How Intermittent Fasting And The Carnivore Diet Kept Me Lean For 20 Years
I imagine if you were a superhero, you’d eventually get bored with your superpowers.
I have a superpower that I’m bored with: I can go from flabby to shredded in just a few months. And provided I get enough sleep, I can maintain that physique indefinitely.
Bold claim incoming…
I’ve figured out the magical secret to getting lean and staying that way.
Now, to be fair, there are multiple magic secrets to get an amazing looking body.
But I have found one of those ways that DEFINITELY works. That way only has TWO steps.
For a lot of people, that’s going to be one step too many.
But if you’re serious about tackling this “getting in shape” thing, then do yourself a favor:
Take 7 minutes out of your life and read the next couple paragraphs.
You can thank me in a comment.
The First Magical Secret
Let’s take it back to the best year in the history of humanity: 2002.
The Winter Olympics were being held in Salt Lake City, The Department of Homeland Security was established, and Guantanamo Bay Prison was created.
Hmm.. actually maybe that year wasn’t so great.
Personally speaking, I had just dropped out of my first year of university and moved back in with my parents.
(It was exactly as fun as it sounds.)
One day, I was out with my mom and we happened to stop by a book store (remember those?).
Back when bookstores were more common, we would always go browsing after dinner. Both of my parents read a lot, and as a kid I picked up the habit as well.
So there we are, browsing through the different sections, and I spot a book with a catchy title.
Being a 19 year old wannabe tough guy, I thought that sounded pretty cool. So I read the back cover.
I don’t remember the exact wording, but what I do remember is a testimonial saying something like,
“This diet is genius! I can eat as much as I want and still lose weight!”
If I read something like that now, I‘d dismiss it with disdainful skepticism. But back then, I ate it up (no pun intended).
I read a few pages of the book and decided that THIS would be the book I take home.
And no joke — that decision changed my life.
The crux of the book is simple: undereat during the day, overeat at night.
During the day, you can have small snacks of fruits and/or vegetables.
At night, you eat one BIG meal — starting with a salad, then protein, then carbs if you’re still hungry.
There is more to it than that, but that is the core of the book.
I thought it sounded plausible that I would lean out doing this, so I gave it a shot.
Spoiler alert: It worked.
Not only did it work, but I had more energy during the day, didn’t experience sluggishness after meals (except after my evening meal), and could use that time to focus on whatever it was I did all day at 19 (mainly selling drugs and playing video games).
The coolest part about eating only one meal a day was that when I ate a meal with friends, I would often eat the equivalent of 3 meals at once — making them wonder how I managed to stay so thin despite eating so much.
“You just have a really fast metabolism.”
LMAO if they only knew I hadn’t eaten in 21 hours…
For most of my adult life, I have been eating like this.
It’s essentially enabled me to eat whatever I can stuff into my face in a two-ish hour window.
Now I know you fatties are already thinking to yourself, “Wait so I can eat Milk Duds for 2 hours straight and I will lose weight? Sign me up!”
Don’t get ahead of yourselves, because I’m not sure if that will work.
I can’t say it won’t work because I’ve never tried it.
But what I CAN tell you is that you will be one very sad panda if you eat hundreds of Milk Duds on an empty stomach.
There’s a very good reason the Warrior Diet says that you should eat your meal in a certain order.
After not eating all day, your stomach is going to devour whatever you put in there first. You need to prepare it properly.
I just imagine a wave of stomach acid flushing out and immediately digesting anything I eat after nearly a day of fasting.
Imagine how long it takes Milk Duds to get broken down… barf.
Now imagine what would happen with a salad… obviously a big difference.
The Second Magical Secret
Fast forward to three years ago.
It’s 2019. I’m 35 years old, still fit as a fiddle and now traveling through Asia.
Shortly after starting my trip, I started up with my YouTube channel again.
For several months, I uploaded “tip of the day” type videos where I shared some insight on fitness, nutrition, or supplements.
One day, a viewer asked me to react to a “What I Eat In A Day” video with Stephanie Buttermore during one of her cheat days.
I didn’t think anything of it until the video started performing MUCH better than most of my more “useful” videos.
That video kicked off a series of 300 reaction videos of similar YouTubers.
During those few months, I watched more “What I Eat In A Day Videos” than is necessary for one human being to watch.
I watched what they ate. I noted their mood, energy level, and skin health. I listened to their complaints about “their relationship with food” (code for eating disorder).
It didn’t take me long to realize what was happening: all the miserable anorexic/bulemic unhealthy people had one thing in common — they rarely ate meat, if ever.
No matter how many videos I watched, these people rarely ate meat. And they all seemed miserable.
Meanwhile the few “success stories” that I found (Gabbi Hanna and Natasha Oceane come to mind) involved eating meat every day, if not for every meal.
All aboard the Carnivore Train
The Carnivore Diet was also beginning to gather steam. Frank Tufano, Shawn Baker, and even the Snake Diet guy talked about eating only meat.
Thanks to the Snake Diet Guy, I even started experimenting with raw meat.
To this day, it’s one of my favorite ways to eat a steak.
Layered on top of my decade+ long habit of eating only one meal a day, all of these things happened simultaneously:
1. I realized that the unhealthy fitness YouTubers rarely ate meat
2. The Carnivore diet became popular in the YouTube fitness sphere
3. I started eating 90% of my calories from barbecued pork
Remember, I was living in Thailand at the time. And also pretty broke.
When you’re broke in Thailand, you are broke.
I had some money coming in from various affiliate stuff I was selling, but not enough to live a western lifestyle… even in Bangkok.
I had to budget carefully for my daily food.
I was still training pretty hard, so I knew I needed to make my meals as efficient as possible.
I thought to myself, “What’s the MOST EFFICIENT food too eat?”
What food would give me everything I needed?
And the answer was simple: meat.
I didn’t really specify between chicken, beef, pork or something else. I just knew that meat would be the best choice.
Fortunately, there was a “famous” food cart 50 feet from my guesthouse.
Skewers were about .40 each. I would order 20 with some sticky rice, usually finishing all of them — sometimes even going back for more.
And let me tell you, after eating 20–30 pork skewers on an empty stomach, you DO NOT want to stick another piece of food in your mouth.
Of course I would still snack after that. I was usually ravenous from long cardio sessions combined with either Muay Thai or weightlifting. And I do love me some ice cream.
Now if you’re a normal person living a normal life in America, you’re probably not going to move to Thailand and dedicate your life to working out.
That said, the principles are the same. Eat mostly meat, eat once a day, and work out.
Couldn’t be simpler than that.
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