [5].
It seemed so easy when I first started considering it. Weird, restrictive, and unfamiliar, but easy. Easy in the sense of straightforward. Just eat meat.
I had no idea what would happen when I began experimenting with the carnivore diet.
My Experiment with the Carnivore Diet Begins
I resolved to start eating only meat and dairy the next month, which was June of 2018.
Going carnivore was bizarre in a lot of ways at the beginning. My mouth missed the texture of crunchy foods like apples and almond crackers. I craved sugar. I ended up drinking a concoction of ice, heavy whipping cream, and nutmeg almost every day just to get by. I didn’t even want to imagine how many calories the heavy whipping cream was, so I certainly didn’t check.
The concept, just eat meat, was easy. But the implementation was hard. I would get sick of burger patties or chicken and go to the grocery store and buy any animal product that seemed appealing to me. Even if it was carnivore food such as pepperoni and Slim Jims, which are sub-optimal because they often contain added ingredients. I would for sure have quit in those first few weeks without beef jerky and Slim Jims!
But oh, the steak. Steak had always been my favourite food (and it still is!). I indulged infrequently in the past, thinking of it as a treat reserved for special occasions. But now, I would buy the cheapest steaks I could get, fry them in butter and bacon fat, and eat. And eat. And eat some more. My favorite food. All the time. I was in love.
Within two days of starting the carnivore diet I realized I was experiencing a satiety I had never in my life felt before. In my pre-carnivore days, I spent large portions of my day thinking about food, hunting for food in the cupboard or fridge, then eating food and frequently feeling guilty about eating food. I wasn’t even aware of how much time I spent like this. It took going carnivore to see myself clearly for the first time. Rather than hunting for the next snack, or resisting the urge to hunt for the next snack, I was going 6 or 7 hours without even thinking about food. This was unexpected, to say the least!
I felt a kind of freedom I had never before experienced.
And it was a good thing I felt that rush of freedom, because within a few days I experienced what is known as “keto flu”, which can last up to six weeks. This is the part of going carnivore that was not easy. It was, in fact, hard. Really hard. I experienced the common symptoms of fatigue, cramping, and indigestion (I didn’t know that, with proper treatment and some supplements, such as electrolytes and lipase, the severity and duration of keto-flu can be reduced) [6].
But as difficult as the keto flu was, the feeling of freedom from thinking about food was intoxicating. And the steak was delicious. So I kept going.
In the first ten days I lost about 7 lbs., which is a common experience as the body is shedding excess water weight. Over the next 6 weeks I lost about another 5 lbs, and started feeling better as the keto flu subsided.
Actually, I was feeling a lot better. The stress-induced depression and anxiety I had been in the grip of for the past year went away. Completely. I no longer had days where I could barely get out of bed. This was also unexpected.
I didn’t have an abundance of energy. But every day I felt more and more like I could handle whatever the next moment in my busy life required of me. It felt good.
I had planned to start reintroducing other foods after one month. But eating meat had by then become a kind of new normal, and I felt good so I just kept putting off reintroducing other foods.
Another seven months went by without me losing any significant amount of weight. But my body was healing old wounds and injuries, like the ankle I had sprained a few years before that always twinged, or my back injury from overexertion while rock climbing when I was 20. I went from making my long-suffering husband massage my tight neck and shoulders every day, to never feeling any aches or pains at all.
All the signs my body was giving me were telling me, something is finally working.
I had to look for a long time to find a “before” picture, since I have so few of myself from that time period.
The Compounding Benefits of Eating a Carnivore Diet
I naturally fell into a pattern of eating only once or twice a day, just from following my hunger cues. I was eating 1-2 pounds a day of mostly beef, bacon and eggs. I found out that I was intermittent fasting, which has health benefits of its own [7]. But rather than having to resist the urge to eat for part of the day, I just didn’t want to eat, except for when my body said it was hungry.
You might be thinking, “I could never do that! I can’t give up ice cream, or chocolate, or fruit!”. But I wasn’t actually going for months without eating anything other than animal foods. While I did significantly reduce how much of those kinds of foods I was eating compared to before trying the carnivore diet, I hadn’t entirely eliminated them. I was getting such powerful results from being a “relaxed carnivore”, I just kept going.
While 90-95% of my diet was coming from animal foods, I sometimes ate ice cream, indulged in chocolate, and had the occasional donut. I drank coffee and decaf with cream daily, and beer, wine and bourbon occasionally. I even went through a short phase of drinking Diet Coke every day. I love Greek salad and would have one every month or so. My body would always let me know with some aches, pains and fatigue when it didn’t like these “cheats” very much, but unlike some other people driven to such extremes, my body wouldn’t react badly enough to motivate me to stop altogether.
And even with these “cheats,” the list of ways I was benefiting just kept growing.
All of a sudden I lost another 5 lbs. I was eating more calories than I had in years, probably around 2000 calories a day (I don’t count) and reached the weight I am currently maintaining, which is around 130. I was pretty active just from taking care of three energetic kids, and I was walking regularly, but other than that I was following no workout routine.
I was eating more and exercising less, while losing weight and feeling better overall.
After 20 months of being mostly carnivore, I got another surprise. I lost about 50% of the cellulite on my legs. I’m sure there had been a gradual reduction, but all of a sudden I lost a bunch more. Really fast. Altogether I would guess I’ve experienced about an 80% loss of cellulite.
Here’s a list of the many benefits I’ve experienced over the last two years from adopting a relaxed carnivore diet:
Weight loss
Increased energy
Elimination of depression
A more stable mood
Decreased anxiety
Hair regrowth
Reduced cellulite
Improved iron levels (I had struggled with anemia in the past)
Perfect digestion
Elimination of gas and bloating
Freedom from the urge to snack constantly
Infrequent hunger
Elimination of aches and pains
Symptoms of hypothyroidism are in remission
Yes. My hypothyroidism, the condition that I was told would have me taking prescription medication for the rest of my life, is asymptomatic. I went off of my medication last year, and have had no symptoms return.
There are many things I don’t understand about why I was able to lose weight on the carnivore diet without creating a calorie-deficit. Especially considering that the calorie-deficit model does work for so many people.
But others have been experimenting with using carnivore as an elimination diet, and there’s a growing body of scientific literature helping to explain why metabolism and weight loss might be more complicated than we think.
Next week, I’ll post the 3rd and final part of this series, explaining some of the science that’s behind the low-carb, ketogenic and carnivore approaches to weight loss — and what we still don’t understand. I’ll give you a hint — we’ll be talking about insulin resistance, inflammation, gut health and metabolism. I’m looking forward to it!
[2] https://www.webmd.com/allergies/allergies-elimination-diet
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153292/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1856434/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6716155/
[6] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-keto-flu-2018101815052
[7] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156