Meet Liz. Before carnivore, she had a lot of issues with mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders such as binge eating and overeating. The eating problems were a coping mechanism for her emotional problems, but they led to stomach and digestive issues as well as being overweight.
Liz was a runner but developed a problem with painful and cracking joints. She also had hip pain from running endurance races.
In 2017, Liz began following a ketogenic diet when her son was nine months old. “I had severe postpartum depression…They kept telling me ‘eat oatmeal, it will boost your milk supply’ so I was eating all this oatmeal for six months and I was extremely sick from it.”
Keto did provide some relief for Liz: “it really helped with my sleeping and helped with my anxiety and I was really struggling with that because my son had a hard time the first couple of months of his life. I didn’t sleep for weeks and then I started keto because I started gaining all my weight back and I felt terrible.”
Liz also got some relief from her emotional issues: “It helped me with my depression and anxiety, and I could sleep at night without having hip pain. It really helped me with my overall mental health.”
Like many people, Liz was eating vegetables with her keto diet, and also the oatmeal everyone recommended. These were not working out for her, as she “started getting sick again and then I had my second child, because I did keto through an entire pregnancy. Then I became more interested in carnivore. Even cooking vegetables is such a pain. There’s a lot of extra work for me, and my kids weren’t always eating them, and I didn’t want to either. I felt like I was just choking them down.”
Liz found the carnivore diet to be a relief in many ways: “It’s more efficient for me…it also cut out the bloating and improved my mental health even more… I stick to mostly beef and eggs, and I like bacon a lot. I missed out on bacon for a few years, so I have a lot of catching up to do!”
She feels stronger, saying, “I do a lot of kettlebell workouts, 4 days a week, and I noticed I can lift heavier and I got faster when I upped all my protein and cut out veggies.”
She finds the extra energy useful, saying, “My daughter is a year and three months old so I get woken up a lot at night. I still have energy to take care of them the next day, without coffee, I can lift the kids and just have a lot more stamina when I work out.”
Liz finds her children benefit too, saying, “My kids are a lot better eating the meat and cutting the sugar-it really helps with the behavioral problems just like it does for us adults!”
