There's a lack of variety, and I don't know about you. This just gets boring. I've tried all the diets. I've done probably 15 different diets, 20 diets over my life. And every time I lose interest because they're just boring. They're restrictive. You just can't, quote unquote, can't eat certain things. So the minute that you crave that thing, all of a sudden, oh no, it's a moral dilemma. It's a choice. And now you have to choose do I fail or do I continue and feel restricted? Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this twice-a-week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition, and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle, and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits and Weights community, welcome to another bonus solo episode of the Wits and Weights podcast. You never know when these are going to drop, so make sure to subscribe or follow and catch these bonus episodes when they come out. Today's episode is called The Carnivore Diet and Why Most Rigid Diets Fail. And it was an answer to a question posted in the Wits and Weights Facebook community as part of the Ask Philip Weekly Thread, where I answer member questions live every Friday. If that sounds like something you need or want or would find value in, search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in my show notes to join the group. It's totally free. You'll have the chance to ask me specific questions for your situation and get direct no BS answers to take your results to the next level. Let's play today's episode, The Carnivore Diet and Why Most Rigid Diets Fail. This question is from Jerry. He is a current client athlete of mine. He's had spectacular results because you know he's following the plan. And he came to me because he had done the carnivore diet before. He knows how to lift, strong guy, you know, concerned about his health and longevity, but also physique and all the other things we all care about. And something wasn't quite fitting in his lifestyle. It wasn't quite working. This this is why, this is why he sought me out and wanted to understand the education and the science behind it, but then apply it and actually get results. So he's getting the results. And I thank you, Jerry, for posting this question in our Facebook group so that everyone can learn from your experience and the answer to the question. He didn't have to do this, everyone, right? Jerry could reach out to me any day as part of our private client uh relationship and ask a question, which he does, but I know he did this to help the community learn as well. So I appreciate that. So here's this question: What are your thoughts on the carnivore diet? Specifically, I adhered pretty strictly to the carnivore diet for about four months, a few years ago. I lost 15 pounds, had some improvements in my blood work, triglycerides of all things came down significantly, some improved digestion after initial two weeks, et cetera. Didn't maintain it because it was just too restrictive long term. And for those watching the video, you can see I highlighted that statement in yellow because you're already answering your own question, Jerry, right? And I understand your question's kind of a leading one because you've already learned through the process why these kinds of diets may or may not work for people. Uh continuing on, he says, Do you think people's success on the diet is mostly just incidental due to the reduction in total caloric intake, like eating more satiating whole foods? So I highlighted that as well. Do the reduction in total caloric intake and the general benefits of reducing carbohydrate intake for folks that may be more insulin resistant. I'm going to address that part especially a little bit later on, but I like the way you worded it for folks that may be more insulin resistant. So the assumption being reduced carbs may be helpful for that specific population, as opposed to necessarily anyone. Or do you think there's something more specific going on with the carnivore diet that's resulting in benefits for some people, at least for as long as they are able to adhere? Reason for the question is, and this is the good part, okay? I've lost just about as much weight by getting serious about my calorie and macro tracking in the short time we've been working together while eating a much more balanced and sustainable diet, albeit fairly low carb, given my specific family history metabolism. And I'm glad he threw that last comment in there because I want everyone to know that even on a flexible diet, even when you're tracking calories and macros and you have all the freedom in the world to pick whatever food you need to make that happen, you still have to make, you still want to make trade-offs for managing hunger, for example, which is like what I talked about on episode 99 with Brandon de Cruz about calorie density, food quality, and so on. And we still have to keep our protein pretty high in relative terms to the calories, which then causes your fats and carbs to be lower. So the when you're deep into a diet or you're on an aggressive diet like Jerry is, because his metabolism is high enough to do that and he lifts a lot, and he has good insulin sensitivity and all that. Um, the carbs still end up being quote unquote low. They might be in like the low hundred grams or something like that. Now, that's that's a far cry from keto, which could be 30 grams or zero grams, uh, or being in a surplus where you're eating 3,000 calories and you're still keeping carbs extremely low, right? That that's what we mean by low carb. But specifically, Jerry asked about the carnivore diet. So, first of all, what is the carnivore diet? Uh, I'm not gonna name all the names because the whole thing is really uh a big um uh how do I call it? It's a sales strategy, it's a program, it's one of these. I I will call it a fad diet. Let's just call it what it is, like many. You know, it comes along and it it has a sexy appeal to it. It's simple to understand. And what it is is you eat only animal products, meat, airy, uh, airy, meat, eggs, and dairy. And there's a lot of great stuff in those foods. I mean, those foods, if you are not um a vegetarian or vegan, especially vegan, or have intolerances to them, definitely should be in your diet uh for the protein, right? For the fats, for the uh whole foods, the calorie density and all that, or not calorie density, um the satiety. But the carnivore diet is only animal products, nothing else. No fruits, vegetables, starches, grains, you name it. So by proxy, the result is it's a zero carb diet. Now, maybe not quite zero carbs because dairy can have carbs in it, but it's close. No added sugars, no high fat, high carb, ultra-processed foods. And I say it that way because a lot of people, when the keto diet became popular, they were like, Yeah, we're cutting out carbs and we're going to fat. And that's why, you know, it's great. And you we cut out all these processed carbs. Well, processed foods, if you look at most of them, are fats and carbs. They're the combination of fats and carbs, which is a delicious combination for the human brain. And what part of the reason we overconsume them. So I always want to be clear about ultra-processed foods being not just carbs, you know, unless, you know, air-popped salted popcorn. But compare the palatability of that, you're you're you're gonna only eat so much of that versus buttered popcorn, right? Like which which both you can buy in a bag. Um, alcohol, I I suspect, you know, for a lot of people this means they cut out alcohol because it's a processed grain-based food and so on. So it cuts out all that stuff. I mean, it cuts out a lot, all right. So, what I want to do to play devil's advocate is first talk about the short-term perceived benefits. Now, perceived and actual in some ways, but uh perceived benefits of a rigid diet or aka a fad diet. Okay. So, first, when you cut out a whole bunch of food groups, or in this case, you say you only eat these food groups, meat, eggs, dairy, you are eating then only whole foods, and these are highly satiating whole foods. Protein is the most satiating macro. Fat is pretty satiating, you know, animal products are gonna have both. They're not gonna have many carbs, and they're gonna have a high calorie uh density, or I should say I not high calorie density, a low calorie density uh in in many cases compared to processed foods, right? Meat can still be uh somewhat calorie dense depending on the cut, but in relative terms to uh whole foods is low calorie density, it's not as low calorie density as plants, but we'll get to that. Anyway, you're eating only high whole foods that fill you up and you're not eating any processed foods, and so you do reduce your calories. So going back to Jerry's, you know, implication, is it because of a reduction in total calorie intake? That is the massive underlying foundation of any of these diets. When I hear someone did keto and lost X number of pounds so quickly, I think, okay, there's a few reasons for that. The first is the loss in water weight and glycogen when you come off carbs. So that could be a few pounds right off the bat. And then it's the lack of overconsumption because you're not eating ultra-processed foods. And we know from studies, and I talked about this with Dr. Bill Campbell and others on the show, that if you are given an unfettered food environment where you have ultra-processed foods available, you're going to overconsume by 500 calories a day versus a whole foods-only diet. Well, that alone would lead to a one pound a week difference between those two groups. So if you were more or less maintaining your weight, or even if you were gaining a little weight slowly over time and you're like, oh, I'm overweight. I need to go on a diet. And so you start keto or you start carnivore, you cut out all these processed foods, you're just naturally, without tracking, going to eat around 500 calories less a day on average. And so you might start losing a pound a week, or it'll be a pound of a week of intake less than you were doing before. And before you know it, you're losing weight. And it's actually probably, it's probably more than that, depending on how much processed foods you were eating, because the average American, the average Western diet is something like 50 or 60 percent ultra-processed foods. And so this is where you hear these big claims of, oh, I lost, you know, 40 pounds in two months, which would be something like five pounds a week, which you think of that. That is extremely fast. And if you follow this show at all, this show, see, I'm already, I'm already acting like it's on the podcast and it will be. But if you follow me or my stuff, my content at all, you'll know that we don't want to lose weight too quickly, or else we're gonna lose muscle. But that's beside the point. Uh, the fact that you have whole foods highly satiating, you eliminate ultra-processed foods is probably 95% of the equation. That's why people lose weight on these diets. It's exactly why. So, yes, that's right. Now, the statement about improved blood sugar control, if you're insulin resistant, I would say that is a true statement to some extent, because if you eliminate carbs, you're not going to have the spikes in blood sugar from carbs. But I would call this a red herring. Uh, I think that's the logical fallacy. I'd have to ask my oldest daughter, um, who has learned has, I think she's in her second year of learning about logical fallacies. And I'll tell you, anytime we read the news, we look at what happens with politicians, she's like fallacy, fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. Pretty much everything everyone says in the media, and if it's a politician opening their mouth, it's going to be a logical fallacy. And uh, she's taught me that. But same thing in the fitness industry. There are a lot of logical fallacies. I think this is red herring, meaning uh it's a distraction because here's what happens your body is really good at compensating in so many ways. And there's something called physiological insulin resistance, where your body preserves glucose because you don't have any coming in by making your muscles more insulin resistant. Isn't that crazy? It's kind of like the uh counterintuitive idea that if you run and run and run and you run, you become this endurance athlete, your body's gonna compensate by becoming more efficient with its calories. So while you may be running to burn more calories, your body's saying, no, no, no, no, stop right there. You're trying to burn so many calories, so we need to be efficient with our calories. Well, the body can do the same thing with insulin resistance. So this is the important thing, though. If you have a diverse diet, all the different foods, fruits, vegetables, grains, meat, eggs, dairy, you know, some combination, doesn't have to be every single one of those, but a variety. And then you move a lot and you strength train, your body will become insulin sensitive and it's not a concern. The body's metabolically resilient, right? It's flexible. And you want your insulin to spike from an intake of carbs when you train, for example. Uh, muscle contractions and muscle mass both are sinks for glucose. So the actual act of training requires it, and the carrying around of muscle mass requires it. And so if you have a healthy lifestyle, you don't have to worry about it. Again, I'm not talking about, say, type one diabetics who've already who are born with a certain deficiency with insulin production. I'm not talking about type two diabetics either, who have crossed the rubicon in that realm. They may need a special diet to maintain their blood sugar control throughout the day. And even then, I would argue type one diabetics can have a moderate carb diet that's not a carnivore or keto totally cut carbs and be just fine if they, you know, if they work out, if they walk, if they eat at the right times, and if they um average out the glycemic index of their meals, right? Of the the glucose spikeability of their meals by averaging out with fibrous foods, with vegetables, with whole grains, and you know, um whole carbs. So the segue from that is that the carnivore diet, which has almost zero carbs, is being confounded in terms of benefits for insulin sensitivity with a diet that has zero ultra-processed refined carbs. My point is if you cut out all refined carbs, in other words, if you just go from a diet that has fruits, vegetables, grains, and all that, um, and is whole mostly whole foods, you're also going to mitigate blood sugar spikes without having to cut carbs. It's the type of carbs that often makes the difference, is my point. Ultra-processed refined carbs. There's reasons that it spikes your blood sugar, partly being the fact that you don't have to digest it and it gets confounded. So I wanted to go off on that tangent because I think it's important to understand that if you get improved blood sugar from dropping carbs, it may not be a direct cause and effect just because you eliminated all carbs. It's because you eliminated certain types of carbs. And maybe your diet and lifestyle weren't uh optimal to begin with. Okay, another benefit is that the carnivore diet and diets like it are elimination diets. If you think about it, you're eliminating a whole bunch of food groups. Uh, when I was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis, it's an it's a throat condition where these little nodules form, uh, migrate to your esophagus and it causes you to have trouble swallowing. Uh, one of the natural remedies was to eliminate a whole bunch of food groups. It was like eggs, dairy, grain. It was a whole bunch. And I said, no, I'm not, I am not doing that. Like when I think of sustainability and lifestyle, I'm not doing it. Are there other options? And there were. There's a medication that I'm able to take now, a biologic. Thank, thank goodness for modern medicine in some ways, that uh eliminates the problem altogether. And now I don't have to worry about it and I could eat whatever I want. But I could have done that elimination diet and seen if it worked for me. It wouldn't work for everyone anyway. Um, I know women who do an elimination diet for uh hormones, right? To see what kind of foods might be affecting your hormones. And so the fad diets in the um carnivore and keto and others may help you remove those intolerances and allergens, improve your gut health, improve your digestion in the short term so that you can identify what might be an issue for you if there is one. So that's a that's a positive. And you can use this technique in the short term to do that. And then you would add back in things that um that didn't seem, you know, you one at a time, you would add things back in to see if they didn't affect you for say a few weeks, and then continue to add more in until you identify the one that did. Another uh, I guess I can call it a benefit is the that it's a high protein diet. So that's good. You're basically forced into getting your protein. So it's no problem to get your protein. And then you get the associated nutrients from animal products, which I think are fantastic: B12, iron, zinc, and others that are in animal products, which is kind of the opposite of what a vegan might struggle with. They might be missing those and have to supplement them, right? And anything you restrict, anything you cut out is gonna result in these deficiencies. And then the last potential benefit is the placebo effect. We're telling us, we're telling ourselves that this diet works for everyone. It's so great. We're on the diet, we're following it, and there's like a placebo effect that then causes us to stick with it. We see uh weight loss and we say, okay, this diet really works. I'm gonna keep going with it. And you kind of amplify the effect as a result. Now, this isn't always a terrible thing in some cases where you take an action, you get a result, it's a win, you continue taking the action and it reinforces it. The problem's going to be is the cause and effect what you think it was? And that's where the real uh challenge comes. So now I'm gonna get into what are the actual long-term impacts of a rigid diet, especially the carnivore diet. And Jerry, I love the carnivore diet because it's it's so restrictive. It gets it's a good example for kind of the hypothetical of everything that can go wrong when you're on a diet like that. So let's go over the whole list here. All right. In no particular order, except the most important one I say for last, is going to be first of all, there's no fiber, there's no prebiotics. And there are so many things we don't even know yet about uh gut in the microbiome, like we're just discovering. But we do know that not having fiber is a problem for your bowel movements, right? It can cause constipation. It has risk for your health, for colon cancer, for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and then it affects your gut health. There's a lack of microbiome diversity. Yes, you can supplement with probiotics and prebiotics. You can always supplement with things, but what we have to remember is that the nutrients and compounds that come from foods are not the only things that we get from those foods. There are many other compounds that we don't even track, right? And I learned this from, I think, from Stronger by Science probably, that you know, one of the benefits of eating whole foods is you get these other things that we still don't always understand or have have necessarily labeled. We know some things like uh the what do you call them, phytonutrients, which the carnivore and keto and low-carb crowds will say, oh, they're they're bad because it's like the defense mechanism of the plants. And nothing could be further from the truth. They are all of the compounds in plants are uh aligned with our health and our history as humans, even if you want to take that route and talk about ancestral um diets. But anyway, no fiber, no prebiotics. The next thing is that there are massive nutrient deficiencies, huge nutrient deficiencies, vitamin C, flavonoids, carotenoids, glucosinolate, I don't know how to pronounce it, glucosinolates, and those three are phytonutrients in plants, folate, and then even the big ones like the electrolytes, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and then all the compounds I just said might be in plants that we don't even track, things like lutein and zexanthrin, okay, which I just discovered about that can affect eye health. And so you're just taking this massive risk of being uh of malnutrition, is what it comes down to. And even if you, you know, swallow uh hordes of vitamins every day, are you still getting what you can get with plants um that you might be missing out on for your health? You you just don't know. And and I think that's a big problem for this kind of diet. It's the reason that I started eating vegetables about what, 15, 20 years ago when I married my wife, and she's like, man, you're picky, and we got to get you eating vegetables. I said, All right, honey, help me out. Let's eat vegetables. I understand there's a benefit to them, and now I love them. I love most vegetables. There's a few that I can't stand, like many of us, but 95% of them I enjoy, and I know how much they contribute to my health in terms of nutrition and and so many other things, um, fiber and everything else. Okay, continuing on as to the impacts of a rigid diet, the abnormally high level of saturated fat, I really think is a true concern. Okay. I used to be a keto zealot, uh, keto, paleo, all that. And I was like, nah, saturated fat, the association with cardiovascular disease, that's just um that's that's there's industry, conflict of bias, or, or you know, if you're if you have a healthy lifestyle, then there's that's a confounding association. And, you know, look at look at countries like France that eat a rich diet high in saturated fat. Some of those arguments have some validity. I always concede that these things are more complicated than we think, but we also know there's a super tight correlation and I think demonstrated causation between high saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease. Why take the chance? And honestly, a diet that's so high in saturated fat generally looks like a restrictive diet anyway, and now you're missing out on other things. So naturally, by eating just animal products, you're going to have fat, saturated fat that goes well beyond 10% of your calories and well beyond one third of your fat. And I would say that that's probably not a prudent thing for most people's health. Glycogen. Okay, now we get into muscle building and energy and performance and all the things that we love to talk about here. Glycogen stores. Are basically completely depleted because you don't have anything coming in. This is going to impact your performance, your lifting progress, your ability to build muscle. You're going to have a catabolic environment, which is so carbs are anti-catabolic. Catabolic means the breakdown of tissue, right? What we want is an anabolic environment where we eat a bunch of protein, it gets constructed into new tissue like muscle, and it stays there. And when you don't have the carbs coming in, the carbs would normally spare the protein from being used as energy because the carbs are being used as energy. And so a zero carb environment will stunt your muscle growth. We know this. We know this from studies of, say, bodybuilders who are in a surplus and those that are on keto build significantly less muscle than those who are not. And why would you want that as a lifter, right? And when Jared came to me and he's a big, strong guy, and he made a lot of progress, he built a lot of strength and muscle. You know, now he's able to take that to a new level with the training environment or with this um, you know, having this anabolic environment where the carbs add some fuel and energy, recovery, performance, and so on. So that's a big deal that you're missing out on with a rigid diet like this. There's also mood and cognitive function with lower glucose. I can't tell you how important this is. I've seen many women that come to me as a client athlete who just have eaten low carb for years. We up their carbs, and all of a sudden, mood and clarity, brain function start to skyrocket, right? And their sleep improves, their stress goes down, overall stress load on the body goes down. That is a huge thing that we cannot discount. Now, I know Jerry mentioned that he had a lot of improvements in blood work and digestion and felt good and everything. And again, we have to think in relative terms. So, relative to an ultra-processed diet, an uncontrolled diet, a typical Western diet, something like the carnivore diet can cause improvements because it's in relative terms closer to where we want to be, but in sort of absolute terms compared to uh optimal, not even optimal, but really what we want for up for our health and for our ability to improve our body composition, strength, muscle, energy, and so on, it it falls far short, in my opinion. Um, and not just my opinion, I think it's backed up by the evidence. Okay, also, um, there's no antioxidants because you're eating a very limited set of foods, and this could have an impact on your oxidative stress over the long term, um, which is associated with longevity and aging. And so if those concern you, then that's a problem. And then potential hormone imbalances. So we do know there are studies that show varying levels of association between low carbs and imbalances or dysregulations of hormones. Insulin, thyroid, cortisol, leptin, ghrelin, the sex hormones, including um what they call functional hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is the absence of menstruation, the absence of a period, just because you don't have enough energy availability, not only calories, but the carbs themselves. And so my my women out there, ladies, uh, female client, athletes, uh embrace those carbs, really. Embrace the carbs because you might find a world of difference with your hormonal function. And anyone who's uh perimenopausal or postmenopausal and you feel like hormones are the bane of your existence right now, it could be that the carbs are too low. It could be, right? And if you're dieting and the carbs are low, that would that would have a similar effect. And so getting out of a diet and being at maintenance or a slight surplus for a while is a great way to recover that, especially if you can introduce the a decent amount of carbs. Um, it may also affect IFG1, which is growth factor. Uh, the evidence on this is a little bit shaky, so I'm not going to just claim that, but you know, possibly. And again, anytime you restrict and cut things out completely, it's going to have downstream effects for your physiology. Just common sense in the SIF SNF test, I think, should tell anybody that eating, you know, five types of foods instead of 500 types of foods may have negative consequences. Okay. Now, what's the biggest one of all? This is the one that we really truly care about. And that is you can't stick to it. It's not sustainable. It's socially isolating, right? You are now the weird one making all the weird requests, saying you can't do this, can't do this, can't have that, can't have that. And we use that language too. I can't, I can't, I can't. Like it's some rule that's that's fixed in stone against us. Um, you know, a slight improvement would be, well, I choose not to have this, I choose not to have that, you know, because whatever, but it's still socially isolating. There's a lack of variety, and I don't know about you, this just gets boring. I've tried all the diets. I've done probably 15 different diets, 20 diets over my life. And every time I lose interest because they're just boring. They're restrictive. You just can't, quote unquote, can't eat certain things. So the minute that you crave that thing, all of a sudden, oh no, it's a moral dilemma. It's a choice. And now you have to choose do I fail or do I continue and feel restricted? And so these are all attributes that caused almost any habit, not just dieting, but also your exercise and training program, um, trying to improve skills through personal development and personal improvement. If you cannot be consistent because of it's weird, it's boring, it's restrictive, then you're gonna fail. And also you tend to think of things in terms of the wagon, falling off the wagon because you've created this little uncomfortable wagon on a single tight track, and that's that's all you can do. And so you very easily can fall off of it. Whereas a flexible approach gives you this wide, broad avenue where you get to walk wherever you want and get to your destination, uh, with obstacles in the way and everything, no problem. So, what does failure mean? It means you're gonna regain weight, it means you're gonna feel inadequate, you're gonna lack confidence because you're not sure if anything really works, you're not gonna get the results you want, et cetera, et cetera. All right. So that if I didn't state my opinion, Jerry, by now, then uh now you now you have it. Okay. So long story short, is that these diets, carnivore, keto, whole 30, even Weight Watchers, right? Which puts points on things and and kind of limits your choices. Any of these diets, rigid, restrictive diets, you know, meal plans that are restrictive, they are deceptively simple because they limit your choices. So they say, here's your 10 choices. Boom, easy, go, right? You don't have to think. And then you realize how difficult that is because now you've taken off the table the other thousand choices that you would have had before. We want to expand our choices, right? We want to expand them to all foods. That's what we want. Yes, even alcohol. I know I had I've talked a lot lately about how cutting alcohol out could be good for multiple things, but you still want the choice, and it's your choice, and you can still fit it into your plan and still make progress. This is what flexible dieting is all about, and increasing your energy combined with all the lifestyle things like training activity and lifestyle. Okay, so the last thing, as Jerry said above when we introduced this question, this flexible approach is exactly what we ended up doing together. And now he's getting these results, incredible results, which at least match what he did before, but without the restriction that's going to cause him to gain the weight back and feel like a failure and feel like I'm not sure what actually works. So if you've tried diets like we talked about today, you are in the vast majority. In fact, I've never met anyone that hasn't tried a diet of some kind. Some people try over a hundred diets in their lifetime, lifetime, especially women, but there are plenty of men, myself included, who've tried dozens of diets. We all have, right? Sometimes many, many, many, many times. And it's a mindset thing, right? So I hope that answered your question, Jerry, about the carnivore diet, but I hope it answered the broader question about rigid versus flexible dieting and the fact that there is a better way. I hope you enjoyed this answer from the Ask Philip thread in the Wits and Weights Facebook group. Again, if you want to take advantage of this yourself so you can get closer to your physique and health goals, head over to our free Facebook community using the link in my show notes. Our Facebook group is a fast-growing community of people who want to use evidence-based principles to look like they lift. If you want to build muscle, lose fat, increase your metabolism, and crush your body composition goals, join the Wits and Weights Facebook group using the link in my show notes. If you can't access the show notes, just go to witsandweights.com and click on community at the top. Again, you could just go to witsandweights.com and click on community at the top. As always, stay strong and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. 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