Dieting: Benefits Of Carnivore Diet

Dieting has become a common concern for most people over the years, with age and increase in unhealthy food products becoming more publicly aware, everyone is looking to stay fit as possible. All sorts of dieting trends have appeared over the years, such as Keto dieting and Atkins becoming some of the more popular ones. Some folks have even tried creating specific diets that allow them to continue consuming their favorites dishes but also finding ways to make sure they stay in shape. IIFYM is a good example of this. We see new diets pop up everyday. The most uprising and trendy diet at the time of this article is the Carnivore Diet.

The carnivore diet has become one of the most recent controversial diets to date and for many good reasons. Simply put, the Carnivore Diet can be compared to the Keto Diet except this time, it involves zero carbs. Because of this, there has been a lot of debate all over the web on whether or not the Keto diet is better for you or is Carnivore the new way to go. Most people are aware that consuming large amounts of meat can be quite unhealthy, disease-inducing, artery-clogging food that should be avoided as much as possible.

Even so, there have been reports of people becoming even more energetic than usual. Drastic weight loss and improved mental cognition. This has made it tempting for most people to look into and see if its a better alternative to a solution that of other dieting lifestyles, such as keto dieting, which shares a lot of similar results carnivore dieting does. Well, with that said, it’s time to shed some light on what the Carnivore Diet actually is!

What is Carnivore Dieting?

The carnivore diet lives up to its name: a diet where you eat solely meat and nothing else but meat for every single meal. This means you’re consuming more protein, fat, and nearly zero carbs for your diet, which makes it somewhat similar to the ketogenic diet. The reason this dieting theory even came into existence was due to people using our ancestors as a primary example of them mostly eating meat for energy rather than fruits and veggies. These results have to lead to our bodies have evolved to run optimally on diet and centered around meat consumption.

This simple and tasty approach has inticed anyone who’s looking to follow a diet without having to dig deep into any complicated nutritional strategies. This means you won’t have to worry about counting any annoying macros or calories, timing your meals or intermittent fasting.

Let's go into a bit more detail for what’s okay to eat. Shall we?

Meat: Beef, steaks and red meat are the primary staples of this delicious diet. Since you aren’t eating any carbohydrates, you should be getting the bulk of your calories from fattier meat to ensure you’re getting the maximum amount of calories to maintain stable energy levels.

Dairy: Dairy products that are produced from animals such as milk, butter, and cheese are allowed for this diet but plenty of carnivore dieters try to limit dairy consumption, mostly due to either being lactose intolerant or due to them switching over from keto dieting which normally disallows this kind of stuff.

Fish: Any type of fish is pretty much allowed, but you should be aiming for the more fattier ones such as sardines, halibut, and salmons.

Condiments: Salt and pepper are some of your best friends here, along with horseradish, mustard, salsa, and other assortment of herbs and spices don’t technically qualify. Even so, most sugar-free condiments don’t contain substances that cause potential digestive problems for most people, so there's no harm in using them just because they are made from plants. Although due to its fat content, meat, especially red meat, is quite tasty on its own, so you’ll probably find that salt, pepper, or small amounts of butter provide the kind of taste you want without needing to add other condiments.

History behind Carnivore Dieting

Personally, what I’ve found carnivore dieting to be even more interesting is the historical significance behind it. Humanity as a whole has never truly lived through a period of time of strictly consuming plant-based or carbohydrate heavy was ever followed throughout the rise and fall of any existing civilization found in history. Although taking a much closer look at what our ancestors ate, there are multiple populations through a variety of ethnic and geographical backgrounds who’ve adopted a carnivore diet for many generations.

Some of the more prominent ancestors include:

• Nomads from Mongolia who thrived on meat and dairy.
• Gaucho Brazilians who consumed mostly beef product.
• Russian Arctic Chukotka who nourished their population with fish, caribou and marine animals.
• Canadian Inuits who lived solely on walrus, seal, whale meat and fish.

As clearly shown plenty of our ancestors not only survived but also displayed some amazing health marker. For instance, our Point Hope Eskimo ancestors followed an animal-only diet consisting of walrus, whale and a variety of other sea creatures, where 50% of their caloric intake was from fat and 35% consisted of protein. Modern day researchers have discovered incidences of heart disease from the Point Hope Eskimo were ten times lower than those of the Caucasian population of America. Despite the increasing number of vegan diets, there are large amounts of data supporting that our ancestors were quite the heavy meat eaters.

Carnivore vs. Keto: What’s Different?

Keto dieting and carnivore dieting are quite closely related when it comes to the various dieting lifestyles out there. Both of these diets require you to consume plenty of fatty meats and protein, but the carnivore diet takes it to a whole new level. Unlike its keto diet brethren, the carnivore diet restricts all plant-based foods, so your carb intake is nearly zero, although keep in mind that some meats due contain small traces of carbs. Although, you can still count on your body gaining some carbs so no worries.

In a similar fashion to the keto diet, your body will become adjusted on producing it’s very own carbs for fuel through a processes known as gluconeogenesis. So dubbing the carnivore diet completely “zero-carb” is somewhat of a misnomer. For the keto diet, the priority is on fat, with protein being somewhat limited in order to prevent the excess of carbs through gluconeogenesis and getting booted out of ketosis. For a carnivore diet, you are encouraged to consume both fat and protein to your heart's content. It doesn’t matter if you achieve ketosis because the primary goal is to simply feel better and becoming more healthy.

Another difference between these two ambitious diets is that, unlike a keto diet, there aren’t any strict or clear guildies for that matter, for carnivore dieters regarding percentages of total calories and macros. The idea behind this is to simply focus on consuming enough red meat, which should be taking care of your nutritional needs. Due to the carnivore diet focusing on foods consisting of animals only, items such as coconut oil and avocados found in the keto diet are not welcomed here.

Can the carnivore diet benefit you?

Weight Loss: A percentage of you may find this difficult to believe for an all-meat, high-fight diet, but similar to that of the keto diet, severely restricting your carb intake will keep your blood sugar low at all times. Since you won’t be dealing with insulin spikes, your body ha no reason to continue storing calories as body fat.

Healthier Heart: While saturated fats have gained a negative reputation for linking to heart disease by raising cholesterol in the blood, in reality, no experimental evidence done has ever managed to directly connect saturated fat to the cause behind heart disease. In fact, saturated fats have been shown to raise positive cholesterol and don’t harm the blood lipid profile like most medical doctors previously believed.

Mental Clarity: Similar to the ketogenic diet, carnivore dieters have reported experiencing an increase in focus and mental clarity pretty much immediately. Our brains are mainly made up of 60% fat so by following a diet that mostly composed of fats and protein, it’s common to be experiencing longer boosts of focus and improved mood. Studies have shown that restricting carbs and using fats and proteins as the majority of your daily caloric intake has strong neuroprotective properties that help people focus even better and tolerate stress much more efficiently.

Decreased Inflammation: Studies have compared inflammation markers between a low carb, high fat group to low fat, high carb group for up to 12 weeks. The results have shown that the low carb, high-fat dieters had much lower systemic inflammation by the end of the three-month study.

Conclusion

The carnivore diet comes with plenty of health benefits, such as the decrease in digestive problems, high testosterone, increase in mental clarity and variety of more. Despite the number of restrictions put into place, it’s still one of the most simple diet plans to follow since the rules are so easy to remember.

Simply only eat meats and NO CARBS!

For those of you out there who’ve only been on the keto diet and wish to change up the pace a bit, take a step into this direction and give the carnivore diet a try to see if this is more compatible with your needs and feels. Even so, the keto diet is still a great dieting plan and comes with its own list of benefits as well so don’t discount completely!

I hope this article can give you some guidelines on the difference between Keto and Carnivore. Now it’s your turn! Would love to hear your view on which one is better? Carnivore diet or Keto diet? Leave it in the comments below! If you’re looking for a fitness coach that can help you implement a workout plan as well as a diet plan, make sure you sign up for Ladder and give us a try!