The dangers of the carnivore diet and why you should avoid it at all costs despite what your doctor says.
Recently, a follower of mine on Instagram messaged me that her friend wanted to lose weight and her doctor told her to do carnivore because she needed to "shock her body because her body was holding onto weight."
If this isn't the biggest bullshit advice by a lazy doctor I do not know what is.
Unfortunately, I have had hundreds of women over 35 work with me in my weight loss program whose doctor advised them to do something stupid like this with their diet.
Doctors should be referring their patients out to a nutritionist instead of telling them to do a diet that will be dangerous to their health.
Please remember doctors only receive two classes in medical school on nutrition. You would never go to a dentist to fix a broken bone so going to your regular doctor for nutrition advice is very silly.
There is an entire field of nutritionists for a reason and if you have been struggling with your weight and nutrition for some time, the responsible thing to do is to get help from someone who is in the nutrition field.
Doing an extreme diet, like carnivore, can actually be detrimental to your health.
Unfortunately, many women over 35 I believe are so desperate for weight loss results they fall into the trap of doing extreme diets to achieve immediate results.
The immediate results on carnivore is only water and muscle loss. Over time, yes, it can lead to body fat reduction, but there is a dangerous risk to your health long-term removing plants from your diet.
Increased risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease are the two major risk factors from doing carnivore. Cancer and cardiovascular disease do not develop in one or two years. They develop over decades, and you do not feel cancer or cardiovascular disease coming on.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I breakdown the serious dangers of the carnivore diet to your health, why some people feel better on the carnivore diet and why you should avoid it at all costs for your health.
Please share this episode with someone you care about.
It is not worth doing this diet and remember if you can't follow a way of eating until you're 85 years old, weight regain will happen.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- What The Carnivore Diet Is & Why It Is An Extreme Diet
- How The Carnivore Diet Became Popular
- How Social Media Can Be Dangerous To Your Health
- The Dangers Of The Carnivore Diet To Your Health
- Why You Might Feel Better With Low Carb Diets
- Why You Should Avoid Carnivore For Weight Loss At All Costs
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Why Low Carb Diets Are Not Necessary For Weight Loss
- Surprising Truth About Carbs
- Why The Scale Goes Up When You Eat Carbs
- Stop Using Whole30 As A Weight Loss Diet
- 1200 Calories The Fastest Way To Kill Hormones
The Dangers Of Carnivore Diet & Why You Should Avoid It At All Costs Podcast Transcript
Today we’re discussing the carnivore and animal-based diet for weight loss and whether it’s safe for your health. In the previous podcast episode, we discussed low carb diets and why they are not necessary for weight loss.
Why low carb, especially for women over 35, can make their weight loss journey harder and almost impossible to maintain because like I always say, if you cannot follow a way of eating until you are 85 years the weight will come back.
If you’ve taken my free weight loss class, I talk about the real problem is that women never sustain their weight loss doing these different diet programs and it is because they are going about losing weight and eating in a way that they could never continue doing until they are 85 years old.
Additionally, women fear carbohydrates because of all the fear mongering they have heard, and they mis-understand what foods truly carbohydrates are.
Foods like cookies, chips, cake, pizza, ice cream, granola are mostly fat sources because most of the calories are coming from fat not carbs.
But people associate these foods mistakenly as carbs, then cut them out of their diet and eat more nutrient dense foods then they feel better, lose some weight (usually water weight at first) and then they assume it was the carbs when it really was, they cut a significant amount of nutrient void foods out of their diet.
But I’m jumping ahead. If you didn’t hear that last podcast, it’s important to go listen to that and understand why low carb is not necessary for weight loss.
So, first let’s discuss what carnivore is, how it became so popular, why some people feel better on it and who might benefit from following this type of diet.
Let’s talk about what this diet is. There’s a lot of variations to this diet, but what it originally was, was not eating plants.
Most people on this diet are eating some variation of animal foods only such as things like meat, sticks of butter, raw milk, cheese, eggs. This diet was largely popularized by Paul Saladino.
He used to call himself carnivore MD, he wrote a book on this diet in 2020, but the reason he doesn’t call himself carnivore MD is that he developed health issues from following the carnivore diet. Since then, he started eating more plants, fruits and vegetables and sort of renamed this diet to an animal-based diet.
After he convinced millions of people to follow the carnivore diet, he came out last year saying he was experiencing negative consequences to his health following this diet and that he was going to include fruits and vegetables.
Hence, we now have the animal-based diet.
He became very popular on social media with millions of followers and the reason for that is because when you have a contrary opinion, or contrary belief and you have some kind of perceived credibility, very confident in what you say, you can convince a lot of people of things that are not true.
Especially on social media where things go viral and when alternative beliefs systems are attractive to people.
For example, the dietary guidelines say eating a ton of red meat is not ideal and eating plants and fruits and vegetables is extremely important.
And someone comes in who seems credible and has doctor or MD in their name and they say actually, these people are lying to you. The reality is you don’t need these foods. These foods are trying to kill you, which is something he has said.
He has villainized compounds in health foods on his social media.
One example is spinach. He said spinach contains oxalates which can build up and lead to kidney stones in individuals who are consuming low amounts of calcium and have genetic susceptibility to getting kidney stones.
So, eating spinach in the context of a low calcium diet can lead to production of kidney stones. You can take that information and tell the public, oxalates in spinach leads to kidney stones leaving out the context of the fact that they don’t actually do that unless it’s in the context of a low-calcium diet and you are genetic predisposition.
This is what people on social media leave out and this is what this guy has effectively done. He talks about how dangerous every plant food is and how they have anti-nutrients. He has scared many people out of eating plant foods that are known to be health promoting.
What Paul has done has created content to scare people away from eating plant foods as a way to get people to follow his diet.
He has built a company selling liver supplements because if you are only eating meat, you’re going to be lacking in a lot of nutrients if you are not eating organ meats and organ meats can fill a lot of those gaps.
But no one likes organ meats. So, if you tell people hey you can only eat meat and sticks of butter, but you need to eat organ meats because you’re going to be lacking in nutrients, most people wouldn’t be on board with that.
He built a multimillion-dollar supplement company selling organ supplements to promote the carnivore diet.
Paul is following now a diet that includes some plant foods because he experienced negative health issues from just eating butter and meat for several years.
If you listen to his story, he was having digestive issues and he felt better taking away plant foods and that is why he started promoting the diet.
So, before we move forward two things that are red flags. Number one is when someone is selling their own line of supplements.
Number two is when someone is selling you a way of eating because it helped them. These are red flags that the individual is not credible even if they are a doctor. I hate to say this but there are doctors misleading the public and profiting off of that.
And also, doctors are not certified in nutrition. They only get two classes in medical school. There is an entire field of nutrition for a reason. I mean you wouldn’t go to a dentist for a broken bone, why would you go to your doctor for diet advice.
Unless they have advanced nutrition training, they are not trained in nutrition. This is why we have nutritionists and dietitians.
But the thing is when you start doing something on social media, if it becomes viral like plants are killing you and then people see this person who is an MD who is explaining it in a way that seems credible and if you’re just scrolling through social media, you’re like wow this makes sense.
It can be easy to fall into these belief systems. When we find information that is far from the norm, we tend to latch onto it thinking this must be why I’m not losing weight as an example, or this must be why I feel bloated when I eat vegetables.
The problem is he’s just making a lot of things up like a lot of people on social media. This content has really created a lot of harm in a lot of people. I have had several clients who have done carnivore and other low carb diets and now they are scared of eating perfectly healthy foods.
But they’ve been afraid of eating them from watching these type of misleading social media posts and now there’s a lot of other influencers doing the same because they realize this is a good marketing strategy.
There’s this one lady called Steak and Butter girl who used to be a vegan and now she’s been doing carnivore for years and literally only eats sticks of butter and red meat and drinks raw milk.
I commented on one of her posts last year and my comment has like 2000 likes as of today and counting because I said how she was doing something very restrictive like vegan and now doing something again very restrictive like carnivore and how she has just swung from one restrictive diet to another.
I’m not saying vegan is bad, but when someone is doing vegan for the wrong reasons i.e. because they have disordered eating patterns and a poor relationship with food like this lady does then that is not healthy.
Recently, this lady said in a video that she had only eating 1200 calories or something and starving herself before doing carnivore. And I have just been waiting for the day to see that video because I knew from watching all her videos that she had disordered eating.
And here she is passing onto her millions of followers her disordered eating acting as though this is healthy. She has millions of followers blindly following her advice. It is insane.
So now people are starting to develop health issues from the carnivore diet. But before we talk about the dangers of carnivore to your health, let’s discuss why some people do feel better when they do this diet and other low carb diets.
This is one of the reasons why this dietary approach is so dangerous.
What is going to happen for most people who have been eating the standard American diet or a balanced, healthy diet and you go on the carnivore diet which is very high fat and high protein.
It’s going to be very satiating, so you’re going to feel very full very quickly and you’re going to lose a lot of water weight very quickly because you’re not eating carbohydrates so all the stored carbohydrates in your body will get used off within the first couple days.
You’ll lose water weight, you’ll be feeling fuller from eating extremely high fat and protein and you’re eating low fiber so your digestive system in many cases feel better.
You’re going to feel less going on in your digestive system because your body is not having to digest fiber, which can be difficult to digest because fiber is something you have to build a tolerance up to.
95% of Americans are not meeting the recommendations for fiber regularly so when they do eat beans or broccoli here or there, they feel bloated and uncomfortable from that fiber being digested.
Often people will correlate that they shouldn’t eat those foods when it truly is the opposite. People need to build up a tolerate of regularly eating fiber before it will feel more comfortable.
People with UC, Chron’s and IBS do need to be careful about fiber, but outside of that it is generally because an individual is not eating enough fiber regularly.
So, yes, a lot of people feel better when they take fibrous foods out. The other side of this is that it’s an extreme elimination diet. In a previous podcast, I discussed Whole30 and how it is an elimination diet.
It is not a weight loss diet even though people try to use Whole30 as a weight loss diet. Carnivore is an extreme elimination diet. You’re taking everything out. You’re taking out dairy, soy, peanuts, seafood, gluten.
These are common food allergens and sensitivities so what you’re doing is eliminating the potential sensitivities and for many people with autoimmune conditions and GI issues, taking away those foods, can help them feel better because they’re removing food, they are intolerant to.
Like if someone has a sensitivity to dairy and gluten then couldn’t have just taken those two foods out and felt better without going on this extreme diet.
The other reason people feel better is because they are eating fewer calories. They’re staying fuller eating more protein. This is one of many reasons why you always hear me preach the importance of protein.
When you are not eating adequate protein, you will over snack and your calories will be higher.
So, when someone goes on carnivore and has lost body fat (not just scale weight), they were eating fewer calories because they were staying fuller and more satisfied.
A lot of people will say they feel less inflamed as well. Two reasons for that. Excess body fat creates inflammation. It is inflammatory. Hence, why being a healthy body fat percentage is important.
Second, sometimes people feel inflamed, but it is water retention and that could be for a variety of reasons.
So, people go on carnivore and they’re like OMG my inflammation went down! I’m not surprised because they lost water weight from cutting carbohydrates and they may be lost some body fat which is inflammatory.
But back to the weight loss. People who do carnivore will lose a lot of water weight at first because you are depleting your glycogen stores, and that loss of water weight is super motivating for people and then they keep following carnivore and lost more weight because it is very difficult to overeat high fat and high protein.
You’re going to stay fuller so you’re not going to be walking around snacking all the time.
So, their calories are lower which is what causes the weight loss. People think it’s magical for that reason, but it’s not. It’s the reduction of overall calories that creates the weight loss through cutting out a ton of foods.
This is why from a marketing standpoint it is so easy for these influencers to get people to follow this diet. They feel better, they lose weight and so they think it’s magical.
Now there are people who feel terrible on this diet. A lot of those people get blocked out of the comments in these carnivore people’s posts and pages.
One of the ways these people protective their narrative about this diet being so magical is they’ll ignore you and block you on social media.
There was a young man who was following this diet and had a stroke and he tagged all the carnivore people on social media and asked why they thought he had a stroke at a young age and no one responded and he was blocked.
The carnivore diet is very dangerous to your health long-term. Extremely elevated cholesterol levels, hair loss, constipation, explosive diarrhea, loss of menstrual cycles, just to name a few.
The reason being you’re taking away all plant foods. You’re taking away polyphenols, micronutrients, phytonutrients, the fiber and then you’re stacking your diet with saturated fat from animal foods.
Saturated fat is not the most health promoting fat source. It is probably the worse naturally occurring fat source we can consume at high levels.
At high levels what it does is, especially those who are genetically susceptible, is it will change the expression of the LDL receptor at the liver.
Why is this important? Well, if we are eating high levels of saturated fat the LDL receptor at the liver will take in less LDL which will allow more LDL particles to circulate in the blood which will increase your risk for cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease does not happen in 1 year, 2 years or 5 years. It happens in 10, 20, 30 years.
So, while you may be perfectly healthy now or even 3 years from now doing this diet it can be only a matter of time before you have a stroke or heart attack from consuming this high amount of saturated fat which the carnivore diet promotes.
LDL builds up over time and calcifies.
Let’s say you were pouring Crisco down your sink all the time. Over time, that’s going to build up and it will cause a blockage in your plumbing. Similar to what is happening in the body and the way these fats develop into plaque.
If you’re eating high saturated fat and low fiber and fiber helps to clear LDL cholesterol, it’s the perfect storm for increasing cholesterol and increasing risk for CV disease.
You’re taking in all your calories from protein and fat and your metabolic machinery has a limited capacity to metabolize protein and fats so what’s happening is these fats are circulating in your system for long periods of time.
We don’t want high levels of fat or sugar re-circulating in your system. That is what causes damage, excess energy re-circulating in your blood.
And when people are eating these very high fat diets, their triglycerides and LDL cholesterol is extremely high all day long because their body is struggling to clear that from the blood, and this is a problem for your cardiovascular system.
We also know people who eat high levels of animal foods are at an increased risk of cancer. People who include plants in their diets are at a lower risk for developing cancer as plants are protective against cancer.
If you replace some of that fat with carbohydrates with fiber, triglycerides would be lower, glucose would be improved, and their body would be able to process their energy efficiently but when you’re completely ignoring balanced nutrition in your diet and ignoring your body’s limited metabolic capacity to metabolize high fat and protein only this creates the perfect storm for you to have serious health consequences.
Now we don’t have long-term research on people eating this high level of saturated fat and animal foods. But based on what we do know, it is highly likely to increase your risk for developing some serious health issues later on in life.
The challenge is diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease do not develop overnight.
You don’t feel heart disease coming on. You don’t feel diabetes or cancer coming on. This is why we have annual labs done.
You’re not going to have a problem probably year 1 or year 3, but year 10, 15, 20 it will start to add up.
This diet is harming people. In terms of fad diets, this is going to be the most harmful diets. People are going to get heart disease 20 or 30 years earlier than they normally would have because of following this type of dietary approach. I
say this all the time. People will do any stupid thing with their diet all in the name of weight loss, not realizing there can be severe health consequences to the diet they are following.
Recently, I had a woman message me on Instagram saying her friend wanted to lose weight, and her doctor told her to do carnivore because she needed to shock her system because her body wouldn’t let go of any weight.
That is absolutely, 100% without a doubt dangerous advice.
If your doctor is telling you to do some bullshit diet like this that will be harmful to your health, get a new doctor. Remember what I said earlier, doctors are not trained in nutrition.
If you don’t know what to do to lose weight. Get a nutritionist. Why spin your wheels and potentially put your health at risk? This is serious stuff guys. The fact that I even have to combat this stupidity from a doctor blows my mind.
So, if you have been considering doing carnivore, I want you first to consider your health. Are you willing to put your health at risk?
Second, ask yourself can truly only eat meat and butter until the day you die to keep any weight you lose off until you’re 85 years old?
And I want to remind you that there is no such thing as losing weight then going back to how you were eating before losing weight and keeping that weight off.
People always mistakenly think they can do that. That is not how you keep weight off long-term.
Before you consider doing any diet, can you keep eating that way until you are 85 years old to keep that weight off?
That’s the first thing you must honestly ask yourself. I know sometimes we are desperate for a solution, but that is one of the dangers of these trendy diets. They prey on your desperation for a quick solution.
Consider seeing a nutritionist if you’ve been struggling with your weight. If you were struggling with a toothache, you would go to the dentist, right? Go to an expert and please be weary of these type of people on social media.
Chances are if they are trying to scare you about something with food and nutrition, they don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re purposely marketing to you in a misleading way to get you to buy something they’re selling or affiliated with.
Okay ladies, I hope this was helpful to you.
Hey, if you liked this episode please share it with someone and please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review as that helps other women find this show. Talk to you soon!
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