Should you try the Carnivore Diet before you die or will it kill you? Part VI/?

Written By Michael Drohan

Reintroduces multiple foods without a plan - takes two steps back…

Part VI of a multipart series of an unknown quantity (of parts)...

Just tuned in to this EPIC quest? Here’s a link to part 1

“Now, how do I go about reintroducing foods without ballsing up all of my hard abstinence?” I pondered between mouthfuls of freshly baked banana bread - the first anything I’d consumed, other than poultry, seafood, meat, salt, black coffee and water, for the last 21 days.  My bloodstream greedily gobbles up these made-foreign carbohydrates and sugars. The sensation evoking an immediate sense of déjà vu.

My first too-deep drag of a Dunhill Blue in the pouring rain, behind a school portable?

The kind of crescendo only ever unveiled at a heaving Drum and Bass rave?

Sins of the flesh?!

Having completed 21 consecutive days of the Nose to Tail diet, (a variant of the carb and sugar free ‘Carnivore Diet’) what I didn’t want to do was reintroduce whatever-the-hell back into my diet that had braced enduring gut and skin issues for several years prior.

I’d found a medicine free solution and if I could make it sustainable; my quest would be complete!
For the first few days I kept it simple: reintroducing one or two (Google certified) ‘low inflammation’ ingredients for a day or two at a time. Attempting to track the foods and symptoms in a spreadsheet and a diet tracking app. This was working 'OK' to begin with, because every food I reintroduced tasted like I’d never eaten it before:

‘The subtle nuttiness and tenderness of freshly steamed brown rice… Sublime!’

You know shit has taken a turn for the weird when your system is telling you plain brown rice is this enjoyable. ‘Tiramisu’ level enjoyable. In hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised that long periods of abstinence made my palette grow fonder. What was surprising was the magnitude of that fondness- the deepness of that love.

“If brown rice could be made this delectable, what would something really delectable, like a Basque Cheesecake, taste like…?!”

“You fool! You’ll derail the entire experiment for a piece of cake!"

Moments of inner conflict were becoming concerningly frequent. I imagine the concern of passers-by, made witness to a grown man having a minor palsy as I was short-circuited by the aromas emerging from a bakery. “Mum, why is that man watching me eat my pizza?”

I digress…

My first attempt at a reintroduction diet can be summarised as ‘doomed from the outset’.

Why?

  1.  It’s difficult to pinpoint food sensitivities. The time delay between cause and effect can be minutes through to days... Whenever I got too excited, eating something that introduced more than one ingredient and resulted in symptoms; I ran the risk of not being able to work out who was the offending culprit. Despite my best efforts; cause and effect became murkier over time. As did my compulsion to update that bloody spreadsheet EV…RY..MEAL …EV...RY…DAY…

  2. Self-restraint is almost impossible to recover once it slips… Day 1: Banana bread. Day 2: Banana bread and brown rice. Day 3: repeat. Day 4: repeat. Day 5: It’s 6 PM and I find myself sat upon one of the plastic chairs, reserved for queuing patrons, outside of my favourite gluten free Japanese soba restaurant. I’m in that warm ‘5 alcoholic ciders deep’ stage buzz; my first alcohol in over a month. SO DAMN GOOD! Passers-by are made to witness my demolition of 3 buckets of sticky-glazed-fried-chicken-topped-with-Japanese-mayo. What the tipsy Mikey wants… “Just one cider…” – uh-huh.

  3. Did I mention; I had no idea what the f*ck I was doing?! I’m not a dietician or a nutritionist. I’m a 39-year-old man, armed with the weapons grade willpower of an ex-smoker/bootstrapped entrepreneur/marketing industry professional/sports-that-can-hurt practitioner, coupled with the extreme frustration of modern medicine’s inability to resolve my late onset gut and skin issues. I’d embarked upon a radical dietary change, on a whim. I’d only thought as far as removing stuff from my diet. I didn’t expect to actually create the positive change to my physiology that I’d hoped for!? I’d learned about this diet from YouTube, FFS!

I was lost at sea.

Oh, and did I mention that now, when I did eat something that didn’t agree with me, the symptoms were significantly amplified vs. pre-Carnivore Elimination diet?!

By ‘detoxing’ from the things that were bad for my system I’d unwittingly given it license to kick my ass extra hard when I abused it!

Farrrrq!

I lived this twilight ‘half in diet/half in symptoms’ existence for around a fortnight. I was on the cusp of calling quits. Reverting to eating whatever, whenever.

A chance encounter changed everything…

Stay tuned for the next episode…

Be your EPIC
We out. 🙇

———————————————————————————————————————————————

Digging Doing Epic Stuff?
Down with my mission of more people pursuing their extraordinary, more of the time?

Domo.

Michael Drohan
Next

Should you try the Carnivore Diet before you die or will it kill you? Part 5/?