120 Days Carnivore: What Happened When I Stopped Eating Plants

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As of tomorrow actually we will be officially 120 days in on the carnivore experiment. I got on this to get healthy both physically and mentally, not necessarily to lose weight like many people although I think I still did.

The before picture was taken during Anarchapulco last year when Avens and Judd came to visit my birds. I felt and looked the worst I ever had in my life and I didn't have any clue why, but I felt like I was dying.

What you can see in the first photo is a gaunt unhealthy woman with bad skin, what you can't see is the following:

crippling anxiety
terrible body wide cystic acne
dark circles under the eyes
extreme depression
extreme fatigue
insomnia
digestive issues
hormonal issues
early signs of both Parkensons disease and heart failure
Early (not really so early) signs of diabetes
shakes and tremors
constant need to pee
brain fog
inability to think/focus
lack of motivation for anything
extreme light sensitivity
daily migraines, sometimes when I woke up

Long story short until I heard about the carnivore diet I'd given up and it showed. When Judd released his photos from Anarchapulco this year I was disgusted and there are many photos he shared that I was too embarrassed to even tag myself in, the photo I shared as my before being one of those photos. I looked like a drug addict and now I truly realize I was, to sugar. And I was forced to use things like natural sleep aids to balance out my sugar addiction.

Within a month as a carnivore, the constant tightness I experienced in my chest was gone, as were the shakes and tremors. I had more energy and for the first time in more than ten years it seemed like my skin was clearing. All the sudden my hopeless situation no longer seemed hopeless.

Then the diet got unexpectedly hard, partially as I mourned my life before. I was also having a lot of conflicted feelings as I knew had I found this diet ten years earlier, my life would likely be incredibly different. As many people know food is strongly linked to memory and when I started to realize that I truly had to quit the sugar (and all carbs in general) to feel better I honestly got depressed.

My whole life I'd lived as though those telling me that I needed to quit sugar were wrong, which was fine by me because sugar is delicious and I didn't wanna quit it. Considering nothing else I'd tried for my skin had ever helped, I had a hard time believing cutting sugar out would do it. I also believed I'd caused too much damage to everything from my teeth to my heart. But when I heard Mikhalia Peterson talk about her experiences I couldn't ignore what she was saying if my goal was truly to get better. I had to try it, so I did.

A lot of carnivores struggle with going out and being social because they're constantly tempted to cheat and I really felt it those first few months, especially as times got tough. I found after awhile my cravings were purely mental and I was getting upset at the idea of never eating donuts again, an easy thing to do when you don't consider how much better you feel without them. Part of what kept my strong was deciding I was sick of feeling weak and emotional over something as simple as a sugar frosted ring of sugar. Now I have self confidence I didn't have before, I'm not so controlled by food that I have to make myself sick just for a five minute taste of something I used to love. I never thought that would happen.

I had some pizza about two months in and have since all but sworn it off, as I had several days of pretty intense bodily reactions including: weird high from the pizza itself, extreme bloating and digestive discomfort for days, lack of sleep for three days, one night felt nauseous and pukey....needless to say I was done by the end of it. That's the worst of the reactions I experience from eating outside of the diet, but at the least the shakes and brain fog come back even if I indulge in things like fruit.

The one thing with this diet is I'm surprised at how strict I've managed to be, although I think that's partially due to how badly I can react to certain things. I'm finding I can't tolerate things like almonds, agave and stevia where other things like dried dates or fruit don't cause much more than carb cravings. While I'm not sure I'll stay 100% carnivore for the rest of my life, I do know I'm never going to really be interested going back to what I used to eat. It's one of those things where I just can't unlearn the feels from the carnivore diet.

Now for those confused by carnivore I'm not just referring to the omnivore diet or even the ketogenic diet (although carnivore can be and is a ketogenic diet). I eat meat, I drink water and that's it. Some carnivores eat only beef, I keep it somewhat diverse with beef, pork and chicken primarily.

What I eat:

carnivore balls (ground beef, lard, chopped liver balls wrapped in bacon and fried)
ground meat patties with lard
bacon, kilos and kilos a week of sugar free bacon. Just the salty stuff for me
beef
pork
chicken
eggs
butter/ghee
salt and pepper

Aaaand if I want extra flavor I'll use garlic or thyme for flavor, but we generally don't end up eating the garlic or thyme itself.

It sounds a lot harder than it is. The first three weeks sucked in some regards but I can say the way I feel now is worth the trouble. Our experiment with the carnivore diet started as just a thirty day trial but by week three I was calling it a lifestyle. My current ideal future diet is primarily meat with "cheat days" once a month or so involving fruit and other simple things like that.

Have you considered going carnivore? Comment below with why or why not!