8: To be Strict Carnivore or Not to be?

This has been stressing me out a lot lately, because I have been eating non-carnivore food more frequently than I would like. If you've read the previous articles then you know that I have planned cheat days and occasional impromptu cheat days. With these impromptu days becoming very frequent this last week I want to sit and give it a hard think. Find out if you should be Strict on your diet or not.

Being Strict on the Carnivore diet has many benefits but it also comes with many sacrifices. Certain pathways down this road lead to different outcomes so you must choose which one fits your desires. Think about what your goal is in a year. Do you want to look totally different? Do you want to feel different? The Carnivore diet can help you achieve either of the two but one might require entirely different discipline than the other. There may also be something unique to your situation that compels you more than others.

This is important to consider in the community and with yourself. I can be very hard on myself about cheat days where I break discipline but if, at the end of the year, I reached my goal then did I really fail? No I did not. It may have been a battle lost but that doesn't mean a defeat in the entire war. Just as I've said before, we cannot dwell on victories but, we also cannot dwell on defeat. Sinking into a defeat may cause more damage than the initial offense. So should you even be mad at yourself for not being strict? Let's find out.

The Meat

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What is the reason you did this?

Your Goal is the determination of how strict you should be while on this Diet. The most popular answer will be weight loss but there are plenty of other reasons. Mine include these:

• Weight/Fat Loss or Body Re-composition

• Mental Clarity

• Primal Instinct

• Overall Health

• "Portion Control" to eat less

These are just the ones that are at the forefront of my mind every day. I will break them down a bit to find the rationale behind it later.

All the Carnivore social media I follow show a high popularity of the same things. Some topics are more popular than others and a few are quite unique to a small percentage of people. I bring this is up because there are also many reasons for doing this diet that are not relevant to me. Some are:

• Healing a chronic disease or ailment

• Avoiding a food allergy

• "Portion Control" to eat more

This is an important thing to consider when outlining your route down this path. If you are only doing this for one reason but you're putting expectations on yourself to eat like someone who is trying to achieve every goal listed above then you may be doing more than enough. Your plan has to be tailored to your goal so you can do it as efficiently as possible. For Example, if someone's goal is to drop body fat but they eat like someone trying to cure an auto-immune disease, this someone will be doing much more than what is required of them.

I advocate for keeping this as casual as possible so again this is all going to sound sacrilege to those who are very passionate about Carnivore but I hope to speak on both sides of the fence. Let's make a summary and a short plan for each of the reasons above.

Body Re-composition

This is the big fish and the one that the fitness industry is run on these days. Body Re-comp is changing your body to look or feel a certain way. A small waist and a large set of shoulders is the mainstream body type to have currently. Super heroes and action stars sport the same V-shaped body.

I think a Carnivore diet can be very helpful in achieving this V-shaped physique or any physique for that matter. Achieving the Super Hero look is just about adding muscle to the correct places and losing body fat. So far in 2 months I have dropped nearly 20 pounds but I have visibly larger arms and a slightly larger chest. I showed a picture of this in last weeks article.

So far meat has done a marvelous job in this arena. The point I want to make here is that I regularly have cheat days and eat non-carnivore food. I once did a thing called "The Military Diet" (themilitarydiet.com) and that involved only following a certain type of diet for 3 days of the week and on the other 4 one could eat whatever they like. With that philosophy/technique in mind someone would technically do carnivore 3 days a week and possibly see the same results. I have not tested that and I do not recommend it. I do recommend working your way up to doing Carnivore 5-6 days a week and only having a cheat day or cheat weekend. This is pretty much what I have been doing for the past 2 months and my body composition has improved overall. There were definitely a few times when I went 10 days Carnivore but, also a few times when I only went 2 days.

• For Body Re-composition Strict Carnivore is Not Necessary.

The days on Carnivore are obviously what made the Fat Loss occur and the high protein helps to build muscle. A smart weight training regimen is all that is needed to restructure your physique. If you want to drop more fat then lengthen the time between cheat days.

Mental Clarity

Peace of mind is something I've been needing a lot of lately so I am feeling pretty strongly about this right now.

Finding the happiness I always talk about is a side effect of being on Carnivore because it helps clear the clutter in your brain. The YouTube channel titled "What I've Learned" has multiple videos on this and a few on Carnviore/Low Carb, I highly suggest them. Obtaining this state of happiness is only possible after following the diet for prolonged periods of time which makes cheat days detrimental.

It takes me about 4 or 5 days to recover from eating plant food. The symptoms I watch dissipate are bloating, irregular bowel movements, and mental function. Mental function for me consists of the ability to focus, emotional reactivity, depression, etc. I personally cannot focus right after eating a bunch of carbs or sugar. In the following days is when I become very emotional and quite depressed. It's a wonder that I would still have a cheat day despite feeling these things. That's carb addiction for you.

• For Mental Clarity a prolonged following of the Carnivore Diet is required, a cheat day will end the positive effects and exchange them for negative effects. Strict Carnivore is Necessary.

Do it for as long as you can and eventually you will probably be a carnivore permanently which is awesome. Avoid cheat days at all cost but Mental Clarity can always be found again so they are not an end all if Mental Clarity is your only goal.

Primal Instinct

If you read the article where I used my Caveman analogy you know how I feel about humans and eating meat. The primal instinct in me is a bit different. Basically I have always felt like my body would be smart enough to sort out food and ensure that everything I ate was put to good use so why would eating more cause such bad outcomes?

Meat tastes great and it treats me awesome so my instinct tell me that meat is my preferred source of food.

• For Primal Instinct eating meat is just a way of trying to do what you feel is correct. Strict Carnivore is Not Necessary.

I have spoken about this shortly in the past. If you are propelled by Primal Instinct then that means you believe meat is your primary fuel and that you will always come back to it when you feel under nourished. If you do eat something non-carnivore that does not mean you will never eat meat again. It does not mean that you have lost sight of what your primary fuel is. You just ate something else. Most times something else tastes good so no one can blame you but if you see your health declining then you know where your home is: Meat.

"Portion Control" to eat more and to eat less

My personal situations is for eating less so I will speak on that first.

I have always boasted of my eating abilities and I still do despite my shrunken food capacity. I used to eat pounds of food at every meal and that was a part of my road to being obese. When I started the Carnivore diet it immediately reduced the volume of food I ate. Calorie intake may have been different but the volume was much smaller. If I used to eat 10 pounds a day, I only eat 3 now. This has made my digestion more regular and I assumed it has taken the stress off of my guts too.

For those who cannot eat enough I cannot speak on this from experience. I am simply not privy to that information. If you are reading this and experience this or used to experience this send me your story and I can insert it here after the blog is published

"(Your Story Here)"

My assumption is that someone who is not eating enough has a body that is aware of the food it's receiving. By this I mean that the body sees your diet consisting of plants and sugars so it reduces your appetite to stave off those null nutrients. Reintroducing meat might wake your body back up and help it desire to obtain nutrition again. That is just a guess and I cannot test it on myself because my eating disorder is the opposite to yours. If it motivates you to try Carnivore I hope it helps and I would love to hear the results you get.

• For Portion Control Strict Carnivore is Not Necessary

Strict Carnivore is not necessary in the same way that is not for Body Re-Comp. When you eat meat the amount of food (for over eaters) will come down or up (for under eaters).

For over eaters, sugar will generally make you crave food beyond the volume you should be eating so you must balance the days you eat meat and the days you eat carbohydrates. If you eat ice cream, pizza, and soda every other day then the change will probably be negligible. My suggestion would be to have a cheat day or cheat weekend. On the days you eat meat you will get full faster than usual and your ability to eat large amounts will reduce over the weeks.

For under eaters, I would say carbs could help your appetite but if you're here then that probably means you have tried that already. In that case I would suggest you try to eat as many small meals throughout the day or that you can handle throughout the day. If that means cooking up 1 pound of ground beef and eating it little by little until you go to sleep go ahead and do that. Whatever works for you, just make sure to listen to your body and give it what it needs. Increase amount slowly week by week and if you can't handle as much on one day don't force feed or anything. I have a feeling I should suggest milk/raw milk, it's a nice animal based carb that might give you the benefits of appetite increase and carnivore.

Healing a Chronic Disease or Ailment

This is another thing I do not experience so I cannot speak for myself but there are many people following this diet for this reason. drawing from what many of them say I can come to a conclusion.

• For a Chronic Disease or Ailment Strict Carnivore is Necessary.

From what I can tell the Carnivore Diet is perfect for curing diseases that stem from an autoimmune disorder. The wonderful thing is that following a Carnivore Diet brings these people to a healthy state and it will adapt to using meat as the primary and sole source of fuel. The not so wonderful thing is that the body wants to stay on Carnivore because it has helped to achieve good health, which is understandable. When you have a good thing going you want it to keep going. Now that a disease has been cured with the use of meat the body can relax and settle into Carnivorous lifestyle. If any non Carnivorous foods, or the food that was specifically causing autoimmune malfunction, is reintroduced then the body will not be expecting it and will lash out to being terribly unhealthy very fast. Mikhaila Peterson and her father, Jordan Peterson, both attested to this and say that even a small introduction of plant food back into the diet reverted the positive progress with no hesitation.

For that reason it is true that someone trying to cure an autoimmune related disease would have to maintain Strict Carnivore indefinitely. Fortunately the positive effects seems to outweigh any sugar high that can be obtained through plant food. Most of the people in these cases are so happy with the improvement that plant food is not worth a thought any longer.

Avoiding an Allergy

Omitting a food from your diet because you are allergic to it is a smart choice and should be done continuously to manage the risk of you having a reaction. If you are considering this diet because you are allergic to foods that are deemed "essential" such as vegetable and fruit then I welcome you to this way of eating, it will help you immensely.

• To Avoid Allergies Strict Carnivore is not Necessary but any degree of Carnivorous eating is suggested.

I know folks that are allergic to fish. Yes all of them. I do not know why but that makes me think there may be some people out there that are allergic to beef/ruminant meat. I assume those people are not here reading this so for the rest of you I highly suggest this diet because it provides all of the necessary nutrition for optimal health and you wont have to worry about your allergies especially if you cook at home. If I had a slew of allergies I would be most worried about not receiving proper or sufficient nutrients because I can't eat them. It has been proven that we can live and grow on a meat only diet so if this sounds like a solution to your worries then I highly suggest you get on the path to being a Carnivore.

Conclusion

We have dissected the inner workings behind a few popular reasons for starting the Carnivore diet to see if being a Strict Carnivore is right for everyone. The answer is: it is not right for everyone. Each person has their own goals to achieve and each requires a specific route to a specific destination. Can someone do strict Carnivore even though they are just trying to lose weight? Yes of course, and they will see more positive changes than just weight loss but if they can only manage Carnivore 5 days a week to reach their goal then that is what they must do. That's all that they have to do to get where they want to be.

Don't let a cheat day or people tell you that you're wrong. For some, Carnivore dieting is just a tool and for others it is a lifestyle. To each, their own. I write this hoping to create a casual meeting place for those who believe in the power of meat and being Carnivorous. If you appreciate and respect that someone else isn't as strict or is more strict than you, this is the community for you. Anyone who has had success knows how good it feels and I think we should share that with as many people as possible or else Meat-based diets may disappear.

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I have a Facebook and an Instagram going now. Hopefully you can just search "The Carnivore Human" and find it. Same logo everywhere so it should be easy to find. This blog is where you find all of the hard information and teaching I have to give but if you want to see me in action, Facebook and Instagram are the places to go. I'll be posting food pics and workout videos so if you want to see that follow those pages! If this is your first article then definitely check out some of the ones that came before it. Thanks for reading and your support of this page and this movement.

Get Meaty My Friends!

Adam

The Carnivore Human