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Thread: Carnivore Diet

  1. #1
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    Default Carnivore Diet

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    I suppose we know this has been the latest fad diet over the last couple of years and not suited to strength training due to the complete absence of carbs.

    That being said I saw that one of the main carnivore guys, Paul Saladino, is now saying fruit, honey and raw milk is a go on the diet. He also interviewed an NFL player recently on YouTube who was following the diet and also eating some white rice which Paul said was cool.

    Total daily carbs ok at 300-400 grams.

    Any thoughts on this approach to eating and whether it would work with SS?

    Im still in my LP so wouldn't change my diet now but may consider it due to the "purported" mental health benefits as I have bipolar disorder.

    Thanks

  2. #2
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    How did they measure said "purported benefits?"

    Interviewing a drug using elite athlete and extrapolating that to the general population is great for increasing the size of Paul's wallet but not the size of your own muscles.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by CalebM View Post
    I suppose we know this has been the latest fad diet over the last couple of years and not suited to strength training due to the complete absence of carbs.

    That being said I saw that one of the main carnivore guys, Paul Saladino, is now saying fruit, honey and raw milk is a go on the diet. He also interviewed an NFL player recently on YouTube who was following the diet and also eating some white rice which Paul said was cool.

    Total daily carbs ok at 300-400 grams.

    Any thoughts on this approach to eating and whether it would work with SS?

    Im still in my LP so wouldn't change my diet now but may consider it due to the "purported" mental health benefits as I have bipolar disorder.

    Thanks
    300-400 grams of carbs is 1200-1600 calories from carbs per day. Depending on the total calories ingested per day, that just seems like a normal American diet. Did you mean 300-400 calories from carbs per day?

  4. #4
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    Fruit, white rice, and meat...so, food? This is the "food diet"? I do agree that eating food can help your mental health. Certainly more than the alternative.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FrankNJ View Post
    300-400 grams of carbs is 1200-1600 calories from carbs per day. Depending on the total calories ingested per day, that just seems like a normal American diet. Did you mean 300-400 calories from carbs per day?
    No, that was just carbs.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Robert Santana View Post
    How did they measure said "purported benefits?"

    Interviewing a drug using elite athlete and extrapolating that to the general population is great for increasing the size of Paul's wallet but not the size of your own muscles.
    Good points. I'm guessing the main benefit is just getting all the processed shit out of your diet, which of course can be done with any diet and be beneficial.

    Sounds like you're quite anti it. Have you looked into it yourself?

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    Meat undergoes processing too. How are they defining processing? I'm anti extreme removal of any given nutrient unless you have a legitimate issue that calls for it.

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    I'm hoping Robert doesn't mind if I chime in here as I have many years of experience with the carnivore diet, as well as some other loony eating disorders I'm recovering from. I also have Precision Nutrition Level 1 coaching certification, take that as you will.

    What Saladino is advocating, as others have pointed out, is no longer really a carnivore diet, but a more or less arbitrary regimen based on Saladino's belief that plants are full of "toxins," and only certain carbs are okay to eat. Nowadays, fruit, honey, and (I guess) rice.

    He's not wrong, in a sense. Yes, plants contain natural pesticides (antinutrients) and yes, eaten in large enough quantities certain compounds can potentially be harmful to certain people who are particularly sensitive. A lot of the "evidence" for this is mechanistic, though, and it seems a stretch to look at the current state of health in the civilized world and blame it on spinach and kale. In his book The Carnivore Code, Saladino relates an anecdote of a woman who almost died from drinking like 4 spinach smoothies. She got oxalate poisoning. But, call me crazy, I feel like that doesn't happen a lot.

    Saladino's carnivore-ish protocol sounds like a not-bad idea for an elimination diet if someone is suffering from gastrointestinal or perhaps autoimmune issues. As for mental health, I don't know by what mechanism this diet would improve it, unless it's by way of just cutting junk food, copious amounts of refined carbs and white sugar. In which case, you can still eat a lot more stuff than just meat, fruit, honey, and rice.

    I recall reading about some interesting preliminary research on nutritional ketosis as a potentially therapeutic intervention for certain mental health disorders (schizophrenia was one), and the internet is rife with n=1 anecdotes. L. Amber O'Hearn is a long-time carnivore who uses the diet to control symptoms of bipolar II. She has done so quite effectively for many years. I don't know if she trains for strength -- I doubt it -- but having the same disorder and having done both years of strict carnivore and only a couple months of strength training, I can tell you that strength training has been markedly more effective for me in a much shorter time. Quite simply I have never experienced fewer mental health symptoms in my adult life than I have in the last 9 weeks of strength training.

    However, you can find tons of heart-wrenching testimonials for veganism too. (I was also a raw vegan for the better part of a year in my 20s. I've sampled every eating disorder.)

    In my opinion, and based on many years of unfortunate experience, a severely restrictive diet is almost always unnecessary and often harmful. This is getting too long to go into the neuroses you have to adopt in order to eat only like 4 things, but it will mess you up. Or, perhaps more accurately, you have to be messed up to do it. I did experience health benefits from going carnivore back in 2010, but I was severely obese at the time (293 lbs when I started), I did carnivore IN LIEU OF training, and many of the benefits were probably the result of cutting shitty food. Much of the weight loss was the result of my appetite decreasing due to ketosis; eventually my weight plateaued at 220 lbs and did not drop any further no matter how much of a strict carnivore I was. (Like most religious carnivores, I did not "believe" in calories.)

    A trainee on the NLP is becoming a more and more efficient user of substrate. For an obese sedentary person who refuses to train, it makes sense to lower insulin signaling with low carb or fasting ketosis. But of course, you shouldn't be obese and sedentary. You should be training. And if you are, your muscles are using glucose. You are insulin sensitive, or getting there, and you don't have to be so damn picky about everything you eat. It's a good idea not to eat garbage, but IMO carnivore scapegoats plants for poor physical and mental health caused by a general poor lifestyle and lack of training. It's great for neurotic people who like being in weird cults, but IMHO, it's simply not necessary for a serious strength trainee.

  9. #9
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    I'm hoping Robert doesn't mind if I chime in here as I have many years of experience with the carnivore diet, as well as some other loony eating disorders I'm recovering from. I also have Precision Nutrition Level 1 coaching certification, take that as you will.

    What Saladino is advocating, as others have pointed out, is no longer really a carnivore diet, but a more or less arbitrary regimen based on Saladino's belief that plants are full of "toxins," and only certain carbs are okay to eat. Nowadays, fruit, honey, and (I guess) rice.

    He's not wrong, in a sense. Yes, plants contain natural pesticides (antinutrients) and yes, eaten in large enough quantities certain compounds can potentially be harmful to certain people who are particularly sensitive. A lot of the "evidence" for this is mechanistic, though, and it seems a stretch to look at the current state of health in the civilized world and blame it on spinach and kale. In his book The Carnivore Code, Saladino relates an anecdote of a woman who almost died from drinking like 4 spinach smoothies. She got oxalate poisoning. But, call me crazy, I feel like that doesn't happen a lot.

    Saladino's carnivore-ish protocol sounds like a not-bad idea for an elimination diet if someone is suffering from gastrointestinal or perhaps autoimmune issues. As for mental health, I don't know by what mechanism this diet would improve it, unless it's by way of just cutting junk food, copious amounts of refined carbs and white sugar. In which case, you can still eat a lot more stuff than just meat, fruit, honey, and rice.

    I recall reading about some interesting preliminary research on nutritional ketosis as a potentially therapeutic intervention for certain mental health disorders (schizophrenia was one), and the internet is rife with n=1 anecdotes. L. Amber O'Hearn is a long-time carnivore who uses the diet to control symptoms of bipolar II. She has done so quite effectively for many years. I don't know if she trains for strength -- I doubt it -- but having the same disorder and having done both years of strict carnivore and only a couple months of strength training, I can tell you that strength training has been markedly more effective for me in a much shorter time. Quite simply I have never experienced fewer mental health symptoms in my adult life than I have in the last 9 weeks of strength training.

    However, you can find tons of heart-wrenching testimonials for veganism too. (I was also a raw vegan for the better part of a year in my 20s. I've sampled every eating disorder.)

    In my opinion, and based on many years of unfortunate experience, a severely restrictive diet is almost always unnecessary and often harmful. This is getting too long to go into the neuroses you have to adopt in order to eat only like 4 things, but it will mess you up. Or, perhaps more accurately, you have to be messed up to do it. I did experience health benefits from going carnivore back in 2010, but I was severely obese at the time (293 lbs when I started), I did carnivore IN LIEU OF training, and many of the benefits were probably the result of cutting shitty food. Much of the weight loss was the result of my appetite decreasing due to ketosis; eventually my weight plateaued at 220 lbs and did not drop any further no matter how much of a strict carnivore I was. (Like most religious carnivores, I did not "believe" in calories.)

    A trainee on the NLP is becoming a more and more efficient user of substrate. For an obese sedentary person who refuses to train, it makes sense to lower insulin signaling with low carb or fasting ketosis. But of course, you shouldn't be obese and sedentary. You should be training. And if you are, your muscles are using glucose. You are insulin sensitive, or getting there, and you don't have to be so damn picky about everything you eat. It's a good idea not to eat garbage, but IMO carnivore scapegoats plants for poor physical and mental health caused by a general poor lifestyle and lack of training. It's great for neurotic people who like being in weird cults, but IMHO, it's simply not necessary for a serious strength trainee.

  10. #10
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    The real answer is we don't really have good evidence for any given diet. Diet studies don't measure intake so you are left with a quasi anecdote masquerading as an experiment. Can some of these things work? Sure. Will they work for everyone? Most certainly not. In general, when you add training to the mix a lot of restrictive diets tend to fail to produce performance outcomes in most people. Again an anecdote from someone who coaches people on this and has to take their word for it on what they eat. However, this is no different than what a research dietitian is doing in an NIH funded study.

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