Why I’m going Carnivore
My latest exploration towards optimal health
When I first came across the carnivore diet, it was while listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Jordan Peterson. Dr Peterson was talking about how his daughter had managed to heal herself of her many chronic and auto-immune diseases by going on a strict carnivore diet.
Compared to her history of quite serious health issues, the results were pretty miraculous. I was pleasantly surprised and happy for them. At the same time, a voice in my head said that this must be some freak exception and couldn’t be real. The cognitive dissonance was loud, most likely due to me being on a fully vegan diet at the time. Thankfully I’ve learned much since then which prompted me to make the current change.
In this essay, I want to walk you through my background with nutrition and dietary protocols before explaining the various reasons why I chose this particular diet, and how I will run the experiment. Overall I’d like this to be an intro to further resources and tools to help you approach this diet, and maybe health in general.
Now, how did I go from fully vegan to here?
My history prior to becoming vegan
To understand my current thinking, let me quickly walk you through my background of health and fitness, of which the last 10 years consisted of consciously directed research and self-experimentation.
I was born in 1990 and grew up in the small coastal town of Park Rynie. My dad always encouraged us to be active and healthy, and having the beach nearby helped ensure we were always active. I grew up learning to swim, and spent a lot of the afternoons at the beach — my dad was one of the local lifesavers (in addition to being a high school math teacher) and took us often to the beach.
As I grew up and became stronger and better at swimming in my high school years, I competed in the Midmar mile (a 1.6 km open water race) with my family and also school teams. In total I’ve completed it 4 times. I also trained in the martial art of karate during this time, which built a strong foundation of discipline and appreciation for physical exercise, habit and routine. I achieved a black belt (1st Dan) before I had to stop as I transitioned to university life and its harsh demands.
As an engineering student I had little time for my usual activities — I was up before 6am and back home after 6pm, and played catch up on weekends. One of those long days, while waiting for other students in my lift club to finish their tests, I discovered that the university had a gym. I met a few of my classmates who also trained there and I joined them and learnt about bodybuilding. I managed to train a once or twice a week but it was awkward as I was figuring out what my body can do and how I should be training it for muscular growth. I was building brain and muscle cells, in many areas of my life but I really didn’t have a plan what I was doing in the gym. Thinking back to those early days in the gym, my knowledge and experience was just a drop in a bucket — its no wonder my results took so long to materialize. During this time I was still staying at home with my family, and got good hot food prepared everyday. While really enjoyable and helpful, it was not a health lever I could experiment with at the time.
In 2012/2013 I traveled to London to do a Masters in Robotics at Kings College. It was the first time I left the country, let alone being alone, and I went for a whole year! It was an extremely pivotal year in my growth as a person and it remains a a significant impact on my life. During that year, my exercise was limited to body weight stuff (like pushups and sit ups and the occasional sporting session with the other students). I used the time to develop a habit of running/ walking in the parks nearby as I could explore more of London as well as get healthier.
It was finally in 2014, however, that I was first able to exert full control of my diet — having just started work as a junior engineer in rural Secunda, South Africa. Since that time, I have always strove to test new health research and protocols and upgrade my health (whether that be body or mind) along the way.
The first change I made was to move away from a traditional Indian-based diet to a more western, body-builder-like diet, i.e. chicken breast and broccoli — generally eliminating oily foods and aiming for a good balance of macros. If I had to label it, it would be a If-It-Fits-Your-Macros (IIFYM) diet. This was when I started training at the gym regularly.
In 2015, I discovered a book called Carb-Nite solution. This was where I was first introduced to the concept of an “ultra-low carb” diet as well as ketosis, which is another energy system of the body that uses ketones and not glucose. Carb-Nite involved 1 cheat meal (or night) in a week. While I was improving my diet I also started experimenting with adding basic supplementation in the form of whey protein and creatine. I got great results from this diet, and combined it with Jim Stoppani’s training program — “6 week Shortcut to Shred”.
Dan Kiefer, the same author of the Carb Nite solution, then published Carb-Back Loading. This was a more advanced protocol that involved restricting carbs to a small 1.5 hour window post-workout, which is when it will be used optimally by maximizing refueling of glycogen stores, instead of triggering a large insulin spike and thereby getting converted into fat.
Maybe you can tell but I’m a bit of a science nerd. I love getting into the technicalities and scientific mechanisms that underpin the human body. I found that understanding how and why things work often result in them having greater effect, usually in the form of me having better adherence towards a changed behavior.
In mid-2015 I shifted careers into management consulting. The 2 years I was there was very demanding on my time and as a result my diet and training were neglected. I managed to train 2 times a week on good weeks; diet was often a random takeaway choice that was hard to control.
I ultimately left that job to become an entrepreneur and one of the motivations was to get back enough of my time so that I can make a serious effort towards my nutrition and training again.
So in 2017 I returned to a regular training regime while defaulting to the simple Carb-Backloading for diet. During this time, I started reading the Tim Ferriss 4-Hour Body and 4-Hour Chef books, which were great introductions into biohacking and cooking. In his 4-Hour body book, I found out about the slow-carb diet, which has turned out to be quite popular due to its minimal rules and widespread positive results. By then, my diet had already been quite similar, so I didn’t see the need to attempt it. One thing he mentioned did stick out to me though — the benefits of trying a fully vegan based diet for 2 weeks.
Fast forward a couple of years to the end of 2019 and I have not been making much progress on my training or diet. I was often not consistent enough and ate too much take-away food. It was easy to over-indulge, especially when ordering food is easier than cooking it. I also didn’t put enough effort into planning my meals and making them a priority before getting to work. My weight more or less remained the same, and so had my size and strength. The lack of concrete goals coupled with a strong program meant I spun my wheels. I was a mix of too little good habits and too many bad habits. Luckily, a big event came up that forced me to change how I did things.
Prior to March 2020 and the first nationwide (and worldwide) lockdown, I already had the idea of doing an experiment of a multi-week vegan diet (thanks Tim Ferriss). By then I knew my personal consumption of meat and fast food was getting a bit out of control and that this upcoming lockdown presented the best opportunity to change my diet.
At the time I was also starting to notice the increase in media coverage, trending articles and influencer stories touting the benefits of a plant based diet. I had already been following NutritionFacts.org and Dr. Greger for over a year by then. I loved his deep scientific analysis that often went across multiple studies and looked frankly at the financial incentives behind the study that often bias the results significantly. In short, rich companies pay scientists to write papers saying their products are better and healthier while the competitors products are harmful. It’s no wonder people are so confused about their health, something so fundamental to the human experience you would think we would have solved it already. I had also watched some of the popular documentaries at the time such as Cowspiracy and a few others, that either promoted the vegan lifestyle or were anti-meat. You could say I was peak influenced.
So after absorbing all the information, theories and personal stories I could, while also starting to feel this inclination to change, I decided I needed to make sure I was being logical about the decision. This was going to have a major impact on my lifestyle and interactions with other people. They were going to have questions and I wanted to share some answers. This is what made me come up with the Lifestyle Decision Framework to help make a better informed decision around my diet and rationalize the way forward.
My Lifestyle Decision Framework
Note: This is how I make decisions, around diet but also behavior in general. Most likely you have different criteria, different weightings and different beliefs that inform your own. Over time these things will change and I hope that you, like me, will continue to update your models and decision making frameworks. What is most important is that you have chosen the criteria and weighed them based on what YOU believe and value in life.
Here are the lenses that I looked at when evaluating this lifestyle change. Weighting factor shown in brackets.
(80%) Criteria #1: Is it good for my Health?
A lot of the knowledge I’d gathered by now was telling me that the vegan diet was healthy, reverses Type 2 diabetes, reduces inflammation and cures a range of other ailments. In addition, longevity studies in Blue Zone groups show that their diet was largely based on whole foods vegetables and had minimal animal protein, at least that’s what I’d heard.
(10%) Criteria #2: Is it good for the Environment?
I’m sure you have heard the narrative that meat is bad for the environment due to the large amount of emissions the animals produce. Compared to plants they also take up a much larger land footprint and require more inputs. This must mean they are bad right? Not necessarily but it’s easy to see why that may be true. Other hazards from industrialized farming include dumping nitrogenous waste into the oceans and polluting local water supplies. So, I thought, if I can live while having a less detrimental effect on the environment, why not make the better choice?
(5%) Criteria #3: Does it promote life and living in harmony?
If I can live in a way that does not impact the lives of others in a negative way, or even enhances their lives, then that should be the better way to live. This view depends on how you look at life in general and the lives of other beings, both animals and plants. The common view is “If I can survive without taking an animal’s life, why do it?” This involves a level of species-ism, inherently valuing animal species more than plant species. Animals do seem to be more sentient and conscious, so it seems like a rational judgment to make. (Though as a being from the animal kingdom myself I do recognize this is also a biased judgment)
(5%) Criteria #4: Do I move closer along the Spiritual path?
Someone smart once said “We are spiritual beings having biological experiences”. Does eating meat prevent the spirit from ascending or growing? Is vegetable food higher in “light” than meat? Many of the esoteric teachings seem to indicate that vegetables and fruits are indeed higher “spiritual energy” foods. Most religions/ spiritual practices often involve fasting and an abstinence of meat. The vegan diet seems like a naturally spiritually sound diet.
My decision was obvious
As the answer to each of the four criteria above is “Yes”, the decision to go vegan is an obvious one. While the criteria are varied, they are not equal. Health effects make up about 80% of the overall decision for me, with the other categories making up the remaining 20%.
So, after having steeled myself to the above decision, and having lived for 30 years as an omnivore, in March 2020, I became a vegan.
My Vegan experience
Becoming vegan was much easier than I’d thought it be.
This was mainly because I’d already been tapering my meat consumption and building strong habits around cooking and eating more vegetables at home. I was already operating at 95% vegan for a month or so. This means just one meat meal a week, usually a nice burger takeaway from the locally decadent Rocamamas. It was hard to say goodbye to those burgers and, truth be told, if the government hadn’t stepped in with their lockdown plans, I might never have.
As a vegan, my diet consisted of mostly beans and lentils as well as cruciferous veg and squashes which I consumed with bread or rice. I also had a daily pea protein smoothie with bananas and berries. The protein smoothie was a habit I developed through my training and I switched to a vegan source a few months prior to the full switch.
The main benefit I experienced was an increase in energy levels and that feeling was sustained for many months. I also gained an appreciation for the tastes of vegetables and fruits again, which I was numbed too while consuming a diet with meat, dairy and fast-food. I used a variety of supplements to ensure my diet was balanced and recorded meals in the MyFitnessPal app when I first started to ensure I was hitting my daily macros.
At this stage, I was feeling quite happy with my success in converting to the vegan diet and the results I was experiencing. However, after almost a year I started to see signs of failure.
It was around the 9 month mark or so that I started feeling lower drive and enthusiasm about life. I didn’t enjoy gym as much as I used to, workouts were not at a good intensity and neither was I getting significant progress in muscle gain or fat loss. Meals were good but were often not as satiating, and I felt myself eating more during the day and generally more volume in total. I now also spent more time cooking and cleaning than ever before, all while trying to “make it” as an entrepreneur and get a business going off the ground. Instead of being liberated, I was starting to feel trapped by the diet. It was not good, and it felt like additional stress was building up in my life and in my body.
I stayed fully vegan for about 11–12 months before deciding I wanted to try introducing meat back into my diet and see if my health would improve or not.
I introduced meat again slowly, first once a week then multiple times per week, I felt my strength return as well as my emotional health to be better and more like my usual self.
Since then, I have stayed with an omnivorous diet while continuing my education into health, which eventually led to me researching the carnivore diet. I wanted to know what were the benefits of meat (that I was lacking) or the detriment that vegetables (of which I was having too many) was having on my system.
That research and learning has resulted in me deciding to try a Carnivore diet.
Why do I think the carnivore diet has any benefits?
As my education has continued into health and nutrition, I have come to some new conclusions and beliefs that make trying this diet out a low-risk high benefit experiment, and therefore something worth trying. While each of these ideas/ beliefs can be expanded into its own post, I will try to keep it brief.
1 — Humans evolved to be omnivores/ opportunivores
One major learning has been through this video from the Institute of Human Anatomy, which tries to infer what humans are meant to eat based on their physiology (i.e. how the human body is built) and comparing it to herbivores and carnivores. The conclusion? Humans are opportunivores, another word for omnivores. That is, we are meant to eat a variety of foods. We are designed to survive across a range of environments, and so we can adapt to a range of diets. This of course makes sense. Though the one thing agreed upon that we shouldn’t have in any kind of diet is highly processed foods.
2 — First principles thinking implies meat has been essential in our survival history
Humans are capable of living and surviving in all kinds of extreme conditions. During the last ice age, for example, which lasted from about 115,000 BC to 11,700 BC (about a 100,000 years), people had to eat meat to survive, and a lot of it. After all, where were the vegetables?
Looking at the history of mega-fauna, talked about in the book Sapiens, we find that a large part of human history involves homo sapiens operating in tribes, migrating across lands and continents, and periodically hunting down the different large mammals to extinction. These were different species of large, fatty animals that were capable of surviving harsh conditions and feeding large groups of humans.
You can also imagine that the nomadic hunter gatherer’s ability to store food for long periods is nothing like what we have today. As such, whatever had been killed needs to be eaten within a short space of time or it will end up spoiled. Likewise, food was not always readily available, and needed to be hunted. No UberEats I’m afraid.
Thus it can be deduced that pre-agricultural man often ate sporadically, had periods of fasting and feasting, ate high protein and fats during the feats, and probably subsisted on nuts/ berries/ light food during the periods of fasting.
3 — Meat and animal fat are the optimal (most energy and nutrient dense) “food”
Why do we need to eat? Well we need energy, which we get via food, which we can then use to do things in our lives. The best food will give us the highest amount of energy in return for the least work. Spend the least energy, get back the most energy back. This is how we’ve been programmed biologically. We are wired to always seek profits. But a calorie is not always a calorie. Quality matters and the form of these calories (whether protein, carbs or fat) determines how it gets processed into energy and other body building blocks.
Thinking along the lines of highest quality calories and nutrients and minerals, meat is definitely the one that comes out on top. It’s the most nutritious and energy packed food we can find in nature. It consists of protein and fat, macro-nutrients essential for the functioning of the body and contains a high amount of the vitamins and minerals we need. Of the 3 macro-nutrients (carbs, fats and protein), it’s the external carbs that are NOT critical to biological function. i.e. We can remove them from our diet and survive perfectly fine. We cannot do that with the other two.
Meat contains a large amount of vitamins and minerals, which are absorbed and concentrated by the animal. Why should you eat 20 different plants and veg to get the nutrients you need when you can let an animal do the hard work and you consume it to obtain those nutrient benefits, as well as a superior energy source.
There’s a theory that states humans only evolved larger brain capacities by consuming more energy dense foods which allowed us the time to work on developing civilization and technology rather than having our days taken up by finding, preparing and consuming food. By being able to hunt animals, humans could gain nutritious food sources that lasted them multiple days or weeks. It gave them more energy which allowed them to think better, and build better tools and create art. Meat helped us step out of the dark ages!
The energy density of protein is 4 cal/gram, while that of fat is 9 cal/g, more than double! Humans aren’t mechanical engines — we cannot consume any kerosene, diesel or any of these higher density petrochemical fuels. The highest energy density food we can consume is animal fat.
4 — The Vegan diet is unnatural, and inherently unbalanced
Is the vegan lifestyle natural? Thinking about pre-agricultural man again, how was he going to get pine nuts, sunflower seeds, roast pumpkin, tofu, etc. three times a day in order to live as a vegan? He obviously could not. The caloric value of vegan meals are often lacking, and need to be topped up through addition of oils, fats, nuts, etc. I believe a vegan lifestyle would be impossible to pull off (pre-agriculture), as its too easy to fail to provide the full scope of nutrition the body needs. Vegans know this, hence they have to take a large amount of vitamins and minerals to supplement their diet.
5 — Social reinforcement via numerous carnivore success stories
Along this journey, a key resource I found was Dr Shawn Baker and his YouTube channel. These days, YouTube is one of my education sources. I highly recommend his channel — he’s always sharing bit-sized chunks of information — busting myths, carnivore health facts and the results of latest studies while also providing some general commentary on the larger dietary trends in the media.
On his channel, he frequently shares stories of people who have transitioned to the carnivore diet (often after suffering with chronic issues for years) and who have now healed their chronic illnesses. These include illnesses like IBS, eczema, gout, toe fungus, chronic inflammation and many more.
What gave me confidence to trust Dr Baker is that he wrote the book “The Carnivore Diet” and is one of the biggest advocates and followers of this protocol. Looking at him you see good calm energy, strong muscular frame (he frequently posts some impressive workouts!) and comes across as a very knowledgeable person in the field of medicine and personal health. After listening to him talk over many videos, I have come to trust his sincerity and integrity when educating his audience.
6 — Vegan “buyers regret”
While Dr. Baker’s own advice and teachings have been really valuable, I found the comments section of his videos to be even more helpful. The amount of ex-vegan stories that are there is simply astounding.
There are examples of people who had been vegan for 20 years before they had decided to throw caution to the wind and try this new diet, often with very positive benefits as can be seen in the comments below. They did so because they had reached a frustration point with certain ailments they were facing. Issues such as IBS, fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc. They also noticed how these issues didn’t get better over time, and often got worse while on the vegan or even omnivore lifestyle. It was quite heartening to hear stories of how so many people have healed themselves and shifted their physical and mental health to a better place.
I heard there are more ex-vegans now than actual vegans. If that’s anything close to true, that’s a lot of buyer’s regret.
7 — You are what you eat
More than the information presented, a larger principle seemed to be at play that was indicating to me that this was the right direction. That’s the old moniker, “you are what you eat”!
This played out to me on two levels. Experts (Dr Gregor vs Dr Baker), and community (vegans vs carnivores).
One thing that used to bother me about Dr Gregor — he does not look like he’s at his peak physical health. As someone who is one of the most vocal spokesmen for this diet, I felt he should have been the picture of health. Bad posture, low muscle mass, baldness… I initially thought I might have been too critical. He was a scientist after all, not a bodybuilder. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt when I embarked upon the vegan diet.
Looking at Dr Baker, however, I can see that it was the right move to look at their personal results. In business, it’s called “dog-fooding” your own product. I’m pretty sure its from a pet food company that required employees to taste the dog food they were making.
Anyways, between the two, Dr Baker is a beast — frequently engaging in resistance training/ cardio while putting away a large amount of meat on a daily basis. His personality comes across as calmer and more well rounded. If I had to become one of them, I would choose Dr Baker!
On a community level, the difference is even more apparent. While exceptions occur on an individual basis, these are the differences I have observed between the two communities:
Vegans are:
- Sadder, more depressed, more anxious, with lower energy and enthusiasm for life
- More judgmental towards each other and themselves
- Focuses more on moralistic aspects, with health often being a #2 or #3 priority
- More community dependent in order to achieve a balanced diet (not necessarily bad, but does introduce risk and dependency)
Carnivores are:
- Calmer, more stable energy, less neurotic
- Happier, stronger and looking healthier
- Spend less time eating, preparing, cooking etc.
- More self sufficient
- More productive
Ultimately, the tribe of carnivores had become much more appealing to me. I would rather be happier in a supportive community than sadder in a more hostile community. I would also rather be happier in a shorter life than live a longer but miserable life, though luckily I don’t have to make such a trade off here!
8 — Elimination diet and anti-nutrients
Why does the carnivore diet work? The answer will surprise you.
It’s actually less about the benefits of meat and more about the current detrimental effects of other things in your diet. Depending on the amount of toxins you are ingesting, and the duration for which you have been taking them, the benefits of switching to this diet will scale accordingly.
Here’s the premise. Humans are exposed more than ever to toxins in the form of highly processed foods, and chemically altered produce. Additionally, we are ingesting plant anti-nutrients and are unaware of its effect on our general and personal health. By eliminating them completely from the diet, we can find out how the body functions at a natural level and then start to test any of these potential toxin containing foods.
So, the carnivore diet is an elimination diet. It works by eliminating a large number of sources of toxins in your diet. While not accounting for every kind of toxin (take polluted air for example), this diet can at least remove a very large source of these toxins in the average human diet. Some toxins are universally bad, while others affect a person on a more personal basis, depending on genetic and environmental factors.
As mentioned, the process of returning to health via the elimination diet, is to first eliminate all possible sources of toxins in your diet. Thereafter, by continuing the restrictive diet it will give the body time to heal and return to normal operation. Thereafter, one can slowly start testing the introduction of various other foods and observing the body’s reaction to them.
What about the “Lifestyle Decision Framework”?
Now looking at my decision framework again, this time with new information and beliefs, I get to a different answer.
(85%) Criteria #1: Health
At the end of the day, I believe there exists a perfect diet for every one of us. It’s a personal thing, much like your unique DNA blueprint as well as the various epigenetic factors in your environment and history that all add up to make you a very unique set of variables. While there exists general models for human health, as an individual you will need to constantly tune, adjust and update your diet as you, your knowledge and your life changes.
Since the last diet switch, the biggest learning for me has been the concept of plant anti-nutrients — chemicals produced by plants to stop predators from eating them and destroying their ability to propagate. I really want to understand the effect these are having on my body so that I understand the tradeoffs I am making when having them in my diet.
Additionally, the diet is not framed so much as a drastic change to a way of life, but rather an elimination diet. A specific protocol to get to a health outcome, and not something meant to be permanent. Though there are enough examples of people living with this diet for many years, and decades, all with various degrees of strictness.
People have experienced massive benefits due to eliminating plant toxins in their diet and are returning to optimal health.
From a health perspective, this diet seems very beneficial and does not impose the idea that I have to remove fruits and veg from my long term diet. In fact it makes provision for safely introducing them back in and testing the bodies response, in a very isolated and controlled way. It’s quite a scientific diet.
All these factors add up to give me the impression that the diet has very little risk while the potential benefits it holds could be massive.
(5%) Criteria #2: Environment
The environmental impact of mankind (and more specifically farming) is not as great as mainstream media would like us to believe. While pollution is still an issue, this is a nuanced one as there exists different kinds of farmers and ranches that produce meat, and there are those that are not polluters and in fact grow and farm in a sustainable way. These are usually the smaller, local farmers.
By sourcing locally, we can avoid a lot of the larger environmental pollution that is often the result of large-scale factory farming and unsustainable practices. However, to some people, it’s a luxury to even consider this as part of your food decision process, as meat can often come with a price premium, but not always. Health still comes first for me as can be seen by how much I weight the above criteria vs this one.
(5%) Criteria #3: Promoting and preserving life
This is an important concept and something I think is always worth considering. What changed my mind on this topic though was learning about the operational overheads that farms undergo when they grow vegetables.
There is a lot of ground preparation (more than when raising livestock), chemical spraying, and setting of traps to kill and ward off small birds, rodents or mammals. These numbers are not trivial, and can severely impact local ecosystems depending on the size of land prepared for farming.
A different perspective, and one I find interesting, is that a standard vegan’s food is not as cruelty free and absolved from taking life as one would think and is often advertised. My uncle, a farmer himself, told me how they had to routinely shoot and kill monkeys, deer and wild boars for the simple reason of keeping them away from destroying and eating the crops.
When consuming meat, the life of the animal itself is involved in your nutrition, but often no other. There are much less chemicals and destruction of the natural environment when raising animals. A single cow produces on average 490 pounds of meat (~220 kgs), enough to feed a human for over half the year (assuming 1kg a day). That means with 2 cows a human could live an entire year. Whereas in the same year, a vegan’s food might have had to incur many multiple small mammals and birds losing their lives. While hard to prove on an individual basis, one only needs to listen to farmers talk about their daily tasks eliminating these animals to know that the number of lives lost are not trivial.
That being said, it’s about understanding that we, as living beings, plants and animals, are all part of the larger circle of life. When we die we will nourish the worms and the ants. When we live we get our nourishment from plants and animals (who are both living beings). As animals, we cannot take energy directly from the sun and so we get it by consuming other life, that is plants or other animals.
Everything has a cost. It could be said that nobody could live a day on this earth without killing a living being, for there are so many insects and ants that are crushed as we go about our daily lives. Some religious sects always keep their mouths covered so that they don’t accidentally inhale an insect. It’s all perspective and what you decide as being important or not. And the degree to which you want to conform your life to your beliefs
(5%) Criteria #4: This Spiritual path
This criteria, while an important one, is not something I put a large weighting on at this current moment in my life. While in some cultures, meat must be eliminated from the diet to become more spiritual or holy, there are some religious customs and rituals that include meat for sacrifice and consumption. In the Hindu culture, there are multiple examples of various religious prayers that involves sacrificing an animal to the gods and then serving it as food to the people.
In another example, the Daoist Immortals from ancient Chinese used to practice Bigu (grain abstinence). The Daoists talk about how beneficial it is to eliminate grains from the diet, which apparently cause demons to reside in the body. Those that eat meat “shall be brave and courageous”, while those that eat grain “shall be wise but not live long”.
After updating my beliefs and improving my understanding of nutrition and the world, my Lifestyle Decision Framework spurs me to move towards the carnivore diet.
It’s time to become brave and courageous.
Let’s begin The Carnivore Experiment!
When I first had the idea to go carnivore, I thought I would make it a 2 week experiment. Like last time, I would slowly taper my diet until I am consuming only meat, eggs and some olive oil. I have already been eating a standard four egg breakfast for about 2 months now so I’ve been close to the final state.
After listening to Dr Berry in this video, I have decided that to properly experience the benefits of the carnivore diet, I should be at 100% adherence for 3 months, before starting to introduce any non-animal based foods.
While this does make it a much longer commitment, I am comfortable doing so as I have already adapted largely to the meat diet. I’ve been spending the last 2 months ramping up for this diet and it would feel like a waste of effort to only test it for 2 weeks, and worse I won’t even get the full benefits from it.
The fact that Dr Berry said 3 months is the right amount of time to gain the benefits from the carnivore diet proves that I should go for much longer to give the body enough time to reset from those plant toxins. A very interesting side note is related to the Bigu diet I mentioned, the one from ancient China. In it, they said one needs 90 days of grain abstention to fully rid oneself of the demons that affect one’s health.
So the plan is now 3 months (90 days) of strict carnivore before attempting to include any non-animal foods.
The main components of my diet will be
- Eggs
- Bacon
- Butter
- Olive oil
- Red meat (mainly beef)
- Tallow (beef fat)
I’ll even try limiting olive oil and move more towards cooking with lard. I will occasionally have other meats in my diet such as tuna, lamb or some chicken (though I will limit takeout food as I am skeptical about having any vegetable oils). Three months gives my body ample time to rid itself of various anti-nutrients (such as oxalates, histamines, etc.) as well as build up a healthy and functioning gut micro-biome for an animal based diet.
Key components on my “Avoid list” are:
- Sugar (and anything with it)
- Any drink that’s not tea, coffee or water.
- Vegetable oils and things cooked in vegetable oils.
- Grains, all kinds and all derivatives (things made with flour).
After 90 days, I will slowly add some vegetables and herbs back into my diet, and try to keep it to one new ingredient per week to give me enough time to be able to observe the impact it has on my body. The aim is to catch any specific anti-nutrient or overreaction in my body. It will also make it easier for me to research the various effects of the specific food and its anti-nutrients as it will be just one new thing a week which is doable.
If you are interested in hearing more about this journey, let me know and I will post more often!
The next 90 days: What do I expect to happen to my body?
It seems most of problems on this diet occur during its transition period. As such, I have opted to make this period as long as needed while minimizing gastric distress. i.e. minimize discomfort, maximize enjoyment.
Why is this necessary? Well as this is a new diet (lifestyle), it is something that I want to build a positive association with. As such I want to be constantly associating positive states and emotions with it, which is much easier if I don’t encounter any negative states.
There seems to be some mild distress (specifically diarrhea) associated with the transition, which depends on how much protein and fat you were already getting in your diet before you started scaling it up and reducing the carbs. This has also been attributed to oxalate dumping, a process that gets triggered days after you cut that component out of your diet.
Once adjusted to the diet, however, I expect to realize a range of benefits. The ones I’m targeting are:
- More clear mental processing (less brain fog, less fog in the morning, more energy to get going, and more mental energy in total to dedicate to my work)
- Ketosis level buzz of energy, with minimal hunger pangs
- Nice toned glowing skin (not dry) and toned muscles
- General loss of inflammation in the body that will be noticed as it leaves e.g. less puffiness
- Improved physical recovery from training
- Lower body fat %
- Less love handles and visceral body fat
- More consistent energy throughout the day
- Strong improvement in blood biomarkers, majority in optimal range
- Less time eating, cooking, washing up, shopping, etc. (lifestyle benefits, not biological)
What will failure look like?
There are two types of failure.
One is failing to adhere to the protocol itself, thereby eliminating or reducing the benefits of it, and furthermore confounding the data and any conclusions that can be derived from it. This is avoidable through good lifestyle design.
The second failure is a failure of the hypothesis itself, i.e. proving that the carnivore diet is not helpful in moving me towards better health. This would be shown through a subjective analysis of my health, i.e. an overall feeling like it is getting worse. This could manifest as a feeling of lower levels of energy, decrease in appetite or other drives, weakness in strength, etc. It can also be objectively worse by noting a decline in specific health biomarkers such as an increase in total visceral fat.
One way to keep track would be to subjectively evaluate myself regularly against my “expected benefits” list above.
How will I prevent failure and maximize chances of success through adherence?
Mindset
The power of the mind is unmistakable. In fact, some believe it’s the primary power of this universe (a topic for another time!).
Our beliefs impact everything in our lives, including how things actually affect us. Beliefs are so powerful, that people who believed they were having a fattening milkshake got fat, while another group who had a slimming one did not put on weight. The punchline? It was the same milkshake!! Check out the study further here if you don’t believe me.
“I don’t think we’ve given enough credit to the role of our beliefs in determining our physiology, our reality.” —Alia Crum, the study’s author
So if you tell yourself this food is bad for you, and then you eat it, it is much more likely to have a negative effect on your body.
The opposite of the placebo effect is called the nocebo effect, something that is leveraged by mainstream media through their incessant fear mongering.
By understanding the mechanisms behind this diet, that it is complete, safe, nutritious and sustainable, I have prepared my mind (and subconscious) to maximize the benefits from this transition and eliminated and self-sabotaging beliefs.
Habit engineering
They say you are what you do. And 95% of what we do is habitual. This means if I want to succeed I need to make the good behaviors in my life as automatic as possible and to shift any negative behaviors into that conscious 5%, which should ultimately make it much harder for me to slip into.
A simple habit I have employed is to have the same breakfast everyday, at around the same time. This takes away any decision making I need to do and frees me up to focus on maximizing work during the day. At night, I will limit myself to steak initially and over time plan to introduce more options that I can oscillate between. I will eat from my own chosen menu of which all are carnivore approved options.
I will mentally note my meals for the day and if I need to stop at the shop that day. Then I can do any shopping while I’m out to go to the gym, so there isn’t an extra trip made and I’m never caught off-guard.
Environmental engineering
Now that I’ve become more clear on the habits I want, I engineer my environment to trigger those habits and to not trigger the ones I don’t want (negative ones).
E.g. I remove all sources of carbs, sugary treats, etc. from home (or at least the usual eating spots). If I can’t get rid of them, I’ll hide them away in long storage so I don’t even see them accidentally. I give away foods that don’t fit my diet and I know I won’t touch them in the next 3 months.
Social engineering
What has shown to help with adherence to new behaviors is some sort of social feedback and accountability. You are more inclined to continue to follow through with something if you tell people this is who you are now. This is about an identity shift rather than a desire to achieve a goal.
Paradoxically if you tell people you want to achieve a goal before you actually do, it lowers your chances of achieving it. Hence it needs to be around an identity shift and after it has been made.
Once you have stated an identity change (i.e. I am now a carnivore), your social environment will reinforce signals to help you maintain that identity. This could be your mum not buying junk food for you or your friends ensuring there’s a meat option for you when they invite you over. Some will even show great interest in your experiment and want to see you gain positive results, in the hope that they could also use this information in their own lives or lives of their loved ones. Those that care for you want you to succeed.
Feedback loops
One of the best ways to increase learning and change is to introduce feedback loops into a system. They say if you are learning without a feedback loop vs with one, the difference in speed of learning is about 20 times greater! This means it is critical to periodically review my performance with honesty, and then making a concerted effort to implement intervention measures to get myself back on track.
i.e. I like the metaphor that abstaining from alcohol is thought of as riding a wagon. When you have a lapse in judgment and succumb to a drink — you fall off the wagon. However, at any moment the wagon is always there, waiting for you to hop back on and continue your ride.
In this case, the wagon to me means being a carnivore. I will look at any times I have fallen off, understand why, contextualize if its appropriate, and then design some intervention measures to ensure better adherence in the following weeks
Conclusion — are you ready to join me?
I wrote this essay in order to give you a holistic and (hopefully) brief overview of the carnivore diet, why and how I am approaching it as well as what changes I expect to see.
Since mid-September I’ve been 100% carnivore, but as mentioned earlier, I’ve been ramping up for a few months. I plan to share a progress update every month or so talking about my experience, learnings, wins and challenges.
I hope to see noticeable changes in the next few months from the new diet .
I hope you’ve found it useful following my frameworks for thinking, understanding and implementing various aspects of diet and behavior change with the ultimate goal of self improvement.
If you like this kind of alpha, I share resources about health, wealth and human psychology (as well as a long post like this every so often) weekly in my newsletter, 🌊The Slipstream. I’ll also be more active on Twitter, you can find me here.
So, if you want to stay up to date with my carnivore experiment and get links to the most impactful resources that have improved my life, and will improve yours, please Subscribe, its totally free! 🙂
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Now, go further …
If I’ve tickled your curiosity to look further into the carnivore diet (as I hope you do) I would suggest starting listening to the following teachers (who are also qualified doctors) and to appropriate the following principles and mental frameworks that helped me think and change my beliefs and mind, as I’ve referenced in this essay.
Teachers and thought leaders:
- Dr Shawn Baker MD (Author ,”Carnivore Diet”, orthopedic surgeon, international speaker, best-selling author, and world champion athlete)
- Dr Ken Berry MD (Family physician, treated over 25,000 patients in his 20 year career. Videos about the low-carb/ketogenic/carnivore diets, intermittent fasting, thyroid health, hormone optimization, and much more)
Principles/ Frameworks:
- You are what you eat: Health is a visible and measurable outcome. Clean inputs, clean outputs
- First principles thinking: Strive to understand things from their fundamentals, then discerning how to act will be obvious
- Put it to the test: Theory can only take you so far. Health, in particular, must be enacted. The best way to know its effect on you is to try it out
- Diet is individual and dynamic: You require a very unique and specific combination of compounds to function optimally
- The more correction a diet needs, the less natural it is: Supplements are needed when diet is insufficient
