Should you try the Carnivore Diet before you die or will it kill you? Part 3/?
Part 3 of a multipart series of an unknown quantity (of parts)...
Just tuned in to this EPIC quest? Here’s a link to part 1
It is no small feat to make a significant change to one’s routine, overnight.
As a good friend and colleague whom I caught up with for a knock off yesterday evening put it: “It wasn’t until I was holding my newborn son at 2 am on the first night that he was allowed to come home with us that it dawned on me: ‘whatever routines I’d established prior to his birth were now effectively destroyed.’ – my life was going to be turned upside down…”
Not selling fatherhood to me there, mate.
Getting up a half hour earlier for a breakfast meeting? Easy-peasy.
Replacing the planned evening Netflix binge with an hour or two to work on my side hustle? Challenging but far from impossible.
Squeezing in the shopping, preparation and experimentation required to successfully implement an almost completely new way of eating? This was going to take some adjustment…
You see; before this experiment in carnivore/nose-to-tail dieting: I was the type of dude who gave his fatty bacon a haircut. Who scram-bam’d eggs sans milk or butter.
I was a Fat Phantom.
A Salad Soldier.
The People’s Low-fat Champ.
“On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behaviour becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact.” – this, according to Phillippa Lally, a health psychology researcher at University College London. In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit. The findings? The simpler the habit; the quicker it can be ingrained. The shortest timeframe is typically around 21 days.
I sure as shooting didn't have 21 days to dial in my carnivore diet.
A typical day in the life of ‘Meat Mike’:
Breakfast: 4 eggs, a 250-gram porterhouse, 6 rashes of bacon – all cooked in lard. Washed down with black coffee.
Lunch: 1 large portion of skin-on salmon and a side of 3 scrambled eggs.
Dinner: A YouTube-learned combo of mince beef, beef kidneys and diced chicken hearts - 'more lard, monsieur?' Oui.
Prepping, cooking and cleaning up to 3 times a day was annoying but manageable, the kicker was that any unexpected interruption to my new routine would prove problematic:
A short notice cross-town meeting meant I had to skip lunch. At serious risk of a systems crash; I discovered that you can order a double-Big-Mac-sans-everything-except-for-the-double-beef patties. It still costs the same as a double Big Mac.
Having slept through my alarm one morning, I skipped my usual fry up. 20 minutes into my 45-minute cycle commute and my energy completely dipped – as in I couldn’t turn the peddles. For someone who, prior to this carnivorous experiment, could punch out a solid 1.5 hrs of high intensity Muay Thai; this was more than a little disconcerting.
If I’m to be honest; even when I was getting adequate flesh fuel, I was never feeling particularly energetic on the carnivore diet.
OK, I was exhausted for the entire experience...
I was trying to run my Mikey engine, which was used to high octane petrol (carbohydrate and sugar), on diesel (fat and protein).
Fill a (petrol) Porsche with low octane petrol? Expect a bumpy ride.
Fill a (petrol) Porsche with diesel? Nicht sehr guht.
Did I mention my mum can bake? Like really bake? Baked goods definitely had not been a foreign concept to me for the past 39 years.
The internet narrative was that I would eventually transition to the new fuel source. Depending upon my past carb transgressions; this 'transition phase' would take anywhere from 3 days to two weeks of ‘feeling balls’ and then I'd be doing cartwheels (again).
By day 21 I felt just as shitty as day 2.
So, if I felt awful for the entire time then why did I stick it for 3 weeks?!
Are gnocchi a potato, or a pasta?
Jokes aside; I stuck it out for one very important (seemingly) unbelievable reason: Within only a handful of days of having embarked upon the Carnivore/Nose-to-Tail diet; my late onset intestinal upset issues and skin hyper-sensitivity issues, which had plagued me for the last 4 years and couldn't be resolved by modern medicine, were gone.
Vanished.
Deleted.
‘Suddenly, as if by magic…’ - was their practical magic in consuming only flesh protein?
Be your EPIC
We out. 🙇
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