From Rock Bottom to Redemption: Frank’s Carnivore Awakening
Frank, a 43-year-old former pastry chef now transitioning into naturopathic practice, once found himself in a desperate cycle of addiction and declining health. “My lifestyle was very unhealthy and I needed to break out of this cycle,” he recalls. Hospitalized with gastroenteritis from alcoholism, he hit a profound low: “I just felt hopeless I couldn’t do it. There’s nothing more I could do”. Yet, a radical dietary shift to carnivore, undertaken about 11 months prior to sharing his story, led to an almost immediate transformation. “I woke up and I felt like a completely different person,” Frank states, marking the start of his new life.
The Weight of the Past: A Chef’s Battle with Addiction and Despair
Frank’s struggles began early, finding marijuana at 12 and progressing to harder drugs through his teens. Alcohol entered the picture at 16, and a cycle of weekend excesses followed him through various jobs into his mid-20s. Seeking change, he moved to Thailand at 26, trained as an ESL teacher, and later retrained in pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok.
Despite the prestige of his new career as a pastry chef, working long, grueling hours (70-hour weeks) took its toll. The high-stress environment and perhaps the constant exposure to sugar saw him fall back into old habits of heavy drinking. This culminated in a critical health crisis: hospitalization for gastroenteritis due to alcoholism. That event sparked a two-year period of sobriety and intense running, during which he excelled. However, upon returning to the UK and his demanding career, the old patterns resurfaced.
Even after achieving sobriety again two years before discovering carnivore—this time for good—Frank found himself in a deep depression. He was doing all the “right things”: an “optimized” whole foods diet with immense plant diversity, regular exercise including cold plunges, sauna, weightlifting, and sprinting, and even therapy. Yet, the darkness persisted. “I was deeply depressed the first year of sobriety,” he shares. “I just felt hopeless I couldn’t do it. There’s nothing more I could do”. Compounding this were lifelong gut issues, exacerbated by previous dietary experiments like veganism, and a pervasive mental fog that felt like “a cloud my entire life”. Anxiety and paranoia were also frequent companions.
A Desperate Search, A Carnivore Solution
Driven by this hopelessness, Frank scoured the internet for answers, listening to countless hours of nutrition podcasts. He’d heard of the carnivore diet and its mental health benefits years earlier from figures like Paul Saladino and Dr. Shawn Baker himself. “It just kept resurfacing to me and I kept hearing things about uh mental health benefits uh you know mental clarity,” Frank says. Finally, after a month of procrastination, he decided to “bite the bullet”. He jumped in overnight, initially keeping a few condiments but soon removing everything, even black pepper, to go fully animal-based.
The Awakening: “A Completely Different Person” in 48 Hours
The change was nothing short of miraculous and incredibly swift. “It was actually pretty miraculous for me,” Frank recounts. After just one full day of eating only animal foods, “on the second day I woke up and it was I woke up and I felt like a completely different person. It was that immediate”. The transformation was so profound that it became “probably one of the most memorable days of my life”. He was so amazed he even recorded himself on his phone, something he’d never normally do.
The “mental fog that felt like had been a cloud my entire life just had just just lifted”. His joint inflammation improved dramatically, and he describes a sensation of “almost like levitating like floating along” when walking. “I just felt amazing from the second day,” he emphasizes. He experienced only one headache on day five and otherwise seemed to dodge common adaptation issues.
Mental Freedom: Depression, Anxiety, and Cravings Banished
Eleven months into his carnivore journey, the mental health benefits have been profound and lasting. “I have not had any of the depressive thoughts or the brain fog or um anxiety. I would get anxiety and paranoia at the same time quite often… I haven’t had a sniff of any of that since,” Frank declares.
His relationship with addictive substances has also been completely reset. “There’s not a day goes by that I even think about having any kind of sugar. I just I just don’t need it,” he says. As for alcohol, “the thought of it is just repulses me now”. He firmly believes the carnivore diet “could be very effective in addiction recovery, all addictions whether it’s sugar addiction or or or alcoholism”.
Navigating the Carnivore Path: Diet, Sleep, and Body Composition
Frank’s carnivore diet evolved. He initially included cheese and creme fraiche for two weeks to help with the transition, then experimented with a strict Lion Diet (ruminant meat, salt, water) for two weeks. Now, his diet primarily consists of fatty steaks, fatty fish, and occasionally smoked pork belly or eggs. He finds immense freedom in the diet’s simplicity, a stark contrast to his previous obsessive focus on diverse ingredients and complex meal prep.
One challenge he encountered was sleep. While many report better sleep, Frank, a light sleeper, found he was waking very early if he ate his last meal too soon. He resolved this by shifting his dinner to between 4 and 6 PM, ensuring he gets adequate sleep.
Regarding body composition, he noticed some weight gain around six months in, likely from consuming too much dairy and added butter. More recently, by reducing added fats and focusing on the fats inherent in ruminant meat and eggs, he’s felt good and seen positive changes in his body composition.
A New Calling: Sharing Hope and Healing
Frank’s transformation has not only reclaimed his own life but also ignited a new passion. He’s building his naturopathic practice online, primarily through Instagram (“the Frank Wright”), with a focus on carnivore coaching and the connection between diet and mental health. He has also started a free School group to discuss these benefits.
“This diet has, with no exaggeration, saved my life and let me reclaim everything that I thought I’d lost forever,” Frank affirms. He is driven to share his story, knowing millions suffer without viable solutions from conventional channels. For Frank, the carnivore diet wasn’t just a dietary change; it was a lifeline that pulled him from the depths of despair into a future filled with health, clarity, and purpose.
