A commenter writes,
I am halfway through week 3 of being on carnivore, and I believe I am feeling a little worse than when I started. Could this possibly just be one of those “it gets worse before it gets better” things. I am constantly running to the bathroom, feel exhausted, achy, not getting very good sleep…granted I did come straight from a horrible mostly fast food diet to this. I’m wondering how long I should stick this out minimum to really give it a chance.
My dear newly-born carnivore,
You are not alone. While it seems like there is a sea of folks around you who adapt almost immediately, who heal miraculously, who suddenly spout energy out of every pore and never crave sugar again in their life—this is not everyone.
In fact, I think these people are the minority. Sometimes people lie on the internet.
The carnivore diet is not a magic bullet.
(Nothing is a magic bullet, FYI.)
For most people switching to carnivore, there is an adaptation period. If you’re coming of a vegan or standard diet, you’ll go through fat adaptation—where your body re-learns how to use your fat-burning mechanisms. Even people switching from a keto or other low-carb diet approach can go through adaptation. I certainly did, switching from a modified low-FODMAP version of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
Adaptation symptoms can include the “keto flu” (where you feel achy and crappy), bad breath, weakness in the gym, extra-stinky body odor… but your adaptation will be individual for you.
After this period, I’ve observed that most healthyish humans go on to live and love life, etc.
However, there’s the rest of us. Those who aren’t so healthyish. Those of us who have long-haul autoimmune illnesses or what have you.
Often, because of the complex interactions in our bodies with the disease, and drugs, and dietary or lifestyle interventions, and who knows what else—there are complications.
These complications take time to unravel.
Hidden in that word—time—is a long period where your body works to heal itself.
Without the stress of fiber, or phytotoxins, or whatever vegetable matter you were sensitive to, your body can now get down to the hard business of dealing with deep seated issues that it never had bandwidth to deal with before.
These extra-tough health problems can include:
- Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth
- Oxalate Dumping
- Candida Overgrowth
- Leaky Gut
- And other things that science hasn’t figured out how to classify and name yet
The extra-unfortunate part of these hidden, deep seated problems is that your symptoms will often get worse before they can get better.
With myself, for example, in order for my body to get started healing from SIBO, it had to first purge out all the excess bacteria that was clogging my system. That meant a whoooollllleeee lot of bacteria-ridding exercises (think: boils, pneumonia, etc.) before my body could get to a point where it could start healing.
HOWEVER: don’t let this scare you. You probably were not on an immune system-suppressing drug for over a decade, and you probably didn’t have one of your teeth die without knowing it, because you are not me.
Your journey will be different, because you have a different set of genetics, a different background, different treatment strategies—a different story.
The point is, don’t give up.
Keep looking for a solution. Be kind to your body as it heals. Test and try and don’t be afraid to experiment. Show up for your life every day and do the best you can with what you have. Stay the course.
Sometimes the only way out is through, yanno?
Much love,
Anne