I don’t eat a “varied and balanced diet” anymore. I don’t do five a day. There is no rainbow on my plate. And no holy (whole) grains. Zero fibre, actually. On the other hand, I eat lots of saturated fat, cholesterol and salt.

I eat meat, eggs, fish, salt and water. And that’s pretty much it 99% of the time.

And believe it or not I have never felt better.

How did I get here? Let us start from the middle…

No matter how hard I tried, everything was wrong

My first daugther was a bit over a year old and I was having probably the most difficult time of my life.

Most people would consider our diet at that time very healthy. It was full of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, heart-healthy plant fats and only relatively small amounts of meat. Everything was prepared at home from fresh ingredients.

Child with alergies

We didn’t really have much choice. From the moment the kiddo was born, it was quite clear that she inherited her mother’s disposition for allergies. We quickly identified milk and eggs as the main culprit and I dropped them from my diet like a hot potato, because I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding her.

But that wasn’t enough. She kept reacting to random things I ate. And when she started solids also to the things she ate. It was a nightmare trying to identify the culprits and medical testing provided only some answers, and clearly not all. So I kept eliminating more and more foods from my diet.

She was actually doing very well for a child with allergies - most likely thanks to the breastmilk - but I on the other hand… not so much.

I started falling apart

That is oatmeal in my bowl. January 2018, 8 months post partum. Tired.

It slowly crept up on me, but by the time she was a year, I was hardly recognising myself. I was skinny, weak, perpetually tired and always sick. Any virus passing by would get me and keep me miserable for many weeks. I even managed to break two of my ribs in a coughing fit. Really.

My hands were covered in eczema I couldn’t get rid of for ages. My digestion was miserable. I was having so much bloating and unexpected trips to the bathroom that it was often difficult to leave the house. But the worst of it was the mental part. I was anxious and angry and scared. Sometimes I didn’t even know why. I was just not coping at all.

According to my doctor, everything looked fine.

Just meat? Are you out of your gourd?

It continued for way too long without much improvement. Until one day in May 2019, when I was 30 years old and the little one has just turned two.

And here I have to give credit to my husband who showed me a picture of married couple he found online and asked me how old I though they were. I guessed maybe late thirties, at most early fourties. I was super wrong. She was 46 and he was 61.

And they attributed their youthfull looks and good health to only having eaten beef for the last 20 years.

Carnivore

The people in the picture were Joe and Charlene Andersen and as we quickly found out, they are far from the only ones following some version of the so-called carnivore diet, and reporting incredible health benefits.

Carnivore… as in no plant foods at all. I was flabbergasted. It can’t be!

I mean, everyone knows, that vegetables are nutrition, right? You can’t live without vegetables!

Or?

Turns out you can. And more than that. You can thrive. We discovered a big community of carnivores online, quite a few of them doctors, researchers and dieticians. And so many stories from all sorts of people. They often sounded like miracles. People who went into remission from their “uncurable” chronic diseases, from eczemas, depression, anxiety, through Crohn’s, type 2 diabetes, psoriasis, juvenile arthritis, to epilepsy, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and tooth cavities…

Some even had their grey hair grow dark again.

I usually follow the rule that if something sound too good to be true, then it probably isn’t true.

But there wasn’t much to lose this time.

Of course I didn’t go in blindly. I read and I read and I double-checked and carefully considered arguments from all the sides. I was a PhD student at the time and let me tell you, a PhD is mostly a degree in reading scientific literature. So that is what I did here too. And things did check out and did make sense. The last thing left was to try.

My personal little miracle

We were going to try it for a month. It has now been over 3 years. It really felt like experiencing my own little miracle.

7 months carnivore and things are good. Definitely less dark circles under the eyes.

I do indeed thrive.

• Digestion - better than ever. And it used to be really bad. Now I don’t think about 99% of the time. Have you ever experienced zero bloat? It’s glorious.

• Skin - better than ever. Eczema was gone within a week and acne a few weaks later. Plus I don’t burn in the sun anymore. Go figure.

• Pollen allergies - basically gone. As long as I am perfectly plant free (including spices) I don’t experience any symptoms. And I used to have terrible allergies fo 9 months out of a year!

• Mental health - much better. I didn’t realize I used to have anxiety until it was gone. The impending sense of doom now only returns when I eat some sugar.

• Resistance to getting sick - definitely better. I still get sick, seeing that I live with two small people that will gladly sneeze in your eyeball and that visit a breeding gourn for pathogens daily (a.k.a. kindergarten). But the illnesses are milder and pass much faster.

Over the last three years I have been experimenting with adding other foods to my diet and every time I end up going back to a pure carnivore of meat, fish, eggs, salt and water. Because many of the benefits I mentioned here disappear for me, once I add some plant foods. Some people don’t feel a difference from adding some coffee or avocado or spices or other plants, but I really do.

And for as long as this will make me feel the best, I will continue.

The carnivore diet and how and why it works has remained a source of fascination for me. I have never before experienced such a profound change. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that carnivore saved my life. And it all makes sense.

And that’s why I just can’t keep it to myself.