What you’re getting yourself into
In the spirit of pointing out the most blindingly obvious, and explaining why carnivore needs strict rules despite not having a religious text to base it on.
There’s been a legion of people embarking this month on a conspiratorial journey away from the dietary guidelines. World Carnivore Month has undergone a successful launch, and the first wave of initiations have already taken place. The cult hasn’t been this strong since we controlled a third of the world’s population in 1279.
But amongst all the goodwill and satanic rituals, there’s been a surge of fresh-faced carnivores who think that avocados are animal products. This is a difficult narrative to push. At least with honey, you could attempt the argument that since it comes from a bee’s ass, it should be classed as an animal food.
In both cases however, you are ultimately looking at plant foods, and there’s no planet where they can be considered carnivore. This isn’t to be dogmatic, we aren’t sworn to abide by some immutable text that has been passed down over the millenia by our paleolithic ancestors.
The rules of carnivore
- Eat fatty animal foods
- Prioritise red meat
- Don’t eat plant foods
- Always eat to satiety
- Don’t go hungry
- Keep it simple
The point of the rules, are to enforce the benefits of an elimination diet, plug nutrient deficiencies, and heal the mitochondria. It’s effectively a factory reset for your metabolism. Playing fast and loose with the ingredients will needlessly muddy the certainties of these outcomes. It makes the diet more complex and less idiotproof.
Because adding plant foods can result in blood sugar fluctuations, diminish ketosis, sprinkle in inflammatory ingredients, allow bad gut bugs to continue to thrive, and generally hamper the process of metabolic healing.
Can you get healthy with a carnivore-esque diet where you douse your ribeye with honey and set an aesthetic avocado next to it? Absolutely, because minimising Omega 6 is ultimately one of the biggest movers in a transformation. Avocados are low in Omega 6, and honey has none.
But will you get better results with the monochromatic version where you just eat fatty ribeye? As long as you can sustain it over the first month, I’d say yes. Beyond that month, with the opening and crucial phase of the factory reset complete, you’ll have the freedom to consider incorporating other foods.
The variations Of carnivore
Carnivore can be fatty red meat.
It can be beef and salt.
It could be beef and eggs.
It could be beef, eggs, cheese, and butter.
It could be beef, pork, eggs, cheese, butter, and raw milk.
It could even be animal products and medical plants for use as nootropics rather than food.
Which may have something to do with me being a coffee addict.
But once you start throwing fruit and salads in there, it becomes animal-based. Which could always be an option for the second or third phase of your nutritional overhaul, when you reintegrate low toxicity plant foods to a metabolism that has already been brought back from the dead.
It just won’t be carnivore, and if you’re going to do carnivore, you might as well do it properly so you give yourself the best chances of succeeding.
You’d be surprised at how much bend some people get out of the definition of carnivore. I’ve heard from people who drink a glass of wine each night, and still call it carnivore. Others drink a can of red bull a day, and still call it carnivore. There are even people who think simply eating meat makes them carnivore, never mind the fat pasty that the sausage has been wedged in.
So adding an avocado to your dinner would be on the lower end of ancestral crimes. But for the sake of simplicity, efficiency, and results, we can’t call it carnivore.
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