From Debilitating Long-COVID to Reclaimed Life: My Carnivore Transformation
My name’s Luke, and I wanted to share my story of how I reversed my long-COVID through using the carnivore diet. The condition totally disabled me. Before I got sick I was an active powerlifter, but after the illness I had debilitating fatigue and brain fog. This diet has, with no exaggeration, saved my life and let me reclaim everything that I thought I’d lost forever.
The Downward Spiral: My Life with Long-COVID CFS
I got covid in January of 2022 and developed long-COVID induced CFS. For two years, I battled debilitating fatigue and brain fog. Sometimes I could manage light physical activity and short work days, but I’d often spend weeks or even months bedbound. My brain fog was so bad during flare-ups that I would often struggle to put sentences together. Despite being exhausted all the time, I couldn’t sleep at night; I’d spend my days with no energy, but it would take sometimes as much as 5-6 hours for me to fall asleep. I also had very bad short and long term memory loss problems, which significantly impacted the quality of my life and personal relationships. This continued for 2 years, despite me working with a naturopath to implement a very well balanced, whole foods diet and taking over 30 pills a day in supplements and medications. I put on a lot of weight and was steadily losing muscle mass. My ADHD got significantly worse, I was having anxiety and panic attacks almost daily for much of that time, and I was unable to earn a living. In the beginning of 2024, my symptoms got worse than ever. I had to use a cane to walk around my apartment and would regularly have my legs give out from under me while walking. I was so confused that I often couldn’t drive a car, or would forget how I got places or what I was doing there.
A Glimmer of Hope: Discovering Carnivore
I was desperate for anything that could help me, and spent any time I had a bit of mental clarity searching online for any stories of people getting better from my condition. In the beginning of March of 2024, I found a single comment on a Reddit thread where someone said they cured their Long-COVID by going carnivore. I knew one of my friends had done a carnivore diet for other autoimmune problems so I reached out to her to ask about her experience, and started watching videos from Ken Berry, Shawn Baker and Anthony Chaffee. I decided to jump head first into the diet, and on March 7th I went and bought a bunch of eggs, beef, pork, butter and chicken and ate only those with salt.
“The Brain Fog Was Gone”: My Rapid and Dramatic Improvements
After only 3 days, the brain fog that had crippled me for 2 years was gone. On the 4th day, I went for a 6km hike with my dogs without feeling tired. I was floored with how dramatic a change I had so quickly. My anxiety and panic attacks were gone. I could focus better. My memory loss problems that I’d suffered from were gone. My insomnia was significantly improved and I was getting full nights of sleep again.
Rebuilding My Strength and Shattering Limits
It’s taken longer for my physical strength to return, but at 3 months in I was able to start doing some light gym training again. Five months into the diet I had lost 42lbs and managed to do a 26km hike in just over 5 hours. This January [referring to Jan 2025, as he started March 2024 and is 11 months in when writing], I started getting back into heavy compound lifting and resistance training, and have started taking up running again. The chronic pain and inflammation I suffered from my whole life, even before covid, is a thing of the past. My bloodwork shows me at optimal levels for everything, across the board.
Fine-Tuning My Carnivore Approach
I’ve done different versions of carnivore over the past 11 months. I did a lion diet for 5 months, and then slowly reintroduced different types of meat to see how I felt. Now my diet is basically fatty steaks, fatty fish and occasionally I’ll have smoked pork belly or some eggs.
A Message of Hope: Why I’m Sharing My Journey
This diet has, with no exaggeration, saved my life and let me reclaim everything that I thought I’d lost forever. After years of having doctors tell me that there was nothing they could do to help me, taking matters into my own hands and just changing what I ate has brought me more health and happiness than I would have ever believed possible. I’m 11 months in now and never going back. I really want to share my story with as many people as I can, because I know there’s millions of people out in there suffering from Long-COVID and there just aren’t any viable treatments coming from the medical community for it. I’d be happy to have my story published on your website and would also be interested in doing an interview with Dr Baker if he’d be interested in sharing my story.
