Food Freedom Friday Edition 321 - Is A Carnivore Diet Permanent?
When exploring the Carnivore diet many people feel afraid or are unwilling to even consider giving up on all plant foods forever. The question becomes, is a Carnivore diet permanent for life? It is true that a Carnivore diet offers some real benefits, and rather than viewing it as a long-term or forever solution, it may instead become a tool in your box. There are multiple temporary applications for a Carnivore diet. Including using it as an elimination protocol, as a tool to reboot, as “cleanse,” or reset or to lose weight.
Elimination Protocol
Elimination diets are the gold standard in nutrition therapy for determining food sensitivities that can contribute to a host of health problems. Even with advanced testing options available, it is the most accurate and customized way to determine what foods you react to. However, it is also one of the hardest options to follow diligently. A desire for answers is one thing, sticking to an elimination diet for a long period of time is incredibly challenging and disheartening.
There are many elimination diet protocols, each one backed by different experts for different applications. GAPS, Autoimmune Paleo, and the Six Food Elimination Diet (SFED) are a few well known examples. Many people struggle to adhere to often confusing guidelines and diets that call for new cooking techniques and extensive food prep. Carnivore fits the parameters of an elimination diet by safely eliminating common (and even obscure) allergens while providing enough nutrition to live on, allowing you to gauge which foods you react to by reintroducing them after a certain period without them.
Whilst initially, a Carnivore diet may be thought of as stricter with more foods eliminated, it is also simpler. It reduces decision fatigue by narrowing down daily food choices to only animal products, in some cases, simply beef and salt. It offers ease of preparation: if you can sear a steak, you have a 1-pan meal in 10 minutes or less! It eliminates complicated rules. You don’t need to know what a nightshade or a FODMAP is, you simply need to know if your food is from an animal.
A Carnivore diet also thoroughly streamlines your diet, allowing you tyo make progress fast, with no wasted time. In other plans, you may find out food that were allowed on the protocol still slowed your progress or caused you to need to restart your plan. Carnivore is so limited and straight forward that you rarely find a complication, particularly if you start in the strict phase that eliminates eggs and dairy.
On the positive side, a Carnivore diet is extremely satiating which can prove helpful on an elimination diet that depends on willpower to give up foods you normally enjoy.
Autoimmunity
For those of you who suffer autoimmune conditions, there is a constant struggle with food intolerances. Reactions can be complicated and it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what food is triggering what symptom. Most likely, this is the reason to embark on an elimination diet in the first place. By beginning with the most basic form of the Carnivore diet, meat and salt, you remove all the guess
Plants have many problematic compounds in them. The fact is, animals have external defenses: they run, bite, claw and otherwise physically defend themselves. Plants, on the other hand, wage a chemical defense.
Does the cost of eating plants outweigh the benefits?
Most people feel good about eating a salad bursting with fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. But someone with an impaired system might instead see a landmine of irritants in a bowl. A person with a hypersensitive system (autoimmunity) understands words like: lectins, oxalates, phytates and more. You may have heard of fermentable oligo-, di-, and monosaccharides and polyols (FODMAPS). All these compounds and more are specific to plants and can wreak havoc on a sensitive system. There is a cost to every bite of plant food. With a healthy system, you can afford to take the hit of lectins in that Pico de Gallo to unlock a vitamin treasure trove. If you have a compromised, overstimulated system, as in autoimmune conditions, the cost may far outweigh the benefits. Switching to animal foods may allow the body to recover from the accumulation of intolerances resulting in either becoming able to eat plant foods again, or the ability to clearly identify which plants, for the sake of your health, need to be avoided. An elimination phase may be enough to settle sensitivities and fortify your system. However, severe cases may call for you to move from the temporary Carnivore diet to the long-term Carnivore plan
The Reboot
When you typically think of a cleanse, you imagine going on green juices for 10 days or nothing but salad for a month. Who would ever consider a meat-based diet to be a cleanse? However, if you consider a cleanse as a period of limited, clean nutrition that allows you to expel harmful substances and reboot cravings and tastes, then a Carnivore diet fits the bill beautifully. Eating only animal products will recalibrate your taste for sweet, a useful tool if you find your sweet tooth constantly sabotages your efforts to eat healthy.
Meat is nutritionally dense, particularly if you include organ meats like liver and heart. You can meet your nutrition requirements with fewer bites of meat than you can with plants, making it a great way to “cleanse” without feeling faint, fatigued, or lethargic as many do on other, more traditional protocols.
If you are looking for a calorie-restricted cleanse, like a fast for example, consider a bone broth fast! Bone broth is a great source of gut healing components and contains all the amino acids necessary to rebuild tissue; so even as you fast, you are reinforcing the healing benefits you’re seeking. Broth is satiating and allows for an effective cleansing experience.
Weight Loss
Carnivore experts tout the health benefits of a Carnivore way of life, including lowered inflammation, increased strength, sustained energy, mental clarity, deep nutrition, and the like, but in essence, most people experiment with different diets because they want to lose weight. The first question often asked after “is it healthy” is “how much weight can I lose?”
Carnivore does facilitate weight loss in several ways.
· Ketosis -A Carnivore diet, it induces a state of ketosis, or fat burning.
· Satiation/Calorie Reduction - Satiation is a key characteristic of ketogenic and high fat diets -Never feeling hungry or “snacky,”and reducing cravings
· Strength In Strictness - simplicity is a key to success, especially for the type of person who struggles to manage “moderation” but thrives in abstinence. For some, even a little leeway on foods not conducive to weight loss is too much temptation. With carnivore, there are no small servings of desserts or fruits or flavors that will kick off a splurge or perpetuate a sweet tooth. No temptations mean stricter adherence, leading to more success with weight loss goals.
Length Of Time
So, you may be wondering how long you need to follow a Carnivore diet to experience these benefits and results.
This is a nuanced question with multiple factors to consider. It depends on your circumstances and desired outcomes.
Elimination/Autoimmunity
If you are going carnivore to heal/identify food intolerances, 6 weeks is a good amount of time to aim for. That is approximately how long it takes the immune system to clear antibodies it made in reaction to a problem food so it can look at that food again with “new eyes.” Oftentimes, the immune system is able to recognize food it previously reacted to as harmless and you are able to enjoy it again. Sometimes, for whatever reason, your body will still trigger an immune response, but you’ll finally know definitively that avoiding that food is the right thing to do.
As A Reboot
Two weeks to 30 days is generally considered a good amount of time to banish cravings and rest your digestive system. There are no hard and fast rules and you get to be the judge. I suggest setting a 2-week goal and then deciding if you have reaped the benefits or feel the need to continue.
Weight Loss
You can choose to stay on the Carnivore diet until you meet your weight goal and then transition to a whole-food based, balanced food plan. Some people use che Carnivore protocol as a strict way to jump start a new healthy eating plan. For example, you can try 10 days of carnivore before moving to keto or paleo (or a combination.) Carnivore is so great at squashing cravings and the desire to snack, it can really set you up to succeed in less restrictive diets. Simply beware, as with any diet, if you finish and return to poor eating habits and inflammatory foods, the weight will come back almost as fast as it came off!
Seasonally
For those trying to mimic ancestral patterns, you may choose to follow a Carnivore diet in the winter when plant foods are naturally scarce and then incorporate seasonal fruits and vegetables as they become available in the spring and summer. This pattern puts you in tune with the natural rhythm of the earth and can offer an appreciation for tastes and varieties that we often take for granted in our modern grocery-store-year climate of constant availability.
In Conclusion
There is definitely no need to renounce all plant foods completely and forever to reap the benefits of carnivore. You can use it as one of your dietary tools to bring out on occasion for specific purposes like rebooting tastes, slimming down, identifying intolerances and even simply to change things up for variety.