Tag: obesity

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Going Carnivore – What Is Your Why

What is your why for going carnivore? My why is a pretty big one. It’s deep. This question could be applied to any new habit we start or goal we put in place. What is your why for…exercising, quitting smoking, cutting out caffeine, or dieting? Most of the time there is a very simple answer. You want to get healthy, you want to lessen your cancer risk, you want to fit into a dress or look better for an occasion, or you want better sleep.

Dig Deep, Make It Stick

In order to make your new habit stick, you’re going to need to come up with something better than any of those. Dig a little deeper. Keep asking yourself why with each answer.

Let’s say you have decided to try a carnivore diet. You might say your ‘why’ is because you want to lose weight. Ok, why do you want to lose weight? Maybe you feel uncomfortable or you no longer fit into your clothes. Losing weight may make you feel better and you may fit into your clothes again. But what other benefits would you gain? Maybe your knees won’t hurt anymore. What would you be able to do? Maybe you would reverse your type 2 diabetes and your doctor would reduce your meds. Would your autoimmune issues resolve? Perhaps infertility would no longer be part of your story.

My Why Has Changed, and That’s a Good Thing

For me, my why initially was my weight. It became so much more than that. I noticed my cognitive function had improved, my energy improved, and my muscle and joint pain improved. All of that happened before the weight loss started. So if I really break it down, my why is living.

I want to live. Allow me to clarify – I want to LIVE. I don’t want to simply exist. Surviving isn’t good enough. I want to soak up every moment, drenched in joy and gratitude. Every day that my health improves makes this kind of living possible. I have a pain-free life. I’m not ruled by carb addiction and sugar addiction. Binge eating is part of my past. My thinking is clear. My energy is high and steady. My anxiety has decreased. I am at a healthy, sustainable weight. Hair no longer falls out by the handful. In fact, my hair is growing back! I feel hope and gratitude every day. My body and mind are truly healing.

That Feeling of Zen

The physical changes are many. The changes to my mind and my spirit, however, are what keep me in this space ready to help others achieve the same blissful existence. Those physical changes allowed me to focus on something bigger than myself and my small world. With that, came the beginning of mental and emotional healing. Have you heard of the term ‘carnivore zen’ or ‘low carb zen’? It’s that stress-less, love more, gratitude, and peace that comes with true healing. When you realize you are no longer suffering and want to share this new-found appreciation for life with anyone who will listen.

I actually used to think it was a little hokey when I heard people talk about how your why needs to be something really big. Like dropping 50 pounds isn’t big? To my surprise, it’s not. It’s not everything. It’s not even the most important thing. Weight loss is often a happy side-effect of the crazy health benefits of being meat-based, animal-based, carnivore, high-fat carnivore (Fativore!), or keto. It’s the disease reversal, the giddiness of symptom relief, the gratitude you are able to feel, and then the weight.

Are You Ready?

If you need help finding your ‘why’, drop me a line! I’m happy to do a free consultation to help you decide how to approach your healing. You can email me, message me on any of my social accounts, or jump right in and book a coaching session.

thecandidcarnivore@gmail.com
book a coaching session

XOXO

~ The Candid Carnivore

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Stop Dieting! Why Traditional Dieting Doesn’t Work

Stop Dieting! Why Traditional Dieting Doesn't Work

Dieting in the traditional way is not sustainable. Why traditional dieting doesn’t work, and what do I mean by that? When you go on a diet it’s a temporary solution to a problem that returns when you stop utilizing said solution. Usually, this is some combination of tracking calories, restricting calories, low fat, lots of veggies, fruit, and fiber, and increasing exercise. 

Calorie Restriction Doesn’t Work

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but, candidly speaking, calorie restriction for weight loss is bullshit. It’s not sustainable. Any weight lost will be gained back when you go back to eating ‘normally’. You can’t lose weight to become healthy. You must become healthy to lose weight. Weight gain is a metabolic disorder that can be reversed. 

Dieting Doesn’t Make You Healthy

I’m currently reading Dr. Ben Bikman’s book, Why We Get Sick. It’s really fascinating and confirms a lot of my suspicions and answers a lot of my questions about insulin and insulin resistance. I’ll share more insight from what I learn from him in future posts. If you’d like to read it for yourself, you can find it on Amazon

Dr. Bikman is a professor and metabolic scientist whose work really speaks to me. An analogy I recently heard Dr. Ben Bikman use went something like this: He asked his students to imagine he had invited them to a huge buffet celebration dinner. It would include all of their favorite foods. A smorgasbord of palatable delights. Now if you want to make sure you are good and hungry so that you can enjoy all of this food I’m providing, he asked, how would you prepare for that? How would you ensure you’re hungry enough to sample all that food?

The majority of his students explained that they would eat less for a couple of days. Some also said they would exercise a bit more. This was sure to make their bodies able to indulge in everything they wanted. Dr. Bikman’s reply? But isn’t that exactly what you do when you’re trying to diet? Therefore, the strategy of reducing calories or food intake and exercising more innately sets you up for failure because your body naturally then wants MORE. If you deprive your body of nutrition and then use up its energy stores by exercising more….guess what? You are going to be hungrier than usual! A great strategy for preparing to binge, but not great if you want to lose weight.

Extended restriction of calories initiates a change, slowing your metabolism. This may then trigger you to overeat and the cycle continues. Maybe you are able to attain weight loss in time for whatever event you’re dieting for and when that is over you go back to your old habits. Well…of course you do, you’ve been starving your body, your hormones, and your brain! You may very well be malnourished even when you’re eating whatever you like and overeating. This is what causes some of us to overeat in the first place. Your stomach is often full, and yet you always have a notion to eat. I mean, there’s always room for ice cream or a few more chips, right? Why? Lack of actual nutrition that is bioavailable to your body. See my blog post here on this topic – Obese and Malnourished/Stuffed but Starving. 

Love Yourself By Healing Yourself

Now, let me set the record straight once again – this is not about punishing yourself for not being a certain size or weight. Yes, you should love your body at any size – but love your body enough to nourish it and move it. That’s not self-loathing. THAT is loving the body you have and wanting it to function optimally so that you can live a long, beautiful, and fulfilling life as God intended. Not to be sick and miserable, putting on a brave face and telling yourself it’s ok to be this way. Stop abusing your body with nutrient-void, addictive garbage. This is not about a beauty standard. It’s about health. Physical, mental, and metabolic health. 

It’s also not immediately about weight loss. It’s about healing. Even if you don’t have a medical diagnosis and you have a waist-to-height ratio greater than 45-50%, you have metabolic issues to correct. This can be done with diet. Autoimmune disorders, diabetes, arthritis, insulin resistance, and many MANY health concerns can potentially be reversed by following a species (human) appropriate way of eating.

How Is That Possible?

Stop dieting! So how, exactly, do I propose you nourish your body and prevent or even reverse chronic disease without calorie restriction and exercise? The answer, my friend, is simple. That’s not to say it’s easy, but it is very simple. Eat what we as humans were designed to eat, and don’t eat what was not meant for us. Hint: there’s a reason every parent fights to get their kids to eat vegetables. 

My 2 rules for starting your mission to better health:

  1. Eat meat and other animal products (eggs, butter, etc.)
  2. Do NOT eat processed “foods” (if it comes in a box or has ingredients you wouldn’t recognize in nature ditch it)

This may be a slow, measured process or you might dive right in. I’ll help you decide which method is best for you! Feel free to email me at thecandidcarnivore@gmail.com if you would like more information on healing your body or losing weight; message me on my social media pages linked below, or click here to find out more about my virtual coaching sessions. I love helping people all over the world feel their best without buying some plan, program, special foods, or having to count or track anything! 

If you’re ready to feel your best, heal your body, get great sleep, and lose weight in the process, what are you waiting for? Contact me!

XOXO

~ The Candid Carnivore

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Obese and Malnourished/Stuffed but Starving: the Real Epidemic

There’s a lot of conflicting chatter about the obesity epidemic and body-positivity. The diet and fitness industries are booming and have been for quite some time. So with so much health-conscious advice and programs available to us, how is it that the obesity rate just seems to keep climbing? Shouldn’t people be healthier than ever? Shouldn’t diabetes and heart disease be a thing of the past if all this advice really works?

Diets are Designed to Fail

Let me share my personal experience with you. Being 5′ 4″ and having been 240+ pounds, 112 pounds, and everywhere in between; having been anorexic and bulimic and having run the gamut of diet trends, restricting, binging, and being completely addicted to food in general as a means of coping with many issues in my life, having meticulously counted calories, fat grams, and carbs, done low fat, low carb, keto, and carnivore…I can speak pretty confidently about this subject.

Both times that I lost a significant amount of weight, I did so by restricting my food intake. It definitely works for weight loss. But it is not, has never been, and will never be, a sustainable way of life. Eat less, move more, right? No. Please stop doing that to your body. Do not punish your body for doing what it was designed to do. There’s so much talk of self-love and body-positivity, but the meaning of those phrases is being twisted. Self-love should not be conditional and body positivity should not take precedence over actual health. It’s one thing to love who you are as a person at any size, but the reality of the actual health of a person of any size – overly fat or overly thin – is something different. The first photo shows me at approximately 240 lbs – malnourished from eating tons of sugar and processed foods. The second photo shows me at approximately 140 lbs – malnourished from eating tons of keto products and calorie restricting. Yes, I felt better about my body and the way I looked in the second photo, but I didn’t feel great. I felt better, for sure. But not great. 

When you see an overweight person, it’s easy to assume they are not lacking nutrition. But in most cases, they are. For example, let’s think about Thanksgiving when you eat all the things, not only the turkey but the potatoes, the rolls, the stuffing, the sweet potatoes. You are absolutely stuffed, yet you manage to squeeze in a piece of pie or two, and whatever other desserts catch your eye. A few hours later you’re back at it, picking at the turkey, having another helping of your favorites. And you may actually feel hungry, even though you know your stomach is at capacity. How?

Stuffed but Starving

One Thanksgiving a few years ago, I made sure I stayed keto/carnivore. I had turkey, deviled eggs, and made PSMF rolls. PSMF rolls are a protein-sparing modified fasting recipe made from eggs. I ate until I was stuffed – yet I still felt like I needed more. For the entire month of November, I had been eating beef only. I was satisfied, happy, nourished, and thriving every day. But on Thanksgiving, everything I ate was from poultry. Again, my stomach was completely full after eating so much – including nearly an entire pan of those rolls. After that, I ‘treated myself’ with my favorite keto ice cream. I could NOT stop eating! I literally made myself feel sick because my body was crying out for the nutrition it had been getting all month and I threw it a curveball that day. I love turkey, chicken, and eggs – don’t get me wrong. I eat one of those things almost daily. But I can’t get by just eating those things. I had starved my body of whole nutrition for too long all those years of eating what we were all taught was healthy. 

2010: 230+ lbs, malnourished, always hungry

Nutrients > Calories

Chances are that an obese person is not that size because of the whole one-ingredient foods. They are likely eating very processed foods. It’s not really about the calorie content of a food, but the nutrition. It makes sense to me that if you are consuming both carbs and fat, that your body will use the most readily available fuel first – the carbs, saving the slow-burning fat in case of actual starvation. If you have been restricting calories in an effort to lose weight, your body doesn’t trust you. Your metabolic system has no brain or logic. It reacts based on your actions. Or lack of action. 

Whether I was eating low-fat, low-calorie, low-carb, or whatever I wanted, I still ate a lot of processed, manufactured food. I always felt deprived, tired, achy, lethargic. When I began my health mission on Carnivore, I started out still using zero-carb sweeteners and diet sodas. While I was feeling much better than I ever had on any other way of eating, there were still times my energy would plummet. Those ‘natural’ and artificial sweeteners were still causing an insulin response. And I still had some minor carb cravings. When I cut those things out, I have consistent energy and zero cravings.

Proper Human Diet

Eating meat and animal products has allowed my body to trust me again. No more glucose spikes and dips. I have nice, level energy and mental clarity that I thought I would never experience. I am now 51 years old and I feel better than I did at age 20.

XOXO

~ The Candid Carnivore

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Food Addiction is a Bitch

Addiction is painful, no matter what the drug happens to be.

Food to Mask the Pain

What is comfort food? Does it truly bring comfort? Or does it bring more pain?

If we are talking about the traditional comfort foods, most of us think of cookies, ice cream, cake, macaroni & cheese, maybe pizza and other foods high in carbohydrates. There is a very scientific reason that we feel comfort when eating those types of food. People much smarter than I can explain all of that in detail and do so with absolute authority. But I can tell you that I have learned from those very smart people, and from my own experience, that these foods contain high amounts of carbs. Carbs turn to sugar in our bodies. Sugar creates a chemical response in our bodies and in our brains that trigger a dopamine response. It’s something very similar to getting high and that feeling, in turn, creates an addiction. Sweet taste is several times more addictive than cocaine. Read that again – sweet taste. is several times more addictive. than COCAINE! What? We give these foods to our children! We are literally raising addicts just by feeding them foods from our local grocery stores. (click here to read one study using artificial sweetener and cocaine, as an example – there are several articles on the matter, just search for yourself! Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward (nih.gov)) 

There is sugar, in some form, in most processed foods. I dare you to grab any food item in your kitchen with an ingredient label – guaranteed there is at least one form of sugar in that item. Maybe more. Sugar has over 50 different names, and food manufacturers will try to fool you as often as possible. 

You hear a lot of people say they are an ’emotional eater’, meaning when they are sad, stressed, angry, happy, or any strong emotion, they turn to food. Rather than allowing themselves to feel that emotion, they distract themselves or use the food to cope or celebrate. Doesn’t that sound very similar to how a person with an addiction would respond? In my statement above, replace the phrase, “…they turn to food.” with “…they turn to alcohol.” Or a specific drug. Even when someone says they reward themselves with chocolate or some other food, isn’t that the same as saying they reward themselves with a drink or drug use? 

The Culture of Food as a Drug

This behavior is something many of us are taught in childhood. A good-intentioned adult wants to fix what is bothering the child, or distract them from crying, by giving them a treat. This creates a dependency very early in life! Rather than being taught how to cope with or regulate emotions, children are often taught to just cover it up or use some substance, which may start out as sugar or carbs, to create a flood of dopamine in the brain that gives us that feeling of comfort. Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of what predisposes a person for drug or alcohol abuse? It makes sense to me. Eating becomes something that is tied to emotions, whether we are eating to celebrate or to mourn. The chemistry of the food creates such an intense reaction in the body that it mimics emotion or masks it. Processed food, carbs, and sweet tastes (yes, even your diet soda and keto sweeteners) give us that dopamine hit that is so strong that real joy and happiness can’t compete. Is this a cause of depression? 

The problem is that – and I am not saying it is as simple as this – while lifestyle changes can be made to avoid drugs and alcohol, you can’t avoid food. You can avoid certain foods and ingredients, but it is SO difficult when family gatherings, social functions, and even office meetings often revolve around the very types of food you are trying to avoid. You hear things like, ‘oh come on live a little’, ‘one cupcake won’t kill you’, ‘you deserve a treat’….Would those food-pushers say to an alcoholic, ‘one shot won’t kill you’, or ‘it’s a celebration, how are you not going to drink?’ But most people don’t understand, because we need food to live, that sugar and processed foods are addictive. 

Nutrition is the Key

I, and I think many others can attest to this, have found that eating only animal foods reduces or eliminates the addiction to sugar and carbs. Why is this important? Sugar and carbs are not what our bodies were designed to thrive on. The over-consumption of these foods creates constant insulin response, which affects our mood and emotional regulation. Without the constant dips and spikes in blood glucose, and therefore insulin, my mood is fairly constant. I don’t crave that dopamine release that food used to give me. 

So do comfort foods really bring comfort, or do they replace true emotions with dopamine, thereby eliminating the processing of emotions and perpetuating the trauma, never allowing the healing or the development of coping skills? In my opinion, processed foods, carbs, and sugar do damage to our bodies and our minds. I know in my healing mission, my body feels so much better. But the healing I have experienced within my mind and my emotions is the most valuable result so far. 

Feel free to comment or ask questions about my experiences and let me know if there is any way I can help you on your own healing mission!

xoxo

~ The Candid CarnivoreShareLabels: carnivorecomfort foodcommunitydietdisordered eatingdopamineemotional healthfood addictfood addictionmental healthsugar addiction

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CARNIVORE MISSION: FOOD ADDICTION AND RESTRICTION, WITH A DASH OF HASHIMOTO’S AND A SIDE OF SHAME

Food Addiction and Obesity in Childhood:

I have been addicted to food since I was a kid. I have binged on everything from sliced bread to uncooked hot dogs. One of my earliest memories of feeling shame came from sneaking yet another handful of little chocolates that my dad had brought home and my mom calling me a glutton when she discovered me stuffing them into my mouth while hiding behind my toy box. I remember asking her what that word meant and that feeling when she told me. I was about 5 years old, maybe 4. 

I felt shame, but it didn’t stop me. Rather I think it defined me in my mind. I was the fat kid. Shopping with my grandmother in the boys’ ‘husky’ section of Sears as a girl in 1st grade was humiliating, but I had no concept of diet. My next shameful moment, at about 8 years old, came when my grandfather had bought me a bag of Reese’s Pieces. We were going to go fishing after he closed up his shop, and he told me not to open that bag. That was a treat for later. I insisted I would not open them, thinking to myself how I didn’t even really like Reese’s Pieces. No sooner than he left the room, I opened and devoured the entire bag. Within 5 minutes, he returned and expressed his disbelief and disgust. I literally ate anything and everything that I wanted and would constantly search cupboards for food when I was not even hungry. The food was filling a void that I did not understand at the time. I could go on and on with memories of feeling that shame related to my binging. Maybe I’ll share those another time. 

When I was around 12 years old, my mom said she would buy me some workout clothes if I promised to exercise. You know, the shiny, colorful leotards with the matching headband and leg warmers from the 80s. Yeah, that must have been a sight! But she bought them for me. And that was it. I didn’t keep my end of the deal. I had no idea HOW. Like, ok thanks. I have this outfit, but how exactly do I exercise? No one ever showed me or encouraged me, so I didn’t do it. 

Now, was this all due to the failing of the adults in my life for not putting any restrictions in place or teaching me how to eat properly? Was this something broken in my brain? Dopamine deficiency? I can say with 100% certainty that I did not have a typical childhood. I was born to teen parents. My mother had severe mental and emotional trauma of her own. I’d be willing to bet that it was a perfect storm of a lot of things. 

I’ll skip over the teen years for now. Just know that there was a lot of destructive behavior and I truly believe I’m lucky to have made it through that period alive. 

Anorexia & Bulimia:

As I continued with binging into my 20s, it finally hit me. I was in my apartment searching for loose change so that I could go buy some snack cakes when I realized that I did not have control of my own actions. I felt possessed! It finally occurred to me that I wasn’t really consciously making this decision. I felt an overwhelming urge, but not a thought process. It was as if I had held my breath for too long and felt the overwhelming urge to take a deep breath. You don’t tell yourself constantly, ‘breathe in, ok now breathe out, breathe in…’. You just do it. That’s what eating was like. Mindless, compulsory binging. That revelation didn’t stop me, though and disordered eating from one end of the spectrum to the other consumed my life for more than two decades. 

Around the age of 22, and at approximately 230lbs after giving birth to my first child, I went to the other extreme. I became obsessed with staying under 20 grams of fat. I cheated, though. I rounded up. If something had 3 grams of fat, I counted it as 5. I kept a running tally in my head all day, counting and re-counting obsessively, and then rounding up that number as well. So, when I may very well have had only 7 grams of fat for the day, I was counting it as 20 grams. I lost a lot of weight very, very quickly. There were days when all I had eaten was a small bag of pretzels from the vending machine, a diet Mt Dew, and a bag of light microwave popcorn for dinner. Snackwell cookies and ‘yogurt’, Tootsie Rolls, or Twizzler Nibs were eaten as an additional ‘meal’ now and then. I worked in retail at the time, so I was on my feet, racing around all day. It definitely was not enough food. My manager at the time was extremely worried about me. She pulled me aside one day, almost in tears. Which was really strange because she was a tough lady. Most of my coworkers were a little afraid of her because she was strict and didn’t put up with anyone’s shit. But that day, she told me about her niece who had passed away from complications of anorexia. She saw similar behavior in me. I thought she was crazy, of course. “I eat, Pat. I promise I do!”. I wasn’t lying, really. Or at least that’s what I convinced myself. I was very skinny – and very sick. My cycle had always been irregular, very heavy and very painful. But now it was very light and short. I had blood in my urine at times. I would get extremely sick and vomit at random times. I began over-exercising, teaching 9 – 11 cardio kickboxing classes per week, plus working out at home. I fractured both of my legs due to malnutrition and over-use. But I had lost 112lbs, so I wasn’t about to stop. I maintained my weight at 118lbs for a few years and through another pregnancy. I even kept that weight, or there about, through a seriously abusive marriage, divorce, and into another abusive marriage. But after the birth of my third child, I lost control. The weight crept back up through my second divorce and continued beyond that 230lb mark. 

For Weight Loss, Eat Less Move More…Yeah, Fuck That:

By my late 30s – early 40s I was finally over this shit. I did not want to just exist as a fat lump. I missed out on so much with my kids because I was just so tired all the time. Dusting the living room would wipe me out. My muscles and joints ached, and I could not do any more. After just dusting! 

My youngest had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism at the age of 8. Her antibodies were in the hundreds, she had so many digestive issues and had so much inflammation at such a young age. I did a little research, put her on a gluten free diet and – WOW – what a difference that made for her! So I went to my family doctor and asked if this could possibly be my issue as well. He begrudgingly ordered a blood test for my TSH level and antibodies. TSH is the thyroid stimulating hormone and the presence of antibodies mean the body is attacking that particular part of itself. The result was a TSH of 5.5 and antibodies around 180. He told me that my TSH was in the normal range and never mentioned anything about the antibodies. At the time I didn’t even know he included antibodies in the lab work. I argued that my TSH was at the very high end of normal, so couldn’t my symptoms be due to that? He laughed at me. He LAUGHED at me. HE LAUGHED AT ME, and said, “Everyone would like to blame being overweight on thyroid issues, but that’s not your problem”, and he refused to look any further

Bullshit. I called an endocrinologist on my own and told them my TSH results and the experience I had with my doctor, and they brought me in for an appointment immediately. I never went back to that arrogant ‘doctor’. I was put on thyroid medication and also began taking a weight loss/food addiction drug. 

That experience taught me how to advocate for my children’s health and for my own. I researched everything I could before any appointment after that. That research led me to paleo – which helped a lot. That led me to low carb – which helped even more. Which led me to keto – which helped even more, BUT I began to get bogged down in the counting and tracking macros, and keto ‘treats’, and the expense of trying to make SAD foods (SAD = Standard American Diet) into keto-approved versions. Freaking exhausting! Between keto, calorie restriction (1200 calories a day), and the weight loss drug, I was down to 140lbs, working out, and feeling amazing. But I was SO. Freaking. Tired of tracking every single thing and calculating. UGH! Then, I found Dr. Ken Berry, and Neisha Berry, and Kelly Hogan, and Dr. Shawn Baker, and Steak and Butter Gal, and all the wonderful, amazing, brilliant others who have taught me so much! And now I belong to a community where I am supported and encouraged to EAT as much carnivore food as I possibly can to heal my hunger hormones and my thyroid. But it’s also healing my mind, my outlook, my everything. I have gained a lot of weight back doing this. I don’t even care. I feel so good, and I know it will come off again once my body has healed from all the trauma I have put it though. There’s no rush. I’m living now – not just existing. 

So here I am, about to turn 50, and I finally figured it out! I stopped the weight loss medication and I’m happily eating about 3,000 calories a day at the moment. Meat is healing me. I don’t eat any plants, I don’t eat any sugar or processed foods, I don’t use any sweeteners. I eat meat, butter, and eggs. I’m ridiculously happy and energetic, my mind is clear and focused, I do not crave carbs, I have no food addiction issues, and my sleep quality is incredible. From mindlessly eating as though possessed to being able to be around people who are eating pizza and ice cream, and just be able to say, ‘wow that smells good,’ and not be compelled to eat it…. that is nothing short of a miracle. 

More on the whole thyroid, wight loss drug, and some other medications I have had to take in the next post. Hint – I was pre-diabetic, insulin resistant, and could almost grow a beard in 12 hours. True story!

If you managed to get through this ‘short post’ – thank you! While I’m writing mostly for myself, to work through some things, I hope you come back again and that I can help others who may have endured these things in some way. 

xoxo

~ The Candid Carnivore