Carnivore? What’s that? Only eat meat? That sounds gross! You have to eat vegetables to get all the nutrients your body needs, right? And milk, you need milk for calcium, for your bones and teeth, right? Eating so much fatty meat can not be good for your blood pressure, cholesterol, your health in general, right? How can you afford to only buy meat? That has to be so expensive! Blah, blah, blah…….. These are some of the things I hear on a daily basis, and honestly, it’s some of my very own thoughts before I began this journey. Read on.

I began a 30 day challenge on the carnivore woe (way of eating) five months ago. I wish I’d started journaling on day 1, but I didn’t. I’ve had so many questions about it, so I decided to write here about my journey.

Throughout my 55 years I’ve struggled with being overweight. I tried almost all the diets out there and even created a few of my own along the way. I’ve taken diet pills, even prescription medicine and even though I might lose weight at first, once I stopped the pills the weight always seemed to creep back on and usually even a few more pounds. When I turned 54, I weighed more than I ever have. Looking at that huge 238 on my scales disgusted me, but I felt so defeated. Nothing seemed to work long term. The weight wasn’t the only issue either. My health was suffering also. The list of medical conditions kept me in the doctors office almost monthly, sometimes more often. I had chronic pain from arthritis and fibromyalgia, my knees are shot from carrying around all this fat for so long. I had sleep apnea and used a c-pap machine. Headaches, and sometimes migraines, plagued me daily. The list goes on and on, but those are a few major problems I suffered from and a few that I’ll mention in my journey thus far.

In March of this year (2024), my husband had become interested in the carnivore woe after hearing our pastor talk about it for a few months. Our pastor had done research and had been trying it himself with great results. He had talked to me about it, but I just didn’t think I could do it. I am not a meat lover. I can eat meat, but I’d much rather have vegetables. I just could not even consider a diet without all the yummy vegetables. Oh how wrong I was. After talking with my husband at length and listening to several videos from Dr. Ken Berry on the topic, we decided to give it a try.

We were going out of town for a few days for my husband’s job, so we eased into it. Being on the road, we ate out for most meals, so we tried just ordering the meat part of the meal. Some restaurants are ok doing that, some are not. Most of the time, you pay for the whole meal, even if you only get part of it. I, being the penny pincher I am, had a slight problem with that. (Ha!) I had to keep telling myself that it wasn’t a hill die on. It’s really no different than ordering a meal and not eating it all, which ends up gettting thrown away. Maybe not the best logic, but it’s what I told myself.

Once we came back home from our trip, we began to listen to all Dr. Berry’s videos about carnivore and ketogenic eating. We also found videos from another guy with a YouTube channel called Chris Cooking Nashville. He creates carnivore and keto recipes. He’s lost a ton of weight and improved his health like Dr. Berry has, so we decided to give some of his recipes a try. That was a game changer!! But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

For the first month we tried to stick with BBBE (beef, bacon, butter (not margarine), and eggs) and only drink water. At first, I ate mostly bacon and eggs. As I said, I’m not a big meat eater, but I do love bacon and eggs so I stuck with that for the most part. I did cook ground beef in the air fryer for lunch a few times. I’ll add our regular grocery list and a few recipes later. Cut out sugar, any type of sugar and believe me there are lots of sugars. Sugar has so many other names as it is hidden in most every processed food on the market. If you feel that you must add sugar, use Stevia or monkfruit. Those two are the only ones I’ve found that aren’t full of junk. In the past few years these nutrition stores have popped up all over selling loaded teas and shakes to help improve your health. What they don’t tell you is that there’s hidden sugar in their products and as tasty as they are, they are not really good for you. I was very addicted to their loaded teas. Not only do they taste great, they gave me the needed energy to get each day started. This was definitely a challenge and I’m not even going to lie, I failed. That failure wasn’t complete though, because even though I did not stick to strickly BBBE and water, I still lost about 20 pounds in that first month. Yes, that’s right! I know, it’s mostly water loss at this point, but it was enough to peak my interest into going another 30 days. I couldn’t believe how much better I already felt. During the first two weeks or so, some people may experience flu-like symptoms. It’s called keto flu. Some may also have some diarrhea. That’s ok. It’s your body getting rid of all the toxins from the crap you’ve been feeding it. I did this for several days, but not so bad that I couldn’t go out. I did not experience the flu-like symptoms, but I was more tired that usual. I learned from Dr. Berry, that I needed to add electrolytes and more fat to my diet. As crazy as “more fat” sounds, I did that and my energy level became much better. I started replacing my loaded tea with a bottle of electrolytes and it worked! I may actually have more energy than before. Another shocking thing is that after that first 2-3 weeks, I just didn’t feel hungry. I started eating only one, maybe two, meals a day. Doing this gave me a fasting period of 12-15 hours each day (6pm after dinner until 9-10am the next morning). My spare tire, you know, that extra ring of fat that sits just below your breast and makes you feel extremely bloated at all times, it was going away. That’s the first place I could tell that I was losing and it felt amazing. I could actually breathe better. The next thing was my leg pain. As I mentioned earlier, I suffer with a couple different chronic pain issues. Leg pain is something I’ve dealt with daily for over 10 years. It had just become part of my life and even though I was miserable, I had just accepted that I was going to have to live with that. After all, when I told my doctor about it, the only suggestion or possible solution was to give me more medication. That’s something I did not want. I hate the way medication makes me feel. I was on 5 prescription medications and I’m now down to 2. My blood pressure is no longer high, nor is my cholesterol. I’ve decreased my pain meds for the fibromyalgia. I’m off the c-pap machine and I no longer snore. I’m down 45 pounds and I have about that much more to go. I’m in no hurry, but I am excited about it. Feeling this much better has made all the difference for me.

At this point, we decided that instead of this being just a 30, 60, or 90 day challenge, because we felt so much better, this needed to become our way of life. That’s the best decision we’ve made that involved our health. We’ve added other meats now, not just beef. We love to try new things that we haven’t eaten before, but any kind of animal product is good. We do not use seed oils, such as olive oil, grapeseed oil, peanut oil, etc. We cook everything in bacon grease or butter. I mentioned above that butter is not margarine. Surprisingly, some people don’t know there’s a difference. There is!! Use real butter. Bacon grease is my favorite though. I love bacon. I eat bacon every day. We save all the grease from cooking it. There’s a few ways to cook bacon that I want to share also. The traditional frying in a skillet always works. However, it is extremely messy and can be a pain to clean up. You can also cut your bacon strips in half or even smaller pieces, place them in a large pot on top of the stove and cover it. Just keep it stirred until it reaches the doneness you desire. My favorite and least messy method of cooking it is in the oven. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper, lay your bacon strips on it. When you turn the oven on to preheat to 425, go ahead and add the pan of bacon. By the time the oven is preheated, the bacon is usually as done as I want it. You can play with this until you find your correct time, but there’s no mess. We will pour up the grease and save it. It’s great for cooking a good ribeye steak or liver. Yes, liver! I love liver and it is THE super food. It has so many nurtrients in it. I grew up eating liver, so it’s always been a favorite. Most people do not like it. I encourage you to try to like it. Your taste may change on this woe. Mine has.

We still get comments about how meat can not be good for us to eat all the time. Go back to our ancestors. They killed animals and they ate, or they caught fish and they ate. They did not have all the processed junk that we call food today. They were much healthier than we are. Our doctors are lying to us. You might ask, “Why would my doctor lie to me?” Because you are paying his mortgage!! That’s what he does for a living. I know not every doctor is like that, but I’d say 95% or more of them are. They try to make you feel like you need the chemial laden medications, which results in you coming back to see them for refills. That’s how they pay their bills. You are in charge of your own health. If your doctor makes you feel guilty about not wanting to follow his instructions or about getting a second opinion, find another doctor.

I know I’ve said a lot already, and it may be so confusing. It’s hard to put everything in order when telling my story, so I’m going to add a basic list of instructions, including a grocery list, below to help you get started. It’s so easy. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I promise it is!

FIRST THINGS FIRST

• Clean out refrigerator and panty. This is a must. If you have junk there, you will be tempted to eat it. Remove and discard any packaged/processed food. I’ll just say that was most everything we had in ours. No shame, just do it.
• Grocery shop- We began with 73/27 ground beef (or the fattiest you can find), bacon, real butter, and eggs. We did buy a couple ribeye steaks that were on sale because they are beef. That’s it!

THE RULES

• Start basic with BBBE (beef, butter, bacon, and eggs) and water.
• No sugar. If you are drinking soft drinks or other sugary drinks, cut down and stop them as quickly as possible for the best results. No sugary snacks (cake, cookies, candies). Sugar has lots of carbs.
• Try not to snack during the day. If you do, be sure it’s something on the BBBE list.
• Eat until you are comfortably stuffed. I try to do this on my first meal of the day. Be sure you have lots of fat in your meal. If you think it’s not enough, add butter. Butter is good on everything. Once you’ve done this for a few weeks, you won’t be hungry again for several hours. You may not even need more than one meal a day.
• Cheating- there are no such thing as cheat days on this woe, but we all know that we aren’t perfect. Don’t plan cheat days, but if you mess up, don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on track as soon as possible.
• Monitoring progress- Weigh on day one, measure your upper arms, waist, chest, hips and thighs. Track all this and update it weekly. Take pictures! You’re gonna love your progress!!
• Exercise- You do not have to exercise. There are people on this woe that can not exercise. Either they are too large to be able to exercise or there are even quadriplegic in a chair who simply can not do it. If you want to exercise, go for it, but you do not have to.
• Fasting- Don’t start out fasting, but after the first few weeks, notice what time you eat last in the evening and try to go 12-15 or more hours before you eat again the next morning. This won’t be hard after awhile. The cravings for sugar and carbs subside after your body is without them for a while.

A FEW FAVORITES

Dr. Ken Berry has a YouTube channel that is full of information. Check him out here: https://www.youtube.com/@KenDBerryMD
A good source for carnivore recipes, such as the ones I’ve listed below is Chris Cooking Nashville: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisCookingNashville
Another great source for carnivore information is Jenny Mitich: https://www.youtube.com/@JennyMitich

I already said bacon and eggs were a daily thing for me. And I can eat them at any time of day, so that was a huge help. We actually keep bacon on our stove all the time. If it’s a very busy day and we don’t have time for a full meal, there’s always bacon.

Another thing I did is just cook ground beef in the air fryer. Crumble up about half a pound of meat, add salt, and cook it 4-5 minutes. Take it out and stir it around and then cook for an additional 5 minutes or so, until it’s as done as you like it. I also added a little bit of shredded cheddar here. Cheese is something I used to love, but I have to be careful with dairy. Dairy is acceptable on this woe, but only if you can tolerate it. Cheese also has carbs and they add up fast so be careful with it. I also recommend only buying the block cheese and shredding it yourself. If you buy the preshredded, it’s full of fillers which is equivalent to cardboard.

Boiled eggs- always a good thing to have on hand, especially if you feel like you need a snack.

Fat bombs- another great “snack” to have on hand. Set out one 8oz block of cream cheese and 2 4oz stick of butter to soften to room temperature. After they have softened, mix with 3 tbsp cocoa and (only if you want it) 1/2 teaspoon liquid stevia. I use a medium scoop and put them on a tray in the fridge to firm up. Makes about 18. It’s like a little chocolate bomb. Very tasty!

Steak- the fattier, the better. Grill it, fry it in bacon grease or butter, cook it any way you like it.

Chris Cooking Nashville- look him up on YouTube. He has some great recipes. Here’s few of our favorites:

Caranivore Bread- This stuff is amazing! https://youtu.be/zTBh6bdIWjc?si=zlU7asp53J1UdfFj

Pizza- Yes, carnivore pizza. Add all the meats!! https://youtu.be/5WoeuOyMUUU?si=0QXUpKmJ0kT0GEVQ

I hope this article has helped some of you. My life is forever changed and I’m grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to share it with you.

Be blessed,

Nana