You Have to Stop Doing Carnivore

Posted on January 29, 2024 by GAHCindy

You’ll waste away!

Every time I see somebody I haven’t seen in a while, they tell me how great I look. Well, that’s nice of them, isn’t it? It also happens to be true. I look about as good as I am capable of looking. Not gonna be winning any beauty contests, sadly, but I’m doing OK! And then, at least half the time, that same someone will say with concern–or, I’m not above suspecting, envy–something to the effect that one can take this thing too far, and I should really reincorporate something sweet into my meals at some point.

There was a time when it would have been a fair observation that I was becoming too skinny. Back when I was doing keto and there were a bunch of vegetables taking up space I should have been using for protein and fat, I was getting to be a little bit on the stringy side. I got down to just 100 lbs, and I hated the way I looked. I still hadn’t lost all the visible fat in my belly, but everything just hung off of me. I was wasting muscle, not just fat. I knew I couldn’t go back to the way of eating that had made me sick to begin with, but I certainly couldn’t continue with keto. All of my research convinced me that removing even more kinds of foods from my diet, rather than adding anything else back, was the best way to make myself truly healthy, and not just not fat.

When I went carnivore, I put back on fifteen pounds or so, and most of that was muscle and bone. I wish I’d had a before and after dexa scan to prove it, but common sense and a good look in the mirror are really enough. I’m definitely bigger than I was, and I’m definitely not fat.

Now, most of the time, when somebody tells me I’m going to get sick from all this meat, I just show my skeptic a nice, firm bicep, or tell them how fast I can run or how much weight I can lift these days. I am well-built at this point, with a healthy layer of muscle everywhere it ought to be. I even get comments about my good build from strangers in public. Nobody thinks I’m skinny. Feels good, man!

I do still have a little bit of mommy-belly, an inch or so of dangly skin that’s pretty easily hidden under my clothes. I’ve carried eight babies and had 5 c-sections. It’s not perfect, and I don’t know if it ever will be. But that’s ok, because a perfect little tummy is not what I’m going for. It would be nice, but it’s not my goal. That’s what I really want you to understand: I’m not doing this diet so I can look small. I want to be appropriately sized, strong and fast enough to do anything I need to do, and sharp and quick enough to stay alive in an increasingly tricky world. (Have you seen the traffic around here lately?)

I can’t do this if I’m eating the way 98% of the people around me are eating. Sorry. It just won’t work. It’s not working for you, either, friend.

Beauty is a sign of health, and health is what I’m chasing. I won’t say I don’t care how I look, because I’m as vain as any woman. I like to look just as good as I can. Happily, when I chase health, I’m bound to catch a little beauty, as well! I can’t lose eating this way!

Carnivore is not a weight loss diet. If you are fat, you will lose weight on carnivore. Your body will no longer be receiving the signal from your food to store extra fat. But if you are too skinny, you can fix that with carnivore, too! Doesn’t that just blow your mind? How is that even possible? But it’s true. You can stimulate muscle and put on healthy fat with this diet. I did it myself, and I haven’t dropped below 115 pounds in a few years. In fact, I’m still slowly gaining a little muscle. It ain’t easy to gain at 40-something, but if you lift consistently, and eat enough MEAT, it is doable.

I never have to eat more than I want to, but I do get to eat until I’m full. And then I can stop eating until I’m hungry again. Now, my concerned friend, does that sound like an eating disorder to you?

People actually heal their eating disorders and get back to a healthy weight by eating only meat. The carnivore way of eating will recompose your body to its best advantage. It does not simply force weight loss until you die. It is not anorexia. It is not a weird cultish fear of food. It is not something people do just to shock the current culture and stick a finger in the globalist all-seeing eye. (Although I do see that last as an upside.)

Carnivore is simply optimal.

For everybody, though? Well, like I’ve said before, I don’t think everybody has to go carnivore. Most people who think they’re doing ok would see improvements in problems they never even thought were food-related, if they’d just give it 30 days. I do think absolutely everybody can thrive on it. There is nobody who absolutely has to have plants. They are non-essential. Plants, especially grains, are survival food, hibernation food, slave food. As long as I have a choice, I want to thrive, not just survive.

There are sometimes some bumps in the road for some as they become accustomed to the Meat Life™, but all of the difficulties I’ve coached people through are caused not by eating meat, but by the severe damage they’ve already done to their bodies with standard American fare. See my “Why Carnivore Didn’t Work For You” series, for a few ways things can go wrong. If you need any help getting through the transition to a diet (not necessarily carnivore) that will work best for you, get in touch with me by email (cindy at getalonghome dot com) or on social media. I’d love to help!

Dear friends and family, I cannot possibly take this lifestyle too far, because it is not weight loss that I’m pursuing. It is health that I am after, and I’m getting better all the time. Join me!

Want to chat? Catch me on Gab, MeWe, or Social Galactic.

Why Didn’t Carnivore or Keto “Work” For Me?

Posted on September 8, 2023 by GAHCindy

Isn’t it supposed to be the optimal way to eat?

Since I began coaching people in the carnivore/keto way of eating, I’ve heard a lot of wonderful success stories. I’ve seen migraine patients drastically reduce their frequency of headaches, and a couple have reported that they are completely pain-free. I’ve seen hundreds of pounds of weight lost. I’ve seen people get off blood pressure and (type 2) diabetes medication. I’ve seen anxiety disorders improve. Everything that I have experienced in my own health, I have also seen happen to others through my coaching. I enjoy the face time I get with my clients. It fills a need in my life that I didn’t even know I had. Nothing makes me happier than getting a call back from somebody and hearing about the ten more pounds lost, or the skin condition cleared up. I help people! I’m feeling pretty good about this gig!

But there have been a couple of “failures”, as well. For better or worse, I’ll often talk to a client once, and then have little follow-up because they don’t need further help. They just hopped right in and got better. These cases don’t bother me. That’s a good thing, even if it does mean I don’t get another paycheck. It also means that I have no idea how things go for some people. They just don’t get back to me at all, and I’m left wondering how it went. Thankfully, the people who do not do well often come back, even if it’s just to explain to me why they’re not doing the diet anymore. The criticism and explanations help me far more than they probably intend to, given that they’re basically just venting their frustrations before they walk away.

I don’t view these cases as failures of the diet, because physiologically, it just doesn’t make sense that the diet wouldn’t help pretty much anybody. Nor are they failures in the client. I view them, rather, as failures in my coaching for those (literally 2) clients of mine who found they couldn’t make it work. There are others who have “failed” who I haven’t coached, but who–kindly or otherwise–emailed to let me know I was full of beans.

To be clear, I don’t think everybody needs to be fully carnivorous in their eating. While we are all built to the same basic plan, everybody’s coming from a different background, and with different current needs. When somebody doesn’t want to do carnivore, unless I can see that they have an obvious problem with all plants the way I do, I help them think about other ways of eating, targeting those foods and patterns of behavior that are most likely to be causing harm to them.

Carnivore is a way of thinking about food, not a religion.

I have counseled low-carb athletes to incorporate some easy-to-digest carbs for performance. I personally have not gone that route, and found that I have some limits because I’m not willing to do that. That’s fine. My clients and I have different goals. I have had one metabolically healthy woman add fruit back to her diet because she just couldn’t get her electrolytes straight any other way. The first few years of carnivore were perfect for her, but she had reached the end of her need for restriction and needed to experiment a little bit for the next step. Do I think there may have been a more carnivorous way to solve her problem? Sure! But having some fruit and veg when sugar and fiber aren’t a problem for you is not the end of the world, so that’s what she did.

I do think most people need to at least be in ketosis a good portion of their day, so I always, always steer people to the low carb side of things. While there is an amount of carbohydrate that a healthy person can handle, people who come to me aren’t usually that healthy yet. Even when they are, the amount they are able to tolerate isn’t nearly as much as they’d often like to consume once they get started. Carbs make you eat more carbs. It’s just the nature of the beast. The cases I spoke of above are two unusual cases out of many.

So why didn’t carnivore “work” for you? This post is an introduction to several more that I hope will help you troubleshoot what went wrong when you tried to change your diet. Hopefully these posts will also help people new to the diet never encounter these problems to begin with. If you’re a newb, read them all before you jump in. Carnivore or meat-based ketogenic eating is very simple, and doing it should be as easy as falling off a log. Unfortunately, we’re usually coming at this from a life of dysfunction, whether physical, social, or mental, and we get tripped up. If you have any diet-related problems at all–and if you’ve been eating the typical Western diet, you do–it is well worth trying more than once, even if you have “failed” in the past.

Do You Need Supplements with a Carnivore Diet?

Posted on August 17, 2023 by GAHCindy

I died of scurvy last year. Twice.

I was looking through some old posts the other day and saw an old comment I’d ignored at the time.

Do you take vitamin supplements? How do you keep from getting malnourished or even gout?
Just curious. Love the idea of steak for breakfast, pricey though.

I was asked the same thing just a couple of days ago, and the day before that, and a few weeks before that. I get it all the time. The simple answer, and the one I usually give, is this:

There is nothing in plants that you need that you can’t get more efficiently and completely from meat. (By the way, steak isn’t that expensive when you don’t eat the sides.) The only thing plants have that meat does not–sugar, fiber, anti-nutrients, that vegan sense of moral superiority–are things you don’t need anyway, and many which you may be better off without. Especially that last.

That’s my story, and I am sticking to it. It’s a nice, pat, accurate answer, as far as it goes. But as with most things in life, it can get a little more complicated than that. And that is what blogs are for.

So, what about scurvy? What about anti-oxidants? What about eating the rainbow?

Usually, Vitamin C is at the forefront of people’s minds when thinking of the potential pitfalls of a carnivorous diet. As far as I can tell, there has not been one documented case of scurvy in a strict carnivore. Contrary to popular belief–and most beliefs about food in our culture are merely popular, not accurate–muscle meat does have a small amount of C in it. It’s not a lot, compared to some plants, but because cellular uptake of vitamin C is inhibited by hyperglycemia, when you’re not spiking your blood sugar all day long, year after year, your cells don’t have any problems utilizing whatever amount of ascorbic acid you you do take in.

Most of the vitamin C found in that much-vaunted morning glass of “healthy” orange juice goes into the toilet, not your cells, because of all the sugar that rides along with it hindering absorption. You’ll still absorb some, but ironically, without the sugary fruit delivery system, you don’t need the massive amounts of C found in the fruit to stay healthy.

Also, as Sally K. Norton explains,

The body tends to metabolize excess vitamin C into a corrosive acid called oxalic acid. This acid immediately steals minerals like calcium as it becomes oxalate. As the kidneys remove oxalate from the blood, calcium oxalate can grow into crystals in the kidneys or elsewhere in the urinary tract causing painful stones. Over time, if the kidneys are forced to handle excessive amounts of oxalate everyday, kidney failure is likely. This is how taking 500 mg or more of vitamin C can promote a loss of kidney function. Perhaps the modern habit of taking extra vitamin C is contributing to the rising rates of kidney stones. One estimate suggests that half of us will get a kidney stone in our lifetime.

So maybe you don’t want your Vitamin C all that high, anyway.

I do think it’s nice that the Lord put the huge amounts of ascorbic acid into the same fruits that inhibit your ascorbic acid absorption, don’t you? Kinda balances things out a little. But you don’t have to drink OJ to get your C boost. At best, it somewhat mitigates through the vitamin C the damage that can be caused by the sugar. At worst, when you’re really insulin resistant, OJ can’t even overcome its own sugary downside.

But C isn’t the only concern, of course. What about all those other vitamins and micro-nutrients in plants? What about the superfoods I feel so good about putting on my plate?

Well, I hate to break it to you, friend, but “superfood” is a marketing buzzword, not a real thing. All of the nutrients found in plants are there for the sake of the plant, and are bound up in ways that the human body doesn’t easily break down into something usable for itself. I’m not saying that there’s zero benefit from these plants. Clearly you are able to get some nutrition from plants. Vegans don’t die immediately. In fact, they can live a long time in an increasingly miserable state. But the amount of, say, Vitamin A that your body can synthesize from the beta carotene found in a carrot is miniscule compared to the amount of already-bioavailable Vitamin A that you’ll get from meat.

Unlike us, the animals we eat are able to extract a great deal of the available nutrition found in plants because they are designed to do that. (Now wait, Christian. Aren’t humans designed to be vegetarians, like in the Garden of Eden? Find my answer to that here.)

Because of the lower animals’ unique digestive tracts, especially ruminant animals, which I think should be a very large percentage of food consumed, carnivores are getting better and more vitamins from animal products. Plant foods are simply sub-optimal compared to the easy-to-absorb nutrition found in meat, which our high-acid stomachs are incredibly efficient at processing.

There are multi-decade carnivores who have eaten nothing but meat, no supplements at all, and are running circles around those of us who have been on a Standard American Diet for the same amount of time. I have no reason to disbelieve these people when they say they don’t take supplements. I can personally attest, nearly six years in, that I feel great and don’t yet show any signs of malnourishment while consuming about 99% of my calories as muscle meat.

But there is a place for mineral and Vitamin D supplementation. It is likely that everybody, including people who think they’re doing just fine, could benefit from supplementation of iodine and magnesium, to name my big two. Plant-eaters have the same problem that meat-eaters do, in this regard. Eating your super-foods won’t help you here, as your body is not very good at extracting even those nutrients that are in your precious kale.

Depending on the location and method of farming, the soils our crops and livestock feed are grown in are likely deficient in a number of minerals. What’s not in the soil, or not absorbable from the soil by the plant because of farming methods and genetic tinkering, cannot pass into the plants, or into the animals and humans that eat them. Inland soil is not going to have a lot of iodine, which comes from sea water. Pretty much all farmed soil is depleted of magnesium at this point. I think everybody ought to be taking at least those two mineral supplements, though I admit I neglect to do so most of the time. There are other mineral supplements that might be useful, based on symptoms and individual circumstances.

And of course, there’s Vitamin D. I do think you can maintain your D levels with enough meat and enough sunshine, but good luck getting enough sunshine, office workers! I like to sunbathe during the late spring and through the summer, but I supplement with vitamin D+K2 for the rest of the year. There is some D to be found in animal products, but the sun is the big stimulator of vitamin D production. Most people do not live in a latitude that provides adequate sunshine, nor do they often go outdoors long enough every day to obtain it even if they do.

Now, maybe you don’t believe me that you don’t need plants to be healthy. I don’t blame you. It’s just not something you’ve ever even imagined before, is it? You’ve been told all your life that you have to eat your carrots to have good eyesight. You have to have your fruit to keep from catching colds or worse. You have to eat your Vitamin F (fiber) or you won’t be able to poop!

You’ve been told a lot of lies, Dear Reader. I understand why this is hard to get past.I had a really hard time letting go of my leafy greens, to be honest. But I’m not eating them anymore, and guess what? I’m better for it, not worse. I have an OCD called trichotillomania (hair-pulling) that goes away 100% as long as I don’t ingest any fiber. I can eat leafy greens for the (largely indigestible) vitamins in there, or I can just eat meat and have eyebrows and eyelashes. I certainly wasn’t looking for this particular benefit when I went carnivore, but it was a pleasant surprise.

Try it sometime for a minimum of 6-8 weeks or so. Really give it the old college try. You might find relief from some symptom or quirk about yourself that you just thought was a cross you’d have to bear forever. At any rate, don’t let the idea that you’ll be malnourished stop you from finding a better way to eat than a high-carb diet.

I am more convinced with every passing year that I do this that meat is sufficient for all of those needs.

I can help with this, by the way, if you’d like diet and lifestyle coaching. Email me at cindy at getalonghome.com or find me on social media and we’ll set up a call. Want to discuss this post? Find me at MeWe, Gab, or Social Galactic.

Meat is Not Jesus

Posted on May 4, 2023 by GAHCindy

It won’t save you.

I spend a lot of time touting the benefits of a meat-heavy diet. I really, really believe in the carnivore and keto way of life! I believe in it so much that I’m spending what little free time I have coaching others on how to change their own dietary habits. While I try to respect other people’s food choices, I’m not at all shy about sharing information with people who appear to be open to it. You might even say I’m a carnivore evangelist. Being a preacher’s daughter, I guess that’s a role I can feel comfortable with.

I haven’t been coaching people on diet for very long at all, but I have spent some time informally helping people in my real life and online figure out how to get to a healthier place with their food. A friend of mine wanted to try carnivore, and I was curious as to what specific issues he was dealing with.

“What do you hope to get out of a carnivore diet?”

“I just want to be happy and well-adjusted like the Petersons.”

Oh, dear. Oh, dearie me.

I often hear names like Jordan B. Peterson and Joe Rogan brought up by carnivores– usually secular ones–as the luminaries who brought them to the Meat Side. Now, I don’t care how a person finds out about carnivore. It’s the best thing to do, no matter why you’re doing it. But I do worry that people who listen to these sources are not just expecting health, but an entire shift in their spiritual condition, just by eating meat. After all, would they even be listening to JBP if they had any discernment at all?

There is a great deal of mental help in carnivore! Let there be no doubt about that. I honestly doubt that Jordan Peterson has adhered very strictly to the diet at all, but perhaps he has. He’s still a basket-case. No well-adjusted man cries as freely as he does. And his daughter has certainly healed her auto-immune disease and her mental state, as well, by eating beef, and only beef. She’s doing very well, but she’s still a hot mess in some other ways, to put it in as non-gossipy a way as possible. Joe Rogan has toyed with the diet and interviewed some carnivore guests, and I’m told he attests to the value of the diet even though he’s not a strict adherent. But he’s literally consorting with demons, OK?

I have myself resolved all sorts of internal angst, the kind that is physically triggered by food, through first keto, then carnivore eating. I highly recommend Dr. Chris Palmer’s book Brain Energy, which gives as good an explanation as I’ve seen for why so many who suffer from mental illness find relief with a ketogenic diet. I think there’s probably more to be said about the gut micro-biome, gut permeability, and the vagus nerve, which communicates between the gut and the brain. Brain Energy is nevertheless a ground-breaking book. It focuses more on the ketones than a lot of other things that I think are going on, but explains a great deal. Whatever the reason, keto works. Carnivore works.

I want to say this loud and clear, lest I be found wanting on Judgment Day for failing to give the real credit where it is due:

If you cure all of your irrational fears, all of your anxieties, all of your mental and social dysfunctions, but you still don’t have Jesus, you still have nothing. You might even act like a nicer person, mistreat others less often, or harm yourself less often, but you’re still in your sin.

Conversely, when I had OCD, social phobia, depression, and general anxiety, but I had Jesus, I had everything already.

Now, I know what a skeptic would say here: If Jesus was so great for you, why did it take a dietary change to fix all these things?

If I ascend up into the heavens, you are there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there psalm 139: 8

I don’t know the mind of God, of course, but His word gives me a clue. He let me make my bed in Hell so that he could show His power to come to me there. Through my weakness I can say right along with the Apostle Paul that:

…there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

–2 Corinthians 12:-8

You can read my testimony here, if you care for more background.

While I was having a difficult time with some aspects of life, I was learning to lean on Jesus. I asked for healing, but to no avail. Or so I thought. Looking back, I can see that what looked like a dark, gloomy pit was really a quiet nest in which a baby Christian could develop, sheltered from many of the assaults of the world which I likely would not have been proof against, had I found out about the carnivore diet while I was still spiritually weak.

To an unbeliever, this must certainly sound foolish, but I wouldn’t trade my years of mental difficulty for all the meat-induced calm in the world, because Jesus shone into my darkness in a way that I think few have experienced. Could God have made me all better all at once? Sure! But I needed to be where I was.

For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

–Hebrews 12:6-12

Not only does it not bother me that I didn’t find a path to health for so long, I am grateful for it.

There’s a lot I would never have learned, had my life been immediately made as anxiety-free as it now is. I wouldn’t have been as useful to the work He had for me to do, then or now, had I not gone through a crucible suited to my particular metal. I am undoubtedly a more relaxed person with carnivore, but I am not more joyful. I am not a better person because I eat meat.

I just wanted to take a minute from my meat-boosting to praise the One who really saves. I get uncomfortable if I go too long between reminders that it’s all Jesus.

Submit to the One who created you. Give thanks to Him and bless His name.

Have Thine own way, Lord,
Have Thine own way;
Thou art the Potter,
I am the clay.
Mould me and make me
After Thy will,
While I am waiting,
Yielded and still.

Dairy-Free Cloud Bread

Posted on April 26, 2023 by GAHCindy

Every low carb eater has a cloud-bread recipe. I don’t claim any originality or superiority for this one. They all turn out basically the same, to be honest. This recipe makes a bigger batch for a bigger family (or just a bigger appetite). Most people use cream cheese, but we have to work around dairy sensitivities, so this a dairy-free version.

Print Recipe

Dairy-free Cloud Bread

A light bread substitute for the carb-conscious

Prep Time5

Cook Time15

Servings:

Equipment

hand mixer
parchment or silicone mats

Ingredients

8 eggs separated
8 Tbs mayonnaise
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 pinch salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder (optional)

Instructions

Heat the oven to 325°
Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar in a large bowl until stiff. It is important to use clean beaters. The whites won't stiffen if you contaminate them with other ingredients, so don't neglect to do this step first.
Mix the rest of the ingredients in a separate large bowl.
Spoon about 1/4 of the egg white foam into the yolk mixture, then gently fold (do not beat!) in until the mixture is homogenous. Repeat until all of the white is blended with the yolk.
Drop 1/4 cup dollops of the batter onto cookie sheets, lined with parchment paper. I usually need three pans for this amount of batter.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until set and golden brown.

I sometimes miss sandwiches, and find that this bread does a pretty good job filling in for the bread. It’s not 100% carnivore, but I make occasional allowances for avocado or coconut oils. If you do carnivore with dairy, substitute cream cheese for the mayo, and you can stay purely carnivore. If you do it without dairy, I’d bet bacon grease would do the trick. Omit the salt if you’re going to do that. I may try this and get back to you.

I recently made egg breakfast sandwiches with mayonnaise. Egg and mayo on egg and mayo. It works, okay?

Picnic!

Plain Food

Posted on April 24, 2023 by GAHCindy

Healthy kids.

One of my teenagers recently told me of a conversation with his coworker. He was talking about our family’s food habits, and told her that I often serve plain, crumbled ground beef with no seasonings.

“That’s child abuse!”

Now, first of all, it’s not like I’m forbidding my children the use of all seasonings. Salt and butter they have in abundance, and they can usually have salsa, sour cream, worcestershire sauce, or several other condiments they like. But we do eat a fair amount of undressed, un-sauced food, and I do this very intentionally. It is not out of laziness, or meanness, or even because I’m a bad cook. I serve most of our food unadorned out of a sincere belief that this will teach my children to have a healthy relationship with food.

When I first started eating a ketogenic diet, I went into it with the mindset that this diet was just for me, because of my particular health problems. I was still stuck in my old way of thinking, brought on by frequent contact with Western medicine, that my problems were genetic, irreversible, and unique to me, so I didn’t feel that there was a need to drag my perfectly healthy (or so I thought) children along for the ride. I was just trying to keep my blood sugar under control, not change the world.

I continued to make the family’s usual “healthy” foods and just made a little something different for myself. But as I delved more into the topic, and especially as I began to go fully carnivore, the realization set in that sugar wasn’t even the main reason I shouldn’t be eating plants. I began to understand that the principles I was applying to my own health could and should be applied to the health of every human being. I had thought at first that keto/carnivore was going to be just a me thing, but I saw after several months that I didn’t just look better. Not only did I have better blood-glucose levels, but all kinds of health problems had become faint memories, rather than daily realities.

Joint pain, brain fog, anxiety, social phobia, trichotillomania, hidradenitis supprativa, asthma, eczema, seasonal allergies, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve just plain forgotten were all GONE. (I still sneeze a little during ragweed season.)

Having realized that, I began to accept that my children were also having some of the same problems I was, and likely for the same reasons. Were they really doing fine, as I’d thought? One of my children had the trifecta of allergies, asthma, and eczema, as well as the disturbing beginnings of an OCD (brought on by a viral infection). Another had been showing symptoms of IBS for at least a year. We had already discovered long ago that still another child loses all symptoms and behaviors of autism as long as we don’t include grains and dairy in that child’s diet. What else might I be able to do for them with an appropriate diet?

Seeing all of this, I couldn’t any longer keep my children on even a “healthy” normal diet. While I didn’t take them all fully carnivore, I did begin to make all of their meals heavily meat-based. I allow them no more than two servings a day of either fruit or a starchy vegetable. They can have some leafy greens, though not kale or spinach. I eliminated grains, seed oils, and all refined carbohydrates completely, allowing for seeds and nuts or beans once a week, and only for the children who tolerate them well. For the two with the most obvious problems, we went 100% carnivore for a time. Both of those children are able to incorporate only small amounts of some “safer” plants, though still not daily.

It’s pretty restrictive, and we’re fine with that.

Now, I know (or hope, at least) that my son’s coworker was joking when she proclaimed our plain fare to be actual child abuse. But let me tell you what looks a lot more like child abuse to me:

8 year-olds who weigh 150 pounds
teenagers with Type II diabetes
children who can’t go more than an hour without begging for a snack
children who can’t behave themselves because of food colorings, sugar highs, malabsorption of nutrients, and proteins that are incompatible with the human gut

That, and not thoughtful application of dietary principles, is child abuse. I am certainly not accusing parents themselves (most of them, anyway) of abuse, but our overall food culture is abusive. Because of dishonest science, hatred of self-discipline, and the greed of big food corporations, nobody knows how to eat, or even that food has an impact on all areas of health. That is an absolute shame, and we have to put an end to it. Now, once a person knows he should do something, and doesn’t do it, we might begin to put the blame on that person. It might become abuse, or at least neglect, if a bad situation is allowed to continue.

The foods that I used to serve my children were very tasty. I took a lot of pride in being a good cook. In fact, I inadvertently did to my children with my “healthy home cooking” the exact same thing that wicked big food corporations are still trying to do to all of us. By introducing the biggest and best flavors I could manage–every day, nearly every meal–I was spoiling their palates and their health, and (much worse) setting them up for food addictions later in life.

Hyper-palatability is that quality of sweetness, saltiness, and fat that processed (even home-processed) foods possess. When we eat these foods, that powerful combination of flavor and mouthfeel bypass all hunger and satiety signals that our hormones send when we are hungry or full, causing us to both overeat, and eat the wrong food. Food corporations spend millions, maybe billions, on research finding the best ways to keep customers eating long past the point of satiety, and to keep us coming back for more. Even though the body’s nutritional needs are not being met by these foods, our entire bodies wantonly crave them, and reject plain food in favor of that dopamine high. There’s a word for this. It’s called addiction. My constant attempts to please the palates of my family were creating raging addicts in my home. I had to face that fact and do a hard thing.

I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. They actually acted like a bunch of little addicts when I stopped letting them have the candy and gold fish crackers! They were somewhat depressed, unhappy with everything I fed them for a while, and though they are typically well-behaved, there were a some bad attitudes for a while. Thankfully, it didn’t take them long to adapt. They are children, after all, and very impressionable. After a few months of eating real food, not too fancy, they learned to reject (for the most part) foods that do not nourish them. Kids do want to do what is good for them, but we have to enable them to do it by removing the stumbling blocks in their way.

Don’t we ever have fun with our food? Sure! Our family does still occasionally have food that can be considered hyper-palatable, like this keto or carnivore pizza or carnivore waffles. But I keep these things mostly to special occasions. There’s nothing wrong with having a treat every now and then, but to expect every meal to hit all of those pleasure buttons in our brains is gluttony. Dare I use such a harsh word to describe probably most of the people who are reading this blog? Yes, I do.

American, you’re most likely enjoying your food a little too much, and a little too often. That is gluttony.

Do your children a favor, moms and dads: Give them plain food 95% of the time. Salt it, of course! We actually need salt. But use sauces and seasonings less frequently, and get the processed foods out of your house entirely. It is a hard lesson to learn, but teach your children to be content with meat that just tastes like meat, fruit that just tastes like fruit, and veggies that just taste like veggies. I can promise that if you do this, you will be improving not only your children’s overall health, but their behavior and moods, and even their emotional connection with you and each other. Far too many children who appear healthy but have behavioral issues are struggling because they just don’t have the energy to fully engage.

Help them.

You might fear a mutiny if you do what I did, but you are the parent. They can’t drive themselves to the store and override your decisions. (Well, a couple of mine could have, actually.) If you do not give in to the addictions that you have created, it won’t be long before the crying is over, and your children accept that this is just how it is for your family. I know you love your children. I know how much I loved mine when I was feeding them the exact same way! Now put as much thought and effort into their nutrition as you do into every other aspect of their lives.

If you find that you need help with a transition to a healthier (not necessarily carnivore) diet for your family, get in touch with me on SG or MeWe and I’ll send you a link to my diet coaching page. Or just shoot me your questions and I’ll get to them directly if at all possible.

Did Keto or Carnivore Heal My Thyroid?

Posted on January 13, 2023 by GAHCindy

Could it heal yours?

I mentioned a while back that I was experimenting with easing off of my thyroid medication. I had high hopes that my carnivore/keto ways of eating had finally made it possible for my thyroid to make its own hormones. I’m at the end of that experiment now, and ready to report my results. I’m going to have to back up a ways to explain my thinking and results, though, so that readers can understand why my results are probably not going to be typical. Someone else may have a better or worse chance of success, depending on their unique circumstances.

In my late teens, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. What I really had was a drug problem, intense sadness, and a Jesus-shaped hole in my heart. But I didn’t turn to Jesus until much later. The worldly way of dealing with my failures was to see a psychiatrist, so that’s what I did. The psychiatrist put me on lithium, never warning me that the drug could affect my thyroid function. I was on myriad other drugs, also, and nothing helped at all. I’m not going to go into the story of the next few years, because, to tell the truth, I have no memory of a great deal of it. It was bad, OK? Suffice it to say that Jesus found me, made me whole, and I’ve been clothed and (mostly) in my right mind for about twenty years now.

Praise God!

But my thyroid did not recover. When I cold-turkey quit all the psych meds, I also threw out the thyroid medicine. In my ignorance, I didn’t realize that it was different than the rest of the meds, and I actually needed that one. For about five years, I didn’t understand that I was running on a damaged thyroid. I had plenty of symptoms that I didn’t know were symptoms, but I had fired all the doctors, so there was nobody to tell me.

This is the part where we sit in silence, in awe and wonder at how God brought me through these still-difficult years and gave me two beautiful, healthy children when I should probably have been infertile.

Then, like many post-partum women, after my second child, I found that my thyroid just flat-out couldn’t do it any more. A doctor finally tested my hormone levels, and put me on levothyroxine. That was more than fifteen years ago, and I have been taking that medication every day since then.

Once I started doing a ketogenic, then carnivore diet, I felt better than I could remember feeling since I was a child. My thyroid antibodies, a marker of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, simply disappeared after I cut out plants. I started hearing stories of women with Hashimoto’s being able to regain some thyroid function. But I didn’t just have Hashimoto’s. I also had decreased function from the psychiatric attack on my thyroid. My chances of success were slim, but I had to try.

As I mentioned here, I did everything I could think of, including quitting coffee and taking thyroid boosting supplements, to optimize my thyroid function, and then I (without my doctor’s supervision, and don’t you EVER think of trying this at home) eased myself off my thyroid medicine over a period of some weeks. For about the amount of time it takes for the last of the thyroid medicine to leave your body, I felt normal.

Then for a few more weeks, I thought I felt normal. Maybe a little slow. And then I started slipping more noticeably. I started to gain some weight, even though I wasn’t eating any differently. I was forgetting things, not getting my housework done, feeling cranky and sluggish all the time. My hair dried out, nails became brittle. Exercise became hard, instead of a joy to me like it usually is.

I kept on trucking for a few more weeks, hoping that my brain and thyroid tissue would finally figure it out.

In the end, I finally had to admit that I was not going to make it. These were my numbers about 3 months from beginning to taper off:

Woah!

So, no, carnivore and keto did not heal my thyroid. I’m not able to make it without hormone replacement. Back on the same medication I went.

But here’s the interesting part. There were things that got better, even as my thyroid symptoms got worse. My period (avert your eyes, men) had always been ridiculously heavy and with giant clots, and that actually got better with no meds. I didn’t experience any cycle disruption at all. Perhaps I would have if I hadn’t tapped out of the experiment when I did. My sleep tracker started telling me that I was sleeping better, less restlessly.

The biggest change was that my acne disappeared. For a few years, I’d constantly had embarrassing, ugly, deep red cysts on my face. After stopping the meds, I didn’t even need makeup to go out anymore. I confess, I always felt especially delicate about the acne because I knew many people would blame my carnivore diet for it. I want to be an ambassador for this optimal way of eating, and I knew nobody would want to imitate me with my face looking like that. I had questioned whether it was the diet myself, but I’ve never seen a carnivore besides me have this problem, and I felt wonderful otherwise. I knew it had to be something else. I had never considered that it could be the formulation of the medication itself.

When I went back on Levoxyl, that acne came roaring back. The good news in this for me was that coffee was not the reason I had acne. It was obviously the medication, so I at least got to reacquaint myself with that old friend. Temporarily. We can talk more about coffee some other time.

Once I started thinking through what had happened during my sabbatical from medication, I realized that it was probably some inactive ingredient in the thyroid pill I was taking, and not anything wrong with my hormones, that was causing the acne. So, without fully disclosing to my doctor what a crazy thing I had done to figure this out, I asked her to put me on Tirosint, instead of Levoxyl. It’s pricey, but absolutely worth it to get a medication that doesn’t have any unnecessary ingredients.

I have not had any acne since I switched meds. My periods also got even lighter and my cycle is shorter: 28 days now instead of 34. This is marvelous!

Even though I didn’t succeed at resurrecting my thyroid with the carnivore diet, as many Hashimoto’s sufferers have done, I am very glad I tried. It is not a good idea to just accept long-term medication without trying to find other solutions. There was a better approach for me, and it is possible that I never would have realized it if I hadn’t gone this route.

Carnivore and keto might still work for your thyroid, Dear Reader. Several readers have asked for updates, I presume because they’d like to try this themselves. My friendly, not-at-all-medical advice is to get your diet nailed down for at least six months. Do either grain- and dairy-free keto or, ideally, carnivore. See if your antibodies improve. Then, under your doctor’s supervision–please do not do follow my example and go it alone–ease off the drugs and see what happens for you. I had a history of high lithium intake to contend with, so you very easily could have better luck than I did.

I would encourage anybody with Hashimotos to give it a very studied, deliberate, careful attempt. I’d love to hear from any of you about your own situation!

I’m not opening comments on the blog anymore. Spam and trolls are just too much trouble. You can find me for conversation on Gab, MeWe, and SG.

You’re Dying! Abort the Carnivore Diet! Abort! Abort! Abort!

Posted on February 18, 2022 by GAHCindy

My life’s comedic timing is perfect.

So, I’m standing here in my kitchen. I’ve just put some suet in my beautiful new 8-quart slow cooker to render down into tallow. Since I’m here, and already coated in glorious grass-fed beef fat from stem to stern, I figure I might as well pack some gel capsules with raw beef suet as well. By the way, those are vegetarian capsules. It says so right there on the bag, as if that were a selling point. I’ll explain why and how I do this strange thing in another post. The point is, I am at this moment doing the most medically scandalous thing a body can do, short of joining Hunter in hitting one of his Daddy’s free crackpipes while consuming said raw beef suet.

Spotted in the wild

And the phone rings.

I: Hello?

She: Hello, this is Such-and-such with your doctor’s office. How are you doing today?

I: Hi there! You tell me: How am I doing today?

She: Well, we got your labs back, and your thyroid and HBA1C look great.

I, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I already know about this shoe. It’s an old, worn out shoe: Good. And?

She: Your cholesterol doesn’t look so good. She (the doctor) says your good cholesterol is high, which is good, but your bad cholesterol is very high, which is bad. She wants you to back off on saturated fats, eat more vegetables and less meat, and get more exercise.

I, grinning and trying not to actually LOL: OK, can you give me the numbers?

See what I mean about my life’s comedic timing? Here I am, deliberately and with wanton disregard for the opinion of Man, packing pills with saturated fat, and my doctor calls me to tell me to KNOCK THAT OFF RIGHT NOW!

I won’t bore you with the rest of the call, Patient Reader, but after the kind receptionist gladly gave me my scary number, I did manage to wring the other, unimportant numbers out of her, as well. Are you ready for these numbers, my friends? Here they are:

Total cholesterol: 315
LDL (not bad, just misunderstood): 211
HDL (The OTHER good cholesterol): 97
Triglycerides: 55 (I’ve seen this as low as 37, and I feel a little cheated today. Probably elevated due to stress from rushing out early for the blood-draw. But this is still a very good trig/hdl ratio of about .56)
VLDL (The actually bad particle): A perfectly relaxing 7.

Now, none of this was a surprise to me, because I got my own bloodwork done in much greater detail, through Own Your Labs just a month ago. I’m way geekier about my health than my doctor is. I wanted more information than my insurance is willing to pay for, so I have a lot of other great numbers to show, off, too! I’m a textbook example of an (I do believe healthy) phenotype known as a Lean Mass Hyper-responder. I am both fit and slender, and of what is traditionally understood as a “risky” cholesterol profile. In fact, the only number that got flagged in my entire comprehensive panel was my LDL–a paltry 151 at the time, due, I think, to a cold I’d been fighting off. That’s quite low for me. Did you know those terrifying little particles are a vital part of your immune system?

While I find conventional medicine to be very useful for many things, evaluating and ameliorating heart disease risk is not one of them. Hormone replacement, trauma and acute care, and antibiotics are all things for which I am very grateful. But you don’t care about my opinion of western medicine right now, do you?

What you care about, I’m sure, is that I’m going to die of a heart attack and need to get on some statins, STAT. In fact, by the time I hit publish, the ambulance should be on its way. I just called them, to be on the safe side.

Don’t hold your breath, veggie lovers. I intend to outlive you all.

I am not remotely interested in explaining the intricacies of lipids to a general audience. I don’t have time. Besides, you might be convinced to go carnivore, and I really don’t want you to start competing with me for meat at its current price. I’m not giving you a complete run-down, or even trying to convince you of my way of thinking about this. I will, however, give you a few clues to aid you in your quest for truth as you come to realize what many, many people are catching on to of late: The science–the actual science, and not the pharmaceutical industry’s “studies”–should at least awaken you to the possibility, that the saturated-fat-heart-disease paradigm is ass-backwards and hopelessly lost.

Saturated fat intake doesn’t appear to have much to do with LDL levels.

Saturated fat intake is not associated with all-cause mortality.

People with high LDL outlive people with low LDL.

Replacing saturated animal fats with vegetable oils is associated with higher risk of heart events, even though it does lower serum cholesterol levels. (There’s an apparent paradox between this one and the first study I listed, which I can explain, but won’t.)

That will be enough to get you started. You may also enjoy this very layperson-accessible lecture by Dr. Paul Mason about why doctors still believe such insane things about cholesterol.

My doctor wants to see me again in six months, after I’ve behaved myself with the meat and exercise for a while. (By the way, I exercise like a beast at least five days a week. I have the abs to prove it. It’s a testament to the inadequate intimacy of the doctor-patient relationship in times of telemedicine due to “covid” that she doesn’t know this. She hasn’t actually touched me in a couple of years.) If my One Number doesn’t look any better, she will try to prescribe me a statin, I’m sure. Now, I have some choices to make, and I’m not sure which direction I should go.

I could attempt to educate my doctor on the facts of the matter. I’ve wasted my time like this before, printing out reams of studies in which the doctor was (surprise!) not interested. I fired that doctor, naturally. But the gal I’m seeing right now is super-smart, and she might just be interested. Then again, she might be primarily interested in continuing to collect her paycheck, which cholesterol-hypothesis skeptics tend to have a harder time doing in this system. I could also bring to her the results of my CAC scan (the one I keep putting off) and at least convince her that my arteries at least don’t appear to be harmed yet. There are lots of things I could show to an open-minded person to get a conversation started.

Alternatively, I could ghost myself and not show up for the next lab-work, instead choosing to wait until I have another thyroid check, and evade that topic yet again. Honestly, this is my usual course of action.

Or, I could game my numbers, doing nobody much good at all, but at least getting it on the insurance record that my cholesterol numbers are “healthy”. Funnily enough, all I’d have to do is eat a bunch of carbs for a few days before my labs and I’d look like the healthiest patient you ever saw. There would be enough immediate downsides to this that I doubt I’d ever attempt it. But it would look better for insurance purposes, for sure.

What do you think I should do? We can talk about this on Gab, MeWe, or SG, my current social media hangouts.

How To Beat Anxiety and Depression

Posted on December 16, 2021 by GAHCindy

Gut health is mental health.

Somebody recently mentioned on a social media site that he had experienced one of those long, dark nights of the soul during which, instead of sleeping, you toss and turn and recall every single stupid or awkward thing you’ve ever said out loud. I’ve had nights like that. Worse than that, I’ve had long, waking days of the same thing. You’re just going about your business and suddenly your mind starts accusing you: I’m the dumbest person ever. How can anybody stand to be around me? I can’t believe I said that!

Not only that, but the anxious mind then takes the opportunity to run a Top 10 (if you’re lucky, it’s only ten) list of your most socially awkward moments ever.

Now, maybe it’s just a function of getting older, but I honestly no longer have any trouble believing that I actually said that, whatever “that” was. You get used to living with your foot in your mouth. You get used to it, but it’s hard to truly learn to let go, isn’t it? I know it’s not just me. Everybody says or does cringe-making things regularly. Not everybody notices it, but most do. So, then, how do they let it go so easily? My gaffes get stuck in my head like a peanut butter and banana sandwich gets stuck to the roof of your mouth!

Surprisingly, for those who suffer from this kind of anxiety, I think it has a lot to do with our guts. No, I don’t mean the socially confident are simply braver than us. I mean that there is a difference in our literal guts, our intestines, that makes the food we eat affect our brains in a unique way. You see, since I started the carnivore diet, I’ve experienced this thing referred to by carnivores who have trod this path before me as the “carnivore calm”. I haven’t had a single 2 a.m. cringing episode since I stopped eating plants!

Almost all plants (and dairy, which I’ll have to address in a separate post) have literally nerve-wracking effects for me. On those days after going carnivore that I just couldn’t resist the asparagus or whatever, I would always notice half a day or so later, I’d get some anxiety again. Not the social kind (that’s really gluten and dairy), but free-floating anxiety. I sometimes get ear worms that seem obnoxiously loud and make me want to jam a crochet hook into my ear to dig them out. I can’t ever just have a nice song that I like in my head. I get to have all of my thoughts drowned out by a 15 second loop of whatever popular atrocity I last heard while flipping through the radio stations. It’s maddening.

Enough days in a row of fiber of any kind, and I become clinically depressed.

(This seems to me a really good place to point out that, in spite of all my anxieties and depression, Jesus has made most of my adult life a productive and meaningful time in spite of all of these hindrances. He’s the real miracle-maker in my life. He gave me the spiritual wherewithal to make it through a lifetime of depression and anxiety and still be a productive and useful person, able to raise a family and work for Him in my own reclusive ways. I give Him all praise and glory for that. And then after all those years of learning to lean on Him, he led me to the physical reason for all these problems that he salved so lovingly for so many years, so that I could move on to the next step in my walk with Him. Give Him praise, people! I never knew what He was doing, but I always knew He knew what He was doing. Eliminating plants and dairy didn’t save me from anything, but it has sure has made me feel better while being saved. OK, back to the OP:)

When I eat zero fiber, I get none of these symptoms. I just hum through my day, clear-headed and happy. I handle stress like a champ. I’m actually having fun!

Carnivore didn’t change who I am. I’m still weird. I’m still introverted. I’m still making mistakes. I still stick my foot in my mouth. I still do stupid things and wonder why I didn’t know any better. But I’m able to forgive myself quickly and move on. My brain no longer stores everything I got wrong today to hate-binge on later when I’m trying to sleep. I’m no longer hindered from enjoying the world by all the negative self-talk that used to try to hold me back.

I’m just so stinking well-adjusted now!

That’s weird, isn’t it? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a few years of experimentation to share. My depression and anxiety largely went away when I moved to a ketogenic diet, so ketones probably have a little something to do with it. Ketosis does give you a very sharp mental state.

But I also gave up wheat at the same time, and I think that really was the magic bullet for me. Gluten has a deleterious effect on my gut, and thus my brain. I know for a fact, after different experiments adding foods back, that gluten is the trigger for other physical ailments of which I’m now totally free. I probably have undiagnosed celiac disease. I don’t really care to ask a doctor to confirm it.

I have a relative who craved gluten like a drug as a kid, and would only eat foods containing gluten (not hard to pull off in this food environment) and whose mind was very much hampered by the stuff. Gluten exacerbated every stereotypical autistic, and, frighteningly, sociopathic behavior in him. It was my witnessing of this pattern that made me wonder about myself. Gluten is the mind-killer!

Gluten, fine, but how can cauliflower make me feel so bad? To tell the truth, I question this aspect of my condition frequently myself, sometimes to the point where I stop believing it entirely and eat something that’s not meat. And then I invariably find out again. A little bite of something is often no problem, but if I just decide I’m going to start having regular keto food instead of full-blown carnivore, it’s only a matter of a day or two before I start having those same old feelings of anxiety and depression, stress, the little compulsions like over-tidiness, and songs stuck in my head. It has, through some intentional experiments, but mostly mishap, become undeniable to me that it’s the food. Fiber is doing something in my gut–whether feeding the wrong bacteria, making it leaky, or something else I can’t guess–that is throwing off the chemicals in my brain. This could very well be happening to you, too.

Now, I’m sure there are causes of mental illness that don’t originate in the gut. I’m not calling carnivore a magic bullet. But for me it has been almost magical, and it might be worth a shot for you, too. If having a song stuck in a loop in your head doesn’t bother you, and that’s the only symptom you’ve got, maybe you don’t want to experiment with taking plants out of your diet. I miss the plants, to tell the truth. I’d eat them all day long if I could. I simply can’t.

I am not the only person who experiences this. There are maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of carnivores who have discovered this exact pattern in themselves. I didn’t make this up. They didn’t make this up. If you want to hear more, I recommend starting with YouTube videos from Amber O’Hearn or Georgia Ede, then let the rabbit hole suck you in from there. There’s a lot of solid evidence that the Western diet is mentally torturing a number of us.

Now, I have to go lift some weights and then we have a gingerbread house decorating party to host (no eating the houses!), so I’m going to throw this out there mostly unedited. Please forgive any typos, run-on sentences, and irrelevant asides.

Want to discuss this? Meet me on Gab, MeWe, or Social Galactic.

Pemmican

Posted on December 10, 2021 by GAHCindy

How to make on-the-go carnivore nutrition:

(Pemmican) was invented by the native peoples of North America. It was widely adopted as a high-energy food by Europeans involved in the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, such as Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen.

The specific ingredients used were usually whatever was available; the meat was often bison, moose, elk, or deer. Fruits such as cranberries and saskatoon berries were sometimes added. Cherries, currants, chokeberries and blueberries were also used, but almost exclusively in ceremonial and wedding pemmican.

—Read more about pemmican on Infogalactic

Recipe first. Scroll on past for images and explanations.

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