150: Animal-Based Diet Results After 5 Years: I Finally Stopped Dieting

Episode 150 - How Animal-Based Eating Changed My Life - 5 Year Update
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I've been eating animal-based for five years, and I can honestly say I eat better than I ever have, and I think about food less than I ever have. Those two things don't really seem to go naturally together, and it's not really what I expected when I embarked on my animal-based journey. So here is the whole change in one picture.

Back in the days, I read the label on almost everything I put in the cart, checking whether it was allowed, you know, on keto, on paleo. Is it keto-friendly? Is it paleo, paleo-friendly, etc.? But tonight I may have pork chop, potatoes or whatever came out of the garden, and I won't make a single decision about whether any of it fits my diet.

Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast. Now, everything that I tell you, none of that requires land, by the way, even though, you know, we do raise animals on our homestead. The framework really works exactly the same, whether your food comes from your own pasture or the meat counter at the grocery store. And I will talk more about the farming, homesteading part later because it's a real part of the entire story of this episode.

But it's really a consequence of how we eat and not a requirement for it. And I wanna be very specific about what actually changed because this diet changed my life is one of the emptiest sentences in health content, I think. But there are three things that have really changed. It's not my weight or my, you know, health or any of that.

The first is really that the decisions stopped. You know, I used to answer the same question at every meal. Is this allowed? Is it paleo? Is it keto? Is it whatever friendly? And that question is gone from my day. The base of the plate is really decided before I walk into the kitchen, and everything around it is up to me.

The second thing that changed is that I started paying attention to my body instead of my plate. You know, once you're not auditing food or ingredients for compliance, you actually have the attention left over or for better questions like, how did I sleep? How is my energy in-- at 3:00 in the afternoon? How did I feel during the workout at this morning?

You know, those questions taught me more than five years-- in those five years than a decade of rule following did. And the third one is something that I never planned. You know, when animal foods became the center of how my family eats, we got very interested in where those animals came from, and that interest turned into raising our own, which has since reshaped our, our days, our weeks, our property, and a good part of how we think about being alive And here is the framework behind all three.

You know, animals at the center of every meal. Everything else is negotiable, and by everything else, I mean real food. I'm not talking about junk food or processed food or, you know, going to McDonald's. But that is really it. You know, those two sentences are the foundation of our diet, and it took me three different diets, stricter diets, and a lot of years to get there, to get there.

But, you know, I didn't start with that framework, obviously, um, and I'm not sure I could have. You know, I did paleo first, or actually my wife and I, and the kids by extension, did paleo first. Then we switched to keto, then carnivore, and we moved on from each one without ever moving backward. So it's not that we stopped paleo and went back to a standard American diet.

No, we went from paleo to keto. We went from keto to carnivore. You know, every single step, every single diet, every single tool, that's what I would consider those different dietary patterns or those dietary frameworks, have raised the baseline for us, and the baseline never dropped. You know, they were kind of like the rungs on a ladder instead of considering them failed attempts So here is what I wanna cover in this episode.

You know, I wanna talk about why animal-based stuck for significantly longer than the stricter versions, how our ancestral story fits into all of that, how our animal-based eating looks like day to day, and who probably shouldn't start eating this way. But before we get into all of that, I have a question for you.

You know, not what diet you're on, but what did you move on from and why? What is the food or w- was it the food or the mental overhead? Did it stop working or did you just get tired of being the person at the table explaining what you can't eat? You know, if you've ever changed your diet, if you've... Let me know why.

What triggered you? What made you say, "I don't wanna do this anymore," or, "I wanna do something else?" You know, tell me in the comments. And if you're listening rather than watching, you know, maybe go ahead and, you know, s- support this episode. Subscribe, give it a rating. Uh, that really, really helps more people discover, uh, my content and hopefully get help, self-help at the end of the day to make better decisions.

Now, let's talk about how we got to animal-based eating before I talk into how all of that shaped the way we live today. Because it's not just a diet. For us, it's not just diet, it's really a way of how we live that got influenced by this whole animal-based framework. But again, let's start with how we got there.

You know, number one, paleo. For us, that was really the exit ramp out of industrial food. You know, we cut seed oils, we cut refined sugars, uh, and anything with ingredient list I couldn't pronounce. And it taught me what's actually in packaged food. You know, I learned how to read labels. You know, how to understand what ingredients do, where they come from, what does processing mean, you know, how do things get processed.

All of those things were thanks to the Paleolithic diet that we embarked on probably 10 years or so ago now. The problem with paleo was, and we discovered this fairly, very quickly, is that we were living in a permanent kind of gray zone, okay? Is rice okay? Is dairy okay? Is this bar paleo? And there was like a whole lot of is this, can we, should we kind of going on.

And we realized also very quickly that, you know, you can make anything paleo without necessarily eating something that's good for you. You can make anything paleo. You could eat sweet potatoes with, uh, honey all day and zero protein and it would be considered paleo friendly. It's obviously not the idea of the paleolithic diet, but you get, you get the point.

There was a whole lot of is it paleo? Can we make this paleo? How can we make this paleo? And it was just a lot of decisions going on, a lot of thinking about food every single day, you know, three times a day. With keto, I've noticed that I suddenly was, you know, less hungry. I was more... I felt more satiated.

You know, my energy levels were more stable. You know, they were not spiking and crashing. And I really liked paleo, uh, keto because it, it allowed me to become more fat adapted, to be completely fine even when in the absence of food. It made fasting easier. There were a lot of things that I learned from keto that I really appreciate And one thing that's important with keto, even though I've said it in the past, I'm not necessarily sure that it allowed me to become more metabolically flexible rather than fat adapted.

I think the metabolic flexibility came from, uh, learning how to adapt to different fuel sources. You know, having carbs for working out and, and, and combining high intensity exercise with, you know, certain dietary patterns. That's really what allowed me to become more metabolically flexible. But with keto, I definitely learned to become fat adapted, and I reduced my body fat in the process.

Carnivore was... You know, it, it was just an eye-opener in the sense of if you really wanna get healthy, if you wanna re-remove every little thing that could potentially bother you, do carnivore and because it removes every, every irritating ingredient. You know, there is... And unless you have alpha-gal, you know, there is nothing in meat, in plain meat that would potentially irritate you or cause you any sort of harm.

So carnivore for me was like the eye-opener in the sense of, wow, this is the perfect elimination diet. If you deal with any sort of health concern, health issue, do carnivore until it's fixed and then, you know, you can, you can move on. The problem with all three frameworks was that they were socially difficult to varying degrees, and in particular with carnivore, you know, there was noth- after three months, you know, there was...

I knew everything there is to know about carnivore. There was nothing really new to learn or experiment because it was meat and salt and water. You know, that was pretty much it. Um, but again, they all helped me to varying degrees to learn more about myself, how I respond to food, and how to make better food decisions Now, another thing that I've learned across those years is that the diet doesn't necessarily become or decide the outcome.

Your adherence to a dietary framework does. So it's not important what you do today, it's what you will do in the next five years that makes or breaks what you're trying to accomplish. And there are plenty of, you know, scientific studies and trials out there that show that, you know, regardless of what diet you put people on, the most meaningful or most important factor in the outcome is whether or not they adhere to the diet.

It doesn't really matter what it is. You know, they've done studies with Atkins and Ornish and Zone Diet and Weight Watchers, you know, completely opposing philosophies. But at the end of the day, those people most successful were the ones that stuck with whatever they picked. Um, and it wasn't as important what they picked.

Um, obviously in the long run it very much is, but you know, if, if you try something and after, you know, a few months you quit, none of what you tried will have any meaningful impact in the long run. And especially if you then go back to your standard way of eating, which means... Or especially if that means, you know, junk food and processed foods and standard American diet.

So strictness, um, is more import- or strictness in the diet and dietary framework, you know, speeds up the quitting. You know, that's... I think shouldn't be as a surprise there. Not a whole lot of people doing strict carnivore for exactly that reason, you know? Doing something that's a little bit more lenient, a little bit more flexible is likely to be more successful, not because the exact framework is better, but because people stick with it for longer, you know?

There is one exception to that point, and that is if you have real coaching, if you're in a tight-knit community, you can be as strict as you want to. You know, I would argue that there are probably very few Buddhist monks that fall off whatever dietary framework they have because everyone does it in their...

You know, everyone they interact with, they do the same thing. You know, there is no, "I'm, uh, the only one." But if you're the only one in your family doing carnivore, I can almost guarantee you, you will not be doing it for very long unless, you know, you're an outlier and you, you thrive in doing something that's contrary to any- everybody else.

You know, I'm leaning that way. I can hold certain things for significantly longer, um, than most other people, but even so, I recognize, you know, my, my limitations. You know, I would not be doing something that is so strict without sh- giving me sufficient benefits at the end of the day, you know? So yes, I, I...

And we get to this in a little bit, but I would consider carnivore probably more optimal than the diet that I am on right now. But at the same time, I feel no ill effects of what I'm doing right now, and it's very easy to maintain. So for me, that's the better framework, you know? Um- I also wanna talk a little bit about, you know, why we ended up with animals at the base.

You know, at the end of the day, one component certainly is that if I look back at what humans have been doing for a long time, you know, we, we can conclude that humans are and always have been meat-leaning, opportunistic omnivores. You know? They thrive on meat, but in the absence of meat, because maybe the hunt wasn't successful or whatever reason, maybe it was, you know, we would eat whatever we had to, to survive And over the years we've also acquired certain cultural norms where we would, you know, thrive mentally, socially, emotionally by sharing different types of foods in our community, you know, or in the family.

And so we are meat-leaning opportunistic omnivores, and that is very much... Or you can implement that very easily with an animal-based framework. Fortunately, now I don't need to go out to hunt. I can go- just go to the backyard and shoot a cow if need be, or go to the store or to the neighbor's farm and purchase meat.

But we've always access to meat, so, you know, there's no reason for us to say, "Okay, we're not gonna have meat this week because it's, it's not there." You know? It is always there. We don't have to be as opportunistic as maybe our ancestors had to be. We have to interrupt this episode for an important message from your feet.

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And now back to the episode. Which brings us, you know, to the plant-based component of an animal-based diet.

You know, animal-based doesn't mean carnivore. It just means that the foundation of every meal, or most meals at least, doesn't even have to be every single meal, but the foundation of most meals is animal-based protein and animal-based fat, and everything around is kind of what we like, what we like to try, what we like to eat, what our body responds well to.

You know, I, I don't think that all plants are bad for us. I mean, I do think that all plants have problems, but I also think that humans have the capacity to deal with those, uh, plant toxins, et cetera, to varying degrees, especially if we have learned to prepare those plants and to mitigate some of those toxins accordingly, you know?

And again, at the end of the day, it... what really matters for me is how my body responds. You know, I seem to be doing well consuming peppers, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes from our garden. Even though they are in the nightshade family, they are in one of those plant categories that are arguably more toxic than others.

You know, uh, avocado is likely always better than a jalapeno pepper, but I seem to be doing well with it. Whereas other things, you know, maybe- I don't know, may- maybe figs or maybe, uh, dates, you know, that are arguably better just on the, uh, face value because they are sweet fruits, they want to be eaten, etc.,

from a, you know, plant philosophy perspective. I don't do as well as eating jalapeno peppers. So I... Since I have now a lot of time considering and listening to my body and considering what my body's trying to tell me, I pick what works well for me, regardless of whether or not that's allowed or if that's paleo-friendly or keto-friendly or this friendly or that friendly or animal-based friendly, you know?

If it works for me, I do it. If it doesn't, I don't, instead of, you know, thinking about what is allowed and what isn't. And another reason for animal-based is, you know, I mean, I've said it so many times before, and I don't wanna repeat everything I've said before, but amino acids, nutrients, they are just significantly more bioavailable and absorbable in animal sources than in plants.

You know, be it iron, be it things that aren't even in plants like retinol, um, like B12. There are so many things that plants don't have or have in forms that humans have trouble converting and using for, you know, as a source of micronutrients or even macronutrients like protein, amino acids, etc., that plants are just the better option and the better foundation as far as I'm concerned.

So what does it mean for me from a-- or for us as a family, really? You know, meat, organs, eggs, fish, dairy, if that works for you, and it does f- for us to varying degrees. There is a nuance to dairy. Um, that's the foundation, you know. And past that, everything is really a preference rather than a permission.

You know? The edges are whatever is in season and whatever is real food and whatever works for our respective bodies. Now, something that I can-- that do well on, maybe our son doesn't, and so sh- he doesn't have it or vice versa, you know. So it's, it's really also about, you know, personal choice and letting everyone pick what they're, what they like as long as it's good for them, you know?

And so that's how we eat, and that's what has allowed us to remove a lot of the, "Oh, can we?" or "Should we?" Everything that we grow, everything that we raise in our homestead, everything that we buy from neighboring farms, and everything... most everything that we buy in the store falls within that general framework And so we don't have to keep making decisions.

Now, if you say, "Now, okay, you know, I'm, I'm really in bad shape. I have diabetes. I'm, you know, whatever. You know, should I do animal-based instead of something else?" I would argue that there are use cases for keto, maybe even paleo, but to a lesser degree, but specifically for keto and carnivore, where those are the better tools.

If you have epilepsy, um, keto has been scientifically studied to be an excellent tool to help with that type of disease. If you have blood sugar issues, if you have, you know, chronic inflammation, you know, all of those things, doing something that removes most potential triggers from the plant-based world, that removes carbohydrates potentially, so your body needs to leverage ketones for fuel or fatty acids for fuel.

You know, all of those things are excellent tools. Carnivore, again, is by far the best diagnostic and healing tool if you have any sort of chronic or metabolic condition. You know, I would... Again, if someone says, "Hey, I have type 2 diabetes. Should I do, you know, animal-based and still eat, eat, you know, seasonal fruits and all of those things?"

I would say, "No. If you need to get your blood sugar under control, cut out all carbs and, you know, learn how to be fat adapted. Fix your insulin resistance. Give your pancreas a break. Teach your cells again to be more sensitive to the signal that insulin is sending, and then you can reintroduce carbohydrates.

You know, not before." If you have any sort of gut issue, do carnivore. You know, cutting out everything that could potentially irritate you, um, is the easiest and quickest way of fixing anything GI related And so that's my take on it. There are use cases for those tools, and a lot of people might benefit from doing them before, but realize that this is a, a period, a framework, a tool that you use for a, a period of time.

W- you know, whether or not that's 30 day- or whether that's 30 days or 60 or 90 or half a year or a year, really depends on how you respond, your, you know, how your... what, what you're dealing with, how your health is, etc. But then you can roll off that. Most people, I would argue, can and approach a more flexible, a more lenient, and a more doable type of eating.

And for me, that is animal-based. And the one thing that I did not expect at all as part of making that switch to animal-based eating is that, you know, when, when you put animal- when you eat animals a lot, or at least for us that was the case, seeing animals on our plate every single day made us begin caring even more than we did before about where those animals came from and how they were raised.

And we realized that there is so much marketing BS and, and, and lack of transparency going on that we, we had, we felt like we needed to take control of that part of our food supply chain. And so we began homesteading. We started raising animals. First chickens, and then, well, first honeybees and then chickens, and then we added, uh, rabbits and turkeys and guineas.

And, uh, last year we, we started, we added pigs, and this year we st- we added cattle. Now we have beef cattle, we have, you know, the pigs- We raise pretty much 90% of the pork and the poultry we eat, we raise on our own homestead. Beef is not quite ready yet. You know, raising beef and finishing it on pasture takes about three years.

So we just started today. We are still, you know, ways to go. So we buy beef from a neighboring farm that does exactly what we do and how we do it. They're just a little bit ahead of us. We also buy the raw dairy from the same, uh, from the same farm where we know exactly how they do things and it, it just all made sense and now our entire...

I don't wanna say our identity, but our lifestyle certainly evolves around raising animals. A- and plants as well to a degree. We have a garden. You know, we've been very successful with wa- watermelons and, and, and cucumbers and jalapeno peppers and a lot of other things. But it's really... It, it got us into taking not full control yet even though I see a future where at least the, the protein and fat aspect is 100% covered by what we raise on our property.

But we've really gotten into, into homesteading and raising our own food and it's been a beautiful journey. We absolutely love it and I, you know, I can't see myself going away from, from having full control over our diet, our food supply chain. It's, it's, it's great going out there and seeing exactly how that pig was doing and how that pig is doing and how happy the pig is and then how, how healthy, etc.

And then, you know, a couple of months or years later, you know, you, you get to enjoy that meat and you know exactly where it comes from or it came from and it just makes you appreciate the food that you're eating so much more and, and food waste is basically a no-go, you know? There is not a whole lot of waste anymore.

You know, stuff that can be fed to animals will get fed back, you know. Um, and there, there is just very little food waste. You know, maybe some goes to the compost, you know, and then feeds the soil again which feeds the, the plants and feeds the animals. So it's all a closed loop to a, to a degree and it's, it's, it's just...

I, I love it. I absolutely love it. So what I'm telling you what you can do tomorrow or m- maybe better yet today, you know, just make one decision once. You know? Make animals the center of every meal and then stop reopening that can of worms. Just stick with it. You know, you don't need to make the decision again should you add, you know, animal protein or not.

You add animal protein and fat to the center of each meal and then everything else just go by how you feel, you know? Buy seasonal, buy local and go by how you feel. Eat what you like and what you do well with And maybe at some point you'll start a garden, maybe you start raising animals if that's your cup of tea.

It is a lot of work. I'm not gonna, you know, dress that up. Uh, it is a full-time job besides the full-time job that I have, but it's totally worth it. But you don't have to go that far. You know, find a farm nearby. You know, we found one just across the state line in Alabama, and technically we could buy everything that we eat from them.

Now, we choose to do it ourselves because we wanna be part of that. We wanna produce content around it. We wanna encourage other people doing the same thing and show them how to do it and, you know, some of the lessons learned. But y- you don't have to go that far if you don't want to. But just make animal-based animals the center of every single meal and stop Questioning every single ingredient.

You know, buy local, buy seasonal, animal-based. It's super simple. If you're suffering with something, if you wanna heal something, if you're dealing with something, maybe goes with a stricter version. Do that for a while, and then open up and relax a little bit, you know? So that's five years, you know, and that's where we have landed, on an animal-based framework that didn't give me a better food list.

Yes, I do have an animal-based food list on the blog that you can download. I'm gonna link it down below. I, I created this so h- people have an idea of it, of what it could mean, but it could really mean anything, you know? It, it's... The most important aspect here is that you have a base. And if you have a base, and you then have something on a day that maybe you know you shouldn't have, it's not gonna ruin your day because the base hasn't shifted.

You know, if you're strictly on keto and then you drink a sugary beverage, be... could, could be organic apple juice, you've just ruined your day. You're out of ketosis, and the whole day, you know, is, has gone down the drain. If I do that, my base hasn't shifted. Nothing has happened. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm not-- I, I don't get disappointed.

I don't get... You know, I'm still walking in the same direction. And that's really one of the things that I've learned and that I would encourage you to, to consider. Um, don't, don't follow strict rules. Have a strict framework that you can easily do without having to make a decision every single day. And I'm not, you know, trying to convince you that animal-based is the optimal human diet because I, I don't know that to be true.

What I know is that it's very easy to follow, comparatively speaking, you know? And looking back at human history, look at back of what science has shown us, adherence beats strictness or beats a better version of that diet. If you can adhere to a less than perfect diet, you're gonna be better off than not adhering to a perfect diet.

That's really ultimately what it boils down to, and that's what I've learned. And so, you know, that, that, all of that argues for a framework, you know? It, it doesn't argue for a rule book, you know? Not, not mine either, you know? You don't have to eat exactly how I eat, you know? I'm, I'm not telling you that's the perfect way to eat.

You can, you can, you can do better. Maybe I could do better. But I can tell you one thing. I've been able to follow an animal-based diet, our whole family has, for five years. That's significantly longer than anything else we've done. And I don't feel the need, haven't felt the need at all to change my framework.

Yeah, we experiment with different foods, you know, maybe sourdough we've, we've not done in the past. You know, different types of plants that I would have not considered in the past, but it's, you know, free to experiment, see how I feel. If I don't feel good, I'm stop doing it. If I feel good with it, I keep it.

Doesn't really matter if it's compliant or not. My framework, however, is not changing, and those are the animals. So I hope you found it useful. If you did, maybe share it with someone who could use it. Until next time.