60 Days Carnivore: from Junk-food to Keto to Carnivore: Age 41, Autoimmune

I've gone carnivore for the last 60 days as the ultimate elimination diet. I did not do this for weight loss. I did it for three very specific reasons. Number one, it's something that drastically overhauled and improved the health of my brother. Number two, extreme curiosity. And number three, desperation, which is something I'm gonna explain in a little bit. Now, I turned 41 yesterday, and back in the day, I had a lot of health problems. And I mean, in my late 20s and early 30s, I was on SSDI, full-blown social security disability in the United States. I was so unwell. I had so many health problems that developed after I had experienced carbon monoxide poisoning long-term at a house that I rented. That event that occurred completely changed my life and my health. It kind of had a cascading effect on my health that caused permanent changes, brain damage. All of it was related to the inflammation caused by that injury. That's the part about why I've been desperate to be healthy. As of a year ago or two years ago, I started diving into any health problems that I have I wanna fix. Anything that's going on, I need to figure out the root cause. I need to understand why is my thyroid not working as an example and try to fix it. I will explain very briefly how unhealthy I was in my 20s to 30s. After that poisoning, I developed so many problems. I had severe GI problems. It was just horrible how bad they were. And then I had sleep problems. I had sinus problems. I had vasomotor rhinitis, sensitivity issues, severe migraines, terrible headaches, terrible sleep. And then I had issues with my arm, my back, sciatica, bursitis, thoracic outlet, carpal tunnel. My arm, I would've done anything to get it healed. I almost paid someone, and I did not have the money back then, but I was trying to pay someone to do stem cell injections. I wanted to get rid of the arm. It hurt so much every day. It hurt to move it. It hurt to leave it down. It hurt to sleep on it. There's so many things that were going on with me. And then I was literally limping because something was wrong with my hip and my foot, my right foot at the time. But I did have some MRIs. I had all these different tests done, and I was diagnosed with everything under the sun. And there were spots on my MRIs and all those places that were causing me issues with walking. The VA, I go to the VA, I'm a veteran, and they were kind enough to get me those scans, but not kind enough to help me out afterwards. So you know how that can be with doctors anywhere. So this was a very mentally and physically very difficult time in my life. The way I started changing things was by, I would say like biohacking, which is where you're testing things out, which is my approach to everything. Now I had to start changing our diets, and it started out with getting rid of gluten and dairy. Just those two things alone, those made such a big impact and started improving my health. I've also found some supplements to help with certain issues, but I still think the most important change is the diet. Now, in addition to what I just mentioned, I also had problems with my blood sugar. I had hypoglycemia as a result of just eating too much sugar. Like I really urgently needed food at times. I would wake up in the middle of the night, super starving, my stomach growling. I would feel that what I needed was a gigantic bowl of Cheerios. And obviously that was a sugar problem. My diet like slowly got better and better. And then six years ago, I moved to the middle of nowhere in the woods in a rural area, and it totally changed my life and my health because I didn't have access to any more fast foods. And then since I moved here, I was still unhealthy when I first moved here, but my health was still, honestly, it was radically better than it was when I was disabled. Just from getting rid of the gluten and dairy, it was so much better. By 2019, I was still consuming sugar, but so much less than in the years prior. And I also cut down on industrial seed oils. On my channel, I do a lot of at-home experiments with skincare and different treatments. But with these particular before and after photos, I believe that the changes that we're seeing are mostly related to the diet more than anything else. I actually did a video on this topic, and I'm gonna link to it down below, showing how my dietary changes improved the appearance of my face and my skin in general. The photo on the left is from 2014. I was 32. The photo on the right was from 2019 when I was 37. On the left, to me, it's really apparent that my face is dealing with some swelling. Even my nose actually looks quite a lot bigger than the photo on the right. The next photo shows me outside holding a bunny. My face was swollen. I included the photo on the right so you could see what a difference it is if I were to Photoshop it out. I had quite an issue with the puffiness. I stumbled upon this video by Dr. Omara, and it's about the very topic of having an inflamed face, specifically when your nose appears larger, like mine did in that photo. And it seems that once you get rid of your inflammation or excess fat, the puffiness goes away. So I just wanted to share all of this just so you know where I'm at and where I came from. I did weigh a lot more back then. Since moving here, I trimmed down, not on purpose, just because over the years of living here, I've gone lower and lower carb. And my body has become very intolerant to vegetables. My body rejects them. Really, over the last couple of years, I started honing in and getting healthier and healthier. And then over the last year, I've basically been very low carb. I've felt really great since becoming low carb. Many people go from the standard American diet to carnivore, and they may experience a lot of benefits. My changes have been incremental. So many benefits I experienced were from going gluten and dairy free initially. Then I experienced many more when going low carb and low sugar. I previously had high blood pressure, but not anymore. I used to have sinus problems that led to sleep issues and migraines, but those issues are mostly gone. I'm no longer in constant pain like I was years back. Back then, I felt a lot older than my age and very unhealthy. I no longer feel that way, even though I do still have some health challenges, which I will touch on later. I'm extremely, extremely hyper-focused when working. So I'm very productive when I'm working, as long as I've slept enough and slept properly. And I've noticed so many benefits. And also, you're not starving all the time. Of course, you're gonna still have a normal amount of hunger, but it's very different from what you're probably used to if you're eating sugar a lot. If you have sugar, you're gonna be starving, in my opinion. My experience is sugar makes me feel like garbage, and then I'm craving things, and it's a rollercoaster. I love not having that. So even if you're just low carb, I think you'll experience the lack of cravings and the stability throughout the day, which I love. Finally, I've been doing Carnivore for the last 60 days. I eased into it. Now, briefly, the reason that I've been inspired to do it, I mentioned my brother. His name is Cary. Please check out his channel. It's called Homestead How. You've probably already seen it if you're already watching a lot of videos on Carnivore or Keto. He has actually really inspired a lot of people with his transformation story. He's doing so much better physically, mentally, emotionally, his body, his weight. I could not believe it when I saw him at a family function a few months ago. So it's completely changed his life. I wanna share some of the things that were difficult, like the challenges that I experienced. Now, I hear people say sometimes, just try Carnivore for five days. Just try it for one day. Just do it for a month. I feel like if you're gonna do it and you wanna know what you could experience from it, I feel like it should actually be done a lot longer. Personally, at least for me, it took my body a long time to get into it, to transition into this way of eating. I transitioned. Even the month before I started Carnivore, all I had were just a couple vegetables with my meat. So I thought I could ease into it, but I still had side effects. The side effects included a ravenous, unbelievable hunger from the depths of my soul. I've never been that hungry in my entire life. And that lasted at least a week, maybe two. And of course, I was trying to incorporate more fat, but I guess I just wasn't having enough or my body needed to go through that experience. I'm not quite sure, but I'm gonna assume that I really needed more fat. I think that's one downfall and one issue with both Keto and Carnivore. People do not often realize how much fat you should be having to feel well, to really feel well on it. And I'm still working on that myself, but I've gotten so much better. And so I'm feeling so much better. One positive thing that I've noticed when I do eat now, I feel energy after I eat. I don't have this every single time, but there are many times where I've eaten something and I'm just like, wow, I feel great. It's often from eggs. And this is really weird and it might sound kind of snooty, but I've bought all kinds of eggs from the store. You can buy the cheapest ones, get whatever you can afford, but I've also bought like their expensive ones. And then we have some farm eggs from a gas station. And I noticed when I buy the farm eggs from the gas station, I feel a lot better after I eat it and it's noticeable. So I try to buy those whenever possible. They're kind of expensive. I need chickens. Basically I need chickens or I need to meet some more people around here because otherwise they're basically $5 at the gas station. One other side effect or challenge that I've experienced sometime into doing Carnivore is that my sleep was impacted and I kept waking up at 3 a.m. This lasted one to two weeks and then it went away. And so it could be another issue where I needed more fat. If you have that issue, Thomas DeLauer did a really great video on it and he explains potential reasons for that happening and things that you can do to try to fix it. If you're thinking about doing Keto or Carnivore or Ketovore, any of those things, just being really low carb, I think any of them are excellent options if you're trying to like improve your health. If you have a tendency to let's just say like binge eat when you do have something that's unhealthy, like some type of garbage food, once you eat that one thing, you need to go like kind of crazy with it. I've just noticed, I've observed from all the videos I've watched that people who have those tendencies do really well on Carnivore. I personally don't have that by some miracle, even though I don't have that, I'm still doing Carnivore because I wanna see what results I could get from this. I wanna heal my thyroid if that's even possible and I wanna understand why my thyroid isn't working properly and give it what it needs and I'm gonna save that for a different video. I'm doing so much better than years ago when I had all those issues. I have a great job and I rarely have flare ups of my autoimmune disorder, which is Hashimoto's. Things are so much better than they used to be when I was dealing with so many health issues at the same time. I think a lot of my pain issues back then were related to Hashimoto's and once I got that under control, which was heavily influenced by my diet, then I saw a lot of other improvements in my health. I'm way healthier than I was back in the day when I was basically disabled. I'm doing so much better overall, but I still have issues of fatigue and I also, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy and back when I was a teenager, I had the very typical symptoms of narcolepsy. It was the real deal. It was very unpleasant. You guys, every time I would go to sleep, if you've ever experienced this, you'll know what I mean and if you haven't, then you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but every time I would go to sleep, I would go into REM and I would be paralyzed and I would be aware of it and so I'm like, I'm awake, but I'm paralyzed and I'd have very scary experiences and it would just happen over and over and over again and every single night and then the next day, I was very, very tired and I currently don't have those symptoms, which is amazing, so I'm wondering if that's still an issue for me. I think my main issue is my thyroid and it's something I'm working hard to support my thyroid function and to heal it and for me, that's not gonna happen in 60 days or in 30 days. This is gonna take some time, so if you're interested in following along for my journey, I've probably forgotten to share so many different things in this video. I would love it if you would subscribe. I would appreciate it a lot. My name is Holly. If you like this video, please check out one of these videos next.