I know what you're probably thinking. Why is this guy not wearing a shirt? What a douchebag. Truth is, it's like 9 a.m. right now and it's already 80 degrees. So, I'm a hot, but more importantly, why does that bug you? No, it's fine. What's up guys? Welcome to the video. My name is Marcus. I am an online nutrition coach. I've been in the game for about 10 years and my goal with this video is not to convince you to do the carnivore diet. Do it. Do it. I'm diet agnostic. It's just to provide you with my experience because if you do decide to give it a go, this might be helpful. Now, prior to three months ago, I was following a high-carb low fat, moderate to high protein diet and I felt really good. My body composition was on point, sleep was bang on. However, there were a few areas that I wanted to potentially improve and those areas were one digestion and two joint pain. So, I was experiencing some nagging joint pain I have for years and so I decided to experiment with the carnivore-ish diet. So, lots of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, as well as some fruit in the mix. So, I'm going to share with you the pros and the cons of what I've noticed over the last 90 days following this diet as well as how I'm going to move forward. Am I going to go back to my high-carb low fat approach? Am I going to continue on with this approach or modify things? Let's find out. We're going to start with the pros and the first benefit that I noticed was that my skin improved. So, I have eczema, which is an autoimmune condition and as long as I don't eat too much gluten or dairy, I'm fine. My eczema doesn't flare up. However, eating this way has actually made my skin even better. So, that's been super cool. I'm also loving the food that I'm eating on this diet. So, before when I was following my high-carb lower fat approach, I used a volume metrics sort of strategy. So, I favored foods that have a lot of food volume to them, but they were low in calories. But what happened was, I was following that diet for a period of time and I really enjoyed feeling really full at night. It kept me super-satiated and full. The thing is, as I sort of changed, I had this epiphany one night, I had eaten a whole bunch of food and it got to the point where I was so full that I was uncomfortable. And I just asked myself, like, Mark, what are you doing, man? Why are you doing this to yourself? And I had an epiphany and I decided to shift my diet after that. I decided that I didn't want to have that overly full feeling. And so, that was sort of one of the sparks or linch pins that sent me in this direction and it's been really cool. Another benefit that I've noticed on this diet that's inherently lower in carbohydrates is that my urgency to eat is less. So, my blood sugar stayed very stable on a high-carb diet. I'm very active. However, I've noticed that I can just go for longer periods of time with ease on this lower-carb higher-fat diet. So, that's been an awesome added benefit because I have no real need for food at any given time. I feel like I'm super resilient and I can just wait until the next meal time. If I don't have access to food that I want to eat, no problem all the way to it out and just eat more at a later meal. It's been quite effortless to manage my body composition as well. And on my high-carb diet, I was able to manage body composition. I was super happy with my body fat percentage and all that stuff. However, it has been even easier with this eating approach, which is nice, right? Like, if it can be easier, that's awesome. I'm all for it. Good news on the information front. My knee pain has reduced, which is amazing. I'm so happy about that. My digestion is a bit of a work in progress, which we are going to double-click on in a second here. Now, when added benefit of lower inflammation and less knee pain is, I started running. That day on, I was going somewhere. I was running. I have not run long distances in years. I grew up playing football and basketball, so everything was very sprint and stop-oriented. And so I've gotten into a little bit of long distance running and I'm really enjoying it. So that has been possibly the biggest benefit out of this experience. I'm stoked on seeing where I can take running in the future. I might even do a half marathon, something like that. Maybe even a full marathon down the road. Who knows? I'm excited. As a side note, as I get more and more into running, if you'd like me to make a video on how I'm going about that process, scaling up volume, stuff like that, let me know. I can totally put that together. Another one for the pro column is that the nutrient density of my diet has gone through the roof. Before, I would say that I was hyper-focused on body composition, which is awesome. It was super fun maximizing that area of my life. However, now I would say that health is in the number one slot. Don't get me wrong. I still want to look, feel and perform really well. I want to have the six-pack, all that good stuff. However, health has become a higher priority at this point. Grocery shopping and food prep has become an absolute breeze. I cook about 95% of my meals at home as it was already. However, now I'm not taking the time to prepare things like rice, potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, all that sort of starchy card stuff. And so it's just made food prep as well as shopping even easier. I love that. And the last benefit is just that I feel better. My sense of well-being has lifted. I've been in this game for a long time. And I've been experimenting with my diet, my lifestyle and stuff like that, non-stop. And I feel the best that I have ever felt right now. Now, having said that, if something changes, I'm totally open to altering my approach. But I feel amazing. And so there's something to be said for that. Now let's move on to the cons. And the biggest drawback for me around this diet has actually been the labeling aspect of it. You know what I tell people what I'm doing? They're like, are you on the carnivore diet? Are you doing keto vor? Are you doing meat and fruit? Is it this or that? And I don't like pigeonholing myself like that. Personally, like if I feel like having a carrot, I'm going to have a carrot, man. I'm just not crazy about naming my dietary approach or labeling it. Because I find it limiting. I understand the use of labels and landlines and all that stuff. I just find that I prefer to not label it a specific diet. If I had to, I would say it leads more towards animal-based. But it is what it is. It is what it is. It is what it is. Now this next con might sound sort of contradictory just because of what I said about how I loved the food choices and the foods that I'm eating on a daily basis. However, I think that a lot of folks would find this diet quite restrictive. The food options are limited, which is a bit of a double-edged sort because there's a lot of freedom in simplicity, right? Personally, I live out of a backpack. I have very few things I travel around the world and work for my laptop. That simple life works for me and the simpler that I can make things, it tends to just make me happier, but everybody's different. So I just thought that I'd throw that in there. Another drawback is that there just isn't a ton of research on the carnivore diet or animal-based eating just yet. As this stuff gains popularity and momentum, there is going to be more research that's done. There's actually research being done right now by companies like Rivera and things like that. And everything is looking super promising. However, it is limited research at this point. Now personally, I really like and enjoy investing in my health and sense of well-being. And fortunately, I have the means to do so, but I can totally appreciate how cost is a thing, right? So I'm going to provide you with a few money-saving tips if you were hypothetically to try this diet out. Two foods that are really, really cost-effective are eggs and ground beef. Also, buying in bulk is always a great way to go because the more that you buy, the more you're going to save. You can even do something like go-hab-zees on a cow if you have a local farm nearby, you've developed some relationships with farmers. That's also just a super cool regenerative way to go about this, which I'm a huge fan of. Also, do not sweat buying everything organic, grass-fed, grass-finished. Just get yourself healthy and heal first. Prioritize you. Get you feeling really, really good. And then from that place, you're going to be able to have a much bigger impact out in the world. So sort yourself out first. And then once you're feeling really, really good, you get to 100%. Then if you feel so inclined, you can go on into the world and create some social change. So for me right now, the pros are heavily outweighing the cons. However, I am going to make some tweaks moving forward because there is some room for improvement. So now let's get into those. I am going to lower my dairy consumption. I was consuming a lot of Greek yogurt, like upwards of a pound to two pounds per day. What? I think that it was messing with my digestion a little bit, making my stools a little bit looser than I'd like. So I'm going to experiment with less dairy moving forward. I'm also going to experiment with less total fruit because I think that all the fiber in the fruit was making me feel a little bit full and distended in the stomach area. So I'm going to experiment with that by lowering the amount of fruit that I'm eating on a day-to-day basis and see how I feel. Now you might be wondering how am I going to compensate for those calories, right? And the answer is fat. I'm probably going to eat some more on a cato, whole legs, fat ear cuts of meat, stuff like that that I'm going to throw in the mix. I'm also going to experiment with some honey just because it doesn't have fiber in it and it doesn't distend my stomach or make me feel overly full. So I'm going to experiment with that too and see how I do. If you like the video, feel free to like the video, subscribe as well as let me know in the comment section below what sort of content that you'd like to see next. Also, if you made it this far into the video, you probably kind of liked it. So I think you'd enjoy the video on the next screen as well.