Could be. I know that if I had remained vegan, I probably wouldn’t be here now. I felt terrible. There were multiple things going on with my health - both physical and emotional - and vegan was helping exactly zero of them. And I was doing it on the advice of multiple physicians, two of them “integrative/functional medicine. I’ll take the conclusions I’ve drawn so far, thank you.

I did a carnivore diet for 3 months this year it really opened my eyes to how different you can feel running on a diet without carbs/sugar. Took me about 3 weeks to transition and definitely had withdrawal symptoms with deep cravings for bread but managed to break through and found a completely new horizon on the other side. Biggest improvement was to my cognition, I could keep a bunch of nested thought bubbles up and open in my mind for much longer. My mood improved to the point where I felt almost a spiritual calm during the day and made me wonder if maybe I've been pushing through life with a low grade depression. My joints stopped cracking and some nerve pain I had from long covid completely subsided. Unfortunately I had to stop the diet because I was losing too much weight (I'm normally 5'11 155lbs but started to fall under 148lbs) and could not eat enough to remain stable.

Since May I've gone off the diet and been indulging in carbs/sugar at every turn to try to get back up and above my normal weight (I'm at 165lbs now) and it has been like dropping a neutrino bomb on my cognition. I would describe my new mental state as being in a stupor. Writing this recap I'm struggling with word recall and remembering all the events of my diet and just generally feel lethargic/slow. Once I get to 170lbs I'm hoping to give the diet another go this fall and maybe be able to go for a bit longer and give me time to experiment with other calorie sources like sweet potatoes/white rice/berries.

Anyways, leaving this comment here for myself as a note to reflect back on and some anecdote for anyone interested in trying the diet. I'd recommend it if you're curious.

I'd strongly advocate for white rice as an inclusion for carbs. I consider it to be almost magic. When I hit my early 30s, I wanted to find a consistent diet for the rest of my life that would give me the weight I prefer along with the broader mental/health/enjoyment outcome I was looking for, that balance. I didn't want to have ongoing weight-diet conflicts, I was looking for easy consistency to maintain as I got older (I don't want to have to think much about it, I don't want to have to manage it or fight with it; I want it to just work, day in day out, for my lifestyle). When I first began testing out various diets and measuring, I assumed brown rice would be necessary/ideal to get the results I wanted. That turned out to be false, white rice worked remarkably well. Which was great, because I dislike brown rice unless I bury it in seasoning, whereas I enjoy white rice plain.

Another thing you might consider along with white rice is (ab)using one day per week as a carb stuffing day to artificially float your weight a bit, if that's a concern. I've found that injection of carbs didn't cause carb-induced brain fogging through the rest of the week, and I use it to occasionally eat unhealthy things that shouldn't be consumed frequently. I eat a low calorie, low sugar diet that I'm quite happy with, so that optional carb-heavy day is a nice flex point in an otherwise rigid dietary approach.

Ah great to hear, thank you for your story. I share the same sentiment of wanting something easy and dependable sounds like white rice may be that.

Yea I think if I can't control my weight the second time around, I'll consider doing a carb day on Fridays so that I have the weekend to recover. Thanks for that suggestion!

There are many anecdotes of people reversing arterial plaque calcification with an all-meat diet. Hypertension, type 2 diabetes, etc., all reversed. If those hypothesies were true that shouldn't happen ever.

My cholesterol was at its lowest the year I ate low carb and did high intensity workouts, and I lost 40 pounds. I was eating bacon and 2-3 eggs every morning.

Cardiac symptoms take decades but CAC increase doesn’t take decades.