Should we eat our vegetables?

The answer might surprise you.

This past summer has been an interesting study into the Carnivore Diet versus keto and low carb. If you’ve been with me for awhile, you’ll know that I used to recommend a lower carb food plan to reduce inflammation and heal the body that consisted of 50-75% veg, 25-50% animal protein, and quality fats such as butter, avocado, olive oil, ghee, or tallow. I am realizing now that I was wrong. And I’m willing to admit that I was wrong, if it means embracing something closer to the truth

At the end of May, I was feeling extremely tired with leg weakness, sinus problems, digestive issues (longstanding), headaches, and my nervous system was so depleted, confused and stuck that I was having difficulty even muscle testing my clients. I would walk my dog for about 5 minutes, 10 if it was good day. I was considering again, as I have in the past, that maybe I should be shutting down my practice and filing for disability.
 
One Friday evening, on June 16th, I was lying in bed exhausted from the day. I had been cancelling 1-2+ days per week because I felt too poorly to see clients. That week was no different. Two days were blocked off. That particular Friday night, one of Darren Schmidt’s notifications came across my screen, as I am subscribed to his YouTube channel. I pulled up the video, and he began talking about Carnivore again, but instead of rolling my eyes, thinking he was too extreme, I decided to open my mind and listen to what he had to say. He listed all the symptoms I was having, and he talked about the toxins in the plants that were blocking the absorption of nutrients. I went on to search on YouTube for other doctors discussing Carnivore and modified Carnivore, like Paul Saladino, for one. Anthony Chaffee is another.
 
After listening to 3 different MD’s talk about the benefits of Carnivore, I decided that the next day I would try not eating any plants. I had more energy that day than I had had in a very long time. So I decided to keep going. I figured I could do anything for 1 week. By day 3 I was tired again, but I figured out I needed electrolytes and salt with plenty of water to make it through the first few weeks. Once I added those in, I felt pretty good. This got me through the “keto-flu.”
 
I had been doing low carb, basically just meats, veg, and fat for at least two months prior to going on Carnivore. The beef was 100% grass-fed, the seafood was wild-caught, organic chicken, organic vegetables, occasionally an organic apple (rare). Zero processed food, zero sugar, zero grains. And yet…I was getting sicker and sicker. I have to tell you that I’ve done vegetarian, I’ve done vegan, I’ve done juice fasts. Not a single food plan has given me the kind of energy and health that Carnivore has.
 
I’m not saying that Carnivore has cured everything that ails me. I am still working on healing myself. But this is what it did…it took out the foods that were causing me problems. After a week on Carni, I was so shocked by how much better I felt, that I began researching how I could possibly be feeling this good.
 
This is what I found.
 
When I was in school learning about nutrition and how the body works, I was taught that you should eat the entire orange, for example. Don’t drink orange juice because it’s basically straight sugar. The fiber in the orange slows down the absorption of the sugar. But if you take that a step further, fiber slows down the absorption of nutrients, period. Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.
 
I needed to know whether humans are herbivores, omnivores, or carnivores. When you look around, humans are eating a variety of different diets. You have at one end of the spectrum the Vegan who only eats plants - vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes. At the other end of the spectrum is the Full Carnivore who eats only meat and no plants whatsoever. And then everyone in between. We have the food pyramid with grains at the bottom, fats and protein at the top, vegetables and fruits in the middle. This is what the government says we should eat. The typical American, however, eats just a lot of processed food that has very little nutritional value. The idea is: calories in, calories out, and it doesn’t matter where the calories come from.
 
So, are we omnivores? I began looking at teeth structure which definitely pulls us away from the herbivore diet. Many herbivores have flat molars for grinding. We have canines and more pointy molars which could indicate that we are omnivores or even potentially carnivores. I wasn’t able to narrow it down any further by looking at different teeth. Our molars are not flat like an herbivore. However, there are some herbivores with molars like ours, with a little point to them.
 
So, I moved on to the GI tracts of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. Herbivores have a large cavity of some kind, either their fore-gut, hind-gut, or cecum. The reason for the large cavity is so that herbivores can take in a HUGE amount of vegetation in a day, and ferment that fiber in order to extract the nutrients from the vegetation. This fermentation process also neutralizes many of the toxins in plants. Some herbivores even have specialized bacteria to break down certain toxins. Most herbivores, especially ruminant animals eat for severals hours in a day in order to take in enough vegetation. An herbivore GI tract looks very different from a human’s GI tract. This new found knowledge determined for me that we are not herbivores.
 
A carnivore’s GI tract looks similar to a human’s, as did an omnivore’s GI tract. So I figured that puts us in either the carnivore or omnivore category. It was a challenge for me to find and list all the omnivores on the planet. There aren’t very many. We consider a bear to be an omnivore, for example, but bears eat 90-95% meat, and occasionally a little fruit if they come across a berry bush, or when they get into a camper’s cooler. If you can come up with an omnivore that eats the way we do, please send me a message.
 
When I looked at anthropological studies of different cultures, and even some of the indigenous people of today who haven’t been tainted by western societal processed foods, I found that most of them ate a diet high in meat, some cultures included milk, and maybe some fruit if along the equator. Plants were used as medicine, not food. Meat, organs, and fat were prized and always eaten first. The fattier the animal, the better. And if you visit a blue-zone, you’ll find they eat mostly meat, minimal plants, not what you’ve heard about them being mostly vegetarian. In the blue-zones, people are living very long healthy lives, still very active and sharp-minded and over 100 years old. The other thing they do a lot of is walking.
 
As I am looking at all the toxins that these plants are creating in order to survive, I am shocked how high the levels are. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, look into Oxalates, Lectins, Gluten, Phytates, and Salicylates…all the toxins from plants that we should not be taking in. I am beginning to wonder if organic vegetables are really “all that,” since they are producing more toxins than we could ever spray on them.
 
Side note:
What about the inhumanely raised animals and what about saving the planet? I agree that an overhaul needs to be done in our country to make sure animals are raised humanely. Chickens should be free-range, eating bugs and grubs and fed non-GMO feed that’s not moldy. Cows should be allowed to eat grass almost 100% of the time, and if they’re given grains, they need to be non-GMO. We have stripped our land for farming which has destroyed the wildlife and the ecosystems that used to be in place. The number of animals that vegetable farms are killing is astronomical, just to keep their crops from getting eaten. The methane that cows excrete comes from the bacteria in their gut that digests the vegetation. It’s the bacteria that produces the methane, not the cow. If those bugs were not in the cow, but instead were on the ground, they would still eat the same amount of vegetation and would still give off the same amount of methane. Whether or not we raise cows does not have as much impact on the methane production as what we have been told. The cow pies are incorporated back into the soil to help produce more top soil, which we as humans have done a great job in depleting. When I drive around, I see very few forests and natural habitats. I see land that’s been stripped. And we talk about the rainforests? What about the land right outside my front door?
 
One cow with some salmon and bacon would suffice me for the year. And how much harm would that cow do to the land? That pastured cow, with plenty of room to roam, is our ticket to replenishing the land. Definitely less expensive than buying produce that I eat a little bit of and the rest goes bad and goes to waste. Money in the trash. I don’t waste any food anymore. Not a single bit. I’m spending less on food, eating less, and feeling better!
 
Hang on a sec:
Weren’t we always told to eat our vegetables? Eat 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, right? Where did that come from? I am having a hard time finding clinical trials regarding how beneficial plants are. Yet, there are countless studies on how detrimental plants are to the human body. But with meat, we absorb almost all of it. A pastured beef steak has as many omega-3’s as fish! Did you know that? Did you also know that red meat contains magnesium, selenium, iron, B-vitamins, zinc, and copper? Beef and liver are THE most nutrient dense foods you can eat.
 
Eating a few tablespoons of grass-fed butter every day can help balance your hormones. We need saturated animal fat for cholesterol in order to make estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and other hormones. Your total cholesterol needs to be above 170 in order to make enough hormones. Fat doesn’t make you fat. Sugar, grains like bread, pasta, tortilla chips, corn, rice – these are the foods that raise the triglycerides and make you fat. Fruit can make you fat. And for many people, vegetables can. What else makes you fat? Hormone imbalance caused by toxins covering the cell wall, not allowing the hormones in and out of the cell. I wouldn’t have believed it, unless I experienced it myself. I cut out the vegetables, and I began dropping weight. And I was doing broccoli and cauliflower (the lowest carb veg). I’m down almost 35 pounds. It’s melting off!
 
I ran my labs on June 1st, before I started Carnivore. My total cholesterol was 239, and after being on Carni for 6 weeks, my total cholesterol came down to 197. It came DOWN! In my opinion, a little too far. And if you know me, you know I don’t worry too much about cholesterol numbers, except when it gets too low, or the ratio is off. I’m more concerned with what could be driving the ratio up, such as things that break down quickly into sugar. Since Aug 3rd, I have increased my fat intake, dropped down to one meal a day (OMAD), and I am feeling so much better. Since I began increasing my fat to protein ratio, I’m dropping weight even more quickly.
 
One thing I have noticed is that when I have my one meal later in the day, I have as much energy as I could want all day long. As soon as I eat my meal, I’m ready to take it easy and relax until I fall asleep. Kind of reminds me of a lion or tiger who has their big meal and then naps for the afternoon. I’m not worried about eating right before bed because I’m not eating plants. Plants are the reason to not eat after 7pm. Why? BECAUSE WE CAN’T DIGEST THEM! I fast throughout the day which gives my body a break from food. It’s very healing.
 
I read a study on autoimmunity, where the subjects were given only plant amino acids to eat and each one developed autoimmunity. The plant amino acids were then taken away and they were given only animal amino acids, and each subject reversed their autoimmunity. EVERY SINGLE ONE!
 
It can take time on Carnivore to heal the gut and change the microbiome to handle eating animal protein and fat versus the carbohydrate loving bacteria that have taken over your small intestine. Shifting to Carnivore can cause constipation if you’re not eating enough fat, or diarrhea if you’re eating too much fat too soon. The liver and gallbladder need time to adjust. If you don’t have a gallbladder, talk to me about how to retrain your liver to handle more fat.
 
I think the biggest mind-blowing fact that I found was how you can take in all the nutrients you need on Carnivore. Even Vitamin C! The first 3 weeks of Carni, I ate 3 large meals a day because for the first time I felt like I was getting everything I needed. Then my body calmed down, once it realized that this food plan wasn’t going away, and I didn’t need to eat 3 meals. I knew at that point that I had been malnourished my entire life, with fiber and toxins slowing down and blocking my absorption.
 
My gut has never been this healthy! I am having normal bowel movements. I don’t know that I have EVER had this long of a stretch with normal, regular BM’s. My entire life. I got into this line of work to heal myself, and to maybe help others on their healing journeys. This is one of the biggest discoveries I have made in the last 13 years. I don’t know the answer to whether everyone should be a carnivore. I think you have to experiment, and find out what version of food plan helps you the most.
 
If you’re living in mold, and have mycotoxin illness, Carni isn’t going to completely heal you, and it may be rocky, but we can work through these challenges.
 
If you’re tired on Carnivore, it’s typically an electrolyte issue, or that you’re eating too many meals. Try the OMAD (one meal a day) in the evening, and see if your energy sky rockets during the day.
 
I have had several people experiment with Carnivore this summer, and most of them are noticing really big improvements in their pain levels, sleep, digestion, energy, allergies, skin issues. Not to mention so many of their reflexes are 9’s and 10’s, and minerals shoot up to 1200. It’s truly incredible to watch, and to experience myself.
 
Depending on the types of symptoms and/or illnesses you have, will determine what types of supplements you will need, even on Carnivore. It’s not a cure-all because we live on this toxic planet, and we live in toxic homes, and we’re not sleeping on the ground. But if you have anything major going on with your body, this is worth a shot. What have you got to lose? I am no longer thinking about filing for disability. I am getting my life back! Am I 100% there? Nope. I’m just over 3 months in, and I am noticing big strides toward where I would like to be!​

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