Why Do I Feel Terrible on the Carnivore Diet
Dear GSG: thank you for your article about Carnivore Diet. I’ve been on it for two months and I don’t feel well.
I got a text from a computer programmer I know last weekend, saying this.
People tend to drop out of the keto and carnivore diets fairly quickly, feeling unwell, especially digestive backup.
(And vegetable and legume growers aren’t exactly a powerful industry in our world, to fight back.)
Two medical doctors took up the flag, and one was a body builder. (People tend to think body builders are in the peak of health, when in fact they just have extraordinarily large muscles.)
Others stay on these diets for some months. A few, even a year or two–and say they feel great.
Some even do labs before, and then a couple months after, and can find a couple of biomarkers improved.
May I submit to you that this may be due to both of the most recent diet fads (Keto, Carnivore) banning processed food? (Processed carbohydrate foods.)
Would folks have felt better from that alone? Have we misattributed the cause?
What if the minority who do well (at least short- to mid-term) on a high-fat or high-protein diet are actually just responding well to getting rid of junk food in their lives?
If I were on the Standard American Diet, before I’d ever consider a liver-clogging high-fat or high-protein diet … first, I’d try just ditching all the processed food!
Before responding in comments that your triglycerides went down.
(See previous commentary, please, before responding with fury about a biomarker changing as evidence that the diet is a great idea. Again, that could easily be due to just getting rid of the junk food.)
Interestingly, one of the two MD proponents of the carnivore diet I discuss in the most detail in the article–has returned to eating whole plant foods.
One can only speculate why. If it were going so well for him, why would he begin eating fruit? (The dreaded carb!)
I know Dr. Paul Saladino eats plants after writing the book on the carnivore diet, only because I thought:
“I haven’t heard that guy do interviews or write anything in so long, I wonder if his health has been compromised enough to start eating the plants he says in his book are ‘poison?’”
It took me 5 seconds with Google to find out this is indeed the case.
Thank you for your support of this blog post. We especially appreciate our $10/mo subscribers. Your donation keeps us going!
I healed a severe dysbiosis along with other maladies created by the standard american diet by following a strict vegetarian diet and using herbal medicines. I avoided processed foods as much as possible (absolutely no fast foods). I believe now the plant based diet acted as an elimination diet just as carnivore functions in the same way. Eating plants clearly is not good for some people and the conditions they are trying to heal from and perhaps that can also be said for carnivore.
After 20 years of plant based my hormones were not in good shape. It started with severe monthly migraines that confounded every doctor I visited. This led to a miserable menopause and I realized I had smoldering infections that I was unaware of and I could not eat the recommended amounts of plants and/or supplements on a daily basis nor could I sustain it when I tried. There are many stories just like mine.
I started carnivore a few months ago. I definitely had an adjustment period but it was short lived (headache for three days and "flu" for about a week). As a vegetarian I thought I was strong but it doesn't even compare to how I feel now. I am willing to give this a chance as I did with vegetarianism. I am always willing to experiment and I did so with my geriatric mother that I was feeding a vegetarian diet. Once I started her on meat/fat the improvement was quick and her aches and pains lessened, her mind sharpened, and her pace quickened.
Will I continue with carnivore? Only time will tell. All I know for sure is being strict vegetarian was not enough to create vibrant health (for me). I also got tired of spending so much money on supplementation. Ridiculous amounts on collagen, green powders, etc... In the end, opinions may vary and that's really all we have in the food world. It is astonishing to me how complicated the simple act of eating has become. One question I do have is if eating animal products is bad why do vegetarians consume collagen?
I have done all raw, vegan..wheatgrass, juicing..no processed foods and I felt somewhat better but I ended up going down to 95lbs, actually at one point even lower. I was sprouting, eating fermented foods etc. I just didn’t feel great. My cholesterol ended up being dangerously low..to the point that my naturopathic doctor wanted to put me on cholesterol supplements. Meat was the big bad wolf so the idea of carnivore was preposterous! I am dealing with rheumatoid arthritis and I was in and out of a wheelchair this past year..in utter misery. Pain off the charts. I am in multiple RA groups and many of the women reported having incredible success with the carnivore diet. I fought them and said they were nuts. I hit rock bottom and was on the verge of taking the extremely toxic drugs and I thought, hey, what do I have to lose..and so I started it. Two weeks in I feel incredibly better..brain fog is lifting, crippling knee pain is lifting, all over body pain is getting better…I am not saying this is a forever way of life, but feeling better and better is an AMAZING place to be!! And I feel infinitely better than I ever did on the raw vegan diet.