The Carnivore Diet For Weight Loss
Thinking about doing the carnivore diet for weight loss?
If not to lose weight, maybe you’re interested in trying the diet for some other benefit you might’ve heard it does wonders for.
Whatever the reason you may have for wanting to give it a go, will the carnivore diet work for it?
Let’s find out!
Background:
The carnivore diet has historical antecedents that can be traced to Bernard Moncriff and the publication of his book, The Philosophy of the Stomach: Or, An Exclusively Animal Diet, in 1856. It wasn’t until 2017 that the most recent iteration of the dietary pattern came to the public’s attention when Shawn Baker, an American orthopedic doctor, made an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and discussed his nutritional philosophy. That interview was followed up in 2019 with Baker’s release of The Carnivore Diet, which gives a more detailed outline of the diet that the cleverly titled book is named after. A year later, Paul Saladino, another doctor and pioneer in the carnivore movement, published The Carnivore Code before also making an appearance on Rogan’s widely influential platform to further amplify the message.
Overview:
Ancestral, or primitive, diets are those that argue for a return to the dietary pattern of our early human ancestors under the basis that the eating habits of modern man don’t align with the way we should eat, thus preventing our bodies from functioning at their best, which leads to a host of issues with our health and wellbeing. That’s what an ancestral diet is, which the carnivore diet so happens to be. More specifically, the diet’s proponents contend that many of the problems that are now pervasive have to do with the departure from diets consisting mostly of protein and fat from animal sources to more carb-heavy plant foods. Thus, it’s argued that for weight loss, better heart health, lower inflammation, higher testosterone, improved digestion, and greater mental clarity, among other things, what we should do is eat nothing but animal-sourced food like the very wise and vegan-hating primogenitors of our species did.
What To Eat:
The “all-meat diet,” “zero carbohydrate diet,” and “no carb diet” are alternative names for the carnivore diet, which gives an idea of the foods that comprise it, those being animals and animal products only. Examples include eggs, organ meats, and fatty cuts of beef, pork, game, poultry, and fish, as well as bacon, sausage, beef jerky, and other processed meats; lard, tallow, and duck fat to cook with; and bone marrow to make bone broth, the carnivore diet’s beverage of choice in addition to water. For flavoring, the options are salt, pepper, and zero-carb herbs, spices, and seasonings. Some variations of the diet may also allow milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, heavy cream, and other dairy products so long as they’re low-lactose variants to minimize carbs as much as possible.
What Not To Eat:
The carnivore diet only allows for foods made of or derived from things that walked, crawled, flew, swam, or otherwise had parents. That means that all fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, legumes, plant-based oils, and rice, pasta, bread, pastries, and other processed and whole grain products are completely excluded from the diet. So too is all sugar, whether it be natural, such as maple syrup, or added, like in ketchup and candy; processed foods containing additives, such as those found in frozen and canned food; dairy products with high levels of lactose; salsa, horseradish, mustard, and any other condiments made from vegetables; and soda, fruit juice, energy drinks, coffee, tea, and alcohol. Oh, and if the obvious needs to be said, MEAT ALTERNATIVES, such as those made by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, ARE ABSOLUTELY OFF LIMITS!!!
Results:
There are no studies specific to the carnivore diet to support any of its purported benefits, one of the biggest being the management of several autoimmune and psychiatric disorders. Because of the lack of research, it’s hard to draw out if the diet is as effective as its legion of followers claim in relieving the symptoms of depression, anxiety, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, for example, or if alleviation of those maladies is owed to the power of the placebo effect or some other extenuating factor. That is, if any effects that address those conditions are to be had.
As for other claims about the carnivore diet working, they don’t have as large of an obstacle in proving their plausibility without the science. For instance, many people who follow the carnivore diet note improved skin or the subsiding of gastrointestinal discomfort. It shouldn’t take a genius to figure out the reason why. Because you’re a genius, you know it’s because those people more than likely had unknown food allergies or intolerances that caused their acne, rash, gas, or bloating, which ceased occurring when they stopped exposing themselves to the allergens or irritants they were eating before that triggered their reaction. What about reports of improved mood? Well, by going from a really high-carb diet to a really low-carb diet with the almost total exclusion of sugar and starches, there shouldn’t be any wild swings in blood sugar, as there’s a relationship between emotions and blood sugar dips and spikes. This absence of carbs also explains why some notice improvement in their insulin health and the carnivore diet may work for diabetes management.
With weight loss, there are a number of reasons why it may be experienced on the carnivore diet. The most obvious has to do with the fact that carbs have an effect on fluid retention in the body. So with the ingestion of very minimal carbs from dairy, a considerable amount of water weight will be lost. Another vehicle for potential weight loss is reduced calorie intake by two methods despite the carnivore diet not having recommended portion sizes and followers being instructed to eat as much as they want until they’re full. The first way is through the high intake of fat and protein, two macronutrients that help make you feel fuller longer, which can lead to eating fewer calories overall. The second is that with the total exclusion of carbs on the diet, the possibility of easily overshooting your daily calories with high-calorie snack options is eliminated, as you’re unlikely to mindlessly munch on a chicken breast and gulp down bone broth in front of the boob tube in the same manner you would a bag of chips and bottle of soda. Lastly, weight loss may be enjoyed on the carnivore diet when the body resorts to burning fat for energy through ketosis, especially when fatty meats and high-fat animal products are consumed rather than their leaner, higher protein counterparts.
Safety:
Until the body becomes adjusted to the high fat and protein intake of the carnivore diet, it’s not uncommon for carnivores, the clever name for the diet’s followers, to experience constipation, bloating, diarrhea, upset stomach, muscle cramps, lethargy, and difficulty sleeping. Those are short-term effects that should eventually clear up and don’t pose much of a danger. Any concerns about the diet and its health risks are to be had in the long term.
For starters, the lack of fiber in the diet not only contributes to the constipation suffered by most people at the beginning but over time it can also create an imbalance in the bacteria in the gut, which can affect colonic health and may result in a compromised immune system. But fiber isn’t the only nutrient found in fruits, vegetables, grains, and other plant foods. There are also key vitamins and minerals, all of which may be missed out on due to their absence in the diet. This can open the door for nutritional deficiencies and their associated conditions.1For example, one may develop scurvy without vitamin C, an essential nutrient that fruits and vegetables are the best sources of and cooked meat is bereft of. Moreover, in addition to their fiber and vitamin and mineral content, plant foods contain a number of antioxidants and other metabolites that make them so beneficial in lowering the risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Eating absolutely no plant-based foods only increases that risk.
As we see, the carnivore diet has the problem of reducing certain nutrients. Compounding its problem is that it also provides too many others that pose their own health risks. One such nutrient is saturated fat, which increases “bad” LDL cholesterol. Being that animal foods are good sources of saturated fat, their heightened consumption can spike cholesterol levels, thereby enhancing the risk of heart disease. And then there’s sodium. When consumed in excess, this chemical element commonly found in bacon, salami, ham, and other processed meats can elevate blood pressure and have a number of deleterious effects on the kidneys.2As if that weren’t enough bad shit about processed meat, it and red meat are associated with higher rates of certain types of cancer, including that of the colon, esophagus, and stomach.
Another nutrient in abundance on the carnivore diet that has potential downsides is protein. The high intake of it can increase uric acid levels and cause gout. What’s more, with the kidneys under constant pressure to filter and process all of the acids and toxins created by protein, damage to those organs may occur. Prediabetes, if not a full-blown case of the metabolic disorder, is also a possible consequence of protein overindulgence. That’s because unlike fat and carbs, the body doesn’t store protein, the macronutrient used to make and repair cells, synthesize hormones, and produce enzymes, among various other tasks. Now, when there’s little if any glucose from carbs for energy but excess protein, what isn’t used by the body for its regular functions gets broken down into amino acids then glucose via a process known as gluconeogenesis. So on the carnivore diet, where waaaaaaayyyyyy more protein is routinely consumed than needed and carbs are few and far between, there’s endless conversion of protein into glucose, which can result in fasting blood sugar readings that are indicative of the development of diabetes.
All of the potential negative outcomes of the carnivore diet are why it isn’t suited for certain populations, such as those with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or any history of stroke or heart or kidney disease.
Other:
After viewing all the shit that can go wrong with your health by following the carnivore diet, you’re probably thinking to yourself what separates it from that of the traditional diets of the Inuit in the North American Arctic and the Nenets of Siberia, both of whom haven’t historically been subject to the same health risks despite their all-meat diets?
Well, that’s because while both groups traditionally existed on high-fat, high-cholesterol diets with no outward signs of fiber for the majority of the year, a crucial detail that’s missed is that the whales and caribou subsisted on by the Eskimos and reindeers by the Nenets, for example, was eaten raw, in addition to every part of the animal being consumed. This consumption of raw animals provided these peoples with nutrients like vitamin C that would’ve been lost when cooked, as well as fiber from the skin, hooves, and bones, not to mention that their diets weren’t always devoid of plant fiber, as they were able to collect berries and other vegetation in the summer and obtained greens from the undigested stomach contents of plant-eating animals. As such, while consuming all-meat diets, the micronutrient profile of these populations was different, thus leading to different health outcomes than what may be expected from the carnivore diet.3Also, while eating almost exclusively meat, their carb intake wasn’t as low as what’s considered ideal by the carnivore diet, as their intake of raw meat indirectly provided them with carbs in the form of glycogen still present in the animals, which is ordinarily lost at the time of slaughter in climates much warmer than what’s found where the Inuit and Nenets call home.
Glossary: calories, diet, hormones