You might first look at this title and think, “yeah, of course only eating meat is bad for you. Done deal.”

On the contrary, I ate only meat for seven weeks and… felt great! And my self-testing and lab blood work improved a great deal too!

But this article is more than just lab testing…

You’ll learn:

Why I decided to eat only meat to improve my health

What specifically I ate during this experiment

What I enjoyed

What I hated

What I learned and what I am eating now!

Background

About a year ago I developed this strange issue with what appeared to be histamine overload causing rashes/hives to form on my body.

I went to a functional medicine doctor and ran some lab tests, discovering that I had a mild case of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). This occurs when the ileocecal valve between your colon and small intestine doesn’t seal properly and allows bacteria from your colon to migrate up into your small intestine. Typically there isn’t supposed to be that much bacteria in your small intestine, so if bacteria decide to make a home where they don’t belong, overgrowth occurs. Symptoms of SIBO vary, but one is excessive histamine production—this issue that appears to be plaguing me.

What the doc prescribed to me was an herbal protocol. It got better, but I was still struggling.

I also followed a no sugar/Low-FODMAPs approach for a while, but it seemed to be as effective as taking the herbs.

Then after eating whatever I wanted during the holiday season, my skin issues started to get bad. There were times where it felt like fire ants were crawling over my body, biting me all over. Not a pleasant experience. I needed to do something drastic.

From my training as a functional nutritionist, I learned that an even more effective way to treat SIBO, better than herbs, Low-FODMAPS, or antibiotics was to follow what’s called an Elemental Diet. You consume a powder with the “elements” of food; essentially some carbohydrates, amino acids (protein), fats, vitamins, and minerals. The idea is that these select nutrients do not feed the bacteria in the small intestine and will eventually kill them off. To do this, you have to sustain yourself on this liquid diet for 2-4 weeks!

I’ve read stories of people going on the elemental diet and losing a lot of weight, both fat and muscle. I wasn’t too excited to go this route. I needed to find another option.

Around the same time I was considering the Elemental Diet, I stumbled upon a group of dieters eating only meat—no vegetables or fruits.

I typically eat a low-carb, paleo-esque-type diet but I go relatively light on the animal products.

But I was willing to try anything that didn’t involve drinking a gross liquid for weeks and losing muscle.

This diet appealed to me over the elemental diet because:

I would still get the same effect as the elemental diet because I would still be starving the small intestine bacteria due to severe carbohydrate restriction I wouldn’t have to worry about muscle loss because I would be eating sufficient protein It seemed like a cool experiment that I could write about later 🙂

Also, many others who tried this all-meat diet reported amazing health results such as weight loss, decreased inflammation, better sleep, added strength at the gym, improved skin, decreased allergies, improved digestion and other related GI issues, and more!

What did I have to lose? (Well, except for freaking out my closest friends and family – but I figured they would get over it!)

Experiment Data Points

For this experiment, I intended to challenge myself to only consume animal products for two months.

What I tested:

Lab testing pre- and post-experiment

Daily blood ketones

Fasting glucose each morning

Urine pH

Body composition pre- and post-experiment

For this post, I am going to review my subjective observations and reflections for the experiment. I already published my results and what I found from the experiment in another post. You can read it here.

What I Ate

As mentioned earlier, for this experiment I only ate animal products. Specifically, this entailed:

Ground grass-fed/finished beef (over 90% of my diet was this)

Grass-fed/finished steaks of various cuts

Wild caught fish

Other seafood such as shrimp and oysters – All wild-caught

Pasture-raised eggs

Bacon (no sugar, uncured) – antibiotic and added hormone free

Butter from grass-fed cows

Raw cheese from grass-fed cows

That’s it. No vegetables, grains, seeds, sweets, or fruit. Only stuff from animals of the highest quality I could find.

I would typically eat two meals per day. My first meal would be around 1 pm and my second meal at around 6 pm. Each meal consisted of about 1.5 lbs. of meat, averaging about 3 pounds of meat per day.

I would always go for the fattiest cuts of meat, and if I were eating lean proteins such as seafood, I would use lots of butter to increase the fat.

I am also a supplement freak, but I stopped taking all supplements during this experiment. The only exception is that I continued to take digestive enzymes and HCl to assist with digesting the extra protein I was eating.

The Good

Here’s where things get super interesting.

Let’s start with some of the positives I observed while eating zero-carb…

Simplicity, Oh The Simplicity!

First off, I want to say that this is probably the easiest diet to implement. Think about how many diets out there are so confusing and nuanced. With zero-carb it’s: Eat meat, don’t eat fruits or veggies. Done.

I loved how simple food preparation was. I also got pretty darn good at cooking a steak too. Useful life skills to have if I do say so myself.

Skin Improved!

My skin issue did improve! Alas, it wasn’t 100%, but it was notably better than before. I feel like the improvement was much better even than taking the herbs prescribed by my functional medicine doctor. It’s possible that if I continued eating only this way for a few more months I may have been “cured.”

More Energy

I tend to get brain fog and fatigue during the day. One added bonus from this diet was that I found that I was able to find words more easily when having a conversation or writing – probably the result of producing extra ketones. I also didn’t feel the need to take as many day naps.

Added Muscle

I didn’t change my workout routine during the entire experiment and found that I was able to put on a little over a pound of extra muscle. Not too shabby.

Slimmed Down

This one surprised me. I didn’t have a goal to slim down, but I lost about 5 pounds during this time. I’m sure most of that was water weight because when I did my body composition measure, I found I had only lost one pound of real body fat. But I received a lot of comments from clients, friends, and family that I looked noticeably slimmer.

The Not So Good

Those are the main positive observations. Now let’s get into some of the negatives of eating a strictly all-animal product, zero-carb diet…

Boring

Let’s face it. The diet is super restrictive and boring! It gets results, but I was getting bored! The reason I started eating bacon, seafood, and raw cheese was because I was beginning to lose my mind just eating beef for lunch and dinner every day. I’m not a picky eater either. I generally can eat the same meal every day if it decreases my decision fatigue and I can focus on more important things, but this diet is strict! Maybe it’s also because the textures are so similar as well. I never thought I was a texture guy, but I guess this diet proved me wrong.

Bathroom Time

This was probably the worst part of this experiment. I’ll try to keep my explanations as non-descriptive as possible. I also hope you’re not reading this while eating…

You’ve been warned!

The positive was that I didn’t have to make a bowel movement more than once every two days. And when I did… they were just little baby rabbit turds. Unlike what most people believe, this isn’t because I became constipated. What happens is when you eat only animal products, the majority of the meal is being absorbed and used. Your waste output decreases as a result!

If you think about it, when you don’t consume any plant matter you are getting zero fiber. Fiber plays a significant role in bulking your stool.

But here’s the part that sucks…

When I did have my bathroom time, let’s just say that there was a lot more paperwork…

Meaning, my stools were a lot softer and clean up was, well, let’s just say it was more involved. In addition, my stool had a more significant odor. Not to brag, but when I was eating plant matter and meat, I felt like I never caused much stink in the bathroom. But that changed once I went full carnivore.

Thanks for coming with me on that journey. 😉

Critiques of Eating Zero-Carb/Carnivore

As much as I had some complaints about this diet, I definitely felt better on it than other diets I’ve tried in the past. I am a total believer in this diet and I see why so many people have really amazing health improvements by eating only meat!

With that said, I feel that there were some nutritionally lacking areas that didn’t sit well with me.

How Does This Diet Affect Our Microbiome?

I know that there are indigenous cultures out there that mainly sustain themselves on animal products. So, their microbiome adapted to their diet, and they appear to be okay. But here’s the thing: the science is still in its infancy regarding “what is an optimal microbiome.” And I’m sure there isn’t one that is optimal for everyone, but that begs the question, Does the microbiome you create for yourself eating only meat work best for YOUR genetics, lifestyle, etc.? I have no clue, but it’s something to think about. Maybe those who live the zero-carb lifestyle need to start eating fermented meat too? I’m not that brave.

Nutrient Variety

The “Beef” With Zero-Carb

A trend I noticed among the zero-carb’ers – a lot of them ate only steak or red meat.

But this makes me wonder, by only eating steak are we missing out on other vital nutrients? If you think about the cultures that mostly eat meat, they aren’t just eating steak. They eat the whole animal, nose to tail. I’m talking about organ meats, the meats with the highest nutrient content on the planet. If you want to stick with eating zero-carb, it would make sense to consider liver and other organ meats as a staple in your diet too.

Also, if you’re eating only steak, even if you’re eating grass-fed beef, you are still going to be lacking omega-3 fatty acids, the fat that helps the body decrease inflammation. You could easily meet your omega-3 demands by just eating wild-caught fish such as sardines or salmon a few times per week.

In addition, I also found that some people in the carnivore community were advocating not buying organic, pastured, or grass-fed meats. They argue that even with the added hormones there are trace differences between conventional meats and better quality meats. But this argument is missing a lot of valid points.

For one, with regard to beef, choosing grass-fed and ideally grass-fed and finished beef is far superior in nutrition. Grass-fed beef has a higher level of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids (1). Second, grass-fed beef has much higher levels of conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) which have been found to lower the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, and more (2).

Then there’s the aspect of conventional meat using antibiotics. New research is finding that eating animals that had antibiotics given to them can kill off your beneficial gut bacteria when consumed (3).

And finally, it just doesn’t sit well with me to support factory farming practices. These are terrible for the animals and terrible for the environment. I understand that these meats are less expensive, but if we continue to support conventional farming practices such as these, we are going to do significant damage to our health and to the planet.

What About Antioxidants?

The final point I wanted to bring up regarding consuming an all-meat diet is also the lack of antioxidants in the diet. Typically when we consume a wide variety of colorful plants, we are also consuming a mixture of various phytochemicals that increase the antioxidants in our body. Maybe this isn’t as big of a deal because we can make glutathione by eating meat, but I feel like it’s still worth noting.

Iodine?

Another essential nutrient you could be lacking with an all-meat diet is iodine, which is an essential nutrient for thyroid, immune, and numerous other biochemical processes in the body (4).

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for iodine to be (5):

150 micrograms (mcg) per day for adult men and women

220 mcg for pregnant women

290 mcg for lactating/breastfeeding women

A pound of beef is estimated to contain about 25-130 mcg of iodine (6).

A pound of codfish has about 315-500 mcg of iodine (7).

But some researchers are recommending about 12.5 mg/day. That’s milligrams, not micrograms (8)!

Conclusions

So with all this said, I still am a huge fan of the zero-carb carnivore approach. For me, my little n=1 experiment concluded that this diet to be great for my health, but as noted above there were some negatives I felt like could be improved as well.

So with that said, I’ve since created my own dietary approach that is influenced by zero-carb eating, but with a few changes.

New Diet 2.0

Still Mostly Animal Meat

I’m going to continue to consume the bulk of my calories from animal protein, mostly grass-fed grass-finished ground beef. The slight change I made to this is that now about a quarter of the meat comes from some organ meat. I found chicken hearts to be very mild in flavor. What I do is blend the chicken hearts and mix it with my ground beef, giving my meat an added nutrient boost.

Dairy Is Ok… Maybe?

I’m going to try to avoid dairy mostly, but if I do consume some, I want to try my best and only consume dairy products that come from casein A2 protein.

Dr. Steven Gundry in the book The Plant Paradox claims that most dairy products come from cows that have a mutation that produces casein A1 protein. In short, farmers prefer these types of cows because they produce more milk than A2 cows. The problem is the A1 dairy can cause our immune system to attack our pancreas (9).

Therefore, it’s best to only consume dairy products from A2 cows, goats, and sheep. As a rule: Guernsey, Holstein, and Ayrshire cows contain the highest amount of A2 casein protein (10).

The trouble is that most US dairy products do not label for this. It’s best to assume if the package does not explicitly say that the products contain the A2 beta-casein type, it’s probably A1 dairy and should be avoided.

Select Vegetables Will Be Added

A small number of vegetables will be added back into my diet. About a cup of organic, mixed greens will be added for some additional antioxidants and nutrients, but mainly to mellow my bathroom time. Doing this alone has fixed the stinky bathroom time, and clean-up has returned to normal!

I also have been adding in seaweed with each meat for additional minerals and iodine.

I will also avoid seeds, legumes, beans, grains, and corn as they have high lectins and phytates. You can read more on my reasoning in my previous article, here.

Maintain Ketosis

Similar to eating fatty cuts of meat, I believe it’s essential to maintain some level of ketosis the majority of the time. This is how I will keep my insulin down, maintaining low inflammation and an ideal weight. Therefore, to help keep most of my calories coming from fat, I’ve been using fats such as olive oil and avocados with my meals. In fact, using this approach I hope that I will be able to push my body into deeper ketosis with the extra fats in my diet.

Supporting My Microbiome

And finally, I will be eating some lacto-fermented vegetables with each meal, mostly in the form of raw, organic sauerkraut or kimchi.

Also, two times per week, and always on workout days, I will be eating high starch vegetables to help provide ample probiotics for my gut flora; this could be a sweet potato or white rice. I’m choosing these two specific foods because sweet potatoes are much higher in nutrients than white potatoes and are not in the nightshade family. White rice has the hull removed, lowering the amounts of lectin and phytic acid compared to brown rice.

Keeping My Insulin System Adaptive

In addition, periodically adding starch into my system will replenish my glycogen stores post-exercise, and keep my insulin system adaptive. Much like exercise, I believe that we get stronger by challenging the body. By eating more carbohydrate-rich foods such as a sweet potatoes/yams, we will, in turn, knock ourselves out of ketosis temporarily. The idea is that this process can make the body more adaptive to whatever is thrown at it dietarily, and you become more insulin sensitive as well.

I also think about what our hunter/gatherer ancestors would do and it seems like they were mostly in a ketotic state, but would randomly knock themselves out if they came across a bunch of berries or honey and wanted to carbo-load. It just seems going in and out of ketosis is programmed into our DNA, but this idea is purely speculative.

Final Thoughts

So that’s it! Again, I highly recommend trying to zero-carb diet as an experiment. I am still an advocate and feel it can be a super useful tool to get someone jump-started into better eating habits.

It’s worth testing this diet out for yourself because honestly, everyone is different. And it’s always smart to have the support of a functional health practitioner who can run lab work and keep tabs on your health as you venture into these n=1 self-experimental waters.

Have fun and please comment below with questions and/or thoughts!

Cheers.

Sources

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874

(2) https://www.mercola.com/beef/cla.htm

(3) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120828093244.htm

(4) https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/modern-diseases/the-great-iodine-debate/

(5) https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/04/iodine-deficiency-affect-childs-brain-function.aspx

(6) http://www.thyca.org/pap-fol/lowiodinediet/

(7) https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional/#h3

(8) https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/04/iodine-deficiency-affect-childs-brain-function.aspx

(9) http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/7/9/5339

(10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk