​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​On July 18, 2024, my wife and I were at a dinner with some very good friends at their home within walking distance of our house.  We always have a lot to talk about, but on this particular evening the topic of losing weight came up. 

 

Several months before, working with my personal trainer, I started using FitnessPal, an iPhone application, to start tracking my food intake. I was toying with Weight Watchers at the time since another friend had great success with that approach.  It wasn’t working for me.  My personal trainer discussed that at a minimum I should be tracking my diet using the app so we could start a lower carbohydrate approach and establish a diet macro that I could sustain.

 

So at that dinner, I was talking about Weight Watchers and food tracking and my friend John told me he was looking at the Carnivore Diet.  He explained to me what he had heard on a number of YouTube videos regarding the diet, that you can get all essential nutrients from a diet virtually devoid of vegetables and you can lose a lot of weight.  I thought he was crazy, but he assured me to give it a look.  I was curious enough to look into it, and stubborn enough to think I’d end up proving him wrong.

 

Days later, I was consuming mass quantities of social media calories, getting fat on all the new and sometimes contradictory information that swirled around this seemingly insane elimination diet.

 

The deep dive helped me understand why John was excited about it.  Certainly, a lot of anecdotal information existed from numerous people about their successes.  I began subscribing to multiple YouTube channels led by carnivore diet experts, influencers and physicians who supported the approach.  It was reminiscent of the Atkins diet which I had tried before and lost a lot of weight (before gaining it all back afterwards). 

 

The difference with the carnivore diet was that it wasn’t explained as just a diet you use to lose weight.  It was a lifestyle choice that people decided was a life-long diet approach, and for some it offered hope for those dealing with inflammation and autoimmune disorders.  I didn’t believe I had these issues, but claims about the diet were also made about its benefits for the general population.

 

I did a bit of homework about the downsides of the diet, rarely coming from those who were its advocates, and the internet is rife with reaction videos where doctors and vegetarians rip into the carnivore diet, while its supporters rip into those doctors and vegetarians about how they just don’t understand what we understand. 

 

Welcome to Social Media!

 

My wife and I were going on a cruise late August 2024, and as I was coming around to embracing this new diet experience, I chose to wait until after our return to start it.  I continued to watch a few videos about the carnivore diet, but I discovered a few others that were about different topics, such as the problems with sugar in our diet and insulin resistance, the latter I had never heard of before. 

 

I downloaded these videos to watch later while I daily indulged in what would be a very non-carnivore cruise diet, leaning into the drink package which made all the booze on the ship ready and waiting for my own personal consumption, 24 hours a day!

 

While on a long cruise excursion bus trip to and from Nova Scotia’s South Shore on August 27, 2024, I had time to watch the videos I had downloaded, all of which involved Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist.

 

It turns out that the message I needed to hear, the one that finally started to boost concerns about my own health, grew clearer and more urgent with each passing video minute.  Like I had done for others before, when I would do the homework and help them through their own health issues, even finding solutions that their doctors overlooked, I was finally doing it for myself.

 

I grew more excited as our vacation progressed, getting more anxious to come home and start making what I hoped would be an important change in my life.

 

I felt I was ready to start the new diet and I was already writing my grocery shopping lists on my iPhone on the plane back home.  I also called my doctor and not only asked her to order the standard blood tests before I started my diet, but to also order a fasting insulin test that the videos had talked about.  My doctor agreed with the idea of doing a lipid panel before my diet start, but didn’t understand why I wanted the fasting insulin.  Frankly I wasn’t entirely clear myself, but she graciously ordered it for me anyway.

 

On September 7, 2024, I had the blood tests done, and the next day, I discovered the joys, and dare I say pride, when I rapidly consumed the first of many well grilled, heavily marbled, and densely seasoned Ribeye steaks.

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