Carnivore for a Month: Week 2

My reflections on eating a Carnivore Diet for a month.

This week was rough.

Sugar withdrawals are no joke. I intended to use meditation and sheer willpower to fight off the withdrawals, but nothing could save me from the drop-offs I experienced.

Luckily, I had an unfair advantage going into this challenge—my roommate Mullis, a master carnivore. Every time the withdrawals hit, I’d ask him if he had the same experience, and he kept reminding me to be patient through the fat-adaptation period. He promised that the superpowers would soon arrive.

All hail the mighty meat gods.

The only thing that helped me recover some of that missing dopamine was black coffee. Normally, I drink 1-2 cups a day, but on Carnivore, the caffeine buzzes were much more intense. While it distracted me from the sugar withdrawals for a moment, it also caused energy crashes later in the day—something I didn’t notice before. On the upside, it might mean I’m no longer using sugar to mask those crashes.

Besides my girlfriend complaining that our apartment stank like a steakhouse, I was also told I was grumpy and irritable. Mornings gave me moments of clarity, but by the afternoon, the sugar withdrawals hit hard. I had to actively avoid sweet treats like smoothies and chocolate—the way I imagine recovering addicts do to control their environment.

Every time I’d feel like I couldn’t take another meal of mince and eggs, Mullis’ words rang in my ears—' Just wait until you’re properly fat-adapted, and your perception of food will change.' Sure enough, when I waited until I was ravenous, even the thought of mince, eggs, and salt became mouth-watering.

It’s funny that I previously thought I ate based on hunger, but this was very wrong. I ate based on mood first, and appetite second—snacking on chocolate, rusks, biltong¹, or fruit whenever I felt a dip. Looking back, I can see how this constant need to balance energy highs and lows made me act like a slave to food.

Now, with a low-carb alternative, my relationship with food feels a lot simpler. I eat when I’m hungry, not because of my mood, and I’m no longer grazing all day. Hopefully, I can continue this way once my experiment is over haha!

I’ve never struggled with body image or weight, but I can see how the Carnivore diet could help someone looking to manage their weight better. Coming from a privileged position where I can afford to eat meat regularly, I realise not everyone has that luxury. Still, there’s a deeper issue with the current status quo around nutrition. Wits University published a study showing that half of all adults in South Africa are either overweight (23%) or obese (27%)². This epidemic puts enormous pressure on our healthcare system, with the SA government spending over R30 million a year on weight-related diseases.

After two weeks, I lost 5kg, much to my mother’s dismay. But that’s normal when switching to Carnivore— one usually loses water weight and has less fibre stuck in their system. I haven’t seen it impact my sports performance though. In fact, I feel more explosive during exercise and have been able to handle a larger workload. The fats I’ve been consuming seem to help with sports recovery too. The new pre-workout is a huge dollop of butter - Yummy I know right?

But mentally, the hardest part has been the empty dopamine tank. Aside from coffee, I’ve tried to fill the gap with exercise. Here’s what my week looked like:

• BJJ x3

• Run x4.

Kudos to my boet Nic for getting me on his running program ahead of my UTCT 35km trail race in November. It was also a special week as I joined my mate Kai for a leg of his 13 Peaks attempt. He crushed it and embodied Archilochus’ words:

‘We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training’

Even with a busy schedule, I made it to two parties over the weekend. Sleep took a hit, but spending time with friends charged my social batteries—fueled by meat, not sugar.

My best mate Jack & I decompressing after a befokte long week at KevDog’s 21st.

So far, there haven’t been any big changes in my heart rate, sleep scores, or other Garmin data. However, I noticed my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has improved since starting Carnivore, indicating less stress overall.

HRV (Heart Rate Variability) estimates when you are under stress and when you are at rest. It is the variation in time between each heartbeat. You can see below that since I began the diet, my HRV has gone from unbalanced to balanced, indicating a reduction in overall stress.

Lastly, I have also been nerding out on Health Science generally this last month and want to begin covering some FAQs I had thus far like:

1. Why am I only going for number 2’s once every 3/4 days now?

2. Is the Fibre I used to get from veggies good for me?

3. What if I had to have a high-fat and high-carbohydrate diet?

4. Would I be able to run a marathon in Ketosis?

If you are interested, I will be setting up a dynamic web page where I can update resources on these topics, and update it based on new findings. I will additionally include some of these interesting insights based on my research in my next blogs.

Stay tuned for some more updates and thanks for joining me on my experiment!

1. An interesting insight I gained from the Carnivore diet is that biltong is a definite NO. If you take a closer look at the ingredients on an Original Free Range Sliced Beef Biltong pack, you’ll find some surprises like sunflower oil (seed oils), preservatives and sugar.

2. Note my source was from this article posted by The Conversation. I did not do a deep dive into this research, although it helps me make the point that I anecdotally see a lot of overweight South Africans daily.