Goal: Spartan Race (Beast course) in May. Sydney Marathon in September and get body fat below 10%
Plan: Continue working out and running at 80% effort to ensure I can exercise every day. Change up workout every month.
Training: Switched it up again to help better prepare myself for the Spartan Race. There’s 21km and 35 obstacles to conquer so we can’t exactly neglect any aspect of the training (Ross Edgley’s 12 week plan will have to wait). Running, pull ups and core work have been my focus, this month I’ll include hill sprints, bear crawls and rope climbing.
Last month I started running in Vivo barefoot shoes and learnt that I’m not flat footed. I developed lower back pain and eventually had to buy insoles. Thankfully they immediately sorted out my back pain issues (so happy I didn’t buy Vibram Five Fingers – customizing insoles for those shoes would have been a nightmare!) So slight set back, but I’ve identified the problem and found a solution.
Food: No change there, still on the KetoCarnivore diet. Bulletproof coffee in the morning. Nuts to snack on (almonds and cashews) Little bit of fruit (avocado, blueberries, grapes and bananas) Dark chocolate for dessert.
Extras: I’ve ordered a smart trainer for my road bike so that I can cycle at home and avoid the roads here (I don’t feel safe cycling on the roads here) as soon as that arrives I’ll get myself set up with Zwift. I can’t wait!
Notes: I’m going to attempt a half marathon this month, was going to do one last month but the lower back pain was a huge hindrance.
Stats: Down 1kg and down 1% body fat, everything else is the same…except my calves are both 1cm bigger. Pretty happy with that. Consistency is the key to whatever your goals are.
I hoped you enjoyed this interview post.
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I’m starting to gain traction now but the heat of Australia is still a major issue. Instead of using that as an excuse I’ve just had to work around it. Never in my life have I been getting up so early! I’m up at 5am so that I can be back before 7am (which is when temperatures start rising above 25 degrees) In the UK I used to workout in the evenings but here its way too hot to do that.
Goal: Sydney Marathon in September and get body fat below 10%
Plan: Continue working out and running at 80% effort to ensure I can exercise every day. Change up workout every month.
Training: I did the first 4 weeks of Ross Edgley’s 12 week “getting back into fitness” plan this month. Started running in minimalist running shoes (Vivobarefoot) to strengthen the muscles in my feet.
Food: KetoCarnivore diet. Bulletproof coffee in the morning. Dark chocolate for dessert. Nuts to snack on (almonds and cashews) Little bit of fruit (avocado, blueberries, grapes and bananas) Veg is minimal and only if I actually want it. My days of eating veg because I felt ‘I have to cause its good for you’ are over. If I don’t want it, I don’t eat it.
Extras: Still continuing with cold showers after exercising (Wif Hof method) Not sure if having a bulletproof coffee in the morning as my breakfast means I am technically no longer intermittently fasting? I feel like I am as I’m only having my first food of the day at lunch.
Notes: Do yourself a MASSIVE favour and get Ross Edgley’s book: The World’s Fittest book. Its not a book about how fit he is, its about what he’s learnt studying sports science and working alongside some of the worlds greatest athletes. If you want to learn how to take your training beyond what you thought was possible, this is the book to own.
Stats: Back up to 90kg (put on the weight I lost last month) but body fat percentage still the same. Chest is 6cm bigger and shoulders are 2cm wider. I think all the upper body work and less running distance is helping me bulk up a bit. I’ll keep an eye on things…
Regards,
Glen
I hoped you enjoyed this post. If you haven’t already, check out Glen on Instagram @genno_shaw
He’s got a very smart way of handling his nutrition and exercise. I am looking forward to seeing where he ends up. His process differs slightly from mine, however what we both know is that consistency is key… and limiting processed junk food.
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I have known Glen for a couple of years as an online friend I guess you would call it. Not in a pervy way, but you know the type of friends you get following crazy fad diets like Keto and Carnivore. Where you follow each other and like their photos etc.
When I first started Keto, I also started training for a marathon. So I set up a group on Strava surprisingly called Ketogenic Endurance. It is still there if you want to join it, for those interested in Fat Adapted running. Anyway Glen did a Ketogenic Diet success story for me, way back in June 2017.
He has now joined the Carnist Revolution haha. Well for a month anyway. Glen has let things slip recently, but he is getting back on track. So I asked him if he would let me document his journey on my blog. He will send me updates for as long as he does it. This is one man’s journey, he is not sponsored by Big Meat, he does not sell factory farm retail, and he does not bathe in the blood of chickens. There are many ways to get your health back on track, I am Carnivore. Glen will go down a more KetoCarnivore route I am guessing, which my Wife calls Carniketo. My definition of KetoCarnivore is a Ketogenic Diet where you are not concerned about limiting Protein. Meat is the basis of the meal, and you add low sugar fruits and vegetables because you want too: not because you think you have too.
What is the same is with Glen and I, is that we both have specific plans outlined which we can evolve as we progress. There is no magic to CONSISTENCY.
This is just one man’s journey into eating well and exercising. It could be a beautiful life long journey, or a 6 week disaster. This could be the one and only post. I have given him no advice, I have not gave him pointers on what to include, I will not chase him for updates. When he sends me an email, I will copy and paste it on my blog. Done.
Good luck Glen.
Month 1
So world carnivore month has ended and man was it a challenge! A year of travelling around the world, sampling each countries own unique cuisines and boozing was a wonderful experience but did my body no favours at all. To kick-start my journey back into fitness I wanted to send a very clear and direct message to my body: PLAYTIME IS OVER!!
Goal:
Get fit again. Get body fat percentage below 10% as quickly as possible
Plan:
Level 1 carnivore diet. No coffee. No alcohol. Get used to training ever day again.
Training:
Kept it simple. Train at about 80% to ensure you can workout the next day. A run every other day and a little 5x5x5* workout on the days I didn’t go for a run.
*5 exercises, 5 reps for 5 sets (pull ups, jumping squats, push ups, lunges and dips)
Food:
Meat. Cheese. Eggs. Himalayan Rock Salt. Water.
Extras:
Intermittent fasting (18/6) I only ate lunch and dinner from the 5th onwards. Cold showers (Wim Hof method). Performance-wise I discovered Amino Water and its been fantastic! The first three weeks were tough, which is what I expected, but once I started drinking Amino Water I noticed a clear boost in performance – its like my muscles finally started firing on all cylinders and I’m able to maintain my intensity during my morning runs or workouts.
Notes:
I developed a real love/hate relationship for the carnivore diet. I love the simplicity of it and the ease of preparation (very useful for a busy lifestyle) and minimal cleaning up afterwards. I missed having a coffee in the morning, some fruit or nuts to snack on, a beer in the evening or a bit of chocolate after dinner. It was probably too much at once for me to cut all those things out. Next year I’ll be better prepared.
For now I’m looking forward to my normal Keto diet. I look at food differently now though, I no longer look at vegetables as the source of all my vitamins and minerals and will certainly not be forcing down any more greens. I see fruit and veg for what they are (what they started out being) which is a compliment to a meal. The meal being meat and the veg being a little something to enhance the flavour.
Pictures attached and already there’s been progress for just one month, down 1% body fat and lost 2kgs.
Regards,
Glen
I hoped you enjoyed this post. If you haven’t already, check out Glen on Instagram @genno_shaw
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The below post is the 3rd most read post on my blog. This is encouraging because at least some people are questioning these things.
I am on a Carnivore Diet, rather than a traditional Ketogenic Diet. The principles are the same though real food in close to natural forms. The Carnivore Diet is still high fat, and I am still fat adapted. I have just ditched the plants.
I do still eat butter, but a lot less than before. I just mainly use it when frying eggs. The meat I eat is fatty enough not to need butter or oils to cook them.
I obviously still hate margarine though and everything it stands for.
You can’t go much wrong with the below mindset:
Avoid foods created in the last 200 years as much as possible. Think products that are food like products rather than real food, or food that needs to be made in a factory, for example: Cereal, Vegetable Seed Oils like Canola or Sunflower Oil, Processed Sugar & Margarine.
Limit your intake of food created in the last 15,000 years. These are generally real plant foods and or plant food with smaller amounts of processing. Think traditionally made breads, vegetables and fruits. You can stick dairy in here too. I always pretend I am fine with Dairy, but if I have too much of it I get congestion. So I limit it. The more robust your body is the more you can handle of these foods if you want. The more health issues you have like obesity, diabetes, allergies, joint pain, depression – then the more you should limit these foods.
Freely eat anything available over 15,000 years ago that is not poisonous.
Disclaimer right at the top here – I am a Keto enthusiast clearly. Living on a Ketogenic Diet means, you eat low carb high fat. So I have to believe that butter is good for you, because I eat a tonne of it. So this post is brazenly pro butter, because I love butter and I think margarine is legalized poison. Just because I am clearly biased, definitely not a doctor, chemist or scientist, doesn’t mean I am wrong though haha.
I try to only eat grass fed butter, and that is the reason for the post really. I can go into most supermarkets and only have a choice of 1 or 2 grass fed butters. I mainly opt for Kerrygold. Now in the same section I have the choice of probably 15-20 types of margarines or spreads!!!
So lets compare –
How Butter is made –
Take the cream off the milk.
Churn it.
Drain off the buttermilk.
You have butter.
How Margarine is made –
Cheap vegetable oil is used, e.g. Soy and Canola.
They are steam cleaned, which turns the oil rancid and removes all vitamins and nutrition. However doesn’t remove all residues of pesticides and solvents.
Oil put through a hydrogenation process, which is a chemical process involving toxic substances like Nikal.
Oil is now semi solid; however it is grey and lumpy and smells really bad. So they add emulsifiers.
They steam clean it again to remove the smell, and bleach it.
They finally add vitamins and artificial flavours… and the kicker… they add yellow colouring to make it look more like butter.
So straight away, why would you choose margarine over butter.
Oh wait Butter is bad for you right? and all them margarines make loads of health claims on their tubs and websites right?. Well its all BS really. Butter is good for you –
Butter contains high levels of Fat-Soluble Vitamins. Guess what; you need fat to absorb some vitamins. Without dietary fat it doesn’t matter how many multi-vitamin tablets you take, you will not be absorbing and storing Vitamin power houses like A, D, E, and K2.
Fat does not make you fat. Guess what does, processed carbs/sugars. Yes butter is high in calories, but it satiates you. So you are less likely to snack or eat large portions.
Butter contains fatty acids, like Butyrate and CLA. Fatty acids have numerous benefits relating to reducing triglycerides, improving insulin sensitivity, improving metabolism and improving mitochondrial health.
Butter is obviously very high in saturated fat, but so what. Saturated fat causes heart disease doesn’t it? Nope! Not the dietary kind anyway. Dietary Saturated fat doesn’t get to your blood stream because your body likes it, knows what it is and uses it. The saturated fat in your blood, is actually mainly caused by all the stress the Liver has to go through processing too many carbs.
Butter raises your cholesterol shock!!! High cholesterol is bad for you right! Nope, not necessarily. There is good (HDL) and bad cholesterol (LDL), in fact there are 3 types really. The good (HDL), the good/bad (large LDL), and the bad/bad (small LDL or triglycerides). It is the triglycerides that contribute to heart disease. Butter increases you HDL, and increases the ratio of large LDL to small LDL. So butter actually lowers your risk of heart disease. This is all good because your body actually requires cholesterol. Your brain is made up from a large percentage of it. Also for us men, you can’t make testosterone without it.
Below is a list of benefits a well know margarine company has put on their website promoting their products as a way to live a healthy life.
80% less saturated fat than Butter. So what!!… dietary saturated fat does not lead to health complications. It was just originally presumed that the link they found between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease was related to how much fat you consumed, it isn’t. It is how many carbs you intake especially the processed kind.
Oils from healthy plant oils. Nope. The Vegetable oils they use are horrendous for your health, due to the heat pressing required to get the oil. It destroys the oil at cellular level, basically becoming poison to the human body. Increasing inflammation and free radicals. You should always get cold pressed oils like, Olive, Hemp, Avocado and Coconut.
Healthier than butter. Erm! So they promote themselves as the healthy option to butter, yet add butter milk. Which is the leftover from butter, which doesn’t have the nutritional benefits of butter just the waste.
Emulsifiers – they say they use emulsifiers like lecithin, which your body requires and is found in healthy foods like sunflower seeds and egg yolk. They don’t say they only use lecithin, they say they use emulsifiers LIKE Lecithin. I would imagine they use a lot of manufactured emulsifiers too. Another funny thing is they say their product lowers cholesterol because cholesterol is bad. However then say lecithin is good because it is in egg yolk, but eggs yolks are known to increase cholesterol. However don’t panic they increase the HDL and lower the small LDL. So a bit of a mixed message on cholesterol here I think.
Added Omega 3 & 6. This is probably the worst. They promote their margarine as being healthy because it contains Omega 3 and 6 (probably added synthetically mind), and that they help maintain normal levels of Cholesterol!!! Really!!! However when you look at the ratio of omega 3 to 6 it is frighteningly bad. Per 100g there is 4.6g of omega 3 and 19g of omega 6. Do we need omega 6… yes we do, but it is vital you have it as part of a sensible ratio with omega 3. Omega 3 is generally found in healthy foods like fish. Omega 6 is awash in the modern diet, especially in the so called healthy vegetable oils. It has been suggested we should eat a 1:1 ratio, but the western diet is around the 1:16 ratio. With omega 6 been the 16. The average human today in the western world, is not eating enough 3 and eating way too much 6. What can an excess in omega 6 contribute to? – heart disease, increased triglycerides, inflammation, free radicals, gut biome issues, diabetes, IBS, depression, obesity ….. The list goes on.
Since the 80’ when all these food pyramids came in, and they tried to get you to replace dietary fat with manufactured low fat crap and told you to eat more grains. Guess what happened, we all got sicker and fatter!!! Thanks for that.
I believe in real food, in real forms for the most part. I eat butter and loads of other types of fat….. but I eat low carb. If you start eating loads of butter but still eat loads of carbs you will get into plenty of health troubles still. Think of it as a Park Swing. The protein is the pivot in the middle that stays the same. Then on one side there is fat and carbs on the other. If you increase/raise the fats, then naturally you have to lower the carbs…. or vice versa but I obviously would not recommend the high carb low fat option that has failed every dieter since the 80’s.
So I apologize for anyone that has got this far down…. I just want more grass fed butter in supermarkets really. If people want to eat margarine, that is there prerogative.
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I am now going to suggest that the Carnivore Diet can increase your tolerance to the Sun. I am having a laugh right? Nope.
I am going to tell you what my wife and I have experienced, then point you towards a few reasons why this might have occurred.
N=2
I have been Carnivore since October 2017, and the wife since December 2017. It is now August 2018. We are from England and it has been an awesome Summer so far. A very unusually hot Summer. We are into our camping, and we have 2 dogs. So we are always out in the fresh air.
We do still use Sunscreen, although less of it and a lower SPF.
We have noticed:
We can spend longer in the Sun without sunscreen before burning.
With or without sunscreen we do eventually go red. However it doesn’t hurt.
Once you are out of the sun and during the night, it doesn’t become uncomfortable.
Aftersun is not needed.
The redness turns golden brown quicker and darker than before.
Considering we don’t do foreign holidays, we currently look like we have had a fortnight in Greece.
How is this possible?
It sounds crazy I know. However I truly believe the Carnivore Diet is an ancestral way of eating. It gives you everything you need, which in turn helps your body deal with any health issues you may have. So I suppose it stands to reason that it would be result in healthier cells, and that is all Skin is. Just a big clump of cells. Plus if your body is not fighting loads of general chronic inflammation, it probably has plenty of resources to deal with a bit of sunburn.
If you think about how and when Humans evolved, we have always been exposed to the Sun for long periods. Whether that was a million years ago hunting megafauna, or 200 years ago tending our farm. We spent a long time persistent hunting, we can out run any animal over long distances. Mainly due to the fact we can sweat and are economical long distance runners. So a tribe of humans would see a pack of animals, they would identify one of them. Then just start jogging after it. The animal would sprint off and rest, eventually it could sprint less and need more rest. Then dying of exhaustion. This could take all day. Imagine if we could only spend an hour in the sun before burning, we would have been useless persistence hunters that’s for sure. You could argue the ozone layer has had an impact or that they might have been making their own sunscreen from plants. Which I doubt. I just think it is logical to think we can spend longer in the sun under the right circumstances than we can generally in these modern times and modern diets.
So either the Carnivore Diet is making us superhuman. Or something we have eliminated from our diet is helping. Maybe both?
I am not the only one who notices this “Sunburn Paradox”.
I first heard about this Sunburn Paradox from Tucker Goodrich on a couple of podcasts. In fact if you are interested in looking into the Carnivore Diet for Sunburn, you should probably just stop reading this blog and search for the information Tucker Goodrich puts out on this subject.
Basically the gist is that he blames excess Omega 6 / Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids in our diet for our whimpiness in the sun. Well you might say you don’t eat much Omega 6. Well if you eat a Standard Western Diet you do. Vegetable Seed Oils are very high in Omega 6, and pretty much every highly processed food on the planet is loaded with Seed Oils because they are cheap. The trouble is Omega 6 is highly unstable under Ultravoilet Light (Sun), and oxidizes extremely easily. So if your skin cells are filled with excess Omega 6, then you are going to get into trouble in the sun.
Here is a little more info on how far off our Omega 3 to 6 ratio is nowadays: “Several sources of information suggest that human beings evolved on a diet with a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3essential fatty acids (EFA) of ∼ 1 whereas in Western diets the ratio is 15/1–16.7/1. Western diets are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, and have excessive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids compared with the diet on which human beings evolved and their genetic patterns were established. Excessive amounts of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and a very high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, as is found in today’s Western diets, promote the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, whereas increased levels of omega-3 PUFA (a low omega-6/omega-3 ratio) exert suppressive effects.”
So you can just believe me that this is true, or maybe you need some more convincing.
“I used to get some serious sunburn on my long runs. So upped n-3 and consumed less n-6… It’s actually pretty amazing to run without a shirt, for three-plus hours and have NO sunburn at all!!!” – Yelling Stop Blog
“When mice were exposed acutely to UV radiation (UVR), a diet of 20% saturated fat provided almost complete protection from the suppression of CHS, whereas feeding 20% polyunsaturated fat resulted in 57% suppression” – Study. So Saturated Fat helped prevent tumors in Mice exposed to UV Radiation (Found in Sunlight), where as Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) made them more susceptible to tumors. My Carnivore Diet is high in saturated fat, and low in PUFA. So I could be gaining protection from the SF, and also not inhibiting my body with PUFA.
“Ultraviolet (UV) radiation, a form of ionizing radiation, results in approximately 1.5 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and is associated with greater than 60,000 deaths annually worldwide attributed to melanoma and other skin cancers.1 There are no standardized biomarker panels to assess UV-radiation oxidative stress injury patterns in skin. Unless assessing erythema after UV exposure, it is difficult to clinically determine the efficacy of UV-protective agents.2–6Therefore, developing a biomarker panel to evaluate UV radiation oxidative damage would facilitate rapid evaluation of skin injury due to UV radiation and enable the development and evaluation of novel oxidation-protective agents, such as sunscreens and topical antioxidants, to treat or prevent UV radiation-induced oxidation resulting in a decrease in lost years of healthy life, DALYs, and annual deaths that are attributed to UV radiation.” – Study. This study links skin health with oxidative stress. So if you can eat protective foods like SF, and not strain your body with PUFA then you will lessen the oxidative damage to the skin cells.
So I think it is fair to at least consider a diet that is too high in Omega 6 could mean people are more susceptible to Sunlight than they should be. I am going to stop here, as after this point you are entering varying degrees of Conspiracy Theory. For example is Sunscreen even useful? From being Keto and then Carnivore, I know that food companies are knowingly feeding us absolute crap for profit. I know it is in Pharma’s best interests to keep these food companies doing the same. Then I know Governments, health boards and charities are perpetuating the problems. So it is a pretty big leap for me to presume that Sunscreen manufactures are producing these products for the good of our health. They will have to turn a profit after all. So I am not suggesting that you should never wear sunscreen again or that you should blindly apply it every time you go out. I am saying find where you are in between these, and varying changes in diet could lead to varying positions between these extremes. As with anything do not presume, do some research and experiment with yourself. I am not a doctor, scientist or philosopher. I read and listen to others, consider it, test it on myself and use that to increase my own health.
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The below post is an opinion piece, I am not giving out medical advice or anything like that. I am just trying to think through, why the Carnivore Diet makes me feel so good. I am not trying to hide my beliefs in the shadows, I have being eating a Carnivore Diet since September 2017. So there is your disclaimer.
I believe it would be a good idea to consider Humans as Facultative Carnivores. The definition of this is that of an animal that does best on a Carnivorous Diet. The animal can survive but does not thrive on a non-carnivorous diet.
Humans are actually classified as Omnivores. The definition of which is an animal that can live on both plants and meat. Here in lies the problem, it makes no distinction on if they should live on both, or what combination might be best. There is a massive range of animals that are classed a omnivores, and there is a lot of differing digestive systems too. Whereas in the Carnivore group, the digestive systems are very similar. I class a pig as a true Omnivore, as they can truly eat and do well on any combination of meat and plants. One of the things that helps pigs be like this is that they have a functioning Cecum. Humans do not.
Nutrition
I think that by defining Humans as omnivores, complicates nutritional science. This allows for distortions and areas to be exploited by vested interests. We live in a world where it is a given that all fruit and vegetables are good for us, and promote health. If a vegetable is scientifically tested and it has all these vitamins and minerals we would want and need, but if they are not bio-available and if digesting that vegetable causes inflammation….should that vegetable be eaten?
What I am saying is nutrition is actually about what your digestive system can digest, and what foods would have caused that evolution of the digestive system. This would mean there is a base human diet that would benefit nearly everyone, then the healthier you are the more you can deviate from it and the less robust you are the more you need to adhere to it.
Humans Digestion
To simplify things I will use the word MEAT to mean all animal products like steak, fish & eggs etc. PLANTS will mean everything else like grains, sugar, vegetable seed oils, fruits & vegetables.
So I am just going to work through the digestive system and see what it is designed to digest, and hence what we should eat for optimal health.
Teeth – simply looking at our teeth it would look like our teeth are designed for plants because of the molars and small incisors. Our teeth do not look like a true carnivores teeth. However we evolved by firstly scavenging for meat, then we became persistence hunters, and learned how to hunt with tools. Then of course we learned to cook with fire. Therefore we have never needed claws or large incisors to hunt. We can clearly use our teeth to eat plants and meat. I will caveat this with that populations which primarily eat meat have excellent tooth health, populations that eat starchy carbs have much worse tooth health. So overall, meat for the win.
Jaws – we have vertical jaws, which means we tear and crush our food. We do not have the jaw size or teeth to process large amounts of plant material considering the energy input we needed. It makes ancestral sense that we ate raw meat, then we learned to cook the meat which made it all the more digestible and nutritious. If plant matter was a significant part of the Homo ancestry, we would have greater evidence for the need for mastication or rumination. Mastication is basically chewing, you would think this is important, but our head shape doesn’t suggest that. Think about it, swallow a chunk of meat whole and some sweetcorn, what plops into the toilet bowl after they have been through your digestive tract…. hint it’s not the meat. Meat for the win.
Stomach – Our stomach is one of the most acidic stomach ph’s in the animal kingdom and is relatively small. This suggests two things: first we are designed to eat meat because stomach acidic wonderfully breaks down meat and barely touches plants. Secondly it is a defense against bacteria and parasites, which would have been important due to the lack of storage and refrigeration, and we spent a lot of our evolution scavenging for meat that would have been turning bad and had already being partially eaten by a large predator. The general rule is the more acidic the stomach acid the more of a carnivore an animal is. We have the same stomach acid ph as Wolves! It is also important to note that if we were designed to eat a lot of plants, we would likely have some bacteria and/or protozoa in our Stomach like you find in Sheep for example. We do not have either, this means there is no cellulose digestion in the stomach. Cellulose is the rigid cell wall of plants. Meat for the win.
Gallbladder – When we eat food with fat in it, it triggers the gallbladder to release bile. This breaks down fat. Really the only year round source of fat in our past would have been the fat that comes along with Meat. The Gallbladder is present and important in Carnivores, and varies in presence and usage in Omnivores and Herbivores. Humans have a functioning Gallbladders.
Small Intestine – The ratio of small intestine to a large intestine is vital in considering what we should eat. A long small intestine compared to the large intestine, relates to an animal that eats a higher quality less fibrous diet. Meat has excellent nutrient to energy profile, and is around 98% percent digested in the small intestines. Humans have a ratio that shows we have favoured meat to plants. Our ratio of small intestines to body length is 1:4, a dogs is 1:6 and a sheep is 1:25. We are clearly more carnivorous than herbivore. Our evolution meant leaving the trees, where we were probably some sort of frugivore. As we started eating meat, our brains grew. This led to a problem. The two biggest drains on energy are the Brain and Digestive System. So we traded the length of our digestive system to allow our brains to grow, so we didn’t need a silly amount of daily calories. So meat caused our brains to grow, which meant we needed more and more meat because we were trading in our ability to eat plants. Meat for the win.
Large Intestine – our large intestine is very short compared to our body length. This is the place where we try to get the last remaining goodness from what was not digested in the Small Intestines. Basically because we are so poor at digesting plants, this means just absorbing water. Then all the digestive plant matter, just gets pushed through to the Rectum. Most of the diseases of the digestive system like Colitis are found in the large intestine. So this suggests to me we are eating too much food, that needs to pass through the Large Intestine. As meat digests in the small intestine, and therefore is unlikely to cause digestive tract diseases…. meat for the win.
Cecum– to me this is the biggest nail in the coffin for anyone who thinks we should eat a lot of plants. The cecum is filled with bacteria and enzymes, that digest cellulose aka plant cell walls. It is a vital to herbivores and ranges in importance in Omnivores. Humans have a cecum, however it is now just an empty sac, basically just an extension of the large intestines and no further digestion takes part in the cecum. So we had a cecum that is vital for plant digestion, however we evolved to not use it. This is huge because humans probably have the greatest survival instinct ever, so to get rid of something that could have helped us survive shows how little we came value plants in our diet over millions of years.
Conclusion – Humans currently get around 70% of calories from plant matter on the standard western diet. We are currently the sickest and weakest we have ever been. I believe our digestive system runs the most efficiently on meat, which therefore has a knock on effect of better health. If you are struggling with anything, from skin dryness to colitis. Then give Carnivore a try for 30 days, it just might change your life.
Appendix for fun – Needless to say the odd conversation with Vegans crop up on my social media. When I talk to them about ancestral eating, they nearly always send me the same photo, and it is the photo below. So they actually think we are Frugivore’s, well we were I guess. Just it was 5-10 million years ago. Without being disrespectful to the person who created it, it is laughably bad and laughable that someone would use it as evidence.
Let’s have a look at it.
Physiological Food – what they mean here is the desire for food, of which creates the best health. They say ours is Fruit, Veg and nuts. Making no mention of if you only ate these, with no supplementation you would die because of a lack of B12 and K2.
Prehensile Hands – not sure what the point is here. Maybe our hands are designed to pick fruit off trees? and in no way useful for throwing spears at animals!
Walks Upright – not sure how they tie this to anything, maybe its because we resemble a tree trunk?
Mouth Opening is small – erm relatively or actually who knows? Is that a reason not to eat a cow? So maybe Vegans shouldn’t eat watermelons because they are bigger than our small mouths.
Rudimentary Blunt Canines – I have discussed why are teeth are as they are. It would be pretty hard to talk with massive canines too.
Jaw, great lateral and forward mobility – what? no that’s not how a human jaw work. Do we look like a horse when chewing? Nope.
No shear, chew food – oh my days, have they never seen anyone eat a chicken drumstick before? Plus totally ignoring the fact we developed tools to deal with these issues, because we have a large brain!
Big salivary glands – not sure how they link this to plant eating.
Saliva is Alkaline and contains Amylase – this is true a healthy body will have an alkaline ph, but not sure why they think a carnivore’s will be acidic. It isn’t. We do have amylase which breaks down starch, but not enough to be useful mind. It is likely a left over starvation survival mechanism, or we were actually evolving it out altogether.
Alkaline Urine – yes again we do have alkaline urine when healthy, and a slightly acidic state means your body in a potentially diseased state. No animal body works in simple terms, whereas a food item changes your bodies acidity. That would be madness. It is a marker for health though, that is true. My urine is alkaline and I only eat meat.
No uricase – they are suggesting here that this imply’s we should not eat meat, because we would be susceptible to build up of Uric acid… which leads to things like Gout. However Uric Acid is only a problem in the bloodstream, and in humans our Kidneys deal with Uric Acid very effectively. In fact nowadays it is know Gout is not caused by Uric Acid from excess meat consumption, but is from excess sugar consumption aka plants.
Weak stomach acid – now it is getting silly haha. Humans have one of the strongest Stomach Acids in the animal Kingdom!!!
Requires Fiber to stimulate Peristalsis – what they mean by that is the wave like movement of the colon muscles to push food down the intestines. This is true if your large intestine is filled with indigestible plant matter (fiber), you do need more indigestible plant matter to push it out. However when you only eat meat and no fiber, your digestive system works much better in my opinion. Fiber is just an inflammatory irritant, that cereal companies have convinced you is a health food.
Metabolize a small amount of Cholesterol & Vitamin A – not sure what they mean here, are they saying cholesterol is not important or that eating foods high in cholesterol like meat is pointless because it is not metabolized. What I do know is cholesterol is in every cell in your body, and if you don’t eat food that promote it then it will make it itself at a great cost.
Sweat glands in whole body – yes that is true and it made us the best persistent hunters on the planet.
Intestines 9 times the length of the body – nope not true, and even if it was that is still closer to a standard carnivore than a standard herbivore. Vegans often talk about the intestines as a whole, because it makes it seem longer than it is. Our Small Intestine to Large Intestine ratio, means we are better at digesting meat to plants. They ignore that.
Colon is acidic – not sure where they got this, as fair as I am aware the colon is very close to the bodies natural ph and is slightly alkaline if anything. Happy to be proved wrong though.
Does not metabolize cellulose – this is true, very true. This actually proves that humans are no longer furgivores, have likely never been herbivores and are pretty poor omnivores. Cellulose is the rigid cell wall of all plant cells. It is how they can form structures, all the alleged goodness is contained within the cell. So if we cannot digest cellulose, then to me it sees unlikely we considered plants an important part of our evolutionary diet.
Complete Digestion 12-18hrs – not sure where they got this. Biology books will say 6-8 hours.
So the graphic is poor in my opinion, it is clearly wrote by someone trying to suggest that we are frugivores and should not eat meat. The people you have tried to use this as evidence against me, have obviously passed it on believing it to be true or hoping it is true and likely haven’t actually fact checked. You should always look into things and not just presume it is true. This means you should also not believe what I said. I am eating a Carnivore Diet. I am clearly biased the other way. So you need to do your own research, and find out what works for you.
“As SOON as I switched to animal fat as my fat source instead of “healthy” oils, I ovulated and had a period two weeks later. I couldn’t believe it!!! Why in the WORLD didn’t someone tell me years ago about the importance of animal fat?!?😤 I’ve been more regular since then than I ever was as a young teenager. I’ve had two healthy boys (no complications for me; home births too; mid-wife with Charlie and unassisted with George)! ❤😀
We experimented with pork only to find that it activated symptoms. Ground meats, no matter what type also did.
We continued researching and looked at our wins and fails. It led us to Blake Donaldson who suggested a steak and water diet for his patients. That made a lot of sense to Joe and I. We started with pemmican only for some time, introducing steak eventually. Sure enough, as soon as I decided to go all beef, EVERY SINGLE ONE of my symptoms vanished!!! I couldn’t believe it. Whenever I tried to share my success and happiness about this, it was met with more questionable stares, anger, fear, and rolled eyes than you would ever imagine. So, it was our little secret. And that’s how we kept it until we found others with our point of view.”
That’s not hyperbole. I haven’t had loose stool, let alone an infamous shit attack, since becoming a carnivore.
This might sound silly to someone who’s never had IBS but let me tell you, in no uncertain terms, this diet gave me my life back.
There were so many things I found myself avoiding because I was so petrified about how my body would turn against me. And while I am still trying to rewire the patterns I built into my brain that associate geographic unfamiliarity with IBS, I am light years improved from where I was just a month-and-a-half ago.
If you suffer from IBS, all I can say is this: give the carnivore diet a try for a month and see how your body responds.”
“ZC helped me recover from adrenal fatigue and several eating disorders. It also cured my chronic constipation which I suffered for several years.
I have had several blood tests done over the last year, and since going ZC my total testosterone went up 50%, free testosterone went up 250% and I got my libido back. My triglycerides are 44mg/dl. And virtually all other blood markers are optimal levels.
Being a health and wellness coach, stumbling upon such a bizarre (against popular belief) and simple way of living really came as a shock. I cannot personally recommend it enough as it has completely changed my life.”
Inspiration: I am no scientist, biologist, nutritionalist or writer even. However I do like putting my ideas down on this blog. So I do take inspiration from more intelligent low carbers than myself, and I love reading, podcasts and social media. So their knowledge will clearly have helped shape whatever I am thinking at the time. Aka the likes of but not limited to (so check them out): Amber O’Hearn, Shawn Baker, Zeroing In On Health, Tim Noakes, justmeat.co etc
Inspiration: I am no doctor, scientist or even a competent writer haha. However I do love learning. So I am always reading and listening to podcasts, then applying what I have learnt and letting it rattle around my brain for a bit before writing posts on it. I take inspiration from the likes of (but not limited to): Amber O’Hearn, Shawn Baker, Zeroing in on Health, Tim Noakes et al.
Hey if you enjoy this post, consider Become a Patron!, or join my free Newsletter. For a simply frickin’ awesome range of Carnivore and Keto inspired clothing and products check out my Shop.
Crohn’s and Colitis are both considered chronic diseases. This means they cannot be cured, you will have periods of good spells and then periods of flare ups. That is a pretty depressing prognosis.
So in one respect this is an extremely arrogant blog post, which looks like I am suggesting I know more than Doctors and Scientists. I do not, but I do believe the root cause of most diseases is diet related and when you apply that logic you view things from different angles. Also I bet someone suffering Crohn’s or Colitis could read this and think, who the hell is this guy to suggest I have been suffering with colitis for 20 years for no reason. Completely understandable, but bare with me. Actually you can take this paragraph as a disclaimer, I am not giving medical advice. I have just wrote down some thoughts I have on the subject.
The way medical science works is that someone has a theory, which gets turned into a Randomized Controlled Trail, the results get passed down to medical bodies and they pass it down to the doctors. So if the doctors use whatever methods they are told to then they are less likely to be suspended, sued or peer reviewed. Unfortunately RCTs are nowadays just generally about what drugs can be used for a disease.
So classing Crohn’s & Colitis as incurable, really just means there is no available drug to cure them.
On top of this nutritional science is like the wild west based around observational studies, vested interest and guess work. T2 Diabetes is also classed a chronic and progressive disease. Through anecdotes and my knowledge of Low Carb diets, I know that Diabetes is easily reversed. It is only chronic and progressive when it is within the foundations of a Standard Western Diet.
So I am wondering if a simple dietary change to Zero Carb/Carnivore could cure/reverse Crohn’s & Colitis just like T2 Diabetes.
Crohn’s & Colitis
“Crohn’s Disease is a condition that causes inflammation of the digestive system or gut. Crohn’s can affect any part of the gut, though the most common area affected is the end of the ileum (the last part of the small intestine), or the colon.
The areas of inflammation are often patchy with sections of normal gut in between. A patch of inflammation may be small, only a few centimetres, or extend quite a distance along part of the gut. As well as affecting the lining of the bowel, Crohn’s may also go deeper into the bowel wall. It’s one of the two main forms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).” – Crohn’s & Colitis UK
“Ulcerative Colitis is a condition that causes inflammation and ulceration of the inner lining of the rectum and colon (the large bowel). In UC, ulcers develop on the surface of the lining and these may bleed and produce mucus.
The inflammation usually begins in the rectum and lower colon, but it may affect the entire colon. If UC only affects the rectum, it is called proctitis, while if it affects the whole colon it may be called total colitis or pancolitis.” – Crohn’s & Colitis UK
What is the Conventional Treatment
No shocks here the standard treatment is usually anti inflammatory drugs, autoimmune repressing drugs and unfortunately surgery to remove infected areas.
Now I am being crazy? but would you not think the first step is a dietary change, or at any step? They are diseases of the digestive system after all, would not overhauling the diet be vital here?
The Crohn’s & Colitis UK charity, basically just say eat the EatWell plate from the NHS and go from there. This is especially disheartening because I have raised money for these in the past.
The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation goes a bit further but is still a little baffling to me:
“While your diet is not a cause of your disease and changing your diet will not cure you, paying special attention to your diet can help reduce and control your IBD symptoms.
One of the best ways to begin understanding how your diet affects your condition is to start keeping a Food Diary. By recording what you eat every time you eat and also the symptoms you experience as a result can help you identify foods that may cause distress and then limit or eliminate them from your diet.
Although Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are not the result of food allergies, many patients and doctors recommend a few simple suggestions to help control symptoms during flare ups:
Eat smaller meals at more frequent intervals
Reduce the amount of greasy or fried foods in your diet
Limit consumption of milk or milk products
Restrict your intake of certain high-fiber foods such as nuts, seeds, corn, and popcorn” – Crohns & Colitis Foundation
Firstly they say your diet isn’t the cause, surely diet is a massive factor? In my opinion your diet is either directly causing the inflammation or is weakening you to such an extent that your body isn’t able to heal your body sufficiently.
I do believe a food diary is a good idea.
However then the say eat smaller and more frequent meals. I am not sure about this, to me if you are not eating good foods. By eating them more frequently but in smaller meals, this would just mean your colon and digestive system would just be constantly processing food, without any rest periods. This would likely increase your chances of inflammation. Then they say limit greasy food. I would agree with this as long as they don’t mean fatty foods, a steak cooked in butter is completely different to chicken wings cooked in canola or soybean oil.
Limit diary would likely be good for some, but not all. Some people just don’t handle diary well that is true.
Finally interestingly they say limit some high fiber foods. Why just some, why not limit all fiber? Well because that would contradict the fact that they recommend you eat your “healthy” wholegrains.
I do appreciate that it would be risky for organisations like these, to suggest diets that differ from whatever food pyramid or plate is recommended in their country. However I have no such burdens placed on me.
Inflammation
So to take Crohn’s & Colitis to its logical core, is that they are diseases of inflammation. So your aim is to reduce the chances of having inflammation in the body. Now it is important to note that inflammation is actually a method your body uses to heal itself. So everyone will have varying levels of inflammation at any one time. However having lots of inflammation constantly, leads to chronic disease.
Going off the digestive system picture and the explanation of the diseases above. To me it seems sensible to think that diet is a major contributor, and that a correct method of eating would cure the disease. By cure I mean where medication is not necessary and there are no flare ups. Obviously if you them went back to eating what you did before the diseases could come back, as a patient clearly doesn’t have a robust digestive system. My general rule is the less robust you are the more meat and less plants you should eat. That rule apply’s here in my opinion.
So what am I really saying here?
Well to me it would mean eating food that mainly digests in between the Stomach and Small Intestines, and avoiding food matter that passes through the Ileum, Large Intestines and Rectum. This would decrease the chances of inflammation causing problems where these diseases are mainly found.
You would also be best eating food that does not promote inflammation in general. This will mean your body is not constantly fighting fires all over the body, so if an issue arises in the digestive system it can be dealt with.
What Digests before the end of the Small intestine?
Well you are reading a post from a blog, from a person who follows a Carnivore Ketogenic Diet. So guess what I am going to say here!!!
Meat and the fat attached within the meat is around 98.8% digested between the Stomach and Small Intestine. The human digestive system is incredibly efficient at digesting meat, it is what we have evolved to eat for over 2 million years. All that is left of meat after the small intestine is some brown liquid. Therefore this stands to reason that meat would cause very little inflammation or damage anywhere between the Ileum and Rectum.
We know this because people who us Ostomy Bags can see exactly what is going on:
“Because I had such an extremely short bowel, my output was very high because no water absorption had taken place. I was fed and hydrated by infusion and could literally live without eating or drinking at all. Because of my excessive output, we had to make a rig that had a hose extending from the ostomy bag that drained into a one gallon jug. Often the hose would get clogged and my wife or sister would have to use a coat hanger wire to unplug it. Now if this vegan pseudoscience is right, we would suspect that the hose was being plugged by pieces of meat.
Never once did we see any solid chunks of meat. I became so curious about this that I once swallowed the largest chunk of meat I could possibly get down without choking. Because of the shortness of my bowel, it only took about twenty minutes for my stomach to empty into the ostomy. Better than two hours later, there were no signs of any meat chunks. What was always clogging the ostomy tube were pieces of vegetables that were not fully chewed.
Entire pieces of olive, lettuce, broccoli florets, grains and seeds were found. Yet, large pieces of fat were never witnessed. As a matter of fact, all the fat from the meat was already emulsified by the bile into solution within the duodenum. Over time, fat would coagulate on the side walls of the ostomy bag, but never were there any solid pieces observed. Certainly we are getting a lot more nutrition from our meat than from our vegetables – unless you can chew your cud several times like a ruminant.” – Intestinal Transplant Survivor
Limit the quantity of Food Matter getting to the Large Intestines?
Wait doesn’t meat rot in the Colon for months on end? Nope, that was probably some ridiculous advertisement from PETA that caught on.
What does rot in the Colon? Ironically everything PETA recommends you eat. Whoops. The definition of rotting is the breaking down of food by bacteria, aka plant matter by our gut flora. Yet even a cow designed for eating plants can only get about 60% of the nutrition from a plant, this is why they are constantly eating and also why they eat their own turds so they can recycle even more nutrition. So just think how much nutrition we can actually get from plants, with a digestive system designed for meat. Its LOW, very low.
“It’s easy to tell when your gut bacteria are doing the work, instead of your digestive enzymes: you fart. That is why beans and starches make you fart, but meat doesn’t: they’re rotting in your colon, and the products of bacterial decomposition include methane and carbon dioxide gases. Here’s a list of flatulence-causing foods, and here’s another:
A partial inventory: “Beans, lentils, dairy products, onions, garlic, scallions, leeks, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cashews, Jerusalem artichokes, oats, wheat, and yeast in breads. Cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and other cruciferous vegetables…
One side benefit of a paleo diet is the elimination of the biggest, stinkiest fart producer—beans (due to the indigestible sugar raffinose)—and several smaller ones (wheat, oats, all grain products). And it sure seems like my gut bacteria have less to do now that my amylase and sucrase supplies aren’t being overwhelmed by an avalanche of starch and sugar.” –J Stanton.
It doesn’t take a scientist or nutritionist to work out the above could potentially irritate the digestive system.
Then we get to fiber, where somewhere along the human time line we decided it was a health food. That is is necessary to keep us regular. I eat no fiber, and my digestion is far better. I poop regularly plus I have far less gas and bloating.
“In conclusion, contrary to popularly held beliefs, reducing or stopping dietary fiber intake improves constipation and its associated symptoms.” – WJG
We get told we need fiber to speed up our digestion, but then get told we need fiber to slow things down. Like the breakdown of sugar in fruit. It is ridiculous.
“Foods high in insoluble fiber include grains, seeds, nuts, vegetables and certain fruits. Insoluble fibers pass through our digestive system practically untouched, because even bacteria can’t easily digest them. Why expose the smooth inner surfaces of our intestines to these abrasive indigestibles?” –Georgia Ede MD
The above should ring alarm bells for anyone with Crohn’s or Colitis. Fiber at it’s core is really just something we cannot digest, we are using to push along other things we cannot digest to poop it out of our system. How can you not think this will irritate your colon. Is it not better to not eat indigestible food matter in the first place, therefore not requiring more indigestible food matter to push it out.
“Does fiber protect the colon from cancer, constipation, and other diseases? No. In the World Journal of Gastroenterology in 2007, Doctors Tan and Seow-Choen published a review of medical studies conducted over the previous 35 years about fiber and colon health and concluded: A strong case cannot be made for a protective effect of dietary fiber against colorectal polyp or cancer. Neither has fiber been found to be useful in chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome…” – WJG
Plants have the potential in numerous ways to irritate the colon. So in my simple mind, to help prevent the need for medication and flare ups for Crohn’s & Colitis is to simply avoid all food that is digested or partially digested in the Large Colon. This means all plants. So grains, sugars, vegetable oils, vegetables and fruits. Especially anything high in fiber, but why mess around just eliminate it all.
“Vegetables (as well as some fruits) are often high in insoluble fiber. While soluble fiber can be soothing for the gut, consuming large amounts of insoluble fiber when your gut is inflamed is a little bit like rubbing a wire brush against an open wound. Ouch.
Vegetables that are high in insoluble fiber include:
Maybe you can get away with some of the above, but is it worth the experimentation.
As well as avoiding food that could irritate the gut you should also look to decrease general inflammation. Probably the biggest inflammatory issue is Omega 6, we are eating far too much of it. This is because Omega 6 is the main fatty acid in vegetable seed oils like Soy and Canola. Vegetable seeds oils are unfortunately found in all packaged, fast and restaurant food. On top of this stress, sleep and environment play a role. If you can keep control of general inflammation, then you will be much more likely to be able to deal with triggers that could cause a flare up for example.
Conclusion
If you are in any doubt about what our bodies are designed to eat, then eat a Ribeye Steak and some Sweetcorn. Then have a look to see what comes out of the other end into the shiny white toilet bowl. It won’t be the steak. It is only logical to then think eating what our body is designed to eat, would cause less stress on the body, and therefore you would be less likely to suffer from digestive issues and disease. Hence you would then not need drugs or surgery or at least reduce your chances of needing them…. in my opinion.
On top of everything I have mentioned I haven’t even touched on benefits of meat only diets in relation general health and well being. Or the destructive properties of high carbs and low fat diets in general.
You see news stories all the time, oh Polar Bears/Sharks/Crocodiles don’t get cancer so we are studying their blood. Well guess what, feed them Cornflakes for Breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, pasta for tea and fruit for dessert…. they will get cancer. They don’t get cancer because they are eating what they have evolved to eat.
A good rule of thumb for humans is:
Eat no food created in the last 200 years.
Be very very very careful eating food created between 201 & 15,000 years ago.
Eat as much as you want of food available over 15,000 years ago. Which is basically Meat.
Before you say we were Hunter Gatherers, so we would have gathered vegetables, berries, tubers etc. This is true but only when meat wasn’t available. Remember Vegan and Vegetarian diets have only become possible due to fossil fuel transportation logistics and supplements over the last 50 – 80 years. Before that fruit and vegetables were only available regionally and seasonally. I am from the North East of England, please enlighten me to what fruits and vegetables were available year round to my ancestors 50,000 years ago. There would have been no option other than to live months on end, on meat only. Luckily we would have been very happy doing so. Also remember fruit and vegetables in the past had much less sugar and much more fiber in them, so it would have been impossible for us to gatherer enough food to live on. Never mind the issues I have already brought up regarding fiber. All this great range of plants you can get in the Supermarket are created by humans, they did not exist to our ancestors. We have spliced Kale, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage and Cauliflower from a mustard plant for example. Do not get caught up in the all plants are good hype, or think Gluten Free pasta is a better option…. well it will be but not as good an option as not eating any pasta obviously.
I am sure a doctor, scientist or nutritionist could pick through this post and say, what about this pathway, what about that chemical, what about this gene expression, and what about aliens that live on Mars. What I am seeing from real people day after day, is meat only diets reversing disease both physical and mental. Like their natural state is being restored. To me the question isn’t should someone with Crohn’s or Colitis go Zero Carb/Carnivore or not? The question is how long should they do it for. Do you stick with it long term and never deviate, or do you eat meat only for 1 or 2 years to allow your digestive system time to heal itself then slowly reintroduce foods and see what effect they have. I am personally of the opinion that Zero Carb is a long term viable healthy option, so I wouldn’t personally reintroduce any plants if I didn’t have to…. and you don’t.
I am not naive enough to think there is a chance that in 5 years time, the standard practice for Crohn’s & Colitis patients will be the Carnivore Diet. The best we can hope for is that whilst the mainstream medical organisation and charities continue to muddle along, small groups will rise up. These will be organised by people from the ground up who have actually got their own Crohn’s & Colitis under control without medication or surgery, and want to help others. This is currently happening in the UK in relation to Diabetes. Diabetes UK is looking extremely old fashioned and out of touch, whereas the up and coming Diabetes.co.uk is looking progressive and adaptable.
Thanks for sticking with this post for so long.
Just to clarify, below is what I consider to be a Zero Carb / Carnivore Diet and why I believe that.
It seems obvious to me that diet can have a massive impact on both disease for good and bad, I believe the more meat you eat and the less plants you eat the better. The question is have other people came to the same conclusion, in regard to Crohn’s & Colitis? Well a lot of people have, here are some examples. These are just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more examples.
“Crohn’s disease is regarded as having no curative treatment. Previous reports on dietary therapy of Crohn’s disease indicate no major success. Case Report: Here we report a severe case of Crohn’s disease where we successfully applied the paleolithic ketogenic diet. Dietary therapy resulted in resolution of symptoms, normalized laboratory parameters as well as gradual normalization of bowel inflammation as evidenced by imaging data and normalization of intestinal permeability as shown by the polyethylene glycol (PEG 400)challenge test. The patient was able to discontinue medication within two weeks. Currently, he is on the diet for 15 months and is free of symptom sas well as side effects. Conclusion: We conclude that the paleolithic ketogenic diet was feasible, effective and safe in the present case.”
Note here that their name Paleolithic Ketogenic Diet is a carnivore diet consisting of red meat and animal fats only at a 2:1 ratio of fats to protein.
“So what does all this say? As always, I’m at a loss to explain it. N=1 is a horrible epistemic position to occupy. I don’t even know what I want to know anymore. I’ll retreat to some bare facts:
In AUG 2009, I started eating a meat-only diet. I crapped my brains out for three months until stabilizing in OCT 2009.
In NOV 2009, I stopped taking my medication.
In AUG 2010, I had a polyp removed from my intestine during my yearly colonoscopy and started drinking milk.
In Jan 2011, I started eating small amounts of potato starch.
In AUG 2011, I had a clean enough colonoscopy to warrant a two year gap until my next one.”
The good thing about this story is he went strict Carnivore. This allowed time for his
digestive system to heal. However someone would just say, yer but if you ate bad again you would get it back so you are not cured. Well after he finished his carnivore protocol, he started reintroducing fruit and vegetables and he has been fine. So once you have allowed your body to heal itself you can go back to a sensible standard diet. Not that I would risk it personally.
“I have tried all kinds of diets and treatments and I wish I knew then what I know now and I might have avoided surgery.I’ve had Ulcerative Colitis since 18 years old in 2005, and after medications all failed, that caused me to lose my colon.I now have an ileostomy and I was told to avoid meat and fat throughout my entire life of this disease. Even after the ileostomy I was told to avoid too much meat and eat a balanced diet, but the interesting part of this, was I also should avoid roughage due to its difficulty to pass through the small intestines and out the ostomy. (This should have been a red flag right away.) If it’s so difficult to digest, why are we eating it at all? Especially in my case with an inflamed colon which brought me here to this ileostomy.After eating poorly with an ileostomy, I decided to take control of my weight and diet. I attempted the keto diet and lost 70 lbs or so, but that diet consists of a lot of dairy, and allows for some nuts and insoluble fiber. This fiber tends to be a problem for people with an ileostomy due to the fact that it doesn’t really break down at all. I now only animal fat and meat and it’s a delight. The output of the ileostomy is simple to manage. It’s all liquid with little to no by products from the food I’ve eaten. I do not eat any dairy either. This is mostly due to the excess cravings that dairy tends to cause in me. Anyone that wishes to debate how red meat doesn’t digest well, can come with me to the restroom and I’ll show them that the only output I have is bile and water. The meat and fat are fully absorbed by the time it reaches the end of my small intestines.The biggest change I’ve experienced on a diet of this restrictive nature, is the freedom, not the shackles. I control my appetite, I have no cravings for poor food choices, and I don’t find myself yearning for the next snack or meat.I also think that this diet has revealed that I am a food addict, and I was chained to the drug of sugar. With most studies on addiction complete removal is usually the best medicine.I plan to keep this up for the foreseeable future, and I hope to see how low I can go in terms of body fat, waist size, and weight. I’d like to maintain strength, but I want to know my limits.The numbers:
5 months (Starting on Dec 31)
Lost 14% body fat (56% to 42%)
Lost 100lbs (385lbs to 285lbs)
Lost 6-8 inches in my waist (48-50 pants to 40)”
Nathaniel Champion“I was diagnosed with IBD (Irritable Bowel Disease) when I was a senior in high school (2011). Had a colonoscopy and was put on a low-dose Lialda (Mesalamine) to control the inflammation. For those of you that know about IBD, you know that there are certain “trigger” foods – spicy, fried, large amounts of alcohol, fresh vegetables (if in acute stage). Diet became everything for me. So much that I cut out all meat for 6 months. (There are articles/literature relating processed meats to higher incidences of colon cancer and this was the logic I used – true or not, I was desperate – I just wanted vitality and I already had risk factors). I had labs performed around the same time (insurance does yearly panels) and they showed I was anemic and had high LDL. I remember being very weak and tired all of the time. I concluded that I was taking steps backwards and not forwards – listening to my body holistically. I got back on my meal prep spread and started feeling better. All of this time I was rehabbing a back injury I got in college and was severely depressed because I was in pain every day – doing lots of rehab, diving into regenerative medicine as well. Was back on track for about 4 months until I heard about the carnivore diet.I began straight carnivore mid-January 2018, about the same time I started a fast-bacc 1 year nursing program down in Houston. Everything was new for me. New city, new curriculum, less time, no social life, less sleep. In my mind, I needed optimal nutrition in order to function at my peak levels and make the grades I wanted in such a fast program. I considered all factors – I knew I was going to be sitting a lot (8-10 hours per day), getting less sunlight, not getting social interaction. At this time I stopped taking my Lialda because the cost went from $10 a month to $250 a month.It’s been approximately 4 months on carnivore and I haven’t had an IBD flare, I sleep throughout the night, my mental and cognitive functioning have increased (I know this is subjective, but I’m able to sit through 12 hour lectures 2x a week, study 8-10 hours per day on the weekends and do 12 hour clinicals every week as well). I only have time to work out 1-2x per week and when I do, I just get my legs moving as much as I can, lift heavy, and work on mobility. Since I’m in school, I haven’t been able to afford all grass fed, so I just go to HEB or Kroger and pick up steaks, hamburger patties, eggs, and butter. I have not had labs performed, but I plan to do that in June, 2018, but I feel better than I ever have.”Wolverine“I now had less than 10 inches of intestine, not nearly enough to live on. Over the next six months I was kept alive by intravenous feedings of TPN and hydration. I didn’t have enough small bowel to even absorb water. When I became dehydrated, instead of drinking, I had to turn up the pump on the hydration fluids. This sounds simpler than it was. When you’re thirsty, every instinct you have tells you to drink. But drinking would raise the ostomy output and only dehydrate me more. I lived in a perpetual state of thirst.
After returning home, I was assigned a home nurse who would attend to my TPN, hydration and care of the surgical wounds. With each visit, she would marvel at the rate at which my surgical incisions were healing. She began to refer to me by the pseudonym Wolverine, after the Marvel character from the X-men, who possesses the ability to quickly regenerate from mortal wounds.”
Twitter, I see almost daily tweets like below.
“My ulcerative colitis disease completley cured after going carnivore. For 13 years I tried a plant based approach vegan, raw vegan, fruitarian etc nothing has worked except carnivore” @adnabdv
I got a write up on Meat Heals today which you can read here.
This is a new and inspiring website showing the restorative benefits of only eating meat, and cutting out plants entirely. I am very pleased to be featured, even though I feel like a bit of a fraud. Other people are taking on some serious diseases, and winning. Whereas I just had a bit of a belly and sore ankles haha. Nevertheless I am loving my Carnivore life, and long may it continue. Thanks to Shawn Baker and the Meat Heals team.
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Diet – Adopting a Low Carb diet was the best thing I ever did for my own health, weight and mental well being. If you are not happy with where you are at now, I can help you make a positive change.
Running – If you are interested in running fat adapted, I can steer you through the obstacles for any running goals you may have. There are separate Diet and Running plans, or you can combine them.
I have recently received some new running clothing, and new minimalist running shoes. I will be wearing these throughout my training period up to and including the Manchester marathon. I am putting them through their paces now, and I will do photos and reviews in due course.
I went away camping at the weekend so for the second weekend running, I was unable to do a long run. So I did three 10k’s during the week. I would like to say I felt fit an strong doing them, but I did not. I felt pretty fatigued all week. I am putting this down to a carb blow out last weekend, which you can read about in The Carnivore Eating Diaries.
I am an Ambassador for a Ketogenic Sports Drink called KETONE.io by Limited Labs – use coupon STEVEN for 10% off storewide. I also contribute to their weekly newsletter The Ketogenic Playbook.
I am also an Ambassador for IAMRUNBOX, which produces products to help the run and cycle commute community. You can use my code J13LPU6E for 15% off storewide.
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