Jean’s Struggle with Weight and Health Issues
Jean has a long history of dieting, and started out being overweight as a child. While she was “almost normal as a teenager,” she found herself struggling with her weight in her twenties and thirties. She is 5’ 4”, and found her weight fluctuating between 130 and 140, even occasionally to 160 pounds.
Failed Attempts at Dieting and Health Programs
At the age of 40, she was diagnosed with a herniated disc in her back, and “couldn’t walk for a while.” But, there was more to come: “Then I was diagnosed with thyroid disease, which at first was like ‘I’m really, really tired’ and I just gained ten pounds in like three months. ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ and my doctor said ‘you have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, it’s no big deal, take this pill’ and I leave with a prescription for Levothyroxine.”
This helped Jean a little, and she did lose some weight but then “it stopped working…from that time on I never felt right, my energy was never right, I had a long list of symptoms, lots of headaches, cold all the time, no motivation.”
This continued into Jean’s late 40’s, when perimenopause hit and she got 4-5 hours of sleep per night, with frequent hot flashes. She decided to cut out sugar, exercised “a little”, and “Tried a low fat diet, it didn’t work.”
Jean saw a program to help with the thyroid by stabilizing blood sugar, eating dairy products and drinking orange juice several times a day. It helped a little, but she saw her triglyceride levels go “through the roof.” Then she tried the autoimmune protocol diet for a year, and got down to 120 pounds, but it didn’t help much in other ways. When she tried reintroducing foods, she found herself eating more and gaining weight.
Discovering the Carnivore Diet
Jean decided to go keto, and did it for 3 days, but found Dr. Baker, Dr. Berry, and Michaela Peterson. She found Michaela’s carnivore story very compelling. Because Jean still had a lot of symptoms, she decided to go on a carnivore diet.
Jean’s Carnivore Diet
Experience and Results
Her diet is beef, liver, and bone marrow. She found that her blood sugar became perfectly steady, and now her headaches are gone also after slightly reducing the total amount of food she eats. Jean now weighs 110 pounds.
Jean’s Current Diet and Lab Results
Jean finally saw meaningful improvement in both her lab values and how she feels, saying “My HDL and Triglycerides are awesome, like my HDL is 93 and my triglycerides are 87 or 90.” She eats mostly beef, with “about 20 grams of added fat for every 100 grams of lean meat, I usually use bone marrow…it’s pretty tasty like butter!”
Jean also eats some beef liver a few days a week, with salt and water. She drinks bone broth also, as she finds that it prevents muscle cramps that she had at first. Overall, Jean is happy to have finally found a diet that works to restore her health!
