Short & Savoury by Adam Shand

A simple introduction to the Carnivore Diet

Obligatory Disclaimer

If I knew I were going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. – Mickey Mantle

I am not a doctor. I am not a scientist. I'm just a guy who got sick of being sick and followed the instructions of “crazy people“ online.

As of October 2024, pretty much everything we know about the efficacy of plant free, carnivorous diets is anecdotal. There is a growing body of practitioners and researchers investigating, but if you need randomly controlled trials and peer reviewed journal articles, you can stop reading now.

Caveat emptor.

Introduction

I have only made this letter longer because I did not have time to make it shorter. – Blaise Pascal

This is my attempt to compile what I've learned about the carnivore diet since I accidentally stumbled across it in 2017. In the spirit of Blaise Pascal, I've worked hard to make it as succinct as possible.

I am not writing this because I have special knowledge about the carnivore diet. The information here is a synthesis of the collective experience from the online forums I’ve been participating in. In particular Zeroing in on Health, Zero Carb Health, r/zerocarb, Meat.Health, Zero Carb Zen, NZ Carnivore, and more recently r/SaturatedFat.

I am writing this because I’ve been answering questions and sharing my experience for several years. The same basic questions are asked every day, and not everyone who asks for help is lucky enough to get a useful answer. These days there is a mountain of books, testimonials, blog posts, tweets, and forum posts about the carnivore diet. However there are still very few, simple guides for beginners who just want to improve their health.

The one advantage I have in writing a guide like this is that I had an unusually hard time with the adaptation process. I was vegetarian (ish) for much of my adult life and never enjoyed eating fat. I was also in my late forties when I started, with a couple decades of deteriorating health to recover from. While my experience of Carnivore has been utterly life changing, I wasn't one of those people for whom it worked "instant magic". I had to do a lot of learning and experimenting to make it work for me.

Should you decide to experiment with a carnivorous diet, I hope that this short and simple guide will help you avoid the most common mistakes and make your journey a little easier.

Many thanks to all those who have been tirelessly sharing their knowledge for years. Special thanks to Amber O’Hearn, Kevin Stock, Dana Spencer Shute, and Esmée La Fleur.

Before You Start

Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels. – Dana Spencer Shute

The people who have the easiest time adapting to a carnivore, have a razor sharp “why”. They know exactly what they are hoping to accomplish. When a moment of temptation or doubt arises, they have their “why” to help them stay on track.

Before starting, I recommend that you do three things:

Write down a list of everything you want to change.

Be specific and detailed: the crusty morning eyes, getting up to pee in the middle of the night, the sore knee, the constipation, the cat allergy, the missing libido. Measure your chest, biceps, hips, waist, and thighs. Include everything, big and small, even if it doesn't seem realistic that carnivore could help.

It's astonishingly easy to miss the small wins and become discouraged. Instead, enjoy the satisfaction of crossing things off your list one by one!
Commit to a minimum of 30 days of strict carnivore.

The first few weeks of carnivore can sometimes be a wild ride. Less than 30 days and there’s a chance you’ll do all the hard work without much of the benefit. Most people feel noticeably better within 30 days and this provides the encouragement to continue.
Find your support crew.

There’s a huge number of carnivore support groups on social media. There are professional coaches with a wide variety of expertise. You might be lucky enough to have a carnivore or keto friendly doctor nearby? Maybe you have a friend that’s a carnivore? Not everyone needs support, but it’s worth a bit of time to get this arranged before you need it.

Overview

Eat meat. Not too little. Mostly fat. – Amber O'Hearn

Carnivore is a ketogenic diet which is high fat, moderate protein, and very low carb. It's important to understand that without carbs, fat is your primary source of energy. Exactly how much fat you should eat varies from person to person, but aiming for 75–80% of your calories from fat is a good place to start. Your body will adapt to higher fat meals over time.

Carnivore is also a very low fibre diet. Many people find that this dramatically improves their digestion and bowel movements.

While carnivore seems to be generally beneficial for many people, there is the most evidence for it being helpful for people with mental health, autoimmune, and digestive issues. Over time it also has a weight normalising effect (people lose or gain weight as needed).

The single biggest reason that people don't get the results they want from carnivore is under eating. This can be really hard for some people to wrap their head around, but if you want carnivore to work, you have to eat enough food to fuel your body.

Most people need to experiment to get carnivore to work well. This can be frustrating in the beginning, but is part of the process.

Do’s and Don’ts

Find a piece of meat you enjoy and eat it until you’re full. Don’t eat again until you’re hungry. Drink water. – Charles Washington

Here are the basic guidelines for the carnivore diet. They are the product of many years of collective experience helping a wide variety of people get the hang of a carnivore diet.

These guidelines may not be where you end up, but they are almost certainly where you should start. You have the best chance of getting the results you want by starting with these guidelines and then experimenting as necessary.

What you SHOULD do:

Eat only animal foods: red meat, pork, poultry, seafood, shellfish, eggs, and full fat dairy.
When you are hungry, eat meat.
When you are thirsty, drink water.
Eat what tastes good (fatty, lean, rare, or well done).
Manage stress.
Exercise moderately.
Work with your doctor.

What you MAY do:

Use salt on your food (trust your taste).
Drink coffee (preferably after meals).
Use plants for flavour or medicine.
Eat organ meats (only if they taste good).
Buy organic, grass fed, regenerative, or free-range meat, dairy and eggs.

What you SHOULD NOT do:

No restricting calories (trust your hunger).
No fasting or forcing an eating schedule (trust your hunger).
No forcing water consumption (trust your thirst).
No snacking between meals.
No sweeteners (including honey and non-caloric ones like stevia, allulose and monk fruit).
No alcohol, soda, tea, or fruit juice.
No tricks to make organs taste good (pills, freezing, etc).
No obsessing over weight, macros, ketones, or glucose.

A huge part of carnivore is learning to listen to your body. Learning to trust what tastes good. To trust when you are (and are not) hungry. But especially in the beginning, there can be a lot of noise.

Habits, withdrawal, stories, embarrassment, fears, and impatience can make it harder to listen to the wisdom of our bodies. For all of these reasons, following the guidelines, especially in the beginning, is helpful for most people.

‼️ If you are taking prescription medications, please tell your doctor you are starting a ketogenic diet. If you are taking medications for blood pressure or glucose, the correct dosage can sometimes change very quickly. There are also some drugs for which ketogenic diets are contraindicated. ‼️

What to Expect

Blame no one, expect nothing, get out there and do epic shit. – Larry Santoyo

Carnivore can be pretty magical, but for most of us it's slow magic that happens over months and years, not days and weeks. Typically the older you are, and the longer you have been sick, the slower the process of getting back to feeling great.

The below list of timings are approximate, but hopefully will provide you with a rough timeline of what to expect as you adapt to a carnivore diet.

In the first month your body is learning to produce, consume, and excrete ketones efficiently and your bowel is learning to work without fibre. During this time energy and appetite can be poor, old symptoms can flare up, and diarrhoea and constipation are common. The specific symptoms (and severity) that arise during this time vary widely. For most people it's uncomfortable but not awful.

One of the more startling changes is that without fibre, your bowel movements will be much smaller (and often much less frequent). Your body can use almost everything in meat, so much less waste makes it to your bowel. "Fullness" is one of the things that triggers the need to poop, so it can take longer before your bowel "fills up" and you feel the urge. If you've been chronically constipated, then your bowel will have stretched over time to accommodate the additional volume of waste. In the beginning it's normal to not poop for several days, sometimes even a week. So long as bowel movements are normal and aren't painful, be patient and your bowel will adapt over time.

In the first week you'll experience "keto flu". Symptoms usually pass in a few days and commonly include fatigue, headaches, grumpiness, cramps, and a weird "metallic" taste in your mouth. There's no need to do anything, but you can ease symptoms with electrolytes (without sweeteners). Unless you have a specific medical reason, there is no need to continue taking electrolytes once keto flu symptoms have resolved. There's lots of additional information on keto flu available online.

Around week three or four it's common to suddenly find the idea of eating another bite of meat revolting. This is a good time to spend a little extra and buy yourself some carnivore treats. Smoked salmon, fancy cheese, salami, oysters, jerky, that tomahawk steak ... whatever sounds delicious! This normally passes very quickly, just hang in there and stay the course.

The main thing every new carnivore has to figure out is how much fat you require to feel good. Fat is both your source of energy and a "lubricant" for your bowel. If you have poor energy or constipation: increase the amount of fat you are eating. If you get heartburn, nausea, or diarrhoea: reduce the amount of fat. It's rare, but sometimes people struggle to eat enough fat to have good energy, without getting diarrhoea. In this case, manage it the best you can, the amount of fat you can handle will increase over time.

For most people the intense part of the adaptation process is over in about a month. However adaptation continues for months and years. Your body will get steadily more efficient at using fat for energy. Many people discover they they no longer like using salt on their food.

Throughout the initial adaptation process the most important thing you can do is make sure you're eating enough. Your body needs energy to heal, and you need energy to live your best life!

Let's Go!

If you walk without questions, you might as well not be there. – Tom Brown Jr.

And that's all you need to know to get started on a carnivore diet. Most people have lots of questions and there are some common stumbling blocks. I'll go through those in the troubleshooting guide.