Some folks for whom carnivore is a bridge too far may be interested in the ketogenic diet, which has many of the same virtues without being quite as hard-assed. I do it periodically and find it quite tolerable.
Not really - Carnivore is just a type of Keto diet. It makes your body remain in ketosis state, but there is much more types of Keto - Carnivore is just one of them.
I am not a fan of carnivore, as it is too restrictive for daily living, and definitely not for everyone. But I am on balanced low-carb/keto for like 4 years and it is doing wonders for my well-being :)
Yes, carnivore is an extreme ketogenic diet. The term 'keto' generally refers to a low carb diet which can include plants. I did carnivore for 3 months to lode weight. I now do "animal based", which is meat, fruit, dairy and honey (not a keto diet).
Yeah, I also did counting of calories and it was amazing how precisely that works. Like I knew how much I'm going to weight in a month. Doing more meat&protein makes it easier to eat less calories per day.
Yea, I still have to go on a diet once a year because I eat too much, but I can pretty much know exactly how long it's going to take because my weight-loss is very consistent when I count calories.
Use a TDEE calculator. It will give you an approximate calorie per day estimate. Reduce your calorie intake based on that number, and how much weight you want to lose per week. If you're losing weight too fast, add some calories. Too slow, subtract some calories.
I used some tool online to calculate it based on my weight, height, activity, etc, but yeah it was essentially that if I'm eating 2400 kcal per day I'll have constant weight, if I'm eating 2000 kcal and less I'm losing weight. Then it's 1kg weight loss = 8000 kcal deficit.
I used MyFitnessPal to track it and you can modify the target calorie number in MFP based on what you are trying to achieve.
Overall I think when you are fat, then start strength exercise to get muscles under the fat (for like 6 months) and after that you can do some weight loss.
If you first start losing weight and get skinny, then the next step you feel like you actually want some muscles, so you will need to eat a lot again anyway.
I saw a massive improvement to my physical and mental health by beginning strength training 5 years ago. Carbs are pretty important for peak performance, but i know people who have done well on the carnivore diet.
I was in a pretty dark place prior to that, I attribute a lot of my current mental state to prioritizing my physical health.
I have a friend who is in love with the positive physical changes he has experienced over the last 6 months of carnivore diet.
His one gripe, and it’s a fair gripe, is that his family’s food bill is through the roof. His personal contribution to meal costs have tripled (they were already buying food from local farms and he estimates it would have 5x’d if they were used to the grocery store prices), and if course everyone else wants a little of what “dad/hubby” is having, which means they are cooking carnivore for two instead of one, so everyone else gets a share. They’ve gone from about $400 per week on food in their house to $700.
Edit: I should say for clarity that he is also eating dairy and S&P. Not just steaks or whatever.
I have zero experience with carnivore diet, but to me it seems just crazy and contrary to any historical or biological strand.
Let's see what eat people that live longer and better: Mediterranean diet, or the equivalent Asiatic one.
From these facts the key seems a balanced diet, plenty of grains, legumes and vegetables, some fish or white meat, and in general meals with moderate portion sizes.
I have the impression that those who are better off on the carnivorous diet used to abuse carbohydrates, sugar and processed foods.
Finally, a carnivorous diet when thought of globally is simply unsustainable from a production and ecological perspective.
What do you think people ate predominantly before we started farming grains? Certainly there were fruits, roots, etc. but the only sustainable food source were animals for a very long time.
I agree that the world can't go on a carnivore diet, but I'm just one person and if I can reap the benefits then I will.
Let's see when is this "before".
Humans began to cultivate and consume vegetables, grains, and legumes in significant quantities during the Neolithic Revolution, which occurred around 10,000 years ago. This period marks the transition from a nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers to a sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture.
10,000 years is a sufficient period for significant genetic changes to occur in human populations, especially in response to environmental pressures and changes in lifestyle, such as diet.
10,000 years is almost nothing compared to recorded human evolution, starting with the famous "Lucy", I believe she was a Homo Erectus.
Yes, there have been some genetic changes because of agriculture. Notably a more widespread ability to digest lactose, in some populations.
But we are still exquisitely well designed for eating meat. Here's a quote from the book The Carnivore Code. It's about how archeological records show that when agriculture was introduced - yes, the population did rise dramatically. But health got worse.
In western Illinois, perched atop a bluff near the confluence of the Spoon River and Illinois River, lie thirteen earthen mounds that hold treasure. It is not the type of golden treasure our good friend Indy would have been after, but historical treasure. These are burial mounds that provide evidence of the lifestyle of the hunter-gatherers who lived in this area from around 950 AD to 1200 AD—a time period in which a very interesting thing happened. For reasons unknown, the population appears to have undergone a massive shift in the way that they were eating. They went from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a lifestyle based primarily on maize (ancient corn) agriculture. Multiple theories exist as to why this may have happened. It may have been out of necessity due to increasing population numbers or perhaps the development of a new technology that allowed tilling of the soil. Other possible reasons include overhunting and the decline of large animal populations. There are still others who point to the hypothetical Younger Dryas meteor impact that caused climate changes and mass faunal extinctions.
For whatever reason, these groups shifted their practices, and the population increased ten times in the span of the 250 years after they adopted agriculture. But there was a dark side to this growth. Comparison of bones from these pre- and post-agriculture groups reveal striking differences indicative of a marked decline in health with the introduction of agriculture.9,10 Dickson Mounds researchers noted a clear decrease in both femur length and tibia diameter in children from the post agricultural period. Adult skeletons from this area displayed the same pattern as well as a significant reduction in stature after farming was introduced.
Similar discrepancies in height have been found in other ancient civilizations. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey reveal that 12,000 years ago, the average height of hunter-gatherers was five feet, nine inches for men and five feet, five inches for women. But with the adoption of agriculture, adult height plummeted—dashing any hopes these poor pastoralists would have had of dunking a basketball or playing competitive volleyball, if those sports had existed at the time. By 3,000 BC, men in this region of the world stood only five feet, three inches tall, and women a diminutive five feet, reflecting a massive decline in their overall nutritional status. Many studies across varied populations show a strong correlation between adult height and nutritional quality. One study looking at male height across 105 countries came to the following conclusion:
“In taller nations…the consumption of plant proteins markedly decreases at the expense of animal proteins, especially those from dairy. Their highest consumption rates can be found in Northern and Central Europe, with the global peak of male height in the Netherlands (184 cm).”11
In this large study of nutritional quality, it is intriguing to note that the intake of animal foods directly correlated with greater height in males. The authors point out that even under conditions of caloric equivalency in plant-heavy versus animal-heavy cultures, height levels were higher in the latter societies. Other studies have come to similar conclusions regarding the key role that nutritional quality plays in determining adult height:
“Evidence across studies indicates that short adult height (reflecting growth retardation) in low- and middle-income countries is driven by environmental conditions, especially net nutrition during early years… This review suggests that adult height is a useful marker of variation in cumulative net nutrition, biological deprivation, and standard of living between and within populations and should be routinely measured.”12
In addition to declining height, there is also evidence that the Native Americans buried at the Dickson Mounds suffered increased bacterial infections. Such infections leave marks on the outer surface of the bone, known as the periosteum, with the tibia being especially susceptible to such damage due to its limited blood flow. Examination of tibias from skeletons found in the mounds shows that post agriculture, the number of such periosteal lesions increased threefold, with a whopping eighty-four percent of bones from this period demonstrating this pathology. The lesions also tended to be more severe and to show up earlier in life in the bones from the post agriculture peoples.
Another type of bone lesion, known as porotic hyperostosis, occurs in the skull and thinner bones of the body and is suggestive of nutrient deficiencies such as zinc and iron. These striking lesions cause the thin bones to have a “spongiform” appearance as the marrow expands and the other layers erode. At the Dickson Mounds, eye sockets and skulls demonstrated porotic hyperostosis, again with markings that display an increase in occurrence and severity after hunting practices were deemphasized in favor of farming. The incidence of joint and spine arthritic degeneration also appears to have doubled between these two periods. Defects in tooth enamel, suggestive of inadequate intake of the fat soluble vitamins unique to animal foods, increased across this time span as well. Clearly, eating less animals and more farmed plants was a disaster for the health of these peoples. Despite an increase in the population, their overall health took a serious nose dive.
The thought of a life without pasta sounds horrible. Everything in moderation. There's no magic- the best diet is simply less. Most people will just yo-yo diet.
How much carbs are you eating? Love me some carbs especially after a workout.
How much of this is a placebo effect of changing your diet around? Again moderation is key. I try to minimize carbs in general but happy to treat myself from time to time. And not afraid to eat carbs when it's convenient, especially in social situations. I refuse to be afraid of a birthday cake.
My guess is number high level athletes who are keto / carnivore is relatively small.. they don't have energy issues.
This stuff works for most people for a short while and they will proselytize their diet to everyone but is hard to maintain long term. 80+% of the time a couple of years later they have stopped talking about their diet and regained most of the weight as with any fad diet.
Carbs make my blood sugar spike a lot and then crash, so about an hour after having a decent amount, say two sandwiches, I can really feel the brain fog.
I also eat it on occasion but the negative effects are quickly apparent and eating like that for a few days like over the holidays I can feel the effect.
Pretty sure if you eat fat with meat you shouldn't have energy issues, domestication of grains is a very recent event in our history, or rather we were domesticated by wheat very recently...
Which sandwiches?
The bread is fresh and made with organic and ancient grain flour not genetically modified?
What filling does it have? Seasonal vegetables? Not industrial processed cheese?
Why two sandwiches and not just one? :)
Suggestion: when you eat carbo/sugar also eat 8/10 almonds to lower the glycemic peak.
I love it! I've been doing it for about year, as a matter of fact just this minute I finished a reply where I talked about my carnivore diet (#840131).
I'll give my own replies to some of the comments that have come up:
Boredom- not a problem. I really thought it would be, but my mind just doesn't even really go there. I absolutely LOVE my breakfast of a beef patty and 2 eggs for breakfast (and lots of beef fat or butter). I look forward to it, every single morning. For other meals, there's a bit more variety. As a matter of fact, I just had some turkey. But nothing satisfies as deeply as beef.
Cost- is it expensive? If you buy the grass-fed grass-finished beef, from local farms - then yes, it'll be expensive. If you buy cheap ground beef and eggs, and look for sales, then I really think it will easily be LESS expensive than eating a standard American diet. You drop a lot of things - alcohol, all the processed foods, all the fruits and veggies that go bad so quickly. Your shopping list becomes really short. You can compare prices easily.
Health - I'm never going back to the standard diet mainly because my health and energy has improved so much on carnivore. I would do it even just for the improvements in mood. Previously I didn't have any serious mental issues, or depression or anything. But it's amazing how much better you can get, compared to being in an "okay" mood most of the time. Now I regularly feel exuberant.
Weight - I wasn't doing this to lose weight. I've gained about 3 pounds, probably because I started lifting weights.
Moderation - I don't believe in it anymore. Moderation is just the lie they tell you, in order to get you to eat "just a little bit" of some of their crappy addictive food-like products. This used to be an ad campaign, for potato chips:
And it's true! The average human really can't "eat just one".
Some good resources to look up are Dr Anthony Chaffee, Dr Shawn Baker, and Dr Ken Berry. Great podcasts and videos.
The way I started out was
Knowing that Saifedean Ammous (author of The Bitcoin Standard, I respect him tremendously) was carnivore made it an option for me. When you first hear about it, carnivore sounds absolutely insane. But after knowing that Saifedean Ammous was doing it - it didn't seem so shocking.
On Saifedean Ammous' podcast, he interviewed Nina Teicholtz, who wrote the amazing book, The Big Fat Surprise. I read it, and then started going further down the carnivore rabbit hole.
Here's a bunch of other posts that I've written, that are carnivore related:
I did carnivore for ~ 1 year. I was strict on it but allowed dairy/spices/sauces/alcohol. I loved it. I felt great. I've never had an easier time managing my weight (which has yoyo'd for my entire life). I had tons of exercise capacity (I suspect stable blood sugar and creatine from all the meat were most of that). It helped me suspect dairy is relatively insulinegenic for me (which is probably why I'm prone to overeating it like other people eat carbs).
While I think there are benefits to going strict carnivore, most people can probably get 80% of the benefit by reprioritizing protein and replacing carbs with more fat. afaict most people are protein malnourished given modern food guidelines and most fast/convenient/packaged foods are mostly flavored carbs.
warning: major bro/podcast science:
As people age, they tend to eat less protein which only exacerbates the decline of endogenous anabolic steroids and our cells sensitivity to them, and eating more protein can help with the decline by encouraging more muscle protein synthesis.
I did really well on about 200g of protein a day, and pretty low fat. Like maybe 80g. The rest were carbs, but yea, people don't prioritize protein nearly enough.
What was the major factor that lead to you deciding to stop?
We went to Brazil, fell off the carnivore wagon with my wife, then when we got back she didn't want to go back on fully and that made it more inconvenient for me to be so strict. If I had more time/effort to spare, I'd go back on.
You get used to the monotony of the diet and learn to enjoy it. Things like smoked oysters, salmon, lamb, pork, chicken are variety enough imo.
My sleep got much better on carnivore, no more insomnia. I actually wrote up a post about it (#495464).
I do have the buildup on my teeth, specifically the back of my bottom front teeth. It's specifically caused by oxalate dumping, which is a whole 'nother topic, with carnivore. Other people report that after a while on carnivore, it goes away. On the plus side, your body is getting rid of a toxic plant product (oxalates) that's harming you.
What do you mean by a carnivorous diet? I am from South America and a balanced diet consists of meat, chicken, vegetables and fruits or are you talking about another way of eating?