From Vegetarian to Carnivore

Part 2 of my interview with Adi and Tzivi…

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming that if someone has been eating what the world calls a “healthy diet,” they couldn’t possibly end up struggling with their health. Adi’s story is a good reminder that our bodies don’t read nutrition labels or follow popular opinion. They simply respond to what works—and what doesn’t.

When I first met Adi at Meatstock in Tennessee, she shared just enough of her story to make me want to hear the rest. What I didn’t expect was just how unusual her background would be. She wasn’t someone coming from years of fast food, soda, and processed junk. In many ways, she had done almost everything “right” according to conventional nutrition advice. Yet she spent much of her life hungry, bloated, uncomfortable, and searching for answers.

Her experience reminds us why it’s so important to stay curious instead of assuming that one approach works equally well for everyone.

Raised Vegetarian… and Always Hungry

Adi wasn’t someone who became vegetarian later in life. She was conceived and raised in a vegetarian household because her mother had made that decision before she was even born. Their meals weren’t built around bread and pasta, either. They ate large amounts of vegetables, nuts, fruit, and dairy, while avoiding seed oils and many processed foods.

On paper, plenty of people would probably describe that as an ideal diet.

The problem was that Adi was never satisfied.

She remembers eating enormous bowls of vegetables—sometimes half raw, half cooked—and still feeling completely hungry afterward. As a child, she simply assumed that everyone felt that way.

It wasn’t until she started attending public school and occasionally ate outside the home that she discovered something different. Her first taste of meat happened to be part of a corn dog, which isn’t exactly the ambassador I’d choose for introducing someone to beef. But hunger has a way of making us keep experimenting, and over time she found herself eating more animal foods simply because they actually filled her up.

That theme would repeat itself several times throughout her life.

Learning to Trust What Her Body Was Saying

As an adult, Adi moved to Israel and eventually had to learn something she’d never been taught growing up: how to buy and cook meat.

That sounds simple until you remember she’d spent her entire life hearing that raw meat was dangerous, difficult, and something to be feared. Add in trying to shop in Hebrew, and that’s a fairly steep learning curve.

Even after she became comfortable cooking meat, her health wasn’t where she wanted it to be. She dealt with chronic bloating, digestive discomfort, persistent skin problems, and eventually much more serious issues, including severe shin splints that left her barely able to walk for months.

Like many people, she began searching online for answers. She found ketogenic nutrition through Dr. Berg before eventually discovering Dr. Ken Berry. She was ready to jump straight into carnivore, but life—and relationships—don’t always move at the same speed. Instead, she and her partner settled on a meat-based ketogenic diet.

It helped, but she still knew something wasn’t quite right.

Sometimes the Missing Piece Is Simplicity

Life became even more complicated when Adi accepted a traveling job. Suddenly she was eating whatever she could find while constantly moving from place to place. Fast food replaced consistency, and although weight wasn’t her concern, she noticed that her face and body looked swollen enough that she barely recognized herself.

After blood work eventually revealed Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, something clicked.

She remembered hearing Neisha Berry talk about using a carnivore diet while dealing with Hashimoto’s, and she decided this was finally the time to stop wondering and simply try it herself.

I laughed a little listening to her explain how she managed it while traveling because, honestly, she was microwaving meat in hotel rooms. That’s commitment. No fancy kitchen. No perfect circumstances. Just figuring out the next meal and making it work.

Within two weeks, she simplified even further by moving to the lion diet after realizing that fish wasn’t agreeing with her stomach. Sometimes we spend years trying to make nutrition more complicated when what our body really needs is less complexity.

Looking Beyond the Scale

One thing I appreciated about Adi’s story is that it wasn’t centered around weight loss.

She talked about recognizing her own face again because the swelling had gone down. Her skin became clearer. The bloating improved. She could walk comfortably again after previously struggling to make it across a room. Those are meaningful changes that don’t necessarily show up on a bathroom scale.

That’s something I remind people of often. Healing doesn’t always announce itself with pounds lost.

Sometimes it’s better digestion. Sometimes it’s less pain. Sometimes it’s waking up with more energy or looking in the mirror and seeing yourself instead of inflammation staring back.

Those victories matter just as much.

Adi also reminded me that there isn’t always one dramatic moment where everything changes. Her story involved years of experimenting, adjusting, learning to cook, trying keto, traveling for work, getting lab work, and making one practical decision after another. Progress often looks much more ordinary than we imagine.

Staying Curious Instead of Stuck

One detail from our conversation really stood out to me.

Here was someone who grew up without seed oils, ate enormous amounts of vegetables, completed multiple extended water fasts, and still developed digestive issues and autoimmune disease. That’s a helpful reminder not to build our health beliefs around assumptions or slogans. Our bodies are wonderfully individual.

The goal isn’t to defend a particular dietary philosophy. The goal is to find what actually helps your body function well.

For Adi, that meant letting go of lifelong beliefs about food and being willing to test something completely different. It wasn’t about following the latest trend. It was about paying attention to honest results.

That’s a mindset I hope all of us can keep, whether we’re just getting started or have been eating carnivore for years. Stay teachable. Stay observant. Let your body—not someone else’s opinion—help guide your decisions.