0: How I found Carnivore and where I go from here

This is the first post I wrote for the page. I don't know if this will be the first one you read but I think I will include this aside section at the top of every post I make to give you a heads up on what your about to read. This post details my life in the 2 years leading up to my full commitment to Carnivore. I continue to make a lot of side notes because I don't want to scare you into thinking that I'm on here trying to convince you that you should eat 1500 calories and workout 12 times a week to get your health back on track. These are all the times I believe I was doing the wrong thing and I share them with you so you can know me better and hopefully draw some parallels to the difficulties you've had in your past.

Intro

Carnivore? Like just meat?

Can you remember the first diet you ever tried? I know I don't really remember a specific diet but we always hear, "Eat less and move more." So that's probably where I started. I was pretty much chubby since I was born. So for all of you "Endomorphs," my story may be quite familiar to yours. To any of you that have the opposite difficulty (putting on any weight) I still hope to help you in any way I can.

So, I was a chubby kid and I started to lift weights when I was 12. At that time I was probably under 5 foot tall and weighed more than 120 pounds. I was a growing boy... that ate pounds of food at every meal. As I got older it started to weigh heavy on me that I had never seen my abs. Other kids were skinny when they were small and maybe got some body fat once they were in their teens. They had experienced a six pack and I was jealous of that. Calorie counting and health food train started.

My experience with these is the same as everyone else, I tried to eat less, got miserable, then broke discipline and ate my sorrow away. I didn't try many formal diets until I was in high school. The most prevalent to my memory are shake replacement diets, fruit juice only diets, low calorie diets for sure, and plain old CRB (chicken, rice, and broccoli). I couldn't stick to one diet for longer than 2 or 3 months, losing 10 pounds or so. The problem I think we all face at this point is deciding whether the strain put on us is worth that 10 pounds of fat. Would life be better if I just quit stressing about my food and enjoy myself? Quick answer: Yes, of course. Long answer: Yes, Of course not. What I mean by that is: "Yes" because food can make us very happy while we are eating it and when we have full bellies after, but also "Of course not" because our health and mental state is getting worse the rest of the time.

Happy living is one of the main goals of this site and frankly I believe food is ruining billions of lives. I believe what we eat has a profound effect on not only our physical health but also our emotions and mental activity. Honestly, these were not the benefits I originally set out to find when I began my walk to The Carnivore Diet, they were pleasant side effects that came about along the way. However my transition to Carnivore was not a simple A to B route. It actually started with the exact opposite.

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The Fall

When I was an Ultra-Vegan

In 2016, I was in college and I had watched a TED Talk from a doctor who explains how he had studied multiple cultures in which people were eating mostly plants such as rice or potatoes. He says how these populations are experiencing phenomenal health and all I had to do to have the same experience is eat only vegetables... Yeah I meant it when I said "exact opposite." To me only vegetables meant I ate about 6 potatoes a day, baked in the oven with no oil just salt and pepper. According to the diet this was okay and honestly I felt okay... but just okay. I used to fall asleep in my Calculus class every day but after a month of eating potatoes I actually never fell asleep in there again. Cool right? Kinda. By 2 and half months I was down 15 pounds and I was working out normally but I just wasn't okay with it. It was easy-ish since all I had to eat was potatoes and I usually did that once a day. Of course my issue was that I knew from the start that I wouldn't want to eat this way for my whole life and I only felt okay which is still better than the way I feel eating the foods that hurt me very badly. Anyway, I quit! It was very peaceful. I just calmly decided that I didn't want to do it anymore then I immediately fried some potatoes in oil after fighting the urge for 10 weeks. That was liberating and allowed me to decide to be just vegetarian.

When I was Vegetarian

This lasted about 10 days before I started eating chicken again. Once the chicken came back in it pretty much meant that I had given up on dieting entirely again. The only thing I employed for a long time was Intermittent Fasting.

When I Intermittent Fasted

Intermittent Fasting always appeared like the Holy Grail to me. Eating dubious amounts of food was and still is something I do often. 15 pounds of food in a day was not a hard task for me. With I.F. it made it a lot harder to eat that 15 pounds because I had to do it in one or two meals. I have practiced something like this since 2015 which is why I ate my 6 potatoes all in one sitting when I was vegan. So after the vegetarian phase I was just eating whatever I wanted to in one or two meals at the end of the day. I worked at a diner so I often ate chicken strips and french fries at night. The results were not great but it seemed that I was maintaining my weight instead of gaining. There were no positive effects to my mood or mental state. Overall this was an awful time, my life was really just in a slump and I had no willpower to pay attention to what I ate. A shortage of time and will is probably the death of most diets. What happened next in my life would be the turn around.

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The Rise

Sadly, another commonality in this story is about my college career. I dropped out of school to join the Navy. Leaving school was a big decision for me but now 2 and a half years later I support it more than ever. More importantly when I returned home to live with my dad I was put in the perfect environment to figure out my nutrition and fitness. Physical health is paramount in the military and I was aiming to do special operations as a Navy SEAL. I had the exact motivation I needed it just had to be applied. From summer 2017 to summer 2018, I was being processed to join the Navy. Why it took that long is irrelevant but in that time I was able to test standard Paleo, The Wild Diet by Abel James, Ketogenic dieting for months at a time.

When I was Paleo

Paleo or Paleolithic Dieting is based around the idea that we should eat like cavemen, meaning if we can't hunt it or pick it from a plant then we should not eat be able to eat it. I want to make an emphasis now that this was all done with Intermittent Fasting and restricting myself to 1500 calories a day. I am 5'11" and weighed 230 pounds at the start of this. My one meal a day was a large bowl of spinach, about 200 to 300 grams of it. Usually no dressing just raw spinach and carrots which was maybe 100 calories or so which reserved the rest of my 1400 for chicken. Chicken and spinach was my diet for about 2 months. It sounds miserable, and it was for a week or so but I was on a mission to lean down for my Navy Career so I often ignored my "Eating for Entertainment Mindset." Ignoring that was hard after bending to its will for 18 years but as the days went on I found that the longer I went without sugar the happier and healthier I felt. I was losing weight quite fast, at a rate of at least 2 pounds per week and up to 6 on certain weeks. I don't recommend calorie restriction anymore but I was very happy at the time with these results. Moving along steadily I was eating less than my Basal Metabolic Rate, or the amount of calories my body needs to operate correctly according to the internet. You can web search BMR Calculator and find your own if you're curious. On top of this low calorie limit, I exercised vigorously, twice a day, 6 days a week. It was a lot but also exactly what I needed to do to get ready for the military. I was doing okay with it all then I discovered a book called The Wild Diet by Abel James.

When I was Wild

The Wild Diet was a game changer for me. Paleo was cool and all but I was beyond bored with chicken and spinach by the end of the first month. The Wild Diet introduced me to the idea of fiber and different types of food having different effects on the body. Carbohydrates are good to gain weight, fermented foods inspire growth in your stomach biome, and fat isn't bad for you which is a very important one! All were awesome revelations that lead to me adding a small bit of baked sweet potato, peppers, pickles, and dressing to my salads at dinner. This brought my salad up to 300-400 calories which meant less chicken. Those purple sweet potatoes are worth the sacrifice though and the added variation seemed like a whole new world to me after the prior weeks. I would call this time in my life a high protein, low fat, and low carb diet? I just wasn't eating a lot of anything but chicken. The salads were huge but that's only because spinach is so empty and I could use a bunch of it. At this point I was content with my menu and I stuck with it for 4 months still no cheat days. By the 6 month mark I had dropped nearly 60 pounds of fat and muscle. I weighed 171 pounds at my lightest. So now I am light enough to join the military and I can preform athletically enough to score a contract to do spec ops. What happened next? There was still 6 months until I shipped out to the Navy.

When I was Ketogenic

I had been seeing a lot about the Ketogenic Diet on social media around December and January going into 2018 so when I reached my lowest weight, I decided I should try to put on muscle instead with the Ketogenic Diet. Why did I choose Keto instead of just eating a bunch of carbs again? Mental Health.

The most attractive thing about this diet to me was the idea of finding mental Nirvana, which is a bit of an exaggeration but I am being dead honest when I say that this diet helped me find a new level of happiness. I will have to write about this effect sometime too because Carnivore has the same effect. Anyway, the second most attractive thing about Keto was that unanimously it seemed like eating a lot of food was the only way to get strong while eating this way. This is what all the famous Keto-ers on YouTube say at least. While practicing this way of eating, one must eat 70% of calories from Fat, 25% Protein, and 5% from Carbs roughly. A slogan would read "More Fat, Less Carbs and Protein!" The more calories derived from fat, the deeper into Ketosis one can go. I hear its really good for miraculous healing but I've never been able to maintain more than 80% Fat for extended periods of time. "You can eat more food, but you won't get fat" was the only thing I've ever wanted to hear my whole life and Keto doesn't say that exactly but theoretically if you eat lots of fat you will get full faster and eat less anyway. That last statement is another key point to the journey.

Lessons I want to point out from what you've read so far:

• Less sugar meant more happy days

• Lowering calories can drive weight loss, but is it healthy?

• Fat is not bad for you

• Mental Health can be improved by diet

• Fat makes you more full than carbohydrates (!!!)

Now that I'm eating more and its within the confines of the Ketogenic laws, I hoped to get big muscles and stayed lean. Not so much.

The Fall of Ketogenics

Now it might be obvious that when someone eats more they just tend to put on weight, specifically fat. Why it was dramatic in this case for me was because I went from a 1500 calorie daily amount that could go up to 4000. Increasing by that much did not happen until the 8 or 9 month mark. I stayed low calorie and Keto for a month or so but finally added in cheat days. I saw my weight going up and my strength going up so at some point I decided I was going to go all in and eat as much as I wanted to. My "Eating for Entertainment Mindset" had manifested itself back into reality. By the time I left for the Navy I was even eating Ketogenic anymore and I weighed just under 200 pounds. 30 pounds I had regained. This is the problem with eating a low calorie diet that you cannot sustain. If or when you decide to bring the calories back up your metabolism will be slowed and it will have to ramp back up to the new amount you're eating. All 30 pounds was not fat, it may have been 15/15 because I put on some good size as well but it was still a defeat. Unfortunately, it only got worse after going into the military.

The Navy, being a government institution, follows government regulations on diet and food consumption. In the course of 24 hours I went from being fat on Keto to being fat on a high carb, low fat diet. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner I ate as much food as possible, at least 3 pounds at each meal for 2 months. I believe it was mostly just me trying to cope with the stresses of Boot Camp. When I graduated Recruit Training, I was 10 pounds heavier but it was blatantly obvious that I had lost muscle mass and traded it for more fat. Months of work had gone down the drain, I had gained fat and lost muscle.

My physical and mental game was so broken compared to 6 months before, I ended up dropping out of my spec ops program too. It was devastating. 4 months has passed since then and I've had little opportunities to implement the Carnivore diet. Despite that I topped back out at 230 pounds after bulking up for weight lifting. 3 weeks ago I got to my duty station where I will be for the coming years so I decided now was the time to commit to Carnivore. I talked about it to everyone and anyone I could in the weeks between me leaving for the Navy and now. So in some ways I think that has conditioned me mentally to be ready for this.

I am currently 2 weeks into Carnivore, down 10 pounds overall, and welcoming all of my old mental happiness from before I left for the Navy. I seem to have tamed my "Eating for Entertainment Mindset" and I plan to write about that sometime soon. I just feel comfortable thinking about eating Carnivore the rest of my life and how eating Carbohydrates is not essential to survival but can be used as entertainment. I hope to share more of my philosophies on eating and exercising as a Carnivore for good health each week... As I conclude this I get the sensation that there isn't really much of a conclusion but that is because this has only started.

I'm only about 2 weeks in today, the 27 January 2019, and I hope that makes me more relatable and more realistic. I am an average guy who gains weight easily and wants to eat the things that cause that. I am not super human. I bench about 230 pounds, I squat about 300, and I deadlift just under that. My average pace for a mile is 8 minutes. MY stats are not crazy so I hope to document myself changing that for you all to see. I am a consumer too and all I see are successes after they've already been completed or someone who was in good health before the Carnivore Diet and just switched over. This story will continue every Sunday with another update of my weight lost, weight gained, and strength lost, and strength gained so I hope you feel compelled to see me try to climb out of this hole I've dug myself into.

Adam

Carnivore Human