In the previous entry, I gave a life-long, chronological timeline of my history with food. I want to take small snapshots of each stage and give a little more detail into each. Now this goes against my nature to do this out of order, but I think my most recent experiences are probably why you’re here.
So did I just decide one day that I would only eat meat? No. But also, yes.
Did I get those results pictured above by being a carnivore? No. But also, yes.
Lemme ‘splain.
In the photo on the left, I was roughly 230lbs. I don’t have any photos of myself at my highest weight and I don’t even know for sure what that number was. Probably somewhere around 250lbs. I didn’t have a scale or a full-length mirror. Just a ravenous appetite, undiagnosed Hashimoto’s, and severe mental and emotional trauma. Though I had tried “dieting” like I did in the days of my anorexia and bulimia, my addiction to food and the damage to my metabolism held my weight hostage.
Paleo
Somewhere around 2013 – 2014, when I had put my youngest daughter on a gluten-free diet for her Hashimoto’s diagnosis, things started to click. I learned, partly due to the enormous cost of gluten-free versions of foods she loved, that maybe we are all better off with just whole, one-ingredient foods. That lead me to paleo. The paleo diet is basically eating only things that existed in paleolithic times. Omitting sugar and processed food and adding some high quality vitamins made such an enormous difference in my life. But I still had a lot of Hashimoto’s symptoms, so my research continued.
Weight-management Drugs
In addition to Synthroid (I’m not convinced really does much as it doesn’t treat the root cause) my endocrinologist prescribed a medication called Contrave, which was a fantastic tool to help me control that impulse to eat everything in sight. It was a miracle, at the time. On paleo, I still had intense cravings and would slip up quite often. But this new medication helped control that. I was truly amazed that I could see donuts from my desk at work and have very little to no urge to eat them. Before this medication, I would have inhaled at least one before I even realized I had left my desk. Food addiction is truly like being possessed. Your brain is on autopilot when it comes to food and yet you need food to live. It’s not like you can avoid food and people who eat. That’s not how this works.
Low-Carb
Around that time, I was also looking at low-carb diets and thinking this may be even better. It was! One of the symptoms of Hashimoto’s for me was brain fog. Now I’m not talking about brain fog as in being a little forgetful, why did I walk into this room, did I take my vitamins. I’m talking about a fog so thick I would forget what I was saying mid-sentence, completely stop talking, and have no idea why the other person is looking at me like they thought I might be having a stroke. Low carb almost completely fixed that!! I knew I was really on to something then.
As for the weight loss, low carb made a dramatic difference in that as well. But I have to admit, it was a whole combination of things that lead me to the 140lb photo above.
1. Low-carb diet
2. Contrave weight-management medication
3. Lifting weights and working out 3 – 4 times per week
4. Consuming less than 1300 calories per day
Would I recommend this combination? Knowing what I know now? No fucking way.
It is not sustainable. Low carb? Fine, do that. Contrave? At $120 per month? Nope. Lifting weights and working out 3 – 4 times per week? Yeah, why not if you have the time? Might be a bit excessive, but it doesn’t hurt either. Calorie restricting? A resounding fuck that. That, my friends, that eat-less-move-more advice is so very damaging! That is disordered eating. Were our ancestors sitting around trying to figure out how many calories they had left in a day? No! Did they eat like crazy every chance they got? Uh, yeah, they did!
So why and how does this work? It doesn’t make sense based on everything we have been taught, right? That’s an explanation for another post. But here’s a hint: your body is hoarding the nutrient-void calories you have consumed and storing them as fat because you’re starving it and it doesn’t know what to do with the garbage you’re throwing down your throat like it’s a living dumpster. Man-made “food” is not fit for human consumption.
Keto – Ketovore – Carnivore
For the last year+, maybe almost two years, I have been eating carnovire-ish. Meaning I had some slips, I used keto-approved sweeteners, some keto treats now and then, some veggies here and there. That was only making things more difficult as far as my addiction to sweet tastes. While I was mostly meat-based, or ‘ketovore’ (keto-carnivore), and I wasn’t eating sugar, the overly processed keto treats (curse you, Rebel Ice Cream!!), even those I made at home, only brought back that intense desire for more. It was best, for me, to eliminate anything and everything that did not come from an animal in its singular form, or at least as close as possible to it.
Counting calories was exhausting and contributing to my tendency for obsessive behavior, too. So that practice had to go as well. Just. Eat. Meat. ALL the meats! No counting, no obsessing, no addiction. Just meat. And eggs and butter, of course.
Today, three months into eating only animal products, as much as I can possibly fit into my stomach, I’m weighing in around 165lbs. And I am way ok with that. I know it will come off again when my body is finished healing. I’m stockpiling nutrition, healing my hormones, and feeling un-fucking-stoppable. Assertive. Confident. Powerful.
How do I know I’m healing?
- My mood and my energy are borderline obnoxious – but in a really good way!
- My ‘beard’ doesn’t grow in within hours of shaving anymore. For context – I have hirsutism, which means I have a hormone imbalance that causes whisker-like hairs on my chin, jawline, and upper lip. This is typically due to PCOS, adrenal imbalance, or insulin resistance.
- I have about 2″ of gray roots and I don’t care – not because I’ve given up, but because I’ve realized that how I feel both physically and mentally are far more important than someone else’s idea of what’s attractive. I feel GOOD, I feel I look good, and I accept myself as I am in this moment. Will I ever dye my hair again? Maybe. But I’m not really concerned about that right now.
- I’m actually not really concerned about anything. Again, not because I’ve given up, but because my mental and emotional response has evolved. I have a better perspective now that my mood is better regulated.
- No longer taking Contrave – I had to stop when I had shoulder surgery. And let me tell you I healed SO quickly! How?
- Less inflammation, that’s how!
- Zero carb cravings, zero sugar cravings, increased mental clarity and focus, better sleep…..
This is just the beginning!
It took nearly 50 years for me to get to this point. There is no sustainable quick fix for my health. And again, I’m feeling better than I have EVER felt! This is the long game – healing.
Stop dieting because you hate yourself and start eating because you love yourself. Your body is made of fat and protein, so give it the building blocks it needs.
xoxo
~ The Candid Carnivore