Background
I’d like to think that I am a fairly typical middle of the pack, middle aged athlete. Like many, I started exercising to lose weight. This eventually lead to running, triathlon, cycling, etc… and it worked! I initially lost 70# but recently I have struggled with gaining and losing the same 20-30# every winter and summer and I’m tired of it.
At the end of each season I sit down and evaluate what went right and what went wrong (you should be doing this as well!). For the last 3 years the biggest limiters in my racing have been my weight and consistency. I start each season at least 40# overweight, lose 20-30#, race overweight, go into the offseason, drink too much craft beer and eat too much bad food, balloon up, jump on the scale come January, realize I screwed up again, and buckle down. I’m tired of this cycle. It’s exhausting mentally and physically, and I can’t imagine it’s a healthy way to live.
After two seasons of Ironman training I have to admit that I am burned out on structured training. I thought that signing up for a crazy long race might inspire me to get out and ride my bike, but I was wrong. Of course, the nasty spring we had in Michigan didn’t help, but if you can’t be motivated to get out and train for a 210 mile gravel/off-road bike race, then there’s definitely something wrong. After much contemplation I decided to take this year off and focus on hanging out with my family. Our kids are getting older and already don’t want to hang out with us and my wife, the saint, has put up with 2 years of constant Ironman training. I recently bought us kayaks and I think it’s time we put them to use.
Why Carnivore
We were visiting northern Michigan over Memorial Day weekend and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of the year. I knew I needed to stay busy or I would sit around and drink beer, eat bad food, and watch Netflix (are you seeing a pattern?). I also knew that I needed to lose weight. If not for my athletic career, then for my health and to ensure I would be there to walk my daughter down the aisle (as she likes to remind me). I’ve always been a proponent of self-experimentation and have tried just about every diet out there. I’ve had my greatest success with a Paleo diet, specifically a low carb, high fat diet (LCHF). Unfortunately I had ignored that style of eating the past few years as I was training so much I felt like I needed carbs. With nothing on the schedule for the foreseeable future I decided to start looking into a Keto/LCHF diet. I did some research and found some amazing success stories along with a few studies showing that it’s a healthy way to eat and a great way to lose weight. I am also intrigued by the stories of people reversing their Type II diabetes with nothing more than diet as a close family member struggles with that. LCHF lead me to some interesting websites and eventually I came across the Carnivore diet.
What is the Carnivore Diet
It’s perhaps the simplest diet I can possibly write about. What is it you ask? Eat only animal based products, mainly meat. Fatty cuts are better than lean cuts. It sounds crazy, right? Well, BSC is right up my alley so I’ve decided to give it a shot. I generally do best in black/white situations when it comes to diet. When there are shades of gray I tend to allow myself an indulgence here and there, which eventually leads to me falling off the wagon completely. This diet is as simple as can be… Did what you are about to eat have a mom or a dad? If so, then go ahead and eat! Plus, how hard can it be to eat ribeyes, t-bones, burger patties, etc?
The Results
The big result from this experiment is that I was down around 15 pounds in 30 days. Sure, some of that was water weight, but the same can be said for most weight loss programs. Overall this was the easiest diet I have ever followed. My average day looked like this:
- Breakfast – nothing, I wasn’t hungry. I would occasionally visit the local diner if for some reason I was hungry. Breakfast would consist of 3 eggs over medium and a sausage patty.
- Lunch – Two grilled hamburger patties, occasionally with a slice of cheese.
- Dinner – Ribeye, NY Strip, Porterhouse, etc. My family quickly grew tired of steak (they are nuts) and I would often grill them shrimp or chicken and would occasionally eat some of their food as well.
You’ll note I often skipped breakfast, which basically lead to unintentional intermittent fasting (IF). That probably helped a bit with the weight loss as well.
Unfortunately the Carnivore Diet wasn’t able to cure the fatigue problems I have been having in the afternoon, but it did help me rule out blood sugar issues as a cause (this has since been diagnosed as a mild case of sleep apnea and I’m hoping to have it resolved soon).
The only negative I experienced during this 30 day experiment is that my stomach was NOT happy the first few days. I did some research and came to the conclusion that my body was not prepared to handle all of the fat I was eating (I came from a background of lean meats like chicken). After a couple of days I popped an Imodium and the problems went away, never to come back.
Exercise
My initial goal was to apply this way of eating to endurance sports, and on that front I didn’t have much luck. I took the first couple of weeks off to give my body time to adapt to a rather drastic change in diet but bonked pretty hard my first few rides. I take the responsibility for this as I am not patient enough to allow my body to become fat adapted (I’ve been told this can take months). I’ve found a new product, Generation UCan, that has carbs but does not knock you out of ketosis. Since adding that into my exercise regimen I have been going strong. In regards to endurance sports and a strict Carnivore diet I would need to say that the results were inconclusive in my small n=1 experiment.
Going Forward
Will I continue a strict carnivore diet going forward? Probably not. I enjoy eating veggies occasionally, especially if my wife makes something like zoodles (zucchini noodles) that go great with a steak. I think the bulk of my future diet, at least for the rest of this year as I focus on weight loss, will continue to be LCHF with most meals following the outline I laid out above. Overall I’m happy with the experiment and would encourage anyone to give it a shot. I always liked what Robb Wolf said about the Paleo diet (and I’m paraphrasing)… “Give yourself 30 days and see how you look, feel, and perform”. If you’re not happy with the results, move onto the next experiment!
