Most people are fat or at least overweight. It’s totally ridiculous in America and the Anglosphere more generally, where teenagers and children are fat, but even in Europe, people start to put on a lot of weight in their 30s and 40s. This is not natural or good. Many men have been turning to drugs, specifically testosterone, in order to lose weight, and now there is an Ozempic craze.
In reality, anyone can easily lose a lot of weight using the “carnivore diet,” which involves only eating meat, fish, and eggs. This is not a calorie restriction diet, so it allows you to eat as much food as you want, within the confines of the rules. This will work for anyone, assuming you don’t have some kind of unique problem.
Note on Processed Foods
For our purposes here, it will simply be assumed that everyone understands that all processed foods are extremely unhealthy, and should never be consumed by anyone. Processed foods are now often referred to as “ultraprocessed,” though it is unclear why this new terminology was necessary, other than to distinguish between something like sausages, which involves a process, but is not necessarily “ultraprocessed.” This group includes more or less everything that is in the center of a grocery store, in a box or a bag. Even if it says “organic” or “natural,” none of that stuff should be consumed by humans. Most of it is corn and soy, and it is all unbelievable crap.
It’s for Weight Loss and Body Rehab, It’s Not a Long-Term Lifestyle Plan
Firstly, it should be noted that many of the carnivore diet people are kooks. The people who promote this diet as a long-term solution for life are basically cultists. It cannot actually be a long-term solution for life, because your body requires things called “essential vitamins and minerals,” which it cannot produce, and some of which are not found in meat. Carnivore people will argue that you don’t actually need fiber, which is probably true.
The other notable thing here is that if you eat the liver, kidneys, lungs, brain, etc., you could live the rest of your life only eating meat. It’s actually probably a good option, but all these carnivore people are saying to just eat the flesh of the animals and you’ll eventually adapt to not having various nutrients. Personally, I don’t think eating organs is a big deal, but most people are not going to want to do that.
Regarding these vitamins and minerals, however: they stay in your body for a long time, so eating nothing but meat for several months or even a year will not be a problem, especially if you are supplementing. (Here is a full outline of the various vitamins and minerals you would have a hard time getting from meat flesh.)
The Other “Health Risks” are All Bullshit
Going back to the food pyramid scheme, introduced by various organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the US government and its tentacles have claimed that you should limit red meat for health reasons and eat a lot of carbs. This is certainly a factor in what has created an obesity crisis in America.
Anyone who is eating 6-11 servings of pasta is going to become obese, assuming they are not engaged in extremely strenuous body activity. There is also no reason to eat huge quantities of fruits and vegetables. Although as mentioned above, if you are not eating organ meats, in the longer term you should be eating some vegetables (and maybe certain fruits). You do not need to eat huge amounts, and it is not healthy to do so.
We should also add that though some people report good results from dairy, most do not. For most people, modern dairy (i.e., all dairy that originates from pasteurized milk) is going to cause inflammation and gut issues. Personally, I recommend zero dairy (excluding butter, which is not really dairy) for several months, and then if you want to try it and see what happens, you can do that, but you need a baseline of no dairy to understand what dairy does to your body. I would be very surprised if anyone stopped eating dairy and then introduced it and felt better for having done so (again, with the exception of raw milk and products made from raw milk, something which is de facto illegal in the United States for reasons that have not ever been properly explained).
The supposed “risks” of red meat are all fake. It’s been shown repeatedly that the cholesterol issue is nothing but a hoax. There is good cholesterol, and all of the problems with high levels of bad cholesterol are related to being overweight. Even if someone is not visibly fat, they can have internal fat that can cause high levels of bad cholesterol, and the best way to eliminate these internal fats is to stop eating sugar and excessive carbohydrates.
I suppose it also needs to be addressed that the government has claimed that “eating fat makes you fat.” This is just a complete lie, and it’s unfortunate that the word for dietary fat is the same as the word for “overweight.” The overwhelming majority of stored fat in the body is a result of sugars and carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are processed into sugars by the body, so there is little difference in eating unrefined sugars and bread or pasta.
Things You Should Eat
Unless you go to a steak restaurant every meal, you’re going to have to cook your own food.
The easiest thing to eat is boiled eggs. You can also cook bacon and then fry your eggs in the bacon grease.
Frankly, you could do this program while only eating boiled eggs. It would be boring, but it would be cheap and it would work. Get free range eggs, boil them and eat them until you’re not hungry anymore.
But there are other options.
Ground beef is also easy to cook, you can fry it with butter or boil it.
Steak is good, and you can cook that how you will. I’ve never been impressed with pan-cooked steak, but some people like it. If you have a grill or a griddle, that probably results in better tasting steak.
You can also get a big piece of beef (try to get the fattiest cut possible) and stew it in the oven or in a pot on the stove. This will last for three days, and tends to taste better after a few days, so you can cook a big piece of it and eat it over a three-day period. Various spices, including garlic, are fine for that, but I would definitely skip the potatoes and carrots if you are trying to lose weight. You could add mushrooms and that would not be terrible.
Fish is very important, and there are various options. Salmon and sardines are the best, and you can eat them from a can (which means there is no preparation). If you can get wild caught salmon (frozen is okay, though not ideal), you can sear it in butter with a little bit of olive oil (to keep the butter from burning).
Canned salmon can be mixed into scrambled eggs comfortably, hopefully in an iron skillet with minimal oil. (Aside from butter, which is of limited use in frying things, the best oil is pig grease. In terms of other oils, the only ones that are even safe are olive oil and avocado oil. Olive oil is not great for frying, given that its molecular structure changes at a low boiling point, so I recommend only using it to mix with butter to prevent the butter from burning.)
I do not recommend chicken at all, really. Chicken is a very low quality meat, and even the chickens marked as “free range” and “natural” tend to not be great. Chicken does fit into the diet technically, but you need to have some idea where it is coming from.
Although most people are probably not eating it, any kind of game meat is also good. Deer, rabbit, squirrel, whatever.
The only vegetables I would recommend, and only after at least six weeks of nothing but meat, would be fermented vegetables, including (natural, live) sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, or whatever else you can find that is fermented. These are very good for your gut health.
You Might Feel Bad at First
You might get diarrhea, headaches, tiredness, brain fog, and various other symptoms when you start only eating meat. This is normal. You can think of it like coming off of drugs. You get withdrawal symptoms.
If you’ve been eating total crap food for years, i.e., processed foods (or “ultraprocessed foods”), you might want to ease into a meat-only diet to avoid some of the worst symptoms. Personally, I would go cold turkey, but everyone is different. Eat the rice and/or potatoes if you have a hard time going straight into no carbs, then cut those out.
Make sure to put enough salt on your food. You should use sea salt, and be liberal with it.
If You’re Already in Shape
If you’re where you want to be in terms of your weight, I think that eating “clean carbs” (white rice and potatoes) is fine and may help with your workout routine. After you’ve shed the excess weight, you can also eat various vegetables.
I do not recommend any carbs that contain the shell or gluten, which includes all forms of wheat and flour used in bread, pasta, and so on. No one should really eat that stuff ever. But the clean carbs can help with energy levels and workouts, if you’re already in shape.
As long as you’re significantly overweight, however, I don’t recommend any carbs.
Although I am pro-liquor in general, you are going to want to cut that out if you are trying to lose weight. Maybe you can do a drink once a week, and consider that “cheat day,” but don’t have it be beer, ever. Maybe if you did red win, that would count for your antioxidants. In fact, maybe “carnivore plus red wine” is the perfect diet. I would need to investigate that. But all alcohol is high calorie and can slow metabolism (even though it does not actually turn into sugar in the body like carbs).
If you’re going to drink significantly, you should just do vodka (with ice or soda water, as needed).
Where is the Plateau and What Do You Do Then?
Obviously, you won’t just lose weight forever by eating only meat. Eventually, your body is going to stabilize, stop shedding fat, and start storing some of the fat and protein.
The plateau is going to be different for everyone, dependent on their physiology and their age, but it’s fair to say it should come at some point between “overweight” and “shredded abs.”
We haven’t talked at all about exercise here, and that is typically what would get you over the plateau. Exercise should always be incorporated in any fitness routine, though frankly, when it comes to being overweight, diet is at least 80% of the issue, and people can lose most of that weight without actually exercising, or with only doing regular walks.
There is much advice I have about exercise, but that should be in a separate article.
Aside from exercise, the other thing that can make a big difference is fasting or intermittent fasting. Fasting means not eating anything for a long period. “Intermittent fasting” is not really fasting, and just means skipping breakfast and eating a late lunch. Fasting has huge health benefits, and it should be done by everyone, though I understand most people are not going to want to do it. However, intermittent fasting, which is usually classified as “only eating within an 8-hour window every day” tends to boost metabolism, while not having most of the other benefits of real fasting.
If you’re getting serious, I recommend doing a 3-day fast every month, with nothing but water, and, if you want, coffee. Obviously, you should build up to that by doing shorter periods, starting with simply skipping breakfast. If you get on the “intermittent fasting” program, which basically means just eating one big meal per day, you are already doing a 24-hour fast, so you shouldn’t have a hard time doing 48 hours. You will feel hungry at first, but trust me, the results are worth it.
Also, whenever you are losing fat, note that the number on the scale is not necessarily that important. When you are losing fat, you should be gaining muscle. You should also drink a lot of water (and will be more drawn to water when dieting), which will offset the scale. The only real way to tell if you’re losing fat, short of some expensive process, is to pinch the fat on your belly and see how much of it there is.
“But I Enjoy Eating These Things”
Every time I’ve written about health, people have responded that they like eating the things I recommend against eating. I have even heard that “bread is a part of white culture.”
My response to this is: it’s your life and you can do whatever you want. Saying “but I like it” doesn’t sound any different to me than a junkie saying “but I like fentanyl.” It’s your body and your choice, I’m not your dad. Do what you want to do. I’m just telling you that you are delusional if you think you can have a healthy body while eating unhealthy food.
In my experience, “cheat days” are not really helpful, as if you stop eating crap and then decide to “reward yourself,” you just end up feeling terrible, as your body is no longer used to processing shitty food. That said, if it is important to you, it is true that eating bad food once or twice a month will not make any significant difference overall.
If you’re going to do cheat days, I would try to keep them as clean as possible. That is, if you really want a pizza, rather than going to Domino’s, get a gourmet pizza made with all natural ingredients. You will certainly have saved enough money to buy a $30 pizza by changing your diet.
Personally, I would recommend only “cheating” for social reasons. If you go to a restaurant with family or friends, you can usually order a meat dish, but if you are at some event, such as a holiday gathering, where people are offering you foods not in your regimen, this is a good place to just be pro-social and eat the thing in question (as long as it is not some totally processed garbage).
Nothing to Lose But Your Fat
Various “authorities” will claim this doesn’t work. In fact, it does work, and I did it myself after gaining weight during that stupid coronavirus hoax. Granted, I did it in conjunction with a significant workout routine, and I treated it like a religion (as I think it is a part of religion). But there is simply no way to cut out carbs and not lose weight, and there is no health risk.
There is no reason not to try this. You do not have to count calories, which is what most diets still involve, and therefore you do not have to feel hungry. (Calorie restriction as a diet method has about the same rate of success as Alcoholics Anonymous, which is effectively zero.)
Unless you enjoy being overweight, there is no reason not to do what I am telling you to do. I promise it is a lot safer than Ozempic.
Remember
There are a lot of things in life that you do not have control over. In fact, you don’t have control over much. One of the things you do have control over is what you put into your body. I would go so far as to say that if you can’t control what you put into your body, you are not going to be able to control anything else. Therefore, the diet issue goes beyond simply taking care of your health and looking good, but extends into the spiritual realm.
All religious people and most philosophers considered there to be a very important connection between the body and the spirit, and believed that a healthy body and a healthy spirit go together. But there is no clear way to develop a healthy spiritual life and have this in turn change your body. There is a clear way to change your diet and increase your mental acuity, your confidence, self-esteem, and sense of purpose.
I have said many times before: if you’re fat, the only thing you need to be thinking about is becoming un-fat. You do not need to be thinking about politics or women or anything else. Of course, you will think about those things on your journey to losing the weight, but if you are not fit, the primary focus of your life should be on fitness, above all else.