https://joshsnyman.com/podcast/nicole-kat
Check out this link which will take you to a podcast episode Josh Synman, a fellow Carnivore from South Africa who is incredibly smart!
We discuss my journey to carnivore. Issues solved by meat based eating and some other topics in between!
Let’s talk about anxiety. The amount of young adults feeling some form of anxiety is at an all time high today. I have experienced a direct relationship between the foods I consume and my anxiety that I believe is important to share. I have dealt with some crippling anxiety in my life. The anxiety I would experience at times would completely shut me down. I would crawl into the fetal position while my muscles spasm, my heart racing, and my stomach aching, thinking I was going to be sick. It made me feel like I was going to die. Sounds dramatic, I know! If you have ever dealt with this type of anxiety then you know what I’m talking about. I always thought, if there was SOMETHING that could help with this (other than medication) I would try it in a heart beat.
Fast forward to when I started carnivore officially in April 2020. One month into it I realized and said to Taylor “wait, where did my anxiety go?” He laughed, I laughed and really we didn’t think anything of my new relationship with food. We both thought, well you must be way more accepting of covid and these “unprecedented times”. Oh okay… interesting how my crippling anxiety was relieved during one of the MOST stressful times in history, only ONE MONTH into changing my diet by cutting out sugar and carbs. I was elated! As far as I was concerned I would keep doing carnivore for the rest of my life since it had cured my anxiety and stomach issues within a month.
So I thought wow, my anxiety is gone. It really never came back until the cheating… We decided to go to Utah and Idaho to visit friends in October and November. I’m not going to lie to you, sometimes I cheat, however I will say, I am very strategic about it. I don’t like to go completely nuts or else I get pretty sick (on the toilet for hours) but I do like to have some things I wouldn’t normally eat. While in Idaho for three nights in November the cheating wasn’t too awful, I maybe had 1-2 drinks per night and limited my sugar intake but definitely had some carbs here and there. In Idaho, my stomach was killing me, it seemed like all my stomach issues were back since I wasn’t sticking to carnivore so I understood that. However, out of nowhere my anxiety (whilst on a relaxing vacation without any worries) came back TENFOLD.
For the last two nights in Idaho, as my head would hit the pillow to go to bed, my body would start shaking uncontrollably. It would start as a shiver and then just get to the point of making it extremely difficult to walk. I thought to myself “hm, so this is how I’m going to die?” I knew in my head I wasn’t having a seizure since this had happened before but let me tell you, shaking to this point is one of the scariest experiences I have encountered. There wasn’t much I could do, tried to breathe and decided to take an anti anxiety pill I sometimes use for flying. I was staying at a friends house and Taylor and I decided not to tell them just because we didn’t want them to worry and this had happened before. However, this time, the trend had become more obvious as to what was triggering it.
The shaking fits weren’t unique to Idaho, they had happened in Utah in October and then again 2-3 times at home prior to that. The only thing these incidences had in common was it only happened when I wasn’t sticking to carnivore/keto and ate sugar, carbs, and gluten. In Utah and Idaho, I cheated here and there, ate sugar, gluten, etc. The times it happened at home were also times we had friends over to celebrate a holiday or birthday where what do you know… yup, eating sugar, carbs, gluten. The theme was consistent… food was causing this. It proved to me how poisonous and toxic some of our foods can be and what havoc they can reek on one’s body.
I had a visit with my doctor after our Idaho trip. She was legitimately concerned I hadn’t tried to set up something sooner since this had happened a couple times before. We went over the shaking, my diet, any other symptoms that might be going on, work, etc. She asked a MILLION QUESTIONS and dug deep. I actually got a little scared. At the end of our visit she recommended two things: 1. Stick to carnivore since that seems to work well for my body and 2. If the shaking were to happen again she recommended taking one of the anti anxiety pills that I sometimes use for flying and if that doesn’t help to go to the hospital. I told her I won’t likely go to the hospital but we agreed to avoid the common denominator, bad food.
I’m hoping that sharing my experience with anxiety and my experience with anxiety being relieved and cured by the carnivore diet can help someone. I can’t imagine living my life with the anxiety I used to have and I am so thankful to have discovered a way to relieve it. Food isn’t just food, it can have an awful effect on your body. I strongly believe that sugar and processed junk is the real enemy here. To live a happier life with less issues (including mental and physical ailments) we should limit our intake of sugar and processed foods.
Salmon roe has been part of my life since I was 4 years old! I remember trying it for the first time at a sushi restaurant where they call it “Ikura”. It was salty heaven and I didn’t mind that is was fish eggs and would continue to ask for it 😂
It wasn’t until years later than I realized salmon roe was an absolute superfood. I remember Dr Rhonda Patrick talking about how good it is for pregnant women to eat salmon roe because of how nutrient dense it is. Specifically, the DHA folic acid found in salmon roe is extremely important for a fetus’ brain development. You can’t find that level of DHA in anything else with the same level of absorption.
My relationship has continued with salmon roe. I now try to eat 4-6 oz per week to get the nutrients it contains which include Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Omega 3s, DHA folic acid, thiamine and selenium. Since it is a superfood for brain development, it has been recommended for women to eat salmon roe while they are pregnant and to try to introduce to your kids at a young age!
Anyone else love salmon roe? 🤍
When following an animal based or carnivore diet, eggs can be a cost effective meal for each day and a great source of 11 different nutrients including Vitamin D, Iron, and B12 (to name a few, look it up! It’s a long list!)
Egg yolks, are one of my favorite things to add on top of my meat and are the most nutritious part of the egg. Some days for whatever reason, the whites of the eggs gross me out so bad, I’m repulsed by them. I thought I just might not be into eggs but turns out it was the whites not the yolks. Am I the only one? What is your thoughts on eggs? 🙌🏼🍳🥚
Month 9: We’ve been doing carnivore since April 2020, and wow has it changed my life for the better in so many ways. One of the ways I think that people don’t talk about is just how SIMPLE it makes eating and cooking meals. Eating simple creates a positive relationship with my food not only in the sense that it loves me back (relieves my health issues) but for example, I don’t track anything, I don’t have to look at my macros to make sure I’m hitting certain numbers. When I did keto I was just obsessing over how much fat I was getting and what I had to eat next or if I was counting net carbs correctly, etc. it’s pretty simple when you eat an animal based diet. I eat till I am full. THAT’S IT!
I think a lot of people also wonder about if we “cheat” and yes we sometimes do, and EVERY single time I regret it. I get very sick, it’s like being on an elimination diet and every time you try to reintroduce sugar or gluten (& some vegetables) you realize how shitty those things are for you. But yes, so we do have cheat meals, we try to have cheat meals instead of cheat days so it still follows some discipline and you don’t go off the rails in a way that’s too hard to recover from. I will admit every time I do cheat here is what happens: bloating, stomach pain, feeling like you have IBS, sometimes throwing up, acne that pops up, irritability, headaches, bad sleep, bad mood, brain fog, you name it. So yeah, NOT WORTH IT.
I am very thankful to have found carnivore and I would’ve never realized how bad my body was reacting to sugar, gluten, soy, vegetable oils, some vegetables, etc unless I went down this path.
For the next 30 days I am going to record what I eat on this carnivore diet daily so people can see what exactly goes into the diet. Typically, I try to keep things 90% carnivore and 10% keto. However, through the whole thing I will be in ketosis and will be showing the break down of my macro nutrients.
I don’t usually record what I eat because I don’t have to and honestly it’s a bit of a hassle. But I think it’s beneficial to see what others eat in a day following a zero to minimal carb diet like carnivore.
Carnivore is really going back to the way our ancestors used to eat. Meat was the most sought after food, for all of its nutrients and the greatest benefit, being full and nourishing their bodies. There wasn’t an obesity issue like we currently face here in the US today. Carnivore gets rid of all the processed food aka carbs, sugar, and goes back to a simpler time when there was less processed food/sugar readily available. As we have seen over the last 70 years, with the introduction of processed foods continually going up, so has the amount of chronic disease, obesity, heart issues, autoimmune disease, etc. However, we are eating less meat and more processed crap…. it’s NOT a coincidence. There is ton of literature out there for you to do your own research. This has worked for me and I looked into it and made the decision for myself. Once I saw the results and my bad symptoms went away, I knew this was the way to go for my body.
Nothing crazy to the carnivore diet here just an array of different meats, eggs, butter, some cheese products, and the occasional garnishing of grilled onions on a burger. However, I don’t eat vegetables. And guess what…. I poop just fine thank you. (More on that soon lol) If I ever do eat vegetables, they are typically cooked to avoid any stomach/GI upset that I have continuously had in my life from vegetables. (More on that later!)
But I want to be realistic… I’m not perfect at all with this diet. The month of July was full of moving and birthdays which brought on some not so low carb meals. But that’s OK. I’m still enjoying my life to the fullest. I aim for 90% carnivore and 10% keto. To be completely honest, I sometimes enjoy having those days of eating gluten or carbs to remind me of how shitty I feel when I do. Those symptoms that carnivore has relieved start creeping back and it’s painful. Not everyone needs to follow the same diet, I purely want to share my results and what I eat to provide more evidence and information to the carnivore diet.
So here we go…
Here is the macro breakdown and my food log from Monday August 3rd:
The Raw Raw Newsletter 