Ryan spent many years of his life yo-yo dieting. He experimented with vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian diets but had relatively zero success. At his heaviest, Ryan weighed over 340 pounds. Ryan says he recognizes that he has a food addiction and an addiction to beer. Ryan also developed severe bloating and depression, as well as arthritis in his hands that made it difficult to do the things he loved, such as playing the bagpipes.
Ryan lost one hundred pounds on his own by eating multiple small meals a day that were low in calories and high in carbohydrates. Though he lost weight, Ryan says he was miserable.
A friend introduced him to the carnivore diet in the fall of 2019. Though Ryan experienced some transitional issues initially, particularly diarrhea, he began to thrive on the carnivore diet. He says, “it was like someone flipped a light switch.” Ryan was doing well on the carnivore diet, losing weight and inflammation, until he was in a severe dirt biking accident in January 2020.
Ryan ended up having multiple surgeries and struggled to walk. During this time, Rayn fell off his carnivore diet into a cycle of heavy pain medications and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Ryan felt depressed and regained most of the weight he had previously lost.
In January 2021, Ryan decided he had had enough. He got back into the carnivore lifestyle. To create accountability for himself, Ryan started logging his weight weekly on the popular social media platform TicTok. Within four months of restarting his carnivore journey, Ryan lost forty pounds, and his arthritis and bloating disappeared. Ryan says he has also improved his mental clarity and depression. For the first time, he knows what it feels like not to experience intense mental fog and to feel genuinely happy and depression-free.
Ryan says at the beginning of his carnivore journey, he ate a lot of pork rinds, cheese, and a few sugar-free condiments but has since cut them out. He says the cheese was causing him to produce more mucus, and the cheese and pork rinds were causing him to display addictive behaviors. Today he eats mostly beef, mainly ribeyes, and ground beef he buys from Butcher Box. Ryan also eats eggs and drinks coffee every morning with butter and collagen. Ryan has also completely cut himself off from drinking beer but will enjoy a scotch or tequila from time to time.
Ryan is still recovering from his injuries and says when he started back on his carnivore journey, he practiced a lot of yoga, meditation, and cold therapy. In May of this year, he added weightlifting, but he still has a long way to go. However, he is conscious that his carnivore eating is helping him heal much faster than a Standard American Diet.
Ryan advises anyone looking to begin the carnivore diet to “give it thirty days.” He knows anyone can feel better with this eating method– Ryan himself is living proof. He says, “I finally feel like me.”
