Disordered Eating How To Break The Cycle With A Carnivore Diet! | Sofia Eats Steak

I had been kind of warming up to the idea of maybe maybe trying carnivore or at least like ketovore or low carb or something like I like I mentioned earlier I was in middle of June I was at the end of my rope about to be hospitalized again and that's when one night my mom came up to me and she showed me this new Dr Barry live stream that had just aired it was people with anorexia long-term cases of anorexia they had been to treatment multiple times they relapsed multiple times they'd been struggling for years and they had adopted a ketogenic diet and meat-based ketogenic diet and it had helped put their year-long cases of anorexia into remission and so that intrigued me all right hello everyone thanks for joining another episode of plant for MD I'm your host Dr Anthony chaffy and today I have a very special guest young lady that goes by the name name Sophia eats Stakes Sophia thank you so much for coming on H thank you so much for having me Dr JP I'm super excited to be here yeah well you're very welcome and uh and thank you for for taking the time to come out so for people who haven't come across you can you tell us a bit about you and what got you here today yeah so uh I'm my name is sopia I am 16 years old and I have been carnivore for about four months now and I the reason I went carnivore is because I have been dealing with anorexia nervosa and eating disorder for the past uh about two years now uh I was diagnosed actually about almost exactly two years ago so uh my eating disorder kind of started back in the pandemic I'd say uh that was a really rough time for me and and so the way I was coping with it is I was so I've always loved to like bake and do things in the kitchen so the way I was coping with it is I would bake things like every single day and then I would eat like multiple servings of it and so obviously that combined with not really doing much just staying in the house all day I gained quite a bit of weight during the quarantine and because of that my body image became like really bad and uh by the time we like got like the lockdown was lifted and we were able to start going back to normal life I was focusing on losing weight and uh bettering my nutrition and I've always been the kind of person who like if I have a goal in my mind and if I want to get something done then I'm going to work hard and make sure that it gets done but sometimes I have a problem where I turn the dial up to 11 I push things a little too far so uh I I started over exercising I started cutting my food and it didn't it didn't start out uh like super bad I'd say I mean it it it kind of It kind of snowballed if you get what I mean um so it it kind of started out small like cutting out small things and then calories became something that I was obsessed with so I don't know I just I became really focused on getting my calorie count like as low as I possibly could if I could get through the day on like say a th000 calories then the next day I wouldn't let myself eat a th000 calories if I could get through the day on 800 then I would just make sure I can't I can't eat 800 calories anymore I could get through on 600 yeah so I just I kept cutting and cutting and exercising more and more and it just became more obsessive and these symptoms that I had that I've always kind of experienced like anxiety and like compulsive behaviors those got a lot worse as the eating disorder got a lot worse and so I was becoming super obsessive about small little things and my quality of life was just plummeting and so in December of 2021 I was hospitalized for the first time due to Mal malnutrition and uh that was that was a rough experience uh because especially since I had to spend Christmas in the hospital away from my family and that was hard and then uh a couple months after that I was uh sent into a standard eating disorder treatment center and uh I honestly think that was a traumatic experience for me uh if you didn't know when you are being when you are being treated for malnutrition in like the standard medical medical field they they refeed you on like a lot of carbs uh basically the standard American diet so at the at the eating disorder treatment center and at the hospital they were not giving me what I'd consider the best food I mean by their standards it was healthy because they were giving it to me but uh so it was a lot of like pastas a lot of uh sorry breads uh things with added sweeteners uh just lots of sugary crap and like you know standard American diet things and so it was yeah I I did not enjoy eating those Foods well I mean cuz I mean having having an eating disorder you don't feel you don't want to eat and so they're giving you these Foods and you don't feel good about what you're eating and they're okay I'm sorry I'm I'm uh I'm getting a little off track here so uh the reason they give you all these Foods they give you a very high carb diet is because they try to make you gain weight as fast as possible because the way the whole system works is that they at least at least the way the eating disorder treatment center I went to is I think they're really just concerned with getting your physical markers up I think your physical health markers up so as long as your weight is going up then that's what they want to see that's what the insurance wants to see so that they'll keep paying for the treatment so they give you these carbs and they give you these highly processed foods that make you gain weight quickly and it's just it's not a positive experience I'd say there's a lot of people who I met in these eating disorders treatment centers who had been there multiple times and so it was clear that the treatment that they were receiving wasn't really working but they just kept getting sent back there over and over again um but as soon as I got out of that eating disorder treatment center I had gained like 30 PBS within like two and a half months just because of all the stuff that they were feeding me and I didn't feel any better in my mind like they had healed my body physically but nothing had healed in my mind and I was still I still had an eating disorder so literally the day after I got out of I was discharged from the eating disorder treatment center I started restricting again and within about uh two months I was pretty much down to the weight that I was before I'd been hospitalized before and so I yeah uh so that June June of 2021 was it June oh my gosh no I'm sorry let's see so it wasn't 2021 it was 2022 okay so July of 2022 I was hospitalized again because I had dropped even further below the weight that I was when I was first hospitalized and so I was hospitalized again and I was about to be sent back to the eating disorder treatment center and I wasn't going to let that happen and so I I kind of worked out a deal with my mom and with my therapist and with my doctor and I said okay I'll follow this meal plan that the the hospital's given me and that worked for a few months and so my weight was stable but I wasn't really gaining much weight and uh at a certain point I started restricting again it's it's just a vicious cycle the eating disorder um you you get better for a little bit but then it's really easy to fall back into it and so around I think January of the start of this year I started restricting a lot more again and I started losing weight again it was not quite as dramatic of a weight like not not quite so dramatic weight loss but the weight loss was still happening just because I wasn't getting enough and I was starting to overe exercise again and just becoming more and more obsessive and so by the end of the school year and when summer started I was at the lowest body weight that I have like been in My Teenage life like before I was a little kid and uh I think uh middle of June was when I was at my lowest weight that was right before I decided to start the carnivore diet and my BMI was at about 14 which isn't as low as some people with anorexia get but like seriously some cases of anorexia are just so severe um but it was still it's still very significantly low weight and so I was on the literally on the brink of being hospitalized again my doctor he was becoming extremely extremely concerned about me and he was saying if if things don't change soon then I'm I don't have a choice I'm going to have to send you back to the hospital and if I was sent back to the hospital then I would most likely be sent back to the eating disorder treatment center and like I said that that was a traumatic experience for me the first time and so I I I would oh my goodness I would I would not let that happen and so I was kind of at the end of my rope at that point I was feeling super super hopeless and as it turns out my mom she had gone carnivore about uh I think three months before that so she went carnivore in March of this year uh just be just the beginning of March right and she had originally heard about the carnivore diet from her friend at the gym she's a CrossFit coach and she had learned about it from her friend who had initially recommended the diet to her as something to help me because uh she had well my my friend is sorry my mom's friend is carnivore herself but there is a carnivore uh dietitian her name is Michelle Hearn and she's a huge like low carb Advocate and she had anorexia herself and she became a dietician because she had recovered from her anorexia and she wanted to learn more about helping others with their anorexia and she was was super confused by like all all the things that the the dietetics board were teaching and like we're giving people with diabetes carbs is like the majority of their diet that didn't make sense to her and so she she became an advocate for low carb diet and she used carnivore and she's recommended carnivore to other people with anorexia to heal their eating disorders and so my my mom's friend recommended the diet to her and she told her about it said cuz she knew that I had an eating disorder she knew it was something that I was struggling with and so my mom looked into it and she uh she heard about like Michaela Peterson and Jordan Peterson and how Michaela Peterson used it to heal her autoimmune condition and how Jordan Peterson is doing like super well on it and so she told me about it uh in Pro I think actually she told me about about it the second time I was hospitalized and the first time I had heard about carnivore I was like there is no way I would ever do that like as somebody with anorexia you are like at least for me in my case I was terrified of fat I was terrified of calories I was terrified of beef because that is basically what what beef is it is a calorie dense food that has a lot of fat it's very nutritionally dense um so I was I pretty much refused to eat any beef um so the first time I heard about it I was I was pretty skeptical and I I kind of decided I'm never ever gonna do that and uh so after that from that point my mom started looking into the carnivore diet a little bit more and so she came across Dr Barry's videos and she came across your videos and uh she heard stories from people like Kelly Hogan and and sea white the intentional carnivore and so she had been having a pretty stressful past few years just well especially with me having an eating disorder but also just a few other things that are going on in our family and she had gained quite a bit of weight and she told me she tells me that no matter what I was trying nothing was doing nothing was helping to like help me lose weight and she she was kind of at the end of her rope too so she decided to try carnivore and to her surprise it helped her lose weight and so far she's lost quite a significant amount of weight and she's looking great she's looking so much healthier and I'm I'm just really happy for her um but anyway I sorry excuse me um so I had been so since my mom was looking into all these carnivore diet uh doctors online and listening to their their videos and their podcasts and their discussions with other carnivores and other doctors I I'd been kind of hearing this stuff as well because she would listen to it around me and uh the stuff that I was hearing was pretty interesting like hearing the kind of the research and the the testimonials from people about it and I mean as somebody with an eating disorder I didn't really need to lose weight but and that's that's what you hear a lot of the time is people they go on Carnivore to lose weight but just hearing all the amazing things that were happening to people who had tried it it was it was starting to get the gears like turning in my head and so I had been kind of warming up to the idea of maybe maybe trying carnivore or at least like ketovore low carb or something um so yeah like I like I mentioned earlier I was in middle of June I was at the end of my rope about to be hospitalized again and that's when one night my mom came up to me and she showed me this new Dr Barry live stream that had just aired and it was one where Dr Barry was talking to uh a couple of people who had worked on a case study about people who had well people with anorexia long-term cases of anorexia they had been to treatment multiple times they' relapsed multiple times they'd been struggling for years and they had adopted a ketogenic diet and meat-based ketogenic diet and it had helped put their year-long cases of anorexia into remission and so that intrigued me so I decided to listen to this podcast that night and the stuff that I heard was it was it was pretty impactful for me I would I had been feeling pretty hopeless if I'm being honest um people with anorexia people with eating disorders often struggle with them for their whole lifetime and so I was worried that the eating disorder was something that I was going to have to deal with for my entire life and the eating disorder just it it's so awful it makes your life miserable and so it was something that I was not looking forward to if I would have to deal with it for my entire life and so when I after I listened to that video and I looked into the case study CU they had linked it in the description I read through the whole case study and and I just I felt so much hope for the first time in a really long time and that was really significant to me just because I hadn't felt any hope for a long time I was worried that I was just going to be stuck in my ways forever and I was just going to be stuck in this eating disorder mindset and so that night I had pretty much decided okay I'm at least gonna try this out because there's nothing it it's not going to hurt me I mean what is what is there to do at this point there's either go to the hospital or start eating more and start gaining weight and so I decided I'm at least going to try this out it's these people they've said that they that the ketogenic diet has helped with their mental the mental side of things as well as the physical side of things and so pretty much that night while I was laying in bed I was like yeah I'm ready to do this I'm ready to go at least keto and so I told my mom the next morning and luckily enough I had a doctor's appointment like that week cuz my doctor wanted to check in on me make sure he didn't have to send me to the hospital and so I let him know what I was doing and he was a little skeptical I mean like you want to do a a meat-based fat heavy diet okay um but I mean at that point I don't think I think he was just relieved that I had decided to start eating more um and so I I that first day when I started carnivore I had bacon not sorry I had eggs and ham cooked in butter and it was it was amazing it was like I don't know it was like something was lighting up in my brain and things just improved from there within like within literally a day of going carnivore my skin was feeling so much softer I have had eczema my entire life it's always been something that I've dealt with I've always had like dry patches at least somewhere on my body but for the first time in like my entire life within a couple of days of going carnivore my Eczema was like completely gone and my skin was feeling so much softer and I was like okay think something's going on here I think I think this this this these people who are advocating for their for this carnivore diet they might be on to something and so yeah so I at first I was counting calories uh just to make sure that I was eating enough just to make sure that I wasn't trying to restrict or anything but at a certain point the counting calories kind of was messing with my head too much because calories have always been something that I've kind of it's always been something that like I've kind of obsessed over and so I stopped counting calories a few weeks in and just started trying to focus on intuitive eating listening to my body signals and eating when I'm hungry stopping when I'm full uh that was a little hard at first I think just because I feel like my body was so ravenous so so in dire need of the nutrition just because I'd been depriving it for so long so when I first started carnivore I was eating a ton of meat like I would have a huge breakfast I'd have a pretty midsize lunch but then at dinner I would sit down and I could eat like a two pound like ribey and yeah I could down the whole thing and so I was eating a lot of food because I had a lot of I had a lot of weight to gain I had a lot of healing to do for my body and it was clear that that was what my body wanted um so yeah things have been going pretty well since then I've been able to main sorry I've been able to maintain a good amount of weight gain and I've gained a good amount of weight I think uh gained so my body composition I've gained muscle mass as well as healthy fat Mass just because my fat Mass was so low but I think my bones are getting denser as well um one thing that I'm still kind of working towards as a health marker is I haven't had a period in two years and so that's something that I'm really working to try to get back right now um because that's an important Health marker for female female health and so right now I think my main goal is to just have an adequate adequate enough nutrition that my period can start up again um but yeah um and so yeah I've just I've experienced a lot of a lot of benefits from carnivore so far uh my well as well as my physical health improving my mental health has definitely improved a lot more and it a lot of it is probably just from getting enough food but I also think the quality of the food that I'm getting the nutrition the nutritional content of the food that I'm eating is really helping with the mental side of things um before I went carnivore I was obsessing over a lot of little tiny things that wouldn't really matter to you know normal people and so I would obsess over over like making sure the house was clean and making sure that I was getting things done and so every single night I would I would obsessively like clean our kitchen for some reason like that that was my one thing I would clean the kitchen and if it didn't stay clean I would get upset and if like heaven forbid my siblings came in and got a snack or got a dish out I would get so mad at them and once I started eating all meat I went carnivore that that compulsiveness that obsessiveness started to slowly flade away and now I like I can let things go a lot easier and I don't obsess as much there are there are still times when I'm a little anxious there's still times when I'm a little obsessive but it's definitely not to the extent that it was when my eating disorder was rampaging um but I I think that's just my nature anyway I think I've always been a little bit anxious a little bit a little bit obsessive but things yeah things have just they've improved so much my quality of life has improved my physical health has improved um I like I do CrossFit I've been doing CrossFit for about three years now and uh as I've been doing CrossFit I've kind of gone up and down in terms of my strength just with dealing with the eating disorder because when you lose so much body weight you're also losing muscle mass and so my strength has kind of gone up and down and I'm I've been I've been gaining a good amount of muscle mass as I've been eating this because it's been lots of protein it's it's been pretty much a all protein all fat and so lots of lots of building blocks to build my body and so I've been making some great gains in the gy gym I've been getting stronger and I can tell just just how much how much stronger I've gotten over the past few months because I I mean I tracking the weights that I was was lifting before I'm able to lift heavier I'm able to do more reps it's just it's all around it's it's improved so much and it it it makes me so happy and it's important I think for me to focus on those things because uh body image is something that I do still struggle with a lot um when I first heard about the carnivore diet helping people with anorexia I kind of initially thought it would be just a magical fix to my problems which was a fault on my part um obviously that's not not that's not the case I mean it's it's definit definely made uh the path to recovery a lot easier I think but there are still there are still hard things obviously um I still deal with some body dysmorphia some body image issues but focusing on the non-scale victories like being able to lift more having more energy not being freezing all the time being able to eat good food that I enjoy that those are the things that help me to keep going so nice yeah and I I think that's that's the gist of it but yeah well that's an amazing story and I mean it's I've seen people hospitalized with anorexia neosa before and it's uh it's pretty scary and the first first young girl that I saw with it she sort of the same sort of idea where was in the hospital she was to the point she was so far along that she actually refused to eat so she had court mandated feeding tubes uh that she had to put in her stomach and uh so she was at that stage and she would get fed up she'd put on weight she'd go back and she would just refuse to eat and she would just keep doing this and she ended up getting multiorgan Fier and uh she actually died that was very very sad and um so it's it's a very very serious issue and um you know that people may not realize just how serious that it can become it's not just um uh it's not just you know being a bit obsessive and wanting to lose weight it's just life-threatening and well you're right yeah I think the mortality rate for people with anorexia is like 20% so that's one in five people they end up passing away either due to like organ failure or suicide or just malnutrition it's it's really sad and a lot of people I think I don't I don't know the specific number but most people relapse with anorexia after they've gone into recovery and so it's it's something that is extremely hard to recover from because it it's like an addiction honestly um I've kind of described it as a like a toxic ex before I mean you you want you know it's not good for you but you want to keep going back to it it's but the thing is like it's it's different from say like being addicted to alcohol or drugs because the way you recover from those things is by abstaining from them and not touching them at all but the thing is with anorexia or an eating disorder you can't do that you have to eat food to live and so it's it's just something that's so so hard to deal with and I wasn't about to let it ruin my life I wasn't allow about to let it just rule over me for as long as I live hey everyone everyone if you need a little extra help getting started on a carnivore diet and my online resources that I have for free aren't enough for you you can go to www.how carnivore docomo challenge where you'll have online Resources Group support weekly Zoom meetings as well as the ability to chat live with myself Simon Lewis and the others in the challenge who can help you and support you and give you extra advice and help you along the way so that's sounds like something that would be beneficial to you then please go to howc carnivore docomo you there yeah I mean that's the thing the the problem is abstaining as opposed to not you right yeah and that and that's the thing too I I haven't seen many of the these treatments I mean the only ones I've seen is when they're they're sort of in the hospital and being forced with a feeding tube and that was only a couple of occasions because I'm not in that field of medicine that was during a um an ER rotation early on that I was working I saw her um and actually another girl as well but the treatments that that doesn't sound like a great idea they're just they're just force feeding you and and then you put on a bunch of weight it doesn't help your mental state and then you go back home and just do the exact same thing again I that's not treatment you need to identify what's what's underlying identify why this person is doing that and try to get them to to not do it I mean I would hope that they had some counseling sessions or group sessions where you talked about it I me do they have anything like that um well yeah they do have the in the in in the eating disorder treatment centers they do have the the group therapies and you also at least at the one I went to you have the individual therapists that see you uh I didn't have a very good relationship with my personal therapist there honestly um but that's because I was sent there like pretty much against my will uh a lot of the a lot of the people there on the Adolescent unit that I was on they were not there by choice a lot of the adults who were on the adult unit they were there because they had been dealing with it for so long and they were like oh my gosh I just got to get rid of this thing um but uh I really think sorry go ahead oh I was just GNA say that's another thing too you know if you're not in the right place to to to fix this you know it doesn't matter how many count how much counseling how much help you have if if you just if you don't want to quit smoking you're not going to quit smoking right want to if you want to stop doing a certain habit you know you're gonna you're going to rail against it right and that's the that's the next point I was about to make um you can force somebody into these treatments as much as you want you can force them to gain weight and put on as much weight as they as you want you can treat them over and over and over again but nothing is going to change unless that person with the eating disorder decides okay something has to change because you you just can't you can't switch somebody's own you can't like take go into somebody's brain and flip a switch they have to do that themselves so and I I think that's something that I had to come to that's something that I had to come to do myself because before I didn't really have any motivation to recover I was just like I don't know I I feel like I'm okay where I am I feel like maybe I could sustain this for the rest of my life however short that life would have been but I I just I had to get to a point where I hit rock bottom and I just decided okay I'm done with this I need I'm going I'm going to recover I'm going to heal from this and so it's really important for the person with the eating disorder to decide to recover from for themselves because that was something that was significant that they mentioned in the case study that I talked about is that each patient there were three patients decided to adopt the ketogenic diet themselves so I don't know if it would be as effective it probably wouldn't be as effective if you were to give somebody who did not want to eat a ketogenic diet the ketogenic diet and expect to see the same results but yeah yeah true and and that's the thing too you know in the in these treatment facilities they're just stuffing you with carbs first of all wases that tell you they saying you want to feed you a bunch of carbs so you can fatten you up as as quickly as possible so we are knowingly we we understand that carbs fatten you up and make you put on weight so you for everyone else that's like oh no that has nothing to do with it well you know we do it in treatment we do it in cows we do it in livestock you give them cow you know carbs to up their weight and up their fat and things like that and but also it's just not giving them healthy eating habits you you're you're teaching them unhealthy eating habits and they look at that and go like I don't want that I'm putting on fat that's what I'm trying to avoid here in first place and um and then you're just starting the cycle over again whereas you you need to put them you know try to get you know very healthy eating habits and teach them how to eat healthily so they can put on lean body mass they don't put on that which is what they were you know trying to to get away from in the first place so yeah I I seen that in in other sides of um of medicine as well like in weight loss medicine like the bariatric surgery so you know I've known people that have gotten surgery to help lose weight and they started losing weight but then um you have complications where they can't eat enough or they have narrowing even more narrowing than they want like strictures and and now they they can't really eat too much and they're having problems even getting enough and they say well you need to get at least 1,200 calories a day day or you won't be able to lose weight and um and they weren't able to so they said and and they're I swear to God this is an actual registered dietitian told in this that okay you just need to eat ice cream and sodas and candy and like whatever you can to get enough calories and it's like what in God's name are you teaching this person this person came to you because they had problems with their weight obviously had unhealthy eating habits prior to this and now you're you're just completely turning up the crank on that on that unhealthy eating behavior um that the worst thing to do yeah um and kind of going along with that when sometimes when you pe patients who have suffered with anorexia for so long sometimes their eating disorder can evolve into a binge eating disorder that I've met people and I've seen that happen to some people before um and I think when you are encouraging people who already have an unhealthy relationship with food and they struggle with it to like so okay so the the whole thing with like the mainstream idea for recovering from an eating disorder is like having a healthy relationship with food having being able to eat intuitively eating like in all foods fit diet so like balanced carbs balanced fats balanced proteins but I think for a lot of a lot of people who suffer from eating disorders they don't already have a good relationship with food and so when you encourage them to add in things like ice cream and soda and pizza and things that are just generally unhealthy then it it it it leads to a a risk of people developing unhealthy relationships with those Foods where like they binge on them or they overeat them and so I mean I'm I'm not saying that it's it's the worst thing if you do eat those things but if you encourage it to a point where it's like those are the only things that you do eat because that's like you're binging and then you're restricting then that's just That's not healthy yeah and and and these foods are highly addictive they're highly palatable you know that's that's a mark in their favor you know okay they taste good you maybe you can get somebody to eat them but they they make you feel pretty lousy and they they don't do good things for your health they don't you I mean they put on fat but that and that's weight but that's not you know the weight that's going to make somebody happy especially someone with anorexia and body you know dysmorphia and and it is addictive and then all of a sudden you know that makes sense that someone would then turn to binging because you have of that addiction you want to drink the soda and ice cream but you're like don't want that garbage in me I don't want that to actually do its work and then so you purge afterwards you know that's not um that's very unhealthy as well and so yeah I I think that that it's important to actually get healthy eating habits and and have someone get okay I can do this healthy eating habit it will make me healthy I'm not going to get fat so it's not GNA do what I'm worried about but I I mean I have that theory in my head and and um but it's nice to see people actually using it and and getting better so that's that's really nice I mean I think that you know a lot of these Eating Disorders have come up since the 1980s late 70s 1980s when we said don't eat fat don't eat meat these are really bad for you people sort of crave them and go like I like that I need that and then so they binge and Purge or you know potentially they can you know get um you know avoid all those sorts of things and everything else tastes garbage and they don't feel very well Al they avoid eating those also you know and so you can sort of get down that trap as well but eating something that tastes good you enjoy makes you feel good but also doesn't make you unhealthy and put on unhealthy weight you know that's obviously the ideal so it's nice to see that sort of in practice with yourself yeah and that's that's one thing that I have been working on a lot I think uh these past few months is making sure that I'm getting enough but then also making sure that I'm not taking it too far I'm not binging uh because well it is very easy to binge on sugary foods like highly Ultra processed foods those sorts of things it's it's not easy to binge on like carnivore foods but it is possible it's something that I've experienced before um so I mean learning how to eat intuitively is something that is very important I think especially in learning how to recover from an eating disorder um because I think my body was like so desperate for food and I was just kind of so relieved to be letting myself like actually eat again that I would just try to eat as much as possible um but really listening learning to listen listen to your body signals like when I'm hungry when I'm full when I'm satiated um that is something that I've definitely improved on like I can tell uh before I was having trouble kind of feeling when I'm full feeling when I'm satiated cuz I always kind of felt like I wanted more I wanted to eat more and that could have just been a side effect from being malnourished but I think learning how to listen to your body signals eating these Foods eating these like eating meat uh I think that's a lot better because I feel like though you're going to get those signals a lot easier because with these foods that are highly processed like sugar sugary and you know the seed oils and everything it it's so easy to binge on them and they're literally engineered so that you keep eating them and so I think just learning to eat intuitively on like as Whole Foods as possible high fat foods like like red meat and just eating as whole as possible is the way you want to go yeah definitely yeah the So when you say you binged on on Carnival because you know at a certain point I I eat and I'm just like I I don't want to eat this anymore so I always eat as much as I care to but I do hit a point that I don't care to anymore and and I have had patients that have come from the other side that they're trying to lose a lot of weight and they are used to eating very very large portions and so they say and say okay you can eat as much as you want to as tastes good and all that sort of stuff and they say okay well I'll cook up the same portions that I'm used to eating and they get partway through that and then it just starts tasting horrible and they spend the next two hours Force feeding themselves against their will and they don't enjoy and they come to me saying I hate this this is horrible and you know talk about how you know you can stop when it stops being enjoyable and so I I know people have forced themselves um but is that is that what you're talking about eating the point of of enjoyment or figuring out where that that Hut off point is that is the right amount for you I think I I yeah I think just I I really needed to relearn where my body like what my body how it signals me that it's done that it's full um one thing that I kind of talked to with my mom a lot as I was starting um is well maybe maybe I'm eating so much just because my body's so desperate for it like I said um but I feel like and it it t I think it takes time for your body's like signals to realign you know uh like for you to start being able to recognize them again uh for me I I don't know if I ever truly I I don't know if I ever went on a true binge but there were times when I did overeat because I would eat way way way too quickly because I was pretty ravenous I think just cuz my body was so hungry um and so I would end up being like way too stuffed and I would feel almost sick afterwards and one thing is uh pork rinds I would I I would eat so so so so so many pork rinds and then I my stomach would be like so full afterwards and I would just not feel good and so and I think yeah there were just and there were points when I would be eating those where I would be like these these aren't even tasting good to me anymore and so I I'm like oh I should stop but I think I and I think pork rinds are more they're more processed food and so they're more like carnivore junk food um but there I think just learning it was difficult for me to learn when when to stop eating just because I had been so out of touch with eating intuitively because i' been counting calories for so long and restricting for so long and so just the process of learning when to stop eating is is it's something that I'm still learning but I'm I've definitely gotten better at it like just listening to my body and I think eating a little bit slower is helped like even if I'm super duper hungry I try to kind of slow down just to make sure that I don't I don't overeat because sometimes it is a little easy to overeat if I'm if I am like ravenous but I'm not I'm not ravenous super often anymore just because I'm getting enough throughout the day um but yeah yeah well that's good I mean it's yeah everyone everyone has to relearn their hunger signals they're very different you know when you're eating a very different way especially when you're in a different metabolic State um but it you know it is it would be true as well that your body needed more energy and nutrients um as well there was a lady that I did um an interview with her name was Claire and she had I I listened to that one a few months ago okay yeah so and and she obv she was she she was on that you know other side of things where she was she actually did die in the hospital she and she had to be resuscitated because she was so unwell um thankfully she made a recovery and she went carnivore and started getting better and but she was saying that she was eating about 8,000 you know kilo calories a day of Stak and she was like this yeah this is just what my body wanted she felt great she's still very slender um you know so that 8,000 calories a day is um you know it's not overdoing it you know that's what her body needed and and you know you're talking about your bone density probably coming up probably is you know you're doing CrossFit you're doing resistance training so you're you're stimulating your bones to grow things grow in lines of stress especially when you're a teenager but even when you're an adult you know the in the textbooks it say that you you build up bone until you're 25 and that's it and then just decays after that why would that be why would our bodies just change at 25 are we different sort of species at that point is it like you know menopause it just everything just Hardline change at that point um no uh you know obviously you just you're just getting the wrong stimulus and and you're getting putting the wrong inputs in so you're getting the wrong uh outputs but she's 3 you know she was 39 at that time and uh she was borderline she had borderon osteoporosis and then after one year of of resistance training and proper nutrition all of a sudden she's now borderline uh normal bone density so I I guarantee your your bone density is getting better and if you keep doing what you're doing it it will get back completely to normal and may be very very healthy I don't know if you've had a bone scan or anything like that but that you know obviously would be be interesting to check you know before and after as well yeah uh one thing when I was in the hospital they did take my labs pretty often and uh I I didn't get my labs taken right before I went carnivore I wish I would have but I want I want to ask my doctor to like take my labs now um just because just because I want to see where I'm at but uh and I I I've never had a bone density scanner anything but I I I do know that my like my lean Mass has gone up very very significantly from when I started and I don't I don't think it's all muscle I think definitely there is some some extra bone density there especially since in in some very long-term cases of anorexia that many people do have osteoporosis just because of the imbalance of hormones and things yeah definitely well that's the thing you you look at you look at different dietary patterns and different sorts of interventions to lose weight and and they say well look at these you know these you know um just starving or or this or that is the same as like a ketogenic diet they haven't really done with carnivore diets but then they see that okay well they all lose about the same amount of weight so they're all the same it's just calorie restriction and whatever you can stick to but then when you look at the the body composition the calorie restriction not eating necessar what I would say is a healthy diet but you know just just less calories and more low calorie plants and things like that they they lose total amount of Weights that let's say eight pounds and in a certain period of time and uh these are just just numbers I'm coming with I don't remember the exact numbers of this study but let's say it's eight pounds and you know five pounds of that was was fat two l pounds was muscle and one pound was bone right so there's three pounds there that you didn't want to lose and but they lost and they lost eight pounds total and that's what people look at because they look because they look at the scale and that's the only important thing oh scale's going down that must mean Fat's going down well yes and other things and then you had you know the other side where people you do more healthy diet including meat things like that but you know like a ketogenic approach and they lose eight pounds but 10 pounds of that was fat and they gained two pounds of muscle so that's a much better that's a much better breakdown yeah and that's that's one thing that um I'm kind of relearning right now as well is not to rely too heavily on the scale because the scale can be very very deceptive I mean you see it in athletes all the time because like people who have a lot of muscle on their body they are literally considered obese because their BMI is yeah they they have such a high BMI for their height but that's because it's literally all MUSC muscle on like bone density and so the scale can be very very deceptive and so I that's another thing that I'm learning right now is learning that the number on the scale isn't always reflective of my true like body compositional health because I could be gaining weight but it could just be bone density and it could just be muscle or it could be even more healthy fat because you you definitely need a healthy amount of fat on your body especially for women um but uh where was I going with this um yeah the the scale can be deceptive and uh a lot of a lot of people obsess just they just obsess over the number on the scale that's that's all that matters to them uh but it's important to look past that I think and kind of look at like okay how's my body composition changing what is my what is my fat percentage looking like what is my muscle muscle percentage looking like lean body mass that sort of thing yeah no yeah it's very important and a lot of people will come to me especially people that are exercising working out lifting weights and and trying to do everything they can to be as healthy as possible while they lose weight and they say well everything went very well at first and I was losing a lot of weight and feeling great and I'm still feeling great now the weight loss is sort of stall and I'm you know lifting weights four days a week and I'm eating this way and doing all these sorts of things you know what am I doing wrong and you just point out that oh you're you're lifting weight you're on on a cornerboard diet it's like you'll never put on muscle easier than when you're on a cornerboard diet you know you're lifting weights you're GNA be you're going to be putting on muscle and so that offsets weight that you lose from fat I mean I lost you know 23 pounds in 10 days pretty dramatic and I was already not eating carbs I was already EO I guess I wasn't doing it on purpose I just didn't eat carbs because they didn't make me feel good and but just dropping the veggies and increasing the amount of meat that I was eating dramatically I lost 23 pounds in 10 days you know so it goes completely counter to anything else um that people would put out there but that's what happened and after that I lost no weight at all but my body composition was changing dramatically and I could I could see that and I could feel that and and so that was that was what was important to me because I was working out I was lifting weights and I was like oh look at this putting on muscle I'm not losing and I'm losing fat so great and and the weight was just the same and so that was that was interesting to me was very interesting to me because for several months it was the exact same weight every morning it was 243 pounds every single morning every morning it was it was not one day it was 24 244 242 it was 243 on the nose every single day I thought that was pretty pretty hilarious um and it wasn't until I actually hurt my knee and couldn't uh you know run and Sprint and do squats that that I started losing weight but that was because I actually my leg started to like shrink down yeah as I was like that wasn't way I wanted to lose anyway but uh yeah it is very important look at that and you know I've seen you know some of your things like some videos like where you're working out you're doing CrossFit obviously you're very active so you know how's your experience been with with putting on muscle and putting on heavy weight now that you're eating this way um yeah so uh doing doing CrossFit that the way our gym does it is we we do a lot of weightlifting and so like I mentioned earlier I've been seeing huge improvements in just the amount that I've been able to lift and that's been so gratifying to me because uh so the gym that I go to we we have an app and if you're a member then you get to log like the weights that you do during the class and so looking back at the weights that I was logging right before I went carnivore for a certain lift and looking at how much I'm able to get uh logging them like now it's been it's been super awesome to see and uh the muscle growth has been it's been very very significant to say the least um before my arms were like they were sticks they were bone thin and now now I actually have like I have I have meat on my arms I have meat on my legs and cuz seriously before I was I was so so skinny um but you can you can see the definition of the muscle on me now and it's it's it's it's awesome to see and especially starting from pretty much like nothing like pretty much just Skin and Bones you can definitely you could definitely say that eating carnivore is one of the best ways to put on muscle especially if you're doing weightlifting just because you're eating so much protein and so you're able to build those muscles very very very quickly and it it's it's definitely very surprising how how much muscle I was able to put on just within the first few weeks yeah that's great and so and so what's your diet now what exactly are you eating these days um so most days I'm eating uh let's see I eat a lot so for breakfast typically I'll do like bacon and eggs and then I go to school so I take School l i take lunch with me uh usually that's like hard-boiled eggs and I have a little mini salt shaker that I take with me so I eat a lot of eggs and a lot of beef and nice so some nights I'll have like ground beef or I'll have burger patties or I'll have a steak um steak is my favorite I love ribe eyes those are my favorite and um so uh yeah it's pretty much just mainly it eggs and beef but some some days I'll have chicken some days I'll have pork I have some bacon well I have a little bit of bacon almost every day um but recently I have I've been thinking a lot lately and so I've decided that I'm going to start experimenting a little bit and I'm actually going to add in a little bit more Dairy so the past like couple of weeks I've been adding a little bit more Dairy because me and my mom we make our own yogurt actually we make our own Greek yogurt out of raw milk that we get here and so we yeah that's it's been it's been really good I felt really good eating it so far and I've been eating a little bit more cheese as well and uh I'm I'm planning on adding in like more fermented vegetables because that's something that Dr sha omara recommends um and I'm also planning on adding in like local inseason fruits like maybe like one piece of fruit like a day or like every other day or something and I'm going to see how I feel on that but going into winter because we're going into winter up here um I won't be able to do that as much just because there's not as much in seasoned fruits but yeah I think I'm excited sorry Che yeah okay um I'm just I I want to experiment because the whole the whole idea behind going carnivore the the original plan was to heal my mind heal my body and then from there find the foods that my my body can like function on the best and so if I can add in uh if I can add in fruits if I can add in like some non-inflammatory vegetables there's foods that don't inflame me that don't make me feel worse if I can eat those and I can feel good and I can still have the same like health benefits then I want to be able to include them in my diet and so it's something that I've uh been experimenting with um but if if they don't make me feel good if I if I start to like get inflamed by them then I can always just go back to eating full carnivore yeah I mean that's that's exactly why I eat the way I eat because I I did that experiment and I found that nope everything makes me feel worse and so this is this is where I defaulted to and that's then that's that was um a happy choice you know I wasn't like oh gosh I can't eat that I'm like I don't want to eat that I have no interest in eating that uh because I tried eating that and I said okay what does this do to my body so I think that's a really good experiment I think it's really important to do um for yourself and and um try doing it one at a time right so don't a whole bunch of things at the same time see how see how each thing affects you um as you go the idea of eating fruit seasonally is um you know is is is important because obviously we we have access to fruit at any time of the year and it's from you know 5,000 miles away and so obviously it's um you know if you're going into winter you know there's no fruit's going to be available seasonally you it's not going to be there and that's and that's generally um how people used to eat in other times there wasn't any fruit at all available because it you know there you know during the ice ages and things like that if you were far enough North or South no fruits were coming even in even in the summer and so it just depends I mean I I I do I do worry about those super sweet fruits because you know sugar can be very addictive and I people start that and um you know they're coming from through the other side of things where they had carb addiction and sugars sugar addiction and weight problems and they started eating a bit of fruit adding a bit of honey and that became a little more fruit and a little more honey and then a lot of fruit and a lot of honey and then they started drinking sodas and eating pizza and and and a lot of people told me that within six months they're back on the couch eating pizza and beer and all that sort of stuff and regain all the weight and had all the health problems again and so that's um that's a bit difficult I actually spoke with um Dr Paul saladino about that and we we sort of discussed and I'm like look I don't I don't mind what anybody does my whole mission here is to let people understand that meat is really good for you it shouldn't be feared and vilified as it is and that there are toxins and plants that they use to keep themselves safe we should understand that and um and then make your own decisions um and but I express that issue that you know I had with the fruit and honey if people can do that and have a little bit and be okay and they feel good on it great but then some people you know do go off the deep end and and he said he's just like yeah I haven't figured that one out yet because that does happen and sort of figured out how to how to address that for some people that have that sort of addiction so I always caution people just to be mindful of that and if you find yourself building up a lot more and more and more maybe that's that's a sign you need to pull back you know I I obviously it's a bit of an extreme example but think of it as as another addictive substance you know say caffeine or even nicotine and say okay well I can have some nicotine couple cigarettes or a cup of coffee on the weekend or something like that that is addictive and now you're going to start craving it you're going to start wanting it and then maybe okay well maybe I'll have two maybe I'll have three maybe I'll have it on Tuesdays as well as Sundays and it just just snowballs and so if you find yourself increasing the amount of addiction of an addictive substance you should try to recognize that probably the addiction doing this and you need to need to pull back um I Dr Shan omaro is awesome I still keep in touch with him we we we text regularly and he found so the the fermented vegetables um like he said he will never eat a plant unless it's fermented and he and uses it basically as a as a supplement to try to get the the microbes right into his into his microbiome and so he um you know very specific it's a small amount and with a bite of meat chewed together swallowed in the same in the same bite and that helps Drive the little bacteria make them so they don't get burned out and destroyed by your your digestive juices and get down to your the area where you can Reed your microbiome um I have the same principle but with with the yogurt you know with with live Culture Yogurt and receding that and that's been you know said to be very beneficial to our microbiome for a long time and so I've done that a bit uh when someone takes antibiotics that's what I recommend them do exactly the same thing but with the with the you know live culture yogur and that seems to help I mean um Sean is is great because he's gone the next step and actually checked his microbiome and microbiome of his patients and I don't know if you've heard this but um he was telling me um last month that he he sent his stool sample away to this microbiome company in America and like the president or the CEO someone someone in charge at the company personally called him and said hey you have the best microbiome sample we have ever measured what what the hell are you doing like how how did you get this he's like happy to talk about it you know so they schedule a meeting toh to talk about it so um so that I mean that you know that that's proof of concept right there that this is working you know another another source of evidence is the Inu studies on microbiome when eating their natural diet because there are a lot of studies that look at the Inuit as a population but not eating their natural diet and that's a very different thing so they say well look you know Inuit don't I'll have heart disease and cancer and things like that yeah you're looking at the Inuit in cities eating the same crap we are so that's not saying anything about their diet but they are conflating that it's like oh this is Inuit therefore they're eating Inuit diet and they're sick no the problem is they're not eating the in a diet and they're getting sick because they're not eating it um but when you look at those people when they are just eating meat they have some of the healthiest microbiomes ever measured so you know at a certain point you know there's there's a problem people had with with probiotics was that yes you can you can put in these microbes but then if you're not eating the things that that feed those microbes they're just going to die off they're going to get crowded out by the other things so you have to eat these Pro you know biotic Foods so these other supplements and all these sorts of things they Bas shown that a lot of these things don't work and don't don't help but um it's probably because all the other things that they add in there but when you are when you have an established microbiome what you're eating feeds that microbiome and it sort changes every day based on what you're eating so at a certain point when you have an established good healthy microbiome like Shawn does like the Inuit 2 you should be able to maintain that uh without having more fermented food you know that's that's the theory but that's the that's the understanding and we don't really understand the microbiome all that well but that's um you know but that's that's what I would expect especially from you know other animals in nature when they're just they're eating what they're supposed to eat and they've got the microbiome that they're supposed to have yeah and my whole view on it is that we should be eating like we evolved to eat so my my belief is that when when we were evolving the the men would primar primarily the men would go out and they'd hunt and so they'd get meat and so we ate a lot of meat uh but my my me and my mom we've talked about it a lot my my theory is that men they tend to do a lot better on Carnivore I mean you see that in people who are on Carnivore but uh I think for for women it can be a little more complicated just because of their hormones um I think we were we were hunter gatherers right and so I think there were times when we did gather fruits we did did gather like nuts and we did eat those sorts of things and so my whole my whole goal with eating is eating as like ancestrally and as Whole Foods as possible I think I think that's the best way while still like being primarily meat-based um but just eating the way we ate before we started doing all these process eating all these processed crap Foods because obviously that's what we thrived on that's how we evolve to the point that we're at now and so that's probably the way that we should be eating I mean like you said animals in the wild when they're eating what they're eating they don't get obese you don't ever see an obese deer out in the woods you don't ever see an obese fox or any you just don't see it I mean you look at you look at house cats you look at house dogs they get they look like freaking plump grapes they I don't know they just they get they get so fat it's because of the things that they're eating they're basically eating the the animal equivalent of the standard American diet and so that's why you see them get fat but I mean yeah so just eating eating an ancestrally appropriate diet I think it's the the key to health yeah yeah I've seen U you know friends cats that look like fuzzy water balloons on legs you know they're just like how was that how do you think that that's healthy whatever you're doing to that cat it's not good yeah um yeah the you know I mean yes we we we Hunter we hunted and we we gathered when we needed to a lot of the anthropological data of you know recent cultures um said that yes they would gather things but if they got meat they would not eat it they would just toss it and so it they they had the gather stuff basically as a as a stop Gap if they couldn't get meat if they couldn't um you know get what they wanted from hunting um then you have like the Plains Indians who really didn't have that problem when they had like the Bison herds come through and scare them over a cliff and things like that they had meat and peman the whole year at that point um and and then of course during the ice ages you know there wasn't really much to gather it was really yeah and you had um the fossil studies or or the fossil records in those areas when they were just like eating mammoths up in the up in the know the ice shelves and things like that those were the tallest humans have ever been you know some of these places were like on average 6'2 even 6'4 on average right massive massive people um just eating large amounts of meat and then when you see you know 10,000 years ago there was a there's a hard line in the fossil record as pre poost Agriculture and people shank you know they they Dro and this was and this was in the hunter gatherer phase as well right because these were people that were gathering and eating more plants and then they figured out you could plant this stuff and actually grow it yourself s and you didn't have to go search for it so these were presumably people already eating some plants as well because the megap had died out the mammoths had all died out and so they needed to look to other sources because they they were deficient in the amount of meat that they could get and even then you know and these guys were like on average 5 foot n now remember the Mammoth Hunters were on average 6 fo2 sometimes 6'4 so they're already sort of eating more plants hunter gatherer versus just Hunter is is a difference but then they go Agriculture and they drop from you know 5 fo n down to like 55 54 or something that so they dropped like four or five inches in average height brains got smaller by 11% overnight you know Jaws got smaller teeth got crowded and other sorts of signs of Po wound healing and and and improper you know malnutrition um it was also interesting you know like in in current um you know native tribes obviously they're not living the same as we did 50,000 years ago when we had meapa um but you know we are seeing people eat in different ways and so the Messi when they eat traditionally they are very tall lean strong healthy people and there's a study they went a couple years looking at the Messiah and their neighbor Zaki cuyu who akuu were largely plant-based had some meat and dairy but very small amount and the Messiah mostly milk blood and meat and small amounts of other things they actually had already started including some grains like Millet seed at that point as well and and then that's their diet's been corrupted over the decades since then but it was interesting because the men were given more of the blood and the meat than the women were and this is you know like obviously you know men are going out with the herds or hunting and then the women are back and maybe doing some Gathering and doing other things and they sort of give the Lion Share to the to the hunter class the warrior class that that needs to fight lions with sticks you know and and they got to win you know because or else everyone's in trouble and they found that that the women they were eating sort of Less meat less blood maybe a bit more plants um they were slightly less healthy than the male Messi and then daki cuyu the men were eating a lot of grains the women actually had a more diverse vegetarian diet they ate more you know greens and sprouts and all these other sorts of things and nuts the men for some reason just ate a ton of grains the male akuu were the least healthy people out of all four categories the female akuu were more healthy than them and then it was the Messi women and then it was the Messi men basically had no health issues and so it is interesting even even at that point um you know the subtle sort of differences between male and female of the of the Messi one thing I sort of think about and I have heard that theory that because of women's hormones you need like some carbohydrates like leading up to um your menstration but I sort of wonder how that would happen naturally how that would happen during an Ice Age um you know if you needed it for your cycle why don't the Inuit need it and why don't why did we make it through an Ice Age and and how would you how would that trigger if we're just in the wild and we don't have you know someone on YouTube telling us hey you know for seven days before for your cycle this is what this is how many grams you need to eat how do you figure that out naturally because it had it has there has to be some sort of system where it just happens on its own where you just sort of get this like I need cookies right cookies didn't exist in in the ice ages so was what was the trigger for them to seek out carbohydrates and and in areas that they didn't have carbohydrates how did they cope with that if it was necessary and then I think of all the other species of animals in the world and I can't think of a single example where males and females eat different diets you know like male lions eat what female lions eat and male uh bald eagles eat what female bald eagles eat and so on so it's a male elephants female elephants cows bow line things like that so I wonder about that and I wonder if that if that would apply to us and just not anyone else any other animal and so I I don't know but again I always always think people should self experiment try these things see how you feel and the thing is too is that whether or not it's it's the ideal perfect long-term sort of solution you feel good and you're healthy and you're doing well and you're doing and you're eating very Whole Foods eating a lot of meat and adding a couple other things in there you're doing better than you ever would have eating any other way and so you know I don't I don't see a problem with that as long as you're feeling good and healthy yeah I think one of the the biggest things that I have learned throughout all of this is that it's really just finding what what works well with you what you feel good on because some people they can't they can some people can eat pork or chicken on a carnivore diet and still feel great but some people they have like these conditions or these autoimmune conditions where they can't eat these things they don't make them feel good so I think just finding a level and the certain kinds of food that you are healthiest on that you feel best on with a wide variety as wide a variety as you can get I think because I think the variety is import important um I think I think that's the biggest the biggest takeaway is just learning what makes yourself feel good because I think everybody is different everybody's at least slightly different in the way that that they they process food so yeah and well and I think I think a major part of this too is is just does this fit with your lifestyle as well does this make you happy is there something you can maintain I mean I do think that we have an ideal you know diet just like you know there's something that is good for all dolphins something that good for all lions you know you can take every lion in the world and you can put put them against you know gazelle and asparagus and there you will not find one single lion that does better on asparagus than they do on gazelle right you know and I think that applies to us as well so I think there is there is an optimal whatever that is you know I argue you know it's a carnivore diet but it's I believe it's something just like it is in every other animal species but um the thing is true is it it it's it doesn't matter if you don't want to do it and if you can't maintain it and so if adding a bit of spices or fruit or something like that helps you navigate life better to where you say I can do this for the rest of my life you know that's important for me I'm happy with this I like not having to think about what do I have it's steak it's every damn night it's steak and I'm very happy about that that's all I've ever wanted to eat anyway that's all I I want to eat now and so I'm thrilled that's all I get to do and you know I said to my my dad early on and I've said this before but it feels like every day is my birthday because you know on my birthday I would my mom would always ask okay what's what's your special she would always make it's like a special birthday dinner like just we what we wanted and every time it was just a massive steak and I could just eat until I'm stuffed on just steak you know and and that was it every night every time and I just and now and now it's every single night every single night I have an amazing steak and I eat until I'm full of steak and just sick of steak and that's that's just yeah it's amazing and I just I just love it so you know like you're saying with rib I just love I me like that's just like this is just a you know it's a birthday every single day for me so I'm thrilled to have that and I'm very happy about that and um but that's me you know and and that that fits my lifestyle that fits my personality and and it works for me because I go outside of that I don't feel my best and I don't like that and so for me in my lifestyle that's what I like I like I like just just eating that thing but there other people that can't do that don't want to do that you know they have social experiences and they they go out with friends and they don't want to be the odd man out they don't want to not eat what other people are eating they don't want to not experience new new sort of dishes so they sort of include a bit of things here and there but um that's fine you know that's what they want to do too so it it matters it matters what what people can do to maintain this and be consistent and happy and and make this a way of life so it's not just like a crash diet that just like ends in disaster down the road it's just something something that you can do and you can maintain and for your life yeah yeah that's good so how does how are your obviously your mom's on board she she sort of sounds like the one that suggested this to you but um what about your your friends and and other family members how are they seeing this weird girl bring a bunch of like you know bags of steak to to lunch and things like that yeah um well so my mom was the first one to go carnivore and then I went carnivore after her and then now my dad is kind of carnivore is he's pretty much entirely meat-based um he's more of like a dirty carnivore so he does he he still eats like things with like you know sugar in them sometimes but he he's mostly meat-based and he actually has an autoimmune condition and from what I can tell I think it's gotten at least a little bit better since he started um so that's something that's really good um I have have three other siblings who are living with me and none of them are carnivore uh sometimes they do complain because they say things like oh why why do we keep buying so much meat like why can't we get the stuff that we used to get which would be like processed foods yeah um but I mean maybe one day they'll come around I mean my my sister she's pretty adamant that she'll never be carnivore but I've got another I've got another sibling who uh who who may go carnivore one day and then my younger brother he he I mean I could he he he may or may not but I mean that's completely up to them I mean at least they know about it they've seen the benefits that I've experienced from it they've seen the benefits that my mom's experienced from it so if they're ever at a point in their lives where they're like oh I'm just feeling so crappy from all this food that I'm eating then they they have that they can they can use that they can go carnivore um not every time I tell somebody at school like one of my friends or somebody I know that I'm carnivore they don't they don't react in the way that I really expect them to which is like them being super surprised like what you eat only meat they're actually just they're pretty indifferent to it honestly they're just like oh okay yeah I mean sometimes sometimes people do ask some questions I mean I have a friend um I've told her about I've told her about me being carnivore and um a lot it's it's surprising it's kind of surprising to me how how little people understand about it like when I say I eat only meat I mean I eat only meat and they're like really like not even not even vegetables not even like bread you only ever eat meat and I'm like well that's what I mean when I say only meat um but I've had people be like me you yeah yeah um but honestly people are they're pretty they're pretty chill with it I mean nobody nobody ever really calls me out for it they're never they never really are like looking at me weird I mean I take hard-boiled eggs to school every day and I eat them and sometimes I feel weird doing that like I'm just the the the weird girl just sitting there eating her hardboiled egg but I don't care it's healthy for me um but yeah people people are generally pretty accepting of it I think and some of them are even like open to hearing about it like hearing the the health benefits that um I I've gained from it that other people have gained from it so yeah well that's good you know it's nice that people aren't getting as much push back and um you know I I noticed that when I first started doing this I wasn't doing carnivore I was just like plants are toxic not eating that and so I just I just cut them out completely I defaulted into just eating meat but because I wasn't I wasn't doing a specific diet I was just you know I would see food there okay I'm going to eat that I'm G to avoid the rest but I didn't talk about it I didn't Telegraph it I didn't even think to um no one said a thing not a single person for five years said a single thing and then um now you know later on when I when I went back onto it then I'm s a little conscious that I'm doing a specific diet for a specific reason then I'm going out I'm doing things and I'm ordering things and I'm feeling self-conscious I feel that I need to explain it and then it sort of comes up and then we have to talk about it I'm like oh this is this is weird and I just realized I don't need to do that and then I just I started ignoring it I just started eating what I ate and people ate what they ate never came up again so you know sometimes it would if I'm even like if I'm at the hospital and I want to eat something on like 10 eggs and like six like massive strips of bacon because like the strips of bacon here are like a foot and a half long that sounds awesome yeah because they're like the whole their whole belly of of the pig and so it's like it's massive it's not like a small strip it's just big long thing so six strips of bacon is is a pile of bacon on a plate and so I've got two plates one just stuffed with eggs one stuffed with bacon like whoa that's a that's a lot of protein there you know and uh so then it comes up but you know when you when you're not doing anything quite extreme no one really cares and and so many people are very concerned about that because they're worried about other what other people are going to think and and give them a hard time for it and and I always tell them you don't bring it up they won't bring it up like you'd be very surprised you know if you're if you're going through saying oh actually I'm I can't eat that I can't do that obviously you know that's raised the issue but if you just go to a dinner or something like that unless you're going to some vegan's house there's going to be meat there just take the meat don't eat the rest that's it yeah no one bats mind yeah definitely yeah all right well Sophia thank you so much for coming on it was an absolute pleasure very nice to meet you and hear your story I'm very very glad that you are where you are today and that you've been able to make such a a great recovery and continuing to do so how do people get a hold of you and and find your stuff yeah so thank you thank you so much for having me thank you for taking the time to do this um so I am my YouTube channel is Sophia eats steak you can just look that up on YouTube it's sopia with an F uh that's that's my my parents weird spelling of it um but yeah so Sophie steak on YouTube and then I also have an Instagram where I like post pictures of my steak sometimes so if you want to follow me on Instagram it's just Sophia eat steak on Instagram as well but yeah so uh thank you you're very welcome and I'll put all that up in the description in the show notes so people can can find the links there and go and see your stuff uh so FIA thank you so much it's been a pleasure you know change your practice and you know based on that I don't know what are some hard facts well hard facts are that you know in in botney and and in horror culture we know that there are certain poisons in there that that plant makes to deter insects and animals from eating them you know especially in the be right because a bean is a seed right all organisms protect their babies more than anything by and large and a seed is a plant's baby