One of the strange things about feeling better is that you become much more aware of what makes you feel worse. If you’ve spent years feeling tired, hungry, foggy, achy, or generally not great, it can be difficult to connect any one symptom to any one food. But once you’ve felt consistently good for a while, you finally have a baseline—and that can tell you quite a lot.
I thought about this during my second conversation with Charlene Anderson. After 28 years of eating carnivore, what strikes me about Charlene isn’t that she has discovered one perfect way to eat. It’s that she has spent all those years paying attention.
A number can be useful without becoming the goal
One of my coaching members had recently bought a Keto Mojo meter and was disappointed when her ketones measured 0.4. There are certainly ways to increase blood ketones, but before changing anything, I think it’s worth asking a more basic question: How are you doing?
Are you sleeping well? Is your energy steady? Are your cravings manageable? Are you making progress toward whatever brought you to carnivore?
I’ve worn continuous glucose and ketone monitors, and I own a Keto Mojo. I’ve gained weight with high ketones and low glucose, and I lost most of the weight I’ve ever lost during years when I had no idea what my ketones were. Unless you have a medical reason to pursue a particular level of ketosis with your healthcare provider, I’d rather see you chase results than chase ketones.
Feeling better can make food reactions more obvious
Charlene used the word “unmasking” to describe something I’ve experienced myself. People sometimes remove foods, begin feeling better, and then discover that when they try an old food again, they have a very obvious reaction. It can seem as though carnivore somehow made them less tolerant of that food.
I experienced this with peanuts. Early in my third pregnancy, after years without plants, I developed a peanut craving that would not leave me alone. Eventually I ate some, and I’m not going to rewrite history: they tasted very good. But almost immediately I didn’t feel as good, and I developed some itching.
Before carnivore, I doubt I would have connected those dots. I felt bad in so many different ways that one more symptom would have disappeared into the pile. Once I knew what feeling good felt like, the difference was much easier to recognize.
You do not need to eat exactly like Charlene
Charlene’s diet is unusually specific. She does best with fresh ribeye, doesn’t feel as good eating ground beef, and has learned that dairy isn’t ideal for her. She and Joe have spent decades refining everything from fat levels to how they store and cook their meat.
This does not mean everyone needs two refrigerators and an industrial-strength vacuum sealer. Please do not tell your spouse that Kelly Hogan told you to buy those things.
Ground beef and dairy make carnivore affordable and practical for many people, and if you feel great eating them, wonderful. What I find useful about Charlene’s experience isn’t her exact menu. It’s her willingness to observe and adjust. The goal isn’t to reproduce somebody else’s carnivore diet. It’s to figure out the simplest version that works well for you.
Give yourself enough consistency to learn something
Some of Charlene’s improvements happened within months, while others took years. There were also periods when she felt worse while changing her diet and wondered whether she was moving in the right direction.
That perspective matters. We can spend decades developing health problems and then get discouraged when everything isn’t resolved after two weeks without carbohydrates. Sometimes the best thing you can do is keep your food simple, stop changing five variables at once, and give yourself enough consistency to notice patterns in your hunger, energy, sleep, cravings, digestion, and overall well-being.
That’s a big part of what we do in My Zero Carb Life coaching. Our groups offer support, community, accountability, and a place to work through the practical problems that inevitably come up. The goal isn’t to make you think about food all day. It’s to help you understand what works well enough that food can eventually take up a whole lot less space in your life. If that kind of support would be helpful, we’d be glad to have you.
Perspective matters.
Coaching groups offer support, community, accountability, and a place to work through the practical problems that inevitably come up. The goal isn’t to make you think about food all day. It’s to help you understand what works well enough that food can eventually take up a whole lot less space in your life.
