I’m a 25 year old male and I’ve lost 72 lbs in the past 202 days on the carnivore diet.
My story, I assume, is like most. I tried what I thought was everything, even taking some kind of extract that was supposed to stop me from being hungry so I could lose weight. Of course that didn’t work. I have always been overweight and in the words of my uncle, “You know you’ll never be thin, right?”. So I assumed that I was going to be fat – but I didn’t have to be THAT fat.
I went through a rough period in my undergrad and topped out around 310 lbs. When I got to grad school, I attempted to take better care of myself and drop the weight. Nothing seemed to work that well.
Being a vegetarian did work for me as I was doing that in conjunction with jogging. On August 28th of 2018, I hit 279.2 lbs and was ecstatic as that was the first time I’d been below 280 in 4 or 5 years. I even took a picture of the scale which is why I know that date. Being a vegetarian seemed worth it. Even though I was miserable, I was getting some success.
My roommate, however, wanted to get back into weight lifting and I decided to join him. I had more or less stopped weight lifting at that point to focus on cardio. It was the most discouraging thing to watch the scale jump back up. I could tell myself it is water weight, it was muscle, that didn’t matter. Over the following several weeks, I was back up in the high 280s, there seemed to be nothing I could do about that, and I gave up on the diet a week or so later.
At some point I listened to Joe Rogan’s interview with Jordan Peterson who discussed his diet of eating only ground beef, salt and water. I thought to myself how crazy that sounded. But he touted the successes for himself and his daughter. A short search on the diet then revealed quite a few more success stories. I thought to myself, “what do I have to lose?” and set an initial goal of making it one month on the diet. I lost 14 lbs that month. I didn’t have to restrict how much I ate and was eating food that was amazing.
I then set a goal to hit 250 lbs. I met that one and my new goal is to get below 200 lbs. At this rate, I’ll hopefully hit that in the next two to three months. This diet has been a complete success and I’ve morphed it into a lifestyle instead of a diet. I intend to maintain it at this point the best I can. I may add in some seasonal fruit/vegetables that I grow, but I haven’t gotten there yet and won’t actually begin doing that until I hit 200 lbs. After my parents saw my success, they both have gone on keto. My father is down 40 lbs in about two months. My mother is down about 10. Now I just have to convince my brother.
I started off doing carnivore and I morphed it into a combination of carnivore and intermittent fasting probably three months ago. I now eat one meal per day with a one hour window for eating. My meals consist of steak, eggs, bacon, sausage, ground beef, chicken, cheese, heavy whipping cream, lunch meats and fish (primarily salmon). I’ve also recently started eating pork rinds. I only use butter or ghee to cook with. I still use spices and grow my own basil, thyme and rosemary. When cooking salmon, I do use lemon zest to season the fish.
I also drink coffee in the morning with probably less than a tablespoon of heavy whipping cream added to it. Occasionally, I will use half and half but try not to. I drink water and sparkling water. I also occasionally make a no-sugar chocolate mousse (made with 100% cocoa chocolate, eggs and heavy whipping cream).
As the image shows, I started January 12th, 2019 at 292.2 lbs. When I weighed myself this morning, I weighed 220.2 lbs.
