I’ve been on a “dirty carnivore” (meat and dairy) diet for 7 months. I’m a very short guy who was 0.1 BMI from being obese. I’m down 45 pounds and just bought new pants with a 28 waist. My goal is 50 pounds, so getting close.
It’s an easy diet to follow, because you’re never really hungry.
The key is that a high FAT, high protein diet satisfies your hunger with less food. The technique is to stop eating when your satisfied and your stomach naturally shrinks, since you’re not eating tons of non-nutricious fiber. FAT and protein just fill you up fast. That results in wanting even smaller portions.
Need a snack? Pop 4 slices of bacon in the air fryer. What diet plan could possibly be better when you can eat all the bacon you want?
The real benefit is you feel incredible. Way more energy (64yo here). I’ve stopped taking a few medications. Don’t need them any longer.
I was a carboholic my entire life. Potatoes and crackers and chips. But after two weeks, you no longer crave them. There are small temptations, but you rarely think about wanting them. In fact, you don’t think about food much at all. Which was a big difference where I rummaged for snacks all day.
Go to YouTube and watch some carnivore videos. Dr. Ken D. Berry is very informative.
For my quick snack I slice an avocado.
Your experience matches mine when I changed to keto and then Carnivore-Lite in 2018. I lost 35 pounds, my 45 years of yo-yo diets ended (I was a very fat kid) and most of my belly fat came off.
I am a runner (regardless of weight) and always ran hard - to exhaustion. Last spring, while it seemed crazy, I decided to cut back how far I ran and to also slow down my runs. The idea was to see if I was stressing my body by too hard an exercise, creating too much cortisol that in turn was keeping the remaining fat on me.
6 months later, about half of the remaining body fat is gone. It supports the idea that much of our fat - for those of us who have issues - is based on out of whack hormones, not “lack of willpower”.
A bit atypically, my cholesterol remained about the same. Compared to 2016, my triglycerides are the same (75). LDL is the same (although I think the “LDL” number is actually an estimate derived from the triglyceride level). My total cholesterol went up 15 points but that is because my HDL went up 15 points.
More important, my health is WAY better. I can FEEL it, which is why I’ll never go back. In my upper 60s and some things are showing their age - but in many ways, I feel better now than I did in my 40s!