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172 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 18h \ on: Weird, oddball health improvements I've experienced on the Carnivore diet HealthAndFitness
This is an interesting list, thanks for sharing it. I've heard many such good reports, especially w/ people w/ auto-immune issues that resisted other therapies.
While I believe your report, and the others I have heard, a confound that has often been difficult to assess is the anything is better than the shit that I've been doing confound. In other words, the standard Western diet is so bad that it might as well be an attack on health. (I don't often use language this extreme about stuff, where everything is "an attack" on something or other, but believe it to be warranted in this case.)
So my question to you is: what's the control group? Where were you starting from? What (if any) results have you historically achieved from other principled diets aside from carnivore?
Hope you take this the right way; just trying to understand the larger context. You've posted a bunch of older stuff, and probably the answers are in there someplace -- if you could recommend one to start with I'll have a look myself.
Very good question. And here's the thing - my previous diet was, according to the "standard US nutritional advice", absolutely GREAT.
Really, it was way "better" than almost everyone I know.
- I seriously limited meat. I favored chicken a LOT over beef, and when making a recipe, I would do things like cut in half the amount of meat. Or at least, reduce it a little bit. I fully believed the whole thing about using meat as a "condiment".
- loads and loads of whole grains. Rarely anything not whole grain. Ground my own wheat flour from wheat grains at home
- ate tons of "superfoods". Like Chia, Spinach, flax, etc. Turns out that crap is terrible for you.
- NEVER at least for the past ... 7 years or so, did I eat processed junk food. I did have some "junk food", but it was all homemade (cookies, popcorn, etc). And I had to limit that, in order to not gain weight.
- I didn't pig out on carbs, in general. One of my rules at restaurants was to NEVER eat any of the stuff that they brought to the table (bread, usually) before the main meal.
- Not only did I not eat processed junk food in the form of Cheetos, purchased ice cream, etc, I also never ate any junk food in the form of fancy treats from bakeries or anything similar.
- I never ate ANY fried food. That was one of my rules.
- Every meal had lots of fruits and vegetables.
- I weight myself regularly, and was always a healthy weight, and at the low side of a healthy weight. Also exercised regularly - not as much as some, but definitely very regular.
- really avoided saturated fat. Believed in the garbage idea that canola oil and vegetable oil are better than animal fats.
I think that's the gist of it. Previous that the period I'm describing, maybe about past 7 years before carnivore, my eating habits were more "average healthy diet" and not as "extreme".
So when I read the Nina Teicholtz book "The Big Fat Surprise", it was a completely, mind blowing revelation for me. I thought I was doing the best thing ever, turns out my diet was rotten. Way too many carbs, not nearly enough meat and animal fats, and too much veggie/fruit.
Though it was maybe better than what other people were doing, my diet still sucked.
Yes, I'm a true believer in Carnivore. Stay tuned for my post tomorrow.
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One more thing - no autoimmune disorders, or really anything like that.
That's why I'm a little bit of an oddball in the carnivore world - many people who go carnivore have autoimmune disorders, or something else serious. I was fairly healthy. Not as healthy as I wanted to be, though.
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Great context, thank you. Look fwd to tmrw's post!
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