The Carnivore Diet: Is The Zero Carb Diet Really Safe?
The carnivore diet is pretty simple: eat only animals. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satiated. No calorie counting, measuring foods, macros, or food timing. Why in the world would anyone want to do this??
There are many claims of weight loss, blood sugar control, and improved mood especially with depression.
It may appear very restrictive and long term probably not healthy. There isn’t substantial research on the long term benefits but our ancestors have been carnivores for years, did not count calories, macros and they ate until satiated.
So it’s old food and it’s hard to go wrong with old food our ancestors have been eating for thousands of years compared to the new foods like crackers, pop tarts, and cereals.
How To Start a Carnivore Diet?
In the video above I explained why I decided to give this a try because it’s a natural progression from Paleo>>>>>Keto>>>>>Carnivore.
Many carnivore enthusiasts choose to eat only beef, salt and water. Check out Dr. Jordon Peterson’s experience.
A carnivore diet consists of eating only beef, turkey, chicken, pork, salmon, sardines, white fish and organ meats. Some will consume small amounts of heavy cream and hard cheese, butter, with moderate amounts of lard and bone marrow, while eliminating all other foods. There are no guidelines on calorie counting, macro calculations, serving size, or even meal timing.
The carnivore diet allows bone broth but discourages coffee, tea or other drinks from plants.
What are the benefits of a Carnivore Diet?
Some of the reported benefits of the carnivore diet are:
Blood sugar control
Fat loss
Added muscle
Mood improvement
Improved gut health
Decrease inflammation
What is the downside of Carnivore diet?
Eating only animal products can be restrictive for some people.
A high animal fat diet can be high in cholesterol and saturated fat but the current research has shown that it may not be linked to heart disease as we have been previously been led to believe.
Eating a lot of processed meats, like cold cuts, bacon and breakfast meats can be loaded with large amounts of sodium and some studies have linked them to colon and rectal cancer.
There may be a lack of micronutrients and benefits of plant-based compounds like fruits and vegetables.
Some people may need to limit protein intake due to kidney dysfunction and should probably not follow the diet.
There are no long-term studies on the benefits of a meat only diet.
Final Thoughts
This is not a template for children, lactating or pregnant women.
This diet may be beneficial as an elimination diet for a few weeks and slowly adding in foods one by one to see if it’s food your body likes. The length of time a person chooses should be discussed with a qualified health care provider.
Every body is different and my personal experience was not what I expected since I had originally planned to give it a try for 1 week. I was carnivore for 2 months before adding in a couple of bites of legumes and nuts and the following day I felt achy joints, constipation and bloating.
My personal experience was amazing! My psoriasis cleared up by 90% in a short amount of time. I had been struggling with it for years and have tried juice fasts, plant based only diet, topical creams, keto (which helped it from spreading to other parts of my body), super foods, herbs, vitamins, and did a gut protocol several times with not a lot of success. These same protocols I have used with patients and they would get amazing results but it wasn’t working for me.
I used the carnivore diet as an elimination diet and it worked great for me. In addition to my psoriasis improving, my bouts of depression and anxiety absolutely ZERO during this time, bowel movements were great and over all felt happier.
So now the process of adding other plant based foods to see how my body reacts and check my blood markers to see what happened to my body begins. After all your body is like a chemistry lab and it’s always changing, so you eat according to what your body loves not necessarily what you love to eat. I love donuts but my does not like donuts. After eating food my body doesn’t like I feel achy, brain fog, bloated and it usually lasts a couple of days. Stay tuned for my test results on the carnivore experience…………………
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