I spent a week on the carnivore diet

It’s the first week of January and while increasing numbers of people are going plant-based for Veganuary, I decided to do the opposite and go animal-based for seven days.

Meat-based diets are not a new trend but nowadays social media users are never too many clicks away from a carnivore.

With versions of an all-meat diet touted by algorithm-friendly figures like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, my Instagram Explore page serves up endless cutting boards of steaks, whole sticks of butter, and questionable-looking organs. Why is it so popular - and does it really have health benefits?

This carnivore content is nestled within the side of social media that consistently tells young men how they can optimise their lives - from early-morning cold plunges to biting down on a rubber ball every day to sculpt your jawline.

Except, in this case, it’s achieving ketosis, or the state where the body burns fat for energy because it’s running so low on carbs.

There have been few long-term scientific studies into the effects of a carnivore diet, but large amounts of red meat and fat, alongside the lack of vitamins and fibre from vegetables, have been linked to many different chronic diseases.

The carnivore community often says otherwise. I wanted to find out if I would experience the health benefits I’d heard so many anecdotes about.

Lucy Fabbri, a nurse and carnivore influencer, thought it was possible. Fabbri went through a period of restrictive eating in her teens, and suffered from mood swings, brain fog, and fatigue while at university.

I would have a meal, and then I’d want to go to sleep. Surely the human body isn’t designed to do that.
Lucy

Fabbri switched between a number of different diets before finding the carnivore diet seemed to work for her. “My mind is clearer. It really chilled me out. My family are like, ‘You’re a changed person.’” She attributes this not just to the nutritional profile of the new diet, but to only having a few different foods to choose from, which saves her time and headspace.

The nurse’s search for a new diet coincided with her nurse training. She observed specialist diabetes nurses prescribe insulin to their patients, and was surprised to hear some staff members laughing off the idea of a low-carb diet. Fabbri points out that Diabetes UK’s website now suggests low-carb diets could be a way to treat type 2 diabetes.

Fabbri said: “From my experience of working within the NHS, no one talks about any sort of diet really. And at uni, I was never sat down to a lecture about nutrition. If I was, it was so brief, I don’t even remember it.”

Fabbri explains her belief that cholesterol has been unfairly scapegoated for heart disease, and that fibre is not necessary for healthy digestion. When I ask the nurse how she knows which sources to trust when doing research, she tells me, “Most of my understanding of this whole thing has come from a few very vocal doctors. I learnt this all online.”

From my experience of working within the NHS, no one talks about any sort of diet. And at uni, I was never sat down to a lecture about nutrition.
Lucy

The nurse warned me against making an immediate switch from omnivore to carnivore, recommending a slow transition period like she’d had. She also guessed I might get “keto flu” from the sudden change in diet - which she said made her feel like she was “dying” for the first week. Good to know.

The Weekly Shop

I was slightly concerned that my new diet was based upon pretty much all of the most expensive foods in the supermarket - meat and dairy. Sure enough, my shopping list for the week came to £66.44 - around £20 more than usual.

Steaks x5	£12.50
Eggs x24	£6.30
Cheese	£5.95
Smoked salmon	£4.75
Beef mince	£3.79
Natural yoghurt	£3.60
Beef jerky	£3.45
Chicken breasts	£3.25
Bacon rashers x14	£3.15
Cured meats	£3.00
Prawns	£2.95
Butter	£2.80
Electrolyte tablets	£2.66
Feta	£2.10
Honey	£2.00
Ham	£1.63
Double cream	£1.23
Cream cheese	£1.13
Total	£66.44

"Survival with thrival"

For self-styled survivalist Michael Mason, the benefits of following an animal-based diet are more about mentality. Mason offers 45-minute consultations for £145 each, which he says help promote “survival with thrival”. For Mason, “survival” lies in choosing the difficult but rewarding path, such as choosing not to pop into the bakery for a cream slice while you’re trying to eat more healthily.

Mason also runs animal-based retreats to the Scottish Highlands, where participants camp, hike and eat in a way that Mason believes unlocks their “primal essence”. According to Mason, primal essence involves “not giving a fuck about what someone has posted on social media, the news, and all of this other stuff.” Ironic considering carnivore influencers on social media are what brought me to this point.

The diet

After waking up on Monday morning from one final dream about vegetables, I kicked off the carnivore week with a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Monday was mostly trial and error, working out how large my carb-less portions should be to fill me up - I ended breakfast and lunch still being very hungry, and overcompensated with a huge dinner of steak and eggs. The best word I can use to describe how I felt at the end of Day One is “dubious” - I felt slightly more tired, slightly more hot and cold, and my joints slightly more stiff than normal.

Tuesday passed with only two minor indignities. The first of these came when I had to eat at McDonald’s after leaving the omelette I’d made for lunch at home, which led to me having to pick the breadcrumbs (not allowed) off some chicken selects by hand. The second embarrassment happened when I was sat at my desk, and realised that, thanks to the diet, my stomach was audibly fizzing - not rumbling, but fizzing, like a glass of Coke.

Wednesday was brutal. Not helped by the below-freezing weather and the day of travel I was consigned to that day, I began to feel very ill during the afternoon. This made me suspect that subsisting on only egg, cheese and meat was keeping me from some essential nutrients. An early evening nap and a steak sorted me out, except for the digestive issues that came after - but I’ll spare you those details.

At the midway point, I sought the advice of Professor Michelle Harvie, a dietitian who was one of the first people to demonstrate that weight loss could reduce the risk of breast cancer in women. Her verdict was decisive. “There are a lot of crazy diets out there, but this is one of the most unhealthy. I really would not advocate it, even in the short term.”

There’s just nonsense out there, and it’s not fact-checked.
Prof Harvie

Prof Harvie batted back some of the claims I’d heard from the carnivore side of the aisle. “If cholesterol is really not bad for our health, then how come goodness knows how many of the population are on statins?” She also said that even if carnivore influencers explicitly say they aren’t giving medical advice, their arguments do convince lots of people.

“There’s stuff on Instagram about how sunbeds protect you against skin cancer. There’s just nonsense out there, and it’s not fact-checked.”

After Wednesday, to my surprise, I actually started enjoying aspects of the diet. It liberated me from thinking too much about eating healthily - I just followed the carnivores’ advice and ate until I was full, putting away an amount of butter, salt and honey that my omnivore self would have shied away from.

My recipes throughout the week ranged from boring (a bowl of shrimp for lunch) to crimes against nature (a meat feast pizza with ground-up chicken as the base). I put my carnivore week to bed with a fruit salad at the stroke of midnight - it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

What did I learn?

Photo by Kyle Mackie on Unsplash

A week wasn’t long enough for me to discover the long-term health implications of the diet - scientific studies are best for that. What I do know is that my digestion was all over the place, and the discomfort that caused in just a few short days was worrying enough. However, I wasn’t hungry in between meals anymore on the carnivore diet. Another positive effect is that the diet reset my brain’s relationship with refined sugar. I slowly stopped gazing at the chocolate biscuits in the office - a craving that has since returned.

This is why the carnivore trend remains concerning. Its promoters often hit upon very real issues - how to change our diets so we don’t rely on pharmaceuticals to solve our health problems, or developing a strong mindset for life. But on social media, the most extreme solutions get pushed to the top of our feeds. It’s easy for audiences to swallow this stuff whole - without a pinch of salt.

The Weekly Shop

"Survival with thrival"

The diet

Image captions

What did I learn?