Julie

Are you currently Keto or Carnivore?

Keto

How long have you been keto/carnivore?

Started on July 4th, 2022.

Describe what a Typical Day of Eating Looks like for you.

I either skip breakfast altogether or go for a hearty portion of bacon around 10:30 am or some salami and some macadamia nuts.

For lunch I usually have some kind of beef, whether that’s a hamburger or a steak, and usually, iceberg lettuce and cucumbers topped with olive oil, vinegar, and hemp seeds.

Dinner is sometimes a beef stew made in my Instant Pot, or it could be salami if I’m in a rush or chicken if my husband is getting tired of all the red meat. I might add lettuce or cucumbers to this too, but these days I don’t worry about eating as many vegetables as I used to, and I stay away from broccoli as I’ve figured out that my belly doesn’t like it!

Nowadays, I’m also pretty big on fat bombs as a dessert. I take chocolate with no sugar or sweeteners, coconut oil, a few macadamia nuts, and maybe some shredded coconut, too; chop it up a bit and put it on a plate, top it with cinnamon and sea salt and stick it in the freezer until it hardens. It’s so good but you have to get used to the taste of unsweetened chocolate. Not for the faint of heart!

Describe the health changes you have experienced since going keto/carnivore.

Well, first of all, I dropped 50 pounds in just over three months. I blew past my goal weight, and my weight has been stable ever since.

I sleep like a baby, but I find I need one hour less sleep per night. Bonus hour!

I was a woman who struggled with ADHD her whole life. I had no idea that keto would do anything to change my ADHD symptoms, but one day around two months after starting the diet, I suddenly noticed a drastic change in my ability to sit down and get stuff done. Before then, it was nearly impossible for me to do anything without hours of procrastinating and yelling at myself just to get started.

My moods stabilized big time too. I have had PMDD, a severe form of PMS, ever since I was an adolescent. I spent about a week every month bloated, tired, crying, fighting with the people close to me. Now, believe it or not, I don’t even get cramps! All, and I mean ALL of my premenstrual symptoms are gone. So much so that now if I don’t look at my period tracker app, I really have no idea when my monthly guest will arrive now that I no longer have the agonizing week of warning beforehand.

I would also say I’m just happier and calmer in general. If something frustrating happens, let’s say at work or something, I can take a deep breath and deal with it instead of getting completely bent out of shape.

But best of all, I no longer stress about food and I don’t feel that 24/7 hunger that I did all the time. I feel like I know what to eat to make my body and mind happy . . . finally, after all these years of doing it wrong!

Your Keto/Carnivore Story

How I got started on keto was that my husband took a picture of me from the side and, yikes! I knew I was chubby, but I hadn’t realized how big my belly had gotten.

Then, randomly, a video about keto just happened to pop up on my YouTube feed. I think I had been checking out intermittent fasting videos too. I’d had some success with that before but had gotten a bit lazy with it.

I decided to give keto a try and went for it. Before going keto, I had been vegan for about 13 years and then spent another 16 years as a flexitarian, eating very little meat. At first, I was eating tons of vegetables along with my meals. I loved eating them, but wow, they took a lot of time to prepare. I began listening to a lot of the carnivore folks online too and realized that I didn’t need to worry so much about the veggies. In the future, I might give them up altogether, but for now, I treat them as an extra, optional part of my meal.

And really, once I got started, it was off to the races! I responded to the diet incredibly quickly. I added in some intermittent fasting, and some longer fasts, too and overall found the diet incredibly easy.

What is the best (or top 3) pieces of advice you could give someone starting their keto/carnivore health journey?

The first two weeks were the hardest for me. One thing that helped was that I didn’t have too many social events to go to in those two weeks. Once I began to see real changes in my body and mind, it was no problem for me to say no to temptation at birthday parties and the like.

Continue learning as you go. You may feel like the diet is complicated at first. That’s okay. Just get started. As you go, you can refine it. For example, I started off eating a lot of yogurt, but then realized I was eating it even when I wasn’t hungry, so now I don’t keep it in the house all the time. It seems to bring out the munchie monster in me. You’ll learn what you can and can’t do as you go.

Don’t do it alone! It can feel very weird being the only person you know eating the way you do. Join a community online or in person of like-minded people, or work with a keto or carnivore coach. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but support really makes a difference.