Beginner
The Carnivore entry point or beginner level consists of meat, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, herbs, spices as well as coffee if you like it as much as I do…
If your goal is to lose weight and/or clear up autoimmune issues and level 1 does that for you, amazing, you’re good to go!
On the other hand if you do not achieve the body composition and/or autoimmune remission results that you’re after…
Intermediate
You can move to the intermediate level which consists of…
Meat, fish, seafood, salt and pepper so we’re eliminating coffee, dairy, eggs, as well as most herbs and spices…why?
Coffee does not impair fat loss, it contains essentially zero calories however, it can irritate the gut and therefore the immune system…
Dairy tends to cause autoimmune issues for a lot of folks and eggs are a fairly common culprit as well.
In terms of fat loss, dairy might not be your friend, especially full fat versions…
And if you’re interested in learning about the 3 reasons why, watch this video that I linked below after ya wrap up with this one…
What about the herbs and spices? Things like garlic and onion are digestive disruptors for quite a few folks and digestion is the linchpin for autoimmune disease…
Also, there are certain spices like cinnamon and turmeric that have quite a bit of oxalate in them and so…
We’re just playing it safe and eliminating the potential for problems that can be associated with these things…
If you reach your goal and ride off into the sunset via level 2, unreal, I’m stoked for ya, if not you can move to level 3 which is…
Advanced
Red meat, salt and water or what’s otherwise known as the lion diet.
The Carnivore diet and more specifically the lion diet is the most powerful tool for autoimmune disease period…it’s honestly incredible!
Having said that, a lot people don’t need to go all the way to the advanced end of the Carnivore spectrum in order to achieve the benefits that they’re after…
However some folks do and the only way to find out whether you’re one of those people or not is to go through this process…
How long should you do each level before moving on to the next one?
3-4 weeks is a solid chunk of time, however…
If you know for certain that something is causing issues for you, there’s no reason to wait to eliminate it from your diet, for example…
If you’re a week into level 1 and you’ve noticed that every time you eat cheese let’s say your stomach hurts and your nose starts running, don’t wait for 2-3 more weeks to eliminate dairy…
Just do it now because you know for certain that it’s not working for ya and that goes for any food or food group…
What about the reintroduction process, when should you start that if it interests you?
In the case of fat loss, I would recommend maintaining your goal bodyweight for at least 30 days but more ideally 60 before reintroducing foods.
In the case of autoimmunity, I would recommend being completely symptom-free for at least 60 day but more ideally 90 before reintroducing foods.
Once that time comes, it’s really important to reincorporate food groups one at a time which I know sounds tedious, but it’s the only way to do this effectively, for example…
Let’s say that you made it to intermediate and you want to reintroduce both eggs and dairy…
The reason you don’t want to throw them both back into the mix at the same time is because you may be intolerant to one or the other or both…
But you can’t know that unless you test them one at a time and the truth is that doing it this way…
Is actually a huge time saver big picture because reintroducing too many foods at once just becomes confusing…
And it’ll result in you needing to go back to square one again, so ya might as well do it correctly the first time…
If the beginner level Carnivore Diet sounds overwhelming, I would recommend starting with what’s called an Animal Based Diet…
This is where I personally started, I did not go full on Carnivore right off the bat…
An Animal Based Diet is essentially a beginner level carnivore diet with the addition of fruit…
And for some folks this is often just a lot more manageable from a psychological standpoint because…
Going from what they’re doing now all the way to Carnivore is just too big of a leap mentally and that’s okay…
Also, it allows for some fruit which can ease the transition from using primarily carbohydrate for fuel to relying more on fat as you taper your carb intake down.
If you implement an Animal Based Diet and you hit your goal body composition and/or clear up your autoimmune issues…
Go no further, you can just continue rolling with that setup if you’d like…
For me personally Animal Based improved my autoimmune symptoms, however it didn’t completely clear them up and so I needed to go further down the line…
If even Animal Based feels like too big of a stretch right now, just start eating more meat, fish, seafood and eggs…
Chances are that those foods will crowd out at least some of the processed stuff in your diet because they’re so satiating and nutrient dense and as a result, you’ll get healthier…
A few more quick recommendations…
Hit 10,000 steps per day or a total of 70,000 over the course of the week as a whole, movement is key!
Sleep 7-9 hours per night and be sure that you’re waking up feeling rested and alert everyday ideally without an alarm.
Seek out community even if it’s online and the reason that I mention this is because…
Carnivore is a pretty extreme diet relatively speaking compared to how most folks eat…
And so community is a super powerful tool that you can use to your advantage on your health journey because there are more and more folks implementing this stuff every single day!
