So many of you have asked for more info on this, but let me start off by saying…I am not a pro at this, nor am I a doctor. I’m just sharing our journey and what I’ve learned in the short time that I’ve been doing this. My sister is the one that told me about the Carnivore diet, which I am very grateful for!
*affiliate links in this post
I’ll add some of the things here that have helped me on this diet, that I will also discuss throughout the post. (just tap on the highlighted, bold print, and it will take you there)
Electrolyte Packs (no sugar and no artificial sweeteners)
I still take my enzymes, before I eat, but I’m hoping that I can get off them eventually.
We use this parchment paper (that my sis told me about) without all the toxins in it.
This is the salt I use and that’s recommended a lot
My sister has been doing this diet for over four months and when she told me all of the things that have improved for her and how she’s feeling so much better, I wanted to try it too.
I wasn’t planning on writing a blog post about this, so I don’t have great pictures. But I did snap some screenshots of things that I’ve shared in videos on Instagram. This l is a screen shot and on the left is me right before I started and the picture on the right is almost at three weeks after staring.
I started this about 3 1/2 weeks ago and my inflammation went down so fast. Can you even believe how much my inflammation went down in less than 3 weeks? I could actually tell a difference in just a few days. I’ve been gluten-free for over 10 years and have gone through spouts of not eating dairy as well, and nothing has helped me like eating a carnivore diet has!
The first thing I noticed from this diet is that I could wear my earrings without my ears getting red, itchy, and puffy. I’ve had red, itchy, puffy ears for years when I would wear earrings, like every time, not just every now and then. And, it was totally gone in two days of staring this diet!
Basically, the short story is…I eat lots and lots of meat, fatty red meat mostly, but I also eat pork and other meats too, as well as eggs, butter, and very sparingly some dairy, like plain yogurt (I love the sheep’s yogurt that my sis told me about, and it’s lower in carbs than other yogurts), kefir, and even more rarely, some raw cheese. I love this mayo (we get ours at our local Fry’s) and it’s so good on some grass fed burgers topped with grillos pickles from Costco, or with hard boiled eggs. We had crab legs with butter one night and it was so yum! It’s been nice to just mix it up and find new things we can have as we go…but, we try to focus mostly on meat, meat, and more meat, especially fatty red meat. And, we just eat until we are “comfortably stuffed” as Dr. Ken Berry says to do. It’s amazing how when doing this, it keeps us from being hungry so often throughout the day.
I also cut out all seed oils, and didn’t realize how bad they were for us until I watched some of the videos that I did! Whenever I go out to eat, I always ask what they cook their meat in to make sure they’re not cooking it in seed oil, and if they do, then I just ask it to be cooked in butter instead. My sister gave me that suggestion, and I’m so glad she did, because I wouldn’t have thought that meats would have been grilled in seed oils until she told me.
I also make sure to check the ingredients on things such as yogurt, etc., to make sure I’m getting the purest form, without additives or sugar. The food industry loves to put sugar in things, so I just make sure whatever I’m buying has no sugar, or artificial sweeteners. There are some people that do strictly meat, with no dairy, for carnivore. I think if dairy causes issues, then it probably needs to be something that is taken out, but I seem to do fine with eating it sparingly, and in small amounts. Our focus is definitely on meats, not dairy. We’ve had so many great things, beef brisket, beef tri tip, ribeye, beef ribs, pork ribs, bacon, flank steak…and I could go on and on. We love the variety!
For exercise, I basically just go walking, nothing huge…just trying to stay active.
I used to get up in the morning and eat grains for breakfast, and now I eat meat and I actually look forward to what meat I’m going to eat for breakfast now, rather than what am I going to put on my oatmeal. I admit, at first I had to change my mindset and just stick with it, even though I thought to myself, “I can only eat meat?” My mindset changed pretty fast the better I felt and now I don’t even crave fruit anymore, even only after three weeks.
When I first started, I didn’t know how I was going to get by without eating fruit. I actually ate a half a cup of organic black berries or strawberries in my yogurt occasionally for the first week and a half. And, I’m not saying that I will never eat berries again, but if I do, it will be sparingly and in very small amounts. I try to stick with organic blackberries and strawberries, if I do eat them, because they are lower in carbs.
Some of the doctors will talk about how it’s good to wean off of carbs, because you can get “keto flu” from your body detoxing carbs. Also, when starting out, we made sure that we were replacing the electrolytes that we were losing. I take these mineral drops every day, and Trav loves these electrolyte packs! I basically did go “cold turkey” into it, as did Trav, minus a little bit of berries that I had here and there. I do feel like I had a little bit of the “keto flu” going on, because I felt awful after the first week, with detox stuff going on. I’ve heard Ken Berry, MD say a lot of people will give up because of the Keto flu but I pushed through and I’m so glad that I did! My sister had “keto flu” as well. You can have all sorts of symptoms, just like you have when your body is detoxing anything. I was already feeling so much better in so many ways that I knew I wanted to continue on.
Another huge thing that I’ve experienced is…I used to get bloated every night and had horrible gas! I mean, just ask Trav and Brylie, the gas was horrifying. I am not even joking you, my gas and bloating, went away, day one…and, Trav is pretty excited about that too, ha.
Another huge thing that I’ve already noticed is my leg arthritis is gone! When I would sit on the floor to play with my granddaughter or anything else that I would be sitting on the floor for, I would get up and I could barely walk at first because my legs hurt so bad. I would have to wiggle my way out of the pain for the first seconds of getting up. I don’t have that anymore! I sometimes actually get up thinking in my mind that I’m going to have it, so I brace myself, and then realize that it’s gone! It’s amazing! Praise God!
Also, before carnivore, I used to want to eat like every two hours throughout the day, I was so snacky and would eat six or seven times throughout my day with all of my snacking and I was hungry all the time! Now? I usually eat 2x most days, 3 at the very most, and am not hungry at all in between. It’s like a dream come true, seriously!
We made “carnivore” pizza the other night and it was amazing! It’s not something that I would eat every day because of the cheese, but it’s such a great replacement for regular pizza! I couldn’t even believe how good it was! Trav loved it too, and that’s really saying something because he is very picky about food.
I used my brother-in-law‘s recipe from Instagram, I’ll add the link, here. He has the recipe in the write up of that reel.
The photo below is after eating the pizza. Before I did this diet, and when I would eat normal pizza, I would be so bloated that night. I’m not even flexing my stomach muscles here and you can kind of see my abs. I’m just in awe about it all! I’ve lost 8 pounds in three weeks and Trav has lost 12. We weren’t doing it just to lose weight, it just happened… I’m glad to have all of that inflammation gone and it’s nice to not feel puffy all the time.
As for Trav, he’s been doing it too because he had high blood pressure for over a year that his doctor was going to put him on meds for….He decided to try this because he heard it could help with high blood pressure and he didn’t want to take med. His blood pressure normalized/was down 50 points in the first couple days and has stayed normal since! WOW! Praise God for that too! Salt is recommended on this diet and Trav couldn’t believe that he could have so much salt with high blood pressure. It’s actually the other things that are causing his high blood pressure. If you listen to the videos going around about it, you’ll understand.
I’m definitely not telling you that you should do this. I’m just sharing our journey so far with it. If this is something that you think you’re wanting to try, I highly recommend listening to a lot of the videos going around from the doctors that are doing carnivore, and there are so many other good life coaches out there talking about it too that have been doing it for a long time. I search up videos on YouTube and podcasts. Some of the great ones to start with are Dr, Ken Berry, I’ll add a few of his videos here, here, and here. Dr Shawn Baker is also great! I’ll add a great resource of his, here. Dr. Anthony Chaffee is another great one, I’ll add one of his videos, here! Just search these docs on YouTube or Podcasts and more videos will pop up.
Going back to my old diet is not something I want to do after experiencing how good I feel! I’ve never been able to find anything in my whole life that has taken away my inflammation like this diet! And, as it may feel restrictive, I’m with Ken Berry when he says, all the things that he was dealing with before doing this diet were more restrictive. I’ve even noticed my hair is barely falling out anymore! I’m excited to continue to see where it takes me on my health journey! I would love to hear in the comments below if you’ve done this and how it’s helped you too.
I know this is as a lot of info about our journey in a short post, but again, I would definitely start watching videos about it with those docs I mentioned and they will give you so much information about it all. I’ve listened to so many things where people have been healed from all kinds of things, even autoimmune diseases, from eating a carnivore diet. I just wanted to share our experience since we are seeing so many health benefits from it and I thought maybe it could help you too!
Teri Smith says
Hey we started working with a functional nutritionist about a year ago. She started us with paleo and some natural water soluble supplements. We felt amazing after the first 2 weeks! Then we my husband wanted to switch to carnivore I wasn’t on board but was cooking the meals for him and the first few days I would add vegetables to my plate but then I started just eating meat
and my inflammation disappeared too! My husband has afib for years and our nutritionist has cured him of that and my high blood pressure. We did a DNA test and found out we both have the MTHFR gene, which 50% to 65% of the population have a variant of, keeps you from absorbing B9(folate)a deficiency in folate can cause isdues such as heart conditions infertility cancers and depression! It’s all been so interesting!
If your interested in a DNA test and more info on join this group on Facebook
@bedrockyourbodytoaheathieryou
We have cut out all seed oils, artificial sweeteners sugar and grains!
We started paleo and both have lost over 40 pounds but carnivore has by far been the easiest to follow!
Connie says
This is so intriguing! Thanks for sharing. I’m definitely going to do some research.
I have so many questions. Does this diet significantly raise cholesterol and eventually cause heart issues? Does it set you up for colon cancer with all the red meat?