In 2023, Mitchell was the picture of health. As a certified nutritionist, personal trainer, and gym owner, his life was dedicated to fitness. He was 198 pounds of lean muscle, eating what he believed was a pristine diet, and on the verge of publishing his first health book.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
Mitchell was hospitalized with a complete small bowel obstruction. He was on the “cusp of perforation,” his intestines ready to explode. Doctors removed five liters of fluid from his gut and forced an NG tube down his nose while he was wide awake. It was, he recalls, “one of the worst experiences of my life.” The diagnosis was Crohn’s disease, a chronic, “incurable” inflammatory condition.
The Death Sentence
The specialists wasted no time in presenting the standard protocol. Mitchell was told he must immediately begin high-cost immunosuppressant infusions—drugs that would leave him vulnerable to infections and cancer for the rest of his life.
When Mitchell, relying on his professional background, asked about lifestyle and nutritional changes, he was met with a dismissive wall. “They flat out told me, ‘Unless you go on this medicine, you’ll essentially die. Nutrition, lifestyle isn’t enough to change your circumstances.'” They gave him, in his own words, “a death sentence” for his foreseeable future.
But Mitchell couldn’t accept that fate. A week before getting sick, he had published a book on health, and now he was being told his entire profession was useless. Defiant and debilitated, he recorded his conversations with the specialists as “his middle finger to the medical community.”
The Seven-Year Key
Weak, having lost 45 pounds, and desperate for an alternative, Mitchell started scouring the internet. He stumbled across an “internet gold” forum from 2008, where a man had meticulously documented his seven-year journey using a ketogenic, low-starch, animal-based diet to manage his own Crohn’s.
That obscure forum post was the key. Mitchell didn’t just see a diet; he saw a metabolic therapeutic. He dove down the rabbit hole, learning from pioneers in metabolic health like Drs. Shawn Baker and Anthony Chaffey.
He committed to a radical experiment: pure red meat, salt, and water.
Remission and a New “Healthy”
The results were rapid and profound. Within six weeks, the symptoms that had nearly killed him—bloody stools, violent vomiting, severe diarrhea, and debilitating cramping—were gone. Mitchell began putting on weight as quickly as he had lost it, adding 40 pounds of healthy muscle back onto his frame in just four months.
Today, Mitchell is in full remission, managing his health with a focused “Species Appropriate Diet” of red meat, eggs, chicken, and some dairy. He is a completely different kind of health coach now, guiding his clients from a “metabolic first” perspective. The man who once ate a sleeve of Oreos is now “fireproof,” a testament to the fact that sometimes, the standard “healthy” advice is exactly what’s holding us back from true healing.
“I was already a health professional… but the longer you do it, the better you feel. The proof is in the steak.”
