Carnivore For Beginners: How To Start A Carnivore Diet with Tips, Tricks, and Common Pitfalls

hey guys dr chaffee here just want to do a quick little video on how to start carnivore this is just some of the tips and tricks that i talk to people about like my patients or friends or people trying to start carnivore basically it's quite simple it's just you're eating meat and drinking water and that's it okay you can salt to taste eat fatty meat fats very important you can eat organs if you want but you don't have to okay and you don't want to get too many organs because you can actually get hypervitaminosis you know people talk about how nutrient dense they are and that's true but that can also be a problem because they're much more nutrient dense than muscle meat which has everything you need so by definition it's going to have a little too much and so if you're eating this stuff out of proportion of the animal remember how many how many hundreds of pounds of muscle uh and fat a cow is going to have to every one pound of liver okay it's not it's not going to be a lot of liver every day okay so a bit of liver a bit of organs totally fine don't overdo it and you don't have to have any if you don't want it then you just didn't eat them i don't eat them and i've been doing this for years okay the most important thing is really about what not to eat okay as opposed to what to eat we know what we need to eat meat drink water okay get the fat but it's important what not to eat okay so my hard rule is no plants no sugar nothing artificial and that goes for sauces seasonings and drinks as well okay so it's not just you know animal meat and animal products right oh honey that's an animal product right well it's actually you know b vomit and they're just vomiting up concentrated nectar okay which comes from a plant so if you want to get technical it goes back and uh you know it's not it's not exactly an animal but it's also sugar okay so there's more fructose in honey than high fructose corn syrup okay and so so this is bad and people may argue that in the form of honey fructose is actually good for you but they have absolutely no evidence to whatsoever to back that up with so all of the best evidence that we have is that fructose causes harm and so i would avoid that at all costs okay so some of the pitfalls that that people cut through okay a lot of people come to carnivore because they you'll have weight loss they want to lose some weight or they want to address medical issues or maybe they just want to optimize their health but they're used to having to eat in a disordered fashion with western diets or vegetarian or vegan diets where you have to worry about portion control and calorie count fasting intermittent fasting all these things you don't need to do this okay you just eat fatty meat when you're hungry and eat until you're satiated so you eat until it stops tasting good if meat doesn't taste good it means you're not hungry but if it does taste good you are so you should listen to that if meat tastes good eat it eat it until it doesn't really taste good anymore then just stop okay let your body be the judge of what you need if you're not eating carbohydrates you can actually listen to your hunger signals it's the carbohydrates that that rearrange your your hormonal signaling panels to to make you think you're hungry when you're not okay so if you're not eating carbohydrates you're not going to be feeling hungry when you're not actually hungry okay so you actually have to relearn your hunger signals so that's something to watch out for as well because some people can under eat okay when i was first doing this i definitely under ate because i didn't realize that fact that was 20 years ago or so but i wasn't eating enough because i never felt hungry traditionally but then i relearned my hunger signals and realized what hunger actually felt like okay fasting you don't need to fast you don't need to intermittent fast these things can be helpful especially when eating a western diet but all the studies you know show a benefit as compared to a western diet but not really a benefit when compared to what they call a fasting mimicking diet which is a ketogenic diet so a lot of the you know the majority of the benefits are coming from just getting into the right metabolic state which is our so-called fasting state what we call biochemistry but i argue is our primary metabolic state this is the metabolic state where all of our heavy machinery comes to bear this is the metabolic state of animals in the wild including humans because humans are eating meat okay exercise people think well if i'm eating all this fatty meat that's going to make me gain a lot of fat unless i exercise a lot that's actually not true you don't have to i don't but you know okay i i don't i look like i work out but i actually don't have time to work out that much because i'm just swamped at the hospital with everything i'm doing um i love to work out i absolutely get a lot out of it and i really enjoy it i'm actually going to the gym after this but you don't have to do that to achieve optimal health the food is the optimal health you're putting in the optimal fuel and that will optimize your workouts as well and you'll get a lot more out of them when you do workout and you'll get a lot of benefit uh from it working out okay um you know people think about you only have you have to eat certain meats only you can't eat fish or what about chicken all these sorts of things any meat that you enjoy is fine any meat you know that that you know taste good that makes you feel good and that you can afford is fine some people have different sensitivities especially other people with autoimmune issues sometimes they have to uh you know actually stay more towards like the grass-fed beef side of things you know even chicken and pork or egg whites can actually cause problem when they're when they're still healing because they're still very sensitive to these things but if you're not one of those people you have eggs have chicken have have whatever you want okay um really uh all this comes down to is you know you know don't make it complicated eat meat drink water be happy get on with your life okay you just eat until you're full and then and enjoy the rest of your day this is gonna save you huge amounts of time uh so don't overthink it you know you don't have to track every little calorie you don't have to track every little macro just eat what tastes good stop when it stops tasting good and your body will do the rest your body knows what it's doing you know if you need a calculator to figure out what to eat you're eating the wrong thing okay because nature is natural it just happens it just happens all on its own and so if you are living naturally you'll be able to respond to your natural instincts okay so also you know don't be scared off by the naysayers you know you came to this for a reason you started doing this and you feel good people are going to come at you and talk about you know well what about this and what about that well what about cholesterol it's going to cause heart disease what about red meat it causes cancer okay well what about it you know arm yourself with the facts know what you're talking about you know watch my videos watch uh dr baker's videos uh you know dr um barry's videos watch all these and tons of others you know professor knox so many people so many people out there that you can learn from and then you can just dive into the literature we all cite our sources we all talk about different meta-analyses and different studies that that show what we're talking about is uh is for real okay and that's why we're coming to these conclusions because the evidence really does show this okay and i put a lot of links in my in my videos when i'm talking about specific issues like cholesterol and i'll probably put some some links down in the description here just so you can arm yourself with a few key studies and uh and go from there okay so also you know people you know get tripped up by uh thinking that i have to be perfect you know like i like i like living off to me i like not having any of this stuff in my system you know and uh and and that's how i feel the best and i like feeling my best so that's what i do um if you know you were to slip up or maybe you you were doing this really well for a while and then you you know you had uh you know some rice or something else uh it's okay you can start again the next day it's all right you know it's actually okay because you're you're going to be seeing the contrast now on how good you feel versus how bad you feel when you're eating these things that you don't want and that's going to reinforce this you're going to be like wow i actually do feel so much better and when i eat just a bit of rice i actually feel like crap for four days so i really don't want that so some people i talk to say that you know they're doing great they're feeling amazing they've never been strong never felt stronger never played rugby better like they're just great great great great great and then they go to their parents house like well you know but i had some rice so i guess you know i i guess that's it it's like well no i mean you know you can still hang out it's okay you know you're not you know i'm not mad at you you're like you just start again you know just start again and they kind of look at me like i didn't even think about that yeah just go again you know like you know we all trip up you know you don't have to be perfect right out of the gate so you know if something's not exactly perfect you know to you know my standards like it's fine you just just keep going keep working on it okay it's not a problem um you know a major one that people uh end up having problems with is alcohol obviously you know alcohol is an enjoyable experience in the social experience it's hard for people sometimes to go out into these you know alcohol-fueled adventures and social experiences and not drink alcohol i'm more used to it because i never drank during the rugby season for many many many years i did you know before i was 21 and then after i turned 21 i was on antibiotics for a month and i really couldn't drink and and so i had to go out you know sober and i was just like oh this is this is weird this is uh strange and then the next time it was well it was still weird and strange but it wasn't as bad and the third time was sort of neutral i didn't care one way or the other and the fourth weekend like i actually preferred it i preferred being sober i prefer talking to people sober i thought it was funny and people were drunk i was able to drive home i wasn't spending all this money at the bar and i felt great the next day i started performing better in rugby i started performing better at life and i just thought wow i'm absolutely feeling amazing and i'm playing out of my skin even though i was sick and i had pneumonia i'm going to try this for the rest of season i'm just going to not drink for the rest of the season i had the best season of my life you know so i'm like right i'm just not going to drink out during the season after this so i'm used to that but it you can get used to it but if you do drink alcohol again you slip up you just hop right back on it's not that big a deal and if you want to drink every now and then and you really don't want to stop that okay that doesn't mean you have to eat you know pizza rice cakes and cookies as well okay so even if you're just eating you know you know eating meat and drinking water and then occasionally you're having some drinks that's still so much better than the other people who are drinking probably more than you are and eating all that other crap all right and then you know as you're going and you're feeling better and better and then you drink you're like wow actually that makes me that pulls me back for actually a lot longer than you think you actually i don't i don't get back to being able to work out to the same level i mean i feel fine but i'm not able to work out to the same extent that i normally do uh after i drink for up to three weeks okay so that that's just not worth it to me and i feel fine i can do all my daily activities fine but when i'm working out to a high level i definitely don't have the same exercise tolerance uh or or or energy level or strength that i do for like seriously full full three weeks okay so those are some of the main things okay so just remember look this is the easiest diet in the world it's the easiest way of eating in the world keep it that way okay you know exactly what you can and can't eat right meat water salt that's it okay no plants no sugar nothing artificial that goes for sauces seasonings and drinks as well okay so you know what you can eat you know what you can't eat there's no there's no confusion here you think oh well is this kind of you have hard set rules you know exactly where you're at okay and if you choose to make exceptions that's that's your choice but you do know what uh you do know what we're trying for here okay you eat as much as you enjoy okay not as much as you want i want to finish this thing well if your body's telling you to stop and it's not tasting good anymore it's becoming a chore to eat that's when you know you should stop your body's telling you that you should stop okay so eat as much as you enjoy eating okay and then eat any time of the day or night it doesn't matter okay now i feel better working out and and working and doing doing things on an empty stomach i've always played hungry i've always you know trained hungry i just feel better that way i don't have food in my stomach trying to digest and a lot of blood diverted there so that i can you know break this food down you go into a rest and digest mode you just feel a bit more chilled out and you know maybe lethargic so for me i feel a lot better eating towards the end of the day and i end up just naturally just going to sleep some people don't some people like to eat earlier that's fine it doesn't matter the only time it really matters is when you're eating carbohydrates when you eat carbohydrates late at night that raises your insulin up and then that blocks growth hormone growth hormone uh gets kicked out often you know at as height about two hours after you go to sleep okay it's just part of your natural natural rhythms okay so when your insulin is up that's going to block your growth hormone that's going to actually screw up your body that's going to screw up your health because growth hormone is very important it's a very important hormone okay so that's when it matters is when you're eating carbohydrates then you don't want to eat right before bed when you're eating carnivore eat whenever you like eat whatever whatever fits your schedule and makes you feel the best okay and then fat how much fat is enough well i like to go by taste first and foremost if it tastes good you know listen to that also i like to go buy your stools it's a very easy way to see if you're getting enough fat or not your body absorbs fat using bile okay it's very hard for your body to absorb fat if you don't have bile okay bile emulsifies the fat and allows your body to absorb it all right your body can absorb some fat yeah and usually like you know mid-chain fatty acids uh uh without bile but but a very small degree you know there's this is this is just in you know physiology textbooks you know that this is just this is how this process works so most of the fat that you eat uh after you run out of bile will actually just go out in your in your waist okay so you're not going to really run into problems eating too much fat because you're not going to absorb it you're only going to absorb a small percentage of the too much fat okay unless you're doing something silly like taking ox bile or something like that because that's going to force you to absorb more than your body is actually asking for so unless you have a problem which requires oxbow like you don't have a gallbladder anymore and you want to eat a big meal at one time okay well maybe i would i could see making exception but really what you should do if you don't have a gallbladder is just eat multiple times during the day to space out those fatty meals and some people make a pseudo gallbladder and actually works as a normal gallbladder so they can just eat normally okay so if you're not taking ox bile or something like that you can just you know you you won't absorb more than your body has pile for which i think means that's more than your body wants okay a little bit but not much the rest of that goes out okay so it's that little bit extra that gets in your stools and it makes them soft okay so if you if you have hard dry stools and are constipated then that means that you're absorbing every ounce of fat that you're eating and it's very very dry and hard okay when you are constipated that's when it's dry and hard you're going to absorb 98 to 99 of the meat that you eat anyway so you're just going to be going far less often don't worry that you're not you're not going more than you know once every couple days or once a week it doesn't matter you you go when there's waste to get out okay if you're eating a whole bunch of non-digestible fiber and you know same as if you're eating you know chunks of plastic you can't digest it you can't absorb it so it has to go out so you're just having this stuff to come out all the time we're just used to this stuff coming out all the time we think that that's normal it's not normal okay that's your body just trying to get this stuff out of you because it's not good for you okay so if it's dry and hard that means you need to increase the fat if it's soft in a normal consistency well that means you're getting just the right amount of fat you're getting all the fat that your body wants from the bile and a little bit extra so you know you've just topped yourself off with the fat right and then the rest of this goes into the into the stools and that keeps it soft if you eat a lot more then that's going to be um that's going to come out you know quicker right so you're going to get loose stools and that's one of the common causes of loose stools in carnivore is is way too much way more fat than your body can absorb right uh it can also be because people still drink coffee or still use artificial sweeteners especially the you know anything in the in ose so it owes a sucralose um you know and all the different uh you know alcohol sugars these things cause diarrhea plain and simple and so you know a lot of people they'll get diarrhea when they first start carnival like oh my god i had this horrible horrible and it's just like yeah well you know are you still drinking coffee are you using artificial sweeteners quite often the answer is yes and coffee will absolutely move things along all right if you are not doing that if you're only eating fat likelihood is you're eating or you're only eating meat and and drinking water the likelihood is is that you're eating more fat than your body can absorb just pull it back just pull back the fat and uh and you'll be fine okay uh so i hope that was helpful just as a little sort of crash course on how to get started that's a question that i do get asked uh quite often so hopefully people uh you know can can find some use out of that and any other sort of specific questions that i didn't didn't cover here maybe just you know asking the question in the comments and i can try to make another video also be doing a video on fiber and constipation and a few other things coming up soon as well okay all right guys if you like that and you think that might be helpful to someone else you know please share this with them so that they can get some tips and tricks and um and and hopefully uh have a successful uh journey with carnivore okay and uh if you like and subscribe uh that would really help me out and it helps get the message out as well alright thanks a lot guys talk to you later