Part I: How I became a carnivore It took me about three weeks to get up the nerve to try an all-meat diet. I had been reading about it since before the New Year. It seemed extreme, but I was just so desperate about my weight. An all-meat diet is, in some ways, just a […]
There is an assumption that is easy to make about health advice: that the health of the person giving advice is a good test of the correctness of their theories. This is a terrible mistake. Here are a couple of reasons why it is a mistake: It conflates what people advocate with what they do. […]
Zooko and I get a lot of questions here and on ketotic.org about our work, or about ketogenic diets. That’s encouraging, and we like hearing from you! However, we often don’t have time to answer questions in depth. I’ve decided to answer this one, because my answer to it has some common themes that transcend […]
I read a recent story by Julia Llewellyn Smith about John Yudkin, an early proponent of the theory that sugar (not fat) is likely to be the main culprit behind many modern diseases. It contained the following paragraph: “One of the problems with the anti-sugar message — then and now — is how depressing it […]
Mark Sisson is the author of The Primal Blueprint, and the blog Mark’s Daily Apple. His blog is a great reference, and I like his work. However, I take exception to the article he posted this week entitled Do You Really Need to Eat Vegetables to Be Healthy? Although he admits at the end that […]
How a scientist interprets outcomes often depends on whether she thinks the outcome should be good or bad. Cortisol levels make a good example. In the context of low carb, ketogenic diets, the finding of slightly higher cortisol levels have been interpreted as a warning sign. In a recent post on our blog, Zooko and […]
This is a copy of an article I wrote for Highbrow Paleo in 2011. I have not edited it. Several years ago, I had an acquaintance who had previously been diagnosed with diabetes. He began a low carb diet, against the advice of his doctor, (this was in the dark 90′s), and over a period […]
I’ve been at this carnivory lifestyle for years now, and I’m still learning how to improve it. Here are two examples: I stopped eating dairy products mid-November. I already knew I couldn’t eat cottage cheese or yoghurt, without experiencing cravings, but I also gave up hard cheese (which I didn’t eat a lot of, but […]
I want to briefly clarify our position about the 30-day trial. Although we hypothesise that there may be benefits to avoiding or minimising plants, it is definitely not necessary to avoid plants to gain the benefits of ketosis!None of the studies that form the basis of our beliefs about ketogenic diets had any such restriction. […]
In response to the 30-day trial that Zooko and I recently recommended, one correspondent argued about the importance of plant foods. He made several points I’d like to address, but the one I want to talk about here is one I’ve heard many times before. The statement is to the effect that plants are full […]