Have you ever felt like traditional methods just weren't cutting it for your health issues? After wrestling with persistent postpartum symptoms and exhausting all conventional solutions, I decided to take a drastic step and try the carnivore diet. Join me, Allie Kay, on the Selfish Mom Podcast as I recount my 22-day journey on this extreme diet. Battling brain fog, low energy, thinning hair, acne, poor sleep, and gut issues, I was desperate for a solution. Despite my skepticism about such radical changes, I felt it was time to explore this controversial diet to see if it could offer the relief I desperately needed.
In this episode, I share the highs and lows of my experience, from initial discomfort and constipation to the surprising benefits like reduced inflammation, weight loss, and sustained energy levels. I’ll walk you through my daily routine, which includes morning workouts, electrolyte intake, and hearty meals of grass-fed beef, salmon, and backyard chicken eggs. We'll discuss the importance of supplements like magnesium and electrolytes to combat muscle cramps, and I'll provide insights on dealing with occasional dietary deviations. As I extend my experiment to 45 days and plan to retest my blood work, I hope my journey offers valuable insights and inspiration for anyone struggling with similar health issues. Tune in to find out if the carnivore diet might just be the game-changer you need.
Have you ever felt like traditional methods just weren't cutting it for your health issues? After wrestling with persistent postpartum symptoms and exhausting all conventional solutions, I decided to take a drastic step and try the carnivore diet. Join me, Allie Kay, on the Selfish Mom Podcast as I recount my 22-day journey on this extreme diet. Battling brain fog, low energy, thinning hair, acne, poor sleep, and gut issues, I was desperate for a solution. Despite my skepticism about such radical changes, I felt it was time to explore this controversial diet to see if it could offer the relief I desperately needed.
In this episode, I share the highs and lows of my experience, from initial discomfort and constipation to the surprising benefits like reduced inflammation, weight loss, and sustained energy levels. I’ll walk you through my daily routine, which includes morning workouts, electrolyte intake, and hearty meals of grass-fed beef, salmon, and backyard chicken eggs. We'll discuss the importance of supplements like magnesium and electrolytes to combat muscle cramps, and I'll provide insights on dealing with occasional dietary deviations. As I extend my experiment to 45 days and plan to retest my blood work, I hope my journey offers valuable insights and inspiration for anyone struggling with similar health issues. Tune in to find out if the carnivore diet might just be the game-changer you need.
Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast, a podcast for you, so you don't get burnt out like a mother. I'm your host, allie Kay, and this is the Selfish Mom Podcast. Learn to prioritize your mental and physical health first, so we can thrive and not just survive. Let's take action, become our best selves together and redefine selfish as the most selfless thing we could do. Welcome to the Selfish.
Speaker 2:
Mom Podcast. I'm your host, allie Kay. What the heck is the carnivore diet? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing something extreme? And what's been happening the past 22 days that I've been doing the carnivore diet? Let's break it down, all right. So it's been a minute. We're just going to jumpstart this season and get right into it with something very extreme that I have been doing. I have been doing the carnivore diet.
Speaker 2:
Now let me preface this with so many things before everyone rolls their eyes and is like Allie, why are you doing the carnivore diet? It's so extreme. You don't believe in the extreme lifestyle. This isn't sustainable, 100%. I agree with that. But let me just give you a little bit of background. So you guys know I just had gosh. I didn't just have my third son, but I had my third son.
Speaker 2:
It's coming up on two years and since postpartum I have been experiencing brain fog, low energy, low mood. My hair is thinning drastically, acne, I'm not getting like quality sleep. I have this cellulite. That is just nothing that I can do. We'll get rid of the cellulite. My body's not really like responding to lifting weights, like I'm not building muscle, um more so than I was prior to years, um, gut issues. I feel like I have this inflammation on me and you can almost see it in my past videos Like it's not fat per se, it's just like this inflammation that no matter what I do you guys know I do all the things I move my body.
Speaker 2:
I am so conscientious of what I fuel my body because I've realized, like you know, when I eat all the processed things, I feel like crap. You know, low mood I I've been having like these, like energy crashes at 3 PM where I feel like I need to make like a double shot of espresso, just all the things where I always thought, okay, maybe this is just like symptoms of postpartum that are going to subside, and lately it feels like these symptoms have gotten worse. You guys know that I also moved over a year ago it's been exactly one year ago we sold our house, we drastically downsized, we moved into a rental house with one bathroom, no garage, just like very scattered. You know I always felt like, okay, maybe I feel so scattered brained and all the things, because you know we uprooted my life and just I'm not on my routine Like I usually am in my structure. But, guys, it's been one year since then, and nothing has gotten better and I feel like my symptoms are gradually getting worse and worse. And, like I said, I feel like I'm so conscious of what I feed my bodies. You know I, I drink the green juices, I drink a lot of plant-based foods, I do plant-based shakes. You know I, I really feel like I live a very clean lifestyle and you know, I'm moving my body almost every single day for my mental health.
Speaker 2:
So why is it that I have these symptoms? Why can't I get rid of this inflammation? Why do I have gut issues? Why is my hair thinning? Why is my body not responding to muscle growth and just all the things?
Speaker 2:
And I want to just say that I have gone to doctors, I have gotten blood work done. A lot of my blood work is out of whack, but the things that you would think would be contributing to these symptoms aren't like hormones. So I'm just I'm at a loss of things. My blood work has been out of whack, so I stopped my supplements to see if that would level it out, because sometimes, you know, certain supplements can contribute to symptoms. Nothing, um, I just I'm at a loss and I believe food is healing. I truly believe we are what we eat. Our gut is our second brain. I believe that we're getting poisoned by the foods that we eat and I feel like I try to do the right things as far as like the foods that are going to feel my body and I'm still having these symptoms.
Speaker 2:
So I decided to do something super extreme for 30 days to see if I could subside these symptoms, if I felt a little better, if my body responded, if my mental health responded. And I have been seeing carnivore everywhere. A lot of the reputable people that I look up to have kind of gotten behind the whole idea of the high protein, high fat. There's someone that I follow on Instagram Primal Body. You know she reminds me so much of myself as far as, like she did the 78 day hard, you know where she's working out twice a day and and following a diet and her body never responded, like she didn't grow muscle mass and she didn't get lean, like her body just had that inflammation look the same as I did and you know she talks about as other carnivores is getting in line with what nature has given you. So there's certain things that I have followed. I am doing strict carnivore with the intent of, after 30 days slowly bringing in food groups to see if I can link these food groups to how I'm feeling. So strict.
Speaker 2:
Carnivore is basically only eating meat, eggs, butter and fish, and let me tell you it is extreme. I the first five days I was very overwhelmed in the sense that I had to cook on the spot, whether it was me grilling out. Some of you guys have asked me how I've been prepping my meat our kitchen. Mind you, I started the carnivore diet right as we started our kitchen renovation, so I have been without a stove so right away I learned how to grill. My husband, kind of like, taught me how to grill.
Speaker 2:
I'm still a little uneasy about if the meat is fully cooked, but I've learned to make, um, you know, grass fed patties. Oh, mind you, all the meat needs to be grass fed. So grass fed is where the cows are eating the grass, so they're not eating the feed that inflames their body because that's corn. So therefore they're not passing the inflammation onto you. And there's so many nutrients in grass fed beef. I just heard a statistics how it takes twelve hundred calories of chicken to match what you would get like the nutrient, nutritional value and what you would eat in like a bite of liver. So there's so much nutritional value and again, this is a high fat, high protein, essentially no carb diet. So veggies and veggies are complex carbs, um, and that's why there's no veggies, and again it's getting behind nature.
Speaker 2:
So another thing that I have been eating or doing is I eat within the circadian, my circadian rhythm, like I eat when the sun comes up and I don't eat um pass when the sun goes down. So that's circadian fasting, if you will. But what's been happening is so the first couple of days I felt super overwhelmed because I had a cook on the spot, you know, and I am not one to know my way around the kitchen. So right away I learned how to grill and it's been not easy but manageable to, you know, cook a couple grass fed patties ahead of time, or maybe cook like I bought a $25 steak and I cooked a huge steak and I had it for like two days, you know. So I've had to kind of adapt how to cook on the spot or prep before, but it's been doable. It's not ideal and, like I said, this is very, very extreme where this might not be sustainable in your everyday life past 30 days, and that's kind of what I've been finding out that I don't know how I'm going to sustain this strictness, which I don't necessarily know if I want to. But what I have found in the past 20 days have been really interesting. So the first five days I felt good, in the sense that all of a sudden I felt full and satisfied.
Speaker 2:
I only eat probably about like two or three times during the day and they're big meals, like I eat a piece of steak, a little piece of salmon and like four scrambled eggs that I got from my back my backyard chickens, so technically those are free, kind of. But I eat like this huge meal after I work out. Like I'll do electrolytes in the morning. I usually do an early morning, not an early morning. I'll be really real. I do like a 10 AM workout. I've still been doing my workouts. I've been trying to do a lot more weights and less cardio. I'll do a workout and then, oh so, like electrolytes, water, and usually I'll do bacon. I make bacon, I buy like the bacon that you just throw on. I eat like four pieces of bacon. I'll work out and then I come home and I'll eat my first meal of the day, which I have been documenting every single day on TikTok and that first meal of the day has been like a piece of steak or a grass fed patty with a piece of salmon and some scrambled eggs. So again, it's only grass fed beef, butter, eggs and seafood.
Speaker 2:
I did make the mistake in the beginning of trying to do cheeses, but a lot of you guys said that wasn't strict carnivore and I wanted to be completely strict for 30 days to just see how I feel and then slowly bring it in. So I did feel a little sick in the beginning, and more so of like how I usually feel when I do like a five day cleanse. You know where it kind of. You feel worse in the beginning but then it gets a lot better and that's what I've been experiencing, I think just being full and satisfied throughout the day and not having that 3 PM crash like that went away right away. And also I'm still doing coffee. So I've been doing my coffee. If I do milk it's like a little bit of dairy, very, very, very small. But usually I drink black coffee and that's all I've been doing in the morning. So that's kind of like a tweak of the strict carnivore. But I'm still doing caffeine, but at that 3 PM I do not feel like I need to crash.
Speaker 2:
Um, the first, like five days, I lost six pounds right away on the scale. Now I don't think that was six pounds of fat. I really feel like it was that water inflammation, because right away on my daily videos that I've been releasing on Tik TOK, immediately people was were saying like, oh my gosh, we could tell a difference in your face. So it was almost like that inflammation that I was holding onto immediately went away within the first week and I'm not even exaggerating my scale went down six pounds, I will say. Since then, within the 21 days, it's gone up two pounds. It's gone down a pound. It's gone up, it's gone down, but within that range.
Speaker 2:
Um, and I was really honest this past weekend and the weekend before I did have, you know, sugar and a dessert. So I have not been perfect, which I feel a little. I'm not going to beat myself up about it and I want to move forward and that's why I'm thinking I want to go 45 days with this. But when it's happened it's been outside of the home. So again, I think the strict carnivore is not sustainable for me, like it's not doable outside of your home, um, unless you're, like, prepped and you're bringing your meals, and I'm not doing that. So my plan is after 45 days, I'm going to go 45 days because I still feel really good. Um, am I regular? I've been getting that a lot.
Speaker 2:
The first, like week, I was constipated and it was so weird because I'm used to being so regular, like going a couple times a day, you know, and to not go every day was really weird. But then I started to gradually go daily, but it's, it's very like minimal, if that makes sense. And the idea behind carnivore is people are saying that your body doesn't need as much fiber than you would need in like a plant-based diet or like a normal diet, because in carnivore your body's actually absorbing the nutrients from the meat and using it for fuel, whereas like vegetables you're, your body's only absorbing 35% of those nutrients and then disposing of them. I don't know if that's fully like. Again, I am not a medical doctor. This is not a medical advice. I am just telling you my experience and that's what I've kind of experienced so far is like I feel regular, but it's not as much. But it took some time to level out as far as supplements, I had to start taking electrolytes every single morning and magnesium. I love LMNT electrolytes and I do the spray magnesium. I also do magnesium from Symbotica, where I had to bump that up because I was experiencing muscle cramps the first week. As soon as I started adding the electrolytes and magnesium, that kind of went off.
Speaker 2:
I do plan of retesting my blood work at the end of 30 days just to see where I am. A lot of you guys were scaring me with, like the comments of how my cholesterol is going to be so high. We do have a family doctor who is a gastro doctor and he explained to me that sometimes you might not be as regular too, because it takes longer for the gas like the gastro dumping is what he said so you might experience umlux and constipation. So that's what's going on there. He also explained that, like within 30 days, I am not going to develop any cardiory. Like, oh my God, I'm not pronouncing this Again I am not a health professional. He said I'm not. There isn't really a chance I'm going to develop, within 30 days of doing this, a heart disease. So it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2:
But I am definitely going to retest my blood work at the end of the 30 days to just see where I am. But so far I feel really good. I think, after the 45 days of doing strict carnivore, I'm doing 45 now, just because I did have those slip ups. I'm going to start adding in, I think, cottage cheese and Greek yogurt just to have a little more variety and, I think, more fat. I feel like all the food that I am eating is more on the leaner side. I do like drench it in butter, that's been like the fun thing, but I think I need a little more fat and that's where where I'm going to. I think I'm going to get it from the cottage cheese and the Greek yogurt.
Speaker 2:
But I am not a health professional. I just feel like with my health and fitness journey I'm I'm my own guinea pig and I'm just figuring out what works for me and how I feel my best. I am sick of feeling like crap and I've experienced little windows of how I can feel so good. You know, and that's one of the reasons why I even like kind of stepped back with my alcohol is because I understand how good I can feel when I'm not drinking regularly, you know, and then when I do drink I experience that low, just everything. Everything gets thrown off where it's like. I'm so intentional now with asking myself is it worth it? Feeling like crap and I just feel like I know I can feel better and these symptoms that I've been having the past like two years isn't typical, like it's not typical for me and I know how good I can feel. So that's really like the driving force. I feel like when you have that baseline of understanding of how good you can feel, how energized, how motivated, you're not going to take anything less. So that's why I am on this journey and I love sharing with you guys. So if you have any questions about the carnivore diet, honestly hit me up.
Speaker 2:
On TikTok, allie K, allie, underscore K1. On TikTok I do updates every single day and that's been really awesome because there have definitely been like the ups and downs through this journey. I have good days. I've had amazing days, me just like navigating this. I'm honest with you guys. The days that I did slip up, I talk about it. You could see the physical changes in my face, like people now that I'm on day 22 are saying oh my gosh, you look so different. I'm like well, thanks guys, it's in my makeup today, but they're like no, you look different, we can see it. So it's been interesting to really document this journey and put those daily videos out there. So definitely check it out. On TikTok, I'll keep you guys updated. Welcome back to the Selfish Mom podcast. I'm so excited for this season. We're going to have all the things and definitely more updates on the carnivore diet, so stick around next time.
