If you are new to the carnivore diet and want to know what those long-term hardcore carnivores eat in a day, check this out.
Table of Contents
- Joe and Charlene Anderson – 24 years of carnivore
- Dr. Lisa Wiedeman- 13 years of carnivore
- Kelly Hogan – 13 years of carnivore
- Dr. Robert Kiltz – 11 years of carnivore
- Dr. Anthony Chaffee – 10 years of carnivore
- Dr. Shawn Baker – 6 years of carnivore
- Mikhaila Peterson – 5 years of carnivore
- Dr. Kevin Stock – 5 years of carnivore
- Common features of hardcore carnivores’ diet
Joe and Charlene Anderson – 24 years of carnivore
Joe and Charlene Anderson are truly hardcore carnivores.
They have been on the carnivore diet for 24 years and seem to be in perfect health.
They started this meat-only diet in 1998 because of Charlene’s numerous health problems.
They are still carnivores today and their diet is very simple.
They only eat beef, in particular, untrimmed rib-eye steaks which have plenty of fat on them.
They just eat one meal a day at dinnertime and eat until they are full.
Joe usually eats 2 to 3 pounds and Charlene has 1 to 2 pounds of beef a day, just steaks and no side dishes, desserts, or treats.
Their beef is just ordinary grass-raised and grain-finished from the grocery stores.
They cook their steaks from medium to medium well.
They don’t eat organ meat or drink bone broth.
They don’t use spices or salt.
They don’t take supplements.
They just drink water.
And they don’t eat out.
Dr. Lisa Wiedeman- 13 years of carnivore
Dr. Lisa Wiedeman, an optometric physician, has been on the carnivore diet for 13 years.
She started the carnivore diet in 2009 because of her sugar and processed food addiction and binge eating which caused her many health issues.
She had found out about this meat-only diet when she stumbled upon a low-carb group called “Zeroing In On Health”.
Although the diet has cured her eating disorder, improved her health and changed her life, Dr. Wiedeman has kept quiet about it until recently.
With a lot more people trying out the carnivore diet, there’s this criticism that the diet may work for them in the short term with quick weight loss and health improvements but will ultimately kill them in the long term with heart diseases and the like.
Therefore, Dr. Wiedeman felt the need to come out and tell people about how she’s still in great health after over a decade-long of eating meat only.
In an earlier interview in June 2022, she mentioned that she ate meat and seafood, and sometimes had cheese, heavy cream, and sour cream.
But in the latest interview that she did with Dr. Robert Kiltz in September 2022, she said that she eats just meat, eggs, and butter and that’s it. She does use salt.
Dr. Lisa Wiedeman provides carnivore health coaching and regularly hosts in-person Meat Ups events for those who want to connect across the East Coast of the United States.
Kelly Hogan – 13 years of carnivore
Kelly Hogan has been on the carnivore diet for 13 years.
She started a low-carb diet because she was obese and later on found out about the zero-carb all-meat diet and decided to switch.
In the beginning, she was just eating the cheapest meat she could find and ate a lot of burger patties because it was cheap and convenient.
Now her diet is about 85% beef and the remaining 15% is bacon and chicken wings and a small amount of eggs, pork chops or chicken thighs.
She does have dairy but only occasionally (about five times a month) because it helps to keep her weight stable.
She still just buys what is most convenient and affordable and that means grass-fed, grain-finished beef.
She had tried eating grass-fed beef before and didn’t feel any difference.
She doesn’t eat organ meat.
She uses salt and a bit of seasoning.
She eats three times a day.
Dr. Robert Kiltz – 11 years of carnivore
Dr. Robert Kiltz is a fertility specialist, and founder and director of CNY Fertility based in Central New York.
In his 30s, Dr. Kiltz began to suffer from various health problems including migraine, bowel problems, arthritis, kidney stone, and hemorrhoid.
He looked at diet to improve his health and started with Paleo before moving to keto.
But in his 50s, he discovered some people who ate only meat and were very healthy so he decided to try it out.
In less than one month, his arthritis, bowel bleeding, migraine, and psoriasis were completely gone. These weren’t resolved by the Paleo or ketogenic diet and he realized that plant food was not good for humans.
Dr. Kiltz started the carnivore diet when he was 55, he’s now 66 and so he has been on the carnivore diet for about 11 years.
His diet is very simple.
He says he eats pretty much the same thing every single day.
He just eats the most fatty meat he can get and that is almost always fatty ribeye steak seasoned with a bit of salt and butter.
He does eat liver sometimes.
He likes to cook his steak from blue to rare.
He would sometimes have treats which are ice cream (made from heavy cream, egg, vanilla extract, sugar, and salt) and dark chocolate but it is few and far between that he does.
He said that because he’s been a carnivore for a very long time, if he goes out and eats with friends and happens to have French fries cooked in duck grease dipped in sour cream, it doesn’t bother him.
He believes a little bit of simple sugar is fine, but greens and complex carbs are problematic.
He eats just one meal a day at dinnertime.
He thinks if you want to eat one meal a day, it’s better to eat at dinnertime than at breakfast because you can avoid the tendency of snacking and munching throughout the day.
He used to drink coffee but has given it up recently.
Dr. Kiltz doesn’t do a lot of exercises which he believes stresses your body. His view is that gentle exercises (e.g. a nature walk) and being active in doing what you love are the best for the body.
Dr. Anthony Chaffee – 10 years of carnivore
Dr. Anthony Chaffee is an American medical doctor and a former professional rugby player.
He currently practices in Australia and specializes in neurosurgery and provides private consultations in the functional medicine area.
In his 20s, when he was told by his biology lecturer about plant toxins in ordinary plant food, he decided to drop the veges and just eat meat and felt great.
He said that he ate strict carnivore for 5 years but then he was a part of a professional rugby team and was traveling and so he fell off strict carnivore but his diet has always been a meat-centered diet.
When he watched Dr. Shawn Baker talking on Joe Rogan’s podcast about the carnivore diet, he realized that was the exact diet he was on before which made him feel amazing and so he decided to go back to eating strict carnivore again.
He’s now been on a strict carnivore diet for the last five years.
He follows the principle of “no plants, no sugar, nothing artificial” with regard to his food and drinks.
He eats mostly just beef, ribeye steak in particular.
He says he’d eat about two pounds of ribeye on average and generally eats one meal a day. But if he works out a lot, he’d eat another meal so it’d be about four to five pounds of meat a day in total.
He does eat other meat (e.g. lamb, chicken, pork, eggs and fish) but rarely. The bulk of his diet is fatty beef.
He only eats organ meat on rare occasions and doesn’t believe that you need them.
He tries to get 70% to 80% of his calories from fat.
He never counts calories and says he’d stop eating when meat doesn’t taste good anymore.
He uses no seasoning and takes no supplements.
He just drinks water and says that coffee causes muscle aches post-training for him.
Dr. Chaffee is active on Instagram and has a popular YouTube channel and a podcast as well.
Dr. Shawn Baker – 6 years of carnivore
Dr. Shawn Baker is an orthopedic surgeon, a lifelong athlete, and an active advocate of the carnivore diet.
Despite being very physically active, in his mid-forties, Dr. Baker began to gain weight, develop metabolic syndromes, and suffer from sleep apnea and aches.
He began to change his diet and ended up with the ketogenic diet before discovering the carnivore diet.
Dr. Baker has been on the carnivore diet for around 6 years.
He says he usually eats twice a day.
For breakfast, he would have steaks most of the time or some eggs or salmon.
For the second meal in the early evening, if he doesn’t have steak, eggs, or salmon, he’d have some cheese or full-fat Greek yogurt. He does not take any vitamin or mineral supplements.
His diet is 95% meat and the rest is eggs, seafood, and dairy (cheese and yogurt).
In a more recent interview (May 2022), he said that he now eats mostly steak and eggs and he’d eat two to four pounds of meat plus one to two dozen of eggs a day.
Meat has been the center of his diet since he started although sometimes he adds a bit of dairy and he has tried fruit but didn’t feel good with it.
He said he feels the best on just pure meat.
Baker’s carnivore diet approach is non-dogmatic and pretty relaxing. He doesn’t emphasize the nose-to-tail principle or the importance of organ meat.
He recommends people eat any food that comes from an animal that they feel good with.
Mikhaila Peterson – 5 years of carnivore
Mikhaila Peterson has been on the carnivore diet for around 5 years.
Mikhaila suffered from a long list of health problems that followed her from childhood to adulthood (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, depression, anxiety, bipolar type II, idiopathic hypersomnia, Lyme disease, psoriasis, and dyshidrotic eczema).
After a lot of struggles and a relentless search for a cure, she found through an elimination process that a beef-only diet worked for her. She was able to get off over 10 medications and put several, seemingly incurable, life-long diseases into complete remission.
In the beginning, she was on a strict “beef, salt, and water” diet.
Nowadays, her version of the carnivore diet includes high-fat beef, lamb, elk, and other ruminants. Around 90% of her diet is beef and lamb.
She used to be unable to have chicken but now she can have chicken without triggering autoimmune symptoms.
She uses salt but no other seasonings.
She generally eats once or twice a day, mostly ribs, about a pound and a half.
She doesn’t take any vitamin or mineral supplements.
She drinks alcohol occasionally.
Dr. Kevin Stock – 5 years of carnivore
Dr. Kevin Stock is a dentist and an advocate of the carnivore diet.
He has been on full carnivore since 2018.
He says 80 to 90% of his diet is from beef that he buys from local farmers but he would also eat lean chicken and pork for body composition goals.
Because he generally just buys conventionally raised chicken and pork, he doesn’t like to eat their non-ideal fat which can be high in PUFAs because of their corn and soy diet. But he’d eat the fat from ruminants which has a better quality.
He’d add some seafood and eggs and sometimes a bit of carbs (white potatoes and white rice) for body composition purposes.
He recommends beginners to eat as follows based on his experience:
- Focus on fatty meat cuts, especially beef and other ruminants
- Your go-to beef cuts should be steaks (ribeye, sirloin, strip, chuck eye); roasts (Prime rib, chuck, brisket); ground beef; organs only if you want (he thinks organ is not necessary)
- Other meats you can eat are lamb, pork, chicken, and fish.
Dr. Kevin Stock runs a coaching program called “Meat Health Academy”.
Common features of hardcore carnivores’ diet
One common feature of those veteran carnivores is that fatty beef consistently makes up around 90% of their diet.
Their cooking is pretty simple. Most of the time they stick to just fresh meat that is lightly cooked.
They don’t use much seasoning and just drink water.
None of them meal-plan or worry too much about organ meat.
And they are all in great shape and seem to be in great health as well.
Other posts you might be interested in:
Is Carnivore the Best Anti-Aging Diet Around?
Carnivore Diet for Beginners: 15 Tips for Success
How to Lose the Last Few Pounds on the Carnivore Diet?
Grass-fed vs Grain-fed Beef on the Carnivore Diet
Do You Really Need to Fast on the Carnivore Diet?
References
Charlene improves sleep, cardiovascular health, digestion on the carnivore diet
Joe and Charlene Anderson: more than 20 years eating only meat
The Carnivore Diet – Shawn Baker, MD
Dr. Kiltz’s Carnivore Conversations Episode 30 – Dr. Lisa Wiedema
What Dr. Chaffee Eats in a Day & How to Build Muscle on a Carnivore Diet
Father and daughter swear by meat, water, salt diet: we have questions
Mikhaila Peterson ONLY Eats Meat! (Jordan Peterson’s Daughter)- Heavy Checklist
Special Guest Interview with Dr. Shawn Baker, MD
Disclaimer: The information in this post is for reference purposes only and is not intended to constitute or replace professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified medical professional before making any changes to your diet or lifestyle. Please check out our disclaimer for more detail.