120 Days Carnivore: What Happened When I Stopped Eating Plants
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As of tomorrow actually we will be officially 120 days in on the carnivore experiment. I got on this to get healthy both physically and mentally, not necessarily to lose weight like many people although I think I still did.
The before picture was taken during Anarchapulco last year when Avens and Judd came to visit my birds. I felt and looked the worst I ever had in my life and I didn't have any clue why, but I felt like I was dying.
What you can see in the first photo is a gaunt unhealthy woman with bad skin, what you can't see is the following:
crippling anxiety
terrible body wide cystic acne
dark circles under the eyes
extreme depression
extreme fatigue
insomnia
digestive issues
hormonal issues
early signs of both Parkensons disease and heart failure
Early (not really so early) signs of diabetes
shakes and tremors
constant need to pee
brain fog
inability to think/focus
lack of motivation for anything
extreme light sensitivity
daily migraines, sometimes when I woke up
Long story short until I heard about the carnivore diet I'd given up and it showed. When Judd released his photos from Anarchapulco this year I was disgusted and there are many photos he shared that I was too embarrassed to even tag myself in, the photo I shared as my before being one of those photos. I looked like a drug addict and now I truly realize I was, to sugar. And I was forced to use things like natural sleep aids to balance out my sugar addiction.
Within a month as a carnivore, the constant tightness I experienced in my chest was gone, as were the shakes and tremors. I had more energy and for the first time in more than ten years it seemed like my skin was clearing. All the sudden my hopeless situation no longer seemed hopeless.
Then the diet got unexpectedly hard, partially as I mourned my life before. I was also having a lot of conflicted feelings as I knew had I found this diet ten years earlier, my life would likely be incredibly different. As many people know food is strongly linked to memory and when I started to realize that I truly had to quit the sugar (and all carbs in general) to feel better I honestly got depressed.
My whole life I'd lived as though those telling me that I needed to quit sugar were wrong, which was fine by me because sugar is delicious and I didn't wanna quit it. Considering nothing else I'd tried for my skin had ever helped, I had a hard time believing cutting sugar out would do it. I also believed I'd caused too much damage to everything from my teeth to my heart. But when I heard Mikhalia Peterson talk about her experiences I couldn't ignore what she was saying if my goal was truly to get better. I had to try it, so I did.
A lot of carnivores struggle with going out and being social because they're constantly tempted to cheat and I really felt it those first few months, especially as times got tough. I found after awhile my cravings were purely mental and I was getting upset at the idea of never eating donuts again, an easy thing to do when you don't consider how much better you feel without them. Part of what kept my strong was deciding I was sick of feeling weak and emotional over something as simple as a sugar frosted ring of sugar. Now I have self confidence I didn't have before, I'm not so controlled by food that I have to make myself sick just for a five minute taste of something I used to love. I never thought that would happen.
I had some pizza about two months in and have since all but sworn it off, as I had several days of pretty intense bodily reactions including: weird high from the pizza itself, extreme bloating and digestive discomfort for days, lack of sleep for three days, one night felt nauseous and pukey....needless to say I was done by the end of it. That's the worst of the reactions I experience from eating outside of the diet, but at the least the shakes and brain fog come back even if I indulge in things like fruit.
The one thing with this diet is I'm surprised at how strict I've managed to be, although I think that's partially due to how badly I can react to certain things. I'm finding I can't tolerate things like almonds, agave and stevia where other things like dried dates or fruit don't cause much more than carb cravings. While I'm not sure I'll stay 100% carnivore for the rest of my life, I do know I'm never going to really be interested going back to what I used to eat. It's one of those things where I just can't unlearn the feels from the carnivore diet.
Now for those confused by carnivore I'm not just referring to the omnivore diet or even the ketogenic diet (although carnivore can be and is a ketogenic diet). I eat meat, I drink water and that's it. Some carnivores eat only beef, I keep it somewhat diverse with beef, pork and chicken primarily.
What I eat:
carnivore balls (ground beef, lard, chopped liver balls wrapped in bacon and fried)
ground meat patties with lard
bacon, kilos and kilos a week of sugar free bacon. Just the salty stuff for me
beef
pork
chicken
eggs
butter/ghee
salt and pepper
Aaaand if I want extra flavor I'll use garlic or thyme for flavor, but we generally don't end up eating the garlic or thyme itself.
It sounds a lot harder than it is. The first three weeks sucked in some regards but I can say the way I feel now is worth the trouble. Our experiment with the carnivore diet started as just a thirty day trial but by week three I was calling it a lifestyle. My current ideal future diet is primarily meat with "cheat days" once a month or so involving fruit and other simple things like that.
Have you considered going carnivore? Comment below with why or why not!
Check out the links below for more like this one!
Carnivore Adventures: Chicken and Steak
Early bird gets the meat
Beef Tongue Anyone?
In case you missed them, some of my recent posts:
Satoshi the Cat Adventures: Sunrise Rooftop Adventures
Anarchaforko Anarchapulco Fork Update: Earn Free Nights at Hotel Copacabana during Anarchaforko by Selling Tickets!
Acapulco Nights: Fall Night Reflections
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Congratulations on finding something that works for you! I believe one of the most important lifelessons we can take is that we're all unique and have unique body chemistry... so the whole notion that there is some kind of "one size fits all" when it comes to diet is basically so much BS.
At the recommendation and (almost) insistence of a couple of (almost) militant vegan friends back when I was 20-something, I managed to go vegan/vegetarian for about six months. I gave up the experiment at that point for health reasons; pretty severe anemia, really bad acne, skin pallor, achy joints, muscle weakness, acid reflux so bad I would sometimes sit for 20 minutes in a semi-fetal position, lack of energy and frequent headaches (which I had never had before) and went back to meat eating.
Now, in all fairness, I was eating pretty much the exact same thing as my buddy Kevin who was quite healthy... not exemplary, by any means, but "quite healthy." I just wasn't.
After about three weeks of eating mostly red meat and salmon, I was back to my former health... which was actually really good.
In retrospect, I think some of this might be genetic... being from upper Scandinavia, it's a part of the world where I have a genetic inheritance for surviving in an environment where a plant based diet would only have been historically feasible for about six months a year, and survival/health would (for my ancestors) have been dependent on access to fish and meat. My experience has been that people genetically from hit climate zones are more likely to thrive on plant based diets.
Your fair skin (in spite of living in the tropics) and reddish hair also suggest a northern genetic heritage, so that fits the pattern, too.
I definately think it's more genetic than blood type based like some people subscribe too. I'm primarily irish so I think that's a big part of why I thrive on this diet. Where my ancestors or from, we wouldn't have been able to eat all the tropical stuff I'm surrounded with here so it makes sense that I can't constantly eat that stuff, too.
Holy what the frig with those CARNIVORE BALLS. WHY HAVEN'T I EVER HEARD OF OR CONSUMED THESE?
PLEASE KINDLY WALK ME THROUGH THE RECIPE AND HOW=TO, PRONTO.
K, in all seriousness, I can tell you that to me.... learning how much better I could FEEL just from what I do (and mostly DON'T) eat, was a true religious experience. Really. I used to literally live on sugar and carbs and I was quite a bit thicker as a result, had huge dips and swings in energy, had severe period symptoms, etc.
My current 8 to 9 year diet now/lifestyle has been basically centered around keto/paleo. I'll never look back, and even when I 'test' the waters again and reintroduce some grains here and there... I am ALWAYS FUCKING SORRY, and always swear them off strictly again. The lifestyle is still here to stay and how I eat as a general rule is literally unrecognizable from how I once ate.
So I FEEL all the FEEEEEEEELZ here, even though I haven't specifically tried just meat and drinking water. My 'scientific biohacker' brain that loves testing things on my body cannot wait to go full force with this for at least a couple weeks just to see. I would say I've almost always had other things besides just meat.. even if it's fruit/veggies/avocados/seeds and the like, I've always had other stuff with meat in my diet so going only meat would be a veerrrrrrry interesting metabolic experience for one like me who, I discovered, puts on muscle really fucking fast when I eat a lot of JUST animal, even for a day. I hang onto muscle longer than some, I can put it on super fast when I basically add a hair of extra effort to my physical activities, and if I add to that an increase in animal intake... oh boy. That could get really fun. I'm actually most interested to see what it does to muscle mass increase in PARTICULAR AS WELL AS strength increase in particular. I love strength increases when I've decided to go for it... and since I've let myself get 'weaker' again, I've been back in the mood to ramp back up and pack on strength and size.
Congratulations though, for real, I know exactly what kind of a religious experience this feels like for you, as I know now that literally every fucking thing we do to our bodies matters, and even our mental relationship to the food (or herbs/plants) matters too.
INDEED. The carnivore balls are just a blend of ground beef, chopped liver and lard. Make into meatballs, wrap with bacon and fry! Favorite food lol
That's really interesting about your ability to gain muscle. I've recently started working out as I notice I'm starting to gain muscle in places I've always had deficits. I'd be really interested to see what kind of results you get.
I'm doing a talk at Anarchaforko for sure on the carnivore, perhaps there should be a meaty panel of some sort with you on it too :D
Great post Lily, I've also been fascinated by Mikhalia Peterson's results. All our bodies are unique and I believe we can each figure out which fuel will help us lead an optimum life. Glad you've found something that works for you!
Thanks! In the beginning I feared I was a lot like Mikhalia but I'm finding I'm able to tolerate a lot more than her. Nothing compared to what I used to tolerate but I can eat a little fruit I think without terrible problems and depression,.
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Plants don't want to be eaten, they wage chemical warfare on those that do, thus your symptoms.
Yep, much respect for those silent warriors lol