Stefania’s Journey to the Carnivore Diet
Being Italian, Stefania was raised on pasta and described her relationship with food before finding the carnivore diet as being very poor. She says she always felt chubby, even though she wasn’t obese, and often found herself stress eating. She even battled anorexia and bulimia.
From Vegetarian to Keto
Stefania became a vegetarian seventeen years ago. She found out she carried a gene for celiac disease and gave up gluten. However, Stefania still found herself experiencing excruciating stomach pain. Later she found a lump on her throat that ended up attached to her thyroid. At that point, she says the doctors didn’t ask many questions but proceeded to remove 80% of her thyroid.
Stefania was then put on thyroid medications and, for ten years, slowly upped the dose of medicine to battle the symptoms she had from her thyroid. She often felt exhausted, and her doctor told her to try going vegan. Stefania eliminated dairy from her diet but consumed many highly-processed vegan shakes and a lot of soy. She lost a lot of weight, but not in a good way. Most of the weight she lost was muscle, and Stephania began to feel depleted.
After experimenting with the vegan diet, Stefania went back to eating vegetarian. It was during this time she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. She began researching alternative methods to treat her disease and found research suggesting a ketogenic diet. Stefania began to follow the keto diet while maintaining her no-meat lifestyle. During her seven years on the keto diet, she saw improvements in her health but still experienced excruciating stomach pain.
The Benefits of the Carnivore Diet
She then found Dr. Shawn Baker and began listening to his teachings about the carnivore diet. At the time, Dr. Baker challenged his listeners to try the diet for 90 days, so Stefania decided to experiment. For the first time in ten years, she ate meat. Stefania says the first four days were tough as her body didn’t know what to do with meat, and she had severe constipation. However, after four days, her stomach issues disappeared. Stefania described the almost immediate energy she felt as “someone turned the power on.” She told her husband she felt like a Duracell battery and could keep “going and going.”
Initially, Stefania only ate chicken, with some beef and eggs added. She also gave up her beloved coffee, which she said was the hardest part. Today, Stefania, after learning she often feels hungry after only eating chicken, focuses her diet on only beef (mainly ground beef, as she prefers its texture over steak) and eggs. She did eventually add back in coffee as well. Stefania says friends and family have asked her how she can eat the same things daily, but she finds it relatively easy. She even craves eggs.
Overcoming Food Addiction
Stefania says her biggest win has been her relationship with food. Before she found carnivore, her sugar addiction was terrible, and her “cheat days turned into cheat weeks.” Nowadays, Stephania says if she “cheats,” it means she has a few extra eggs or eats a bit more than she usually would. She has not strayed and credits carnivore for changing her health and breaking her food addiction.
