Sean improved fitness, chronic joint and back pain on carnivore diet

My story:

When I turned 40 in July 2017,  I was “living a good life” filled with “good food” and “good booze”. 

What wasn’t good was my health. I was fat. My back hurt. My knees hurt. When I bent over to tie my shoes, I couldn’t breathe. I was always tired because I had a bad case of sleep apena. I was pre-diabetic. I was on blood pressure medication. I thought that’s just how life went when you were over 40. 

Just before Halloween that year, I was introduced to the idea of a ketogenic diet and, after some research, I realized I could eat bacon and lose weight. I decided to give it a try and, for the next year, I ate a strict keto diet, usually staying under 20g of carbs daily. My protein came mainly from chicken and fish with some tempeh (soy) thrown in. My fat sources were ghee, olive oil, and coconut oil. I included most of the “dark green, leafy vegetables” that people are so enamored with. I ate a boatload of caesar salads with chicken. 

 

I lost a bunch of weight, going from ~315lbs to ~240 (I’m 6’1″, btw). 

I lost athletic performance. I had no gas in the tank. I was lighter but my strength was not what it used to be. 

I also lost my sex drive. 

Then my weight loss stalled.

I decided to take a hiatus from keto and just watch my calories. I gained some weight back over the holidays and decided to go back on keto in January of 2019 and saw no changes.

 

In March of 2019, I stumbled upon Dr. Ted Naiman, Dr. Paul Saladino, and Dr. Shawn Baker and the Carnivore WOE. That month, I decided to give it a try despite the objections of my girlfriend and my mother, a retired RN. I did make my mother a promise to get my labs done monthly to ensure I wasn’t killing myself.

 

In the first month, I saw my strength and sex drive come back with a vengeance! I went from being able to do 0 pull-ups to 8!

 

Now, I usually eat once a day (OMAD) and fast for the rest. Here’s what I’ve seen:

Basically, I’m 42 and I feel like I’m 22!

 

Now, here’s the super cool part:

Also, after seeing my lab results each month, my parents made the decision to go carnivore in June. For my mother, it was about losing weight and breaking her carb addictions. For my father, he did it to beat a cancer he’s been fighting since 2013. His scans in September showed the tumors shrinking and that was with no other new intervention aside from diet!