Should you try the Carnivore Diet before you die or will it kill you? Part 4/?
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”
Part 4 of a multipart series of an unknown quantity (of parts)...
Just tuned in to this EPIC quest? Here’s a link to part 1
Eureka!
I’d discovered a fringe diet that had resolved my enduring gut and skin issues within a week, when medical professionals had me pegged as a low-grade-medicator for life.
I was a modern-day Archimedes!
The Francis Drake of dietary tinkering!
Now, 21 days into the Carnivore/Nose-to-tail diet, I was about to tap out. The sirens scent of my mum's just-baked cinnamon banana bread calling me to my ruin. I was about to reinvite ailments that had driven me to extreme frustration, for the best part of 3 years, because of baked goods?!
Q: What would drive a man to this seeming act of masochism?
A: The sheer lack of joy in my life.
Flesh Life sucked.
You can probably guess some of the physical symptoms that made manifest when I replaced fibre, sugar and carbohydrates with a 100% protein diet, overnight:
Bouts of can’t-think-straight, can’t-be-bothered-getting-up-off-the-couch lethargy.
Occasional course nausea (hello humungous increase in fat intake!)
Bowel movements somewhat akin to a Ken Doll then… devastatingly inverse.
That fun stuff I could manage. After all I’d:
Limped through 5 hours of the New York Marathon with a strained glute, shuffling along like some sort of deranged zombie extra on the set of The Walking Dead...
Slithered hundreds of metres, face first, into the bowels of a Bolivian silver mine. Resisting the urge to think about what would happen next if I became stuck. That gringo who died in mama pacha, his ass saluting sol.
Once as a yout I'd misjudged my flight pattern over a garden steak whilst inebriated. I came mighty close to becoming a gelding.
I'd even worked in the marketing industry for the better part of 15 years!
I’d seen some shit!
What scuttled my Flesh Life excursion wasn’t my body, it was my mind.
In eliminating so many different types of food I had also eliminated my joy.
I suspect this may not have been the case were I a Masai Tribesman or an Eskimo. If, since birth, I’d been consuming a much less diverse range of food sources (baked goods), out of necessity.
Food can be mighty scare on the savannah.
But you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone… right?
The problem was, I did know.
I knew the aroma of freshly steamed milk met with perfectly extracted Colombian beans. That caramel swirl...
I knew scrambled eggs were radically improved in accompaniment with fresh avocado, lime and garlic. Preferentially perched atop fluffy, butter-laden sourdough toast… Yes child.
I knew sushi. God damn wonderful sushi. Perfect little boats of same-day-fresh-tuna belly draped across sticky-sweet Japanese short-grain rice. The pleasure explosion when soy-wasabi draped Nigiri touched my tongue.
These moments, as it turned out, were ones I would crave once snatched away. They’d supported me through stressful jobs, tumultuous associations, broken bones, broken hearts…
I caved because of I love food and I love life.
Food is life.
On the carnivore diet my life had become… depressing!
As someone who is happy-go-lucky by nature and had never been really affected by The Black Dog – the creeping undercurrent of despondency that seemed to be growing as the diet progressed was scary.
It wasn’t like fear. Fear I could face up to, compartmentalise and generally speaking; remove myself from the equation if I really felt I needed to. This was different. There was no off switch.
I thought I was ready for whatever haymaker this diet could throw at me...
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” - ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson
Be your EPIC
We out. 🙇
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