Who Might Benefit from a Strict Carnivore Diet?

A strict carnivore diet may seem too restrictive and hard to follow but, in this post, I will argue that this is the best option among various versions of the carnivore diet for those:

Who are new to this diet
Who want to fix urgent health problems
Who want to lose a few pounds of excess body fat quickly.

What is a strict carnivore diet?

In this post, a strict carnivore diet is defined as a diet that consists of just ruminant meat, fat, and organs. Salt is optional but there should be no plant-based food, drinks, or anything artificial on this diet.

This diet only includes the best quality meat that you can eat on the carnivore diet.

Ruminant meat (e.g. beef, bison, lamb, goat) resembles most of what our ancestors used to eat and is nutritionally superior to other meats (e.g. pork, poultry).

The reason behind this is that ruminant animals have a unique digestive system that allows them to extract and utilize nutrients more efficiently than non-ruminant animals. They tend to have lower levels of polyunsaturated fats and more favorable omega 6 to omega 3 ratios and are generally better raised than pork and poultry.

Ruminant (beef) is also reported to be the most commonly consumed food by long-term carnivores (six months and longer).

The inclusion of organ meat makes this diet nutrient-dense and ensures that you get an abundance of all the essential nutrients that your body needs. While some people don’t really need to eat organ meat to be healthy on this diet, those looking to fix urgent health issues with this diet might benefit from including it in their diet.

The inclusion of ruminant fat is to make sure that you get enough fat, your main source of energy on the carnivore diet which is also critical in helping your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins.

If you eat fatty meat cuts with a lot of visible fat on them, you don’t need to add extra animal fat trimmings. But if you mainly get your meat from supermarkets or grocery stores, they are generally very lean and you do need to buy extra fat to make sure you get enough.

If you want to try out the carnivore diet for the first time

If you want to try out the carnivore diet to see whether it works for you, a strict carnivore diet is the best option, in my opinion.

By starting with a restrictive but also the best version of this diet, you are likely to experience more benefits and experience them quicker and it will be a huge motivation to keep you going.

If you start with a broad version of this diet, for example, that includes dairy and pork, and find that you are not feeling that good, you may conclude too soon that this diet isn’t for you while it might turn out that cheese or pork is the problem. A simple ruminant-based diet will take out all the guesswork for you.

Think of it like going to the gym to build muscles and get in shape. If you choose a good gym with supportive instructors and put in 100 percent effort for three months, you are likely to see results quickly and will be motivated to continue training.

On the other hand, if you join a gym with literally no support and poor facilities, you might begin with going there three times a week and then drop to twice a week, then a few times a fortnight because there are other things that are more important than a gym session. You will unlikely see the results that you want. Naturally, you’ll soon feel discouraged and decide that the gym is not for you.

Also, if you decide to try this strict diet out, try to commit for at least 3 months. If that is too daunting for you then try it for 30 days first, eat nothing but ruminant meat, fat, and organs and drink only water.

If you can do it for 30 days, I believe you will have no problems lasting a year or more. Those first few days to a couple of weeks are the hardest days, but once you get over those adaptation symptoms, you should be on autopilot mode and I believe it’s going to be super easy from then on.

There is a good chance that you’ll want to stick to this diet for life and never go back to your previous diets because you never feel that good before and only now genuinely know what it means to be truly healthy.

If you want to fix an urgent health problem

If you want to fix an urgent health problem, a strict carnivore diet of just ruminant meat, fat, and organs is also the best one to follow, in my opinion.

With this clean and simple diet, you will feed your body with the best quality food that is also the most nutrient-dense possible. You will be cutting out all plant-based food and processed food and drinks and, therefore, eliminate plant toxins and harmful chemicals from your diet.

Feeding your body with quality nutrients while stopping the influx of dietary toxins will create an optimal condition for your body to do what it is very well capable of doing: fixing what needs to be fixed and healing the body from the inside out.

The right food can indeed be your medicine and also potentially the cheapest and most powerful medicine you can find. Not only it treats but also has the potential to fix the root causes of many health problems.

There is substantial evidence that demonstrates the healing potential of this diet.

The International Center for Medical Nutritional Intervention (ICMNI), based in Budapest, Hungary, has been using a high-fat animal-based to treat many health conditions successfully including diabetes, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and intestinal permeability since 2012.

If you are interested, please check out their diet protocol as well as a few success cases that they have published.

While they do allow certain plant foods in certain cases, if they have a patient with metastatic cancer, a patient who underwent several cycles of chemotherapy, or a patient with an autoimmune condition, then there is no question that he or she will need to be on a full animal-based high-fat diet with just meat, fat, and organ meat.

With this simple but effective diet protocol, they have been able to treat a variety of health conditions, from epilepsy, diabetes, and Crohn’s disease to cancer. You can check out success cases as well as other related research work on their website.

Please note that I have no medical background and simply present the information here based on my research and personal experience. If you have some health issues that you would like to resolve with this diet, please seek advice from your healthcare providers and do your own research.

If you want to lose a few pounds fast

If you want to lose a few pounds quickly, following a strict carnivore diet of just ruminant meat, fat and organs can be very effective.

Even some long-term carnivore dieters say that when they want to lose a few pounds quickly, they’d go zero-carb and eat just meat, mostly beef, only.

Because there is only a negligible amount of carbs on this diet, your body will be forced to burn fat for fuel and will effortlessly dig into the extra fat reserve that you want to lose.

While some people can handle a small amount of carbs, for example from milk and honey, many people will find it difficult to control their carb intake and it’s easier to cut it out altogether than try to limit consumption.

A major problem with carbs, i.e. sugar is that it is hugely rewarding and leads to overeating very easily. You may just want a couple of teaspoons of honey a day but, before you know it, you may progress to adding bananas, mangos and other sweet food to your diet and it’s difficult to stop. Animal studies even found that “sugar and sweet reward can not only substitute to addictive drugs, like cocaine, but can even be more rewarding and attractive“. [1, 2 ]

So, if you have tried other diets and failed to get rid of a few stubborn pounds, try going zero carbs and eat just ruminant, fat and organs. If you need motivation or want to see evidence that this diet is effective for weight loss, please do check out thousands of testimonials on Dr. Shawn Baker’s website.

What will the menu look like on this diet?

On this diet, you’ll be eating just fatty steak every day (e.g. beef, lamb, goat, bison, and buffalo) and a bit of organ meat (liver, heart, kidney, brain, etc.) a few times a week.

You don’t need to eat a lot of organ meat. As a general guide, if you eat organ meat three times a week then you don’t need to eat more than 100 grams each time.

If you can’t get fatty cuts of meat from your local shops, then you may need to supplement with fat trimmings.

The IMNCI recommends adding 35 grams of animal fat to every 100 grams of average meat cut that you get from the grocery store.

If you can’t afford steak, budget cuts or ground beef and ground lamb are just as nutritious.

This diet may seem boring to many people but you’ll just have to try it out to believe it. It is not boring at all. If you eat only when you are genuinely hungry, plain meat will taste delicious every time. And if plain meat doesn’t taste good to you, simply stop eating, your body is telling you that it has had enough.