Understand the Carnivore Diet
The carnivore diet includes only foods sourced from animals and excludes everything sourced from plants. When practiced as a therapeutic ketogenic diet, it:
eliminates toxic elements from your diet
provides complete nutrition
reduces inflammation through ketones
Millions of people around the world successfully follow the carnivore diet on their own without a dietitian. Patients on medications to manage blood glucose, blood pressure, mental health issues, or who have complicated diagnoses, benefit from the expertise of a carnivore dietitian who knows what to monitor and how the diet will affect the need for medications.
What is metabolism?
Metabolism is the sum of all the chemical reactions that take place in your body.
These reactions convert food into energy, build and repair tissues, and regulate essential processes like breathing, blood circulation, and temperature control.
Many of these processes originate in the mitochondria. Virtually all chronic disease is rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction.
What are Mitochondria?
Mitochondria are tiny refineries in almost every cell of your body. An oil refinery takes in crude oil and produces gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel, to run your car, your lawnmower, and the jet you fly on. If the inputs are bad and the refinery is broken, everything downstream is affected.
Similarly, mitochondria take in nutrients and produce energy, hormones, neurotransmitters, and other chemicals your body needs.
A toxic diet deficient in nutrients makes your mitochondria sick, and you experience inflammation and chronic disease.
A ketogenic carnivore diet is a powerful tool for repairing mitochondria and restoring metabolic health.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it nutritionally adequate?
Yes! Meat is nutrient-rich. Poor health is a result of malnutrition. Only foods from animals can supply all the nutrients in the right proportions to provide everything the human body needs.
What are ketones?
When carbohydrate in the diet is very low or absent, your body makes ketones from your stored body fat and from the fat you eat.
A high level of ketones produces remarkable benefits. Your insulin levels drop improving insulin resistance. Chronic systemic inflammation in all parts of the body decreases improving inflammatory conditions and mental health.
Do I have to take supplements?
No! With a few exceptions, the diet provides everything you need.
Most people can benefit from extra electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium) because when the body makes ketones from fat, water is released. When that water is excreted, it takes electrolytes with it.
Occasionally a patient may have a particular condition that warrants the use of additional supplements, but the general goal is to get everything you need from your carnivore diet.
What foods are allowed?
All types of animal flesh are allowed: beef, pork, lamb, wild game, poultry, fish, and seafood. Some patients also tolerate eggs, cheese, and cream. The list will vary depending on an individual’s tolerance.
Are carbohydrates and fiber essential?
No! “Essential” in nutrition means the body cannot make it. Some fatty acids are essential, some amino acids (the building blocks of protein) are essential, but no carbohydrate is required in the diet. The body makes all the glucose it needs.
Fiber is not digested and is an irritant to the intestinal tract. The gut microbiome improves on a carnivore diet.
What's wrong with plants?
Most plant-derived products contain carbohydrates which increase insulin and decrease ketones.
All plants contain toxins: oxalate, lectins, gluten, and phytosterols, any of which could be making you sick.
Fruit, honey, and sugar contain the sugar fructose which is a main contributor to atherosclerosis and fatty liver disease.