Transcription
I ate nothing but meat for 90 straight days. No vegetables, no fruit, no fiber, no carbs, just beef, eggs, butter, salt, and organ meat for three straight months.
By day 90, my cholesterol was so high that most doctors would have told me, "You're about to have a heart attack." Seriously, if you walked into a normal cardiologist's office with these numbers, they would have handcuffed you and put you on a statin before you left the building.
But then something happened that nobody expected because I had one of the top heart surgeons in the country, in the world, review my labs. This guy has performed over 5,000 heart surgeries. And what he told me was that my cardiovascular risk at day 90 actually improved.
Then my gut microbiome results came back and somehow eating zero fiber vegetables and plants for 90 days, my gut microbiome and my gut diversity improved, which should not have happened according to everything we've been taught about health and nutrition for the past 50 years.
By day 30, I looked leaner. By day 60, I had lost about 16 lbs and dropped 6% body fat. My sleep improved. My glucose stabilized. My cravings disappeared and what this experiment revealed completely changed the way I look at health, cholesterol, red meat, gut health, and the human body itself. This lesson will share everything that happened, the good, the bad, the blood work, the gut test, and the part that even shocked the health experts.
Okay, let's back up for a second. For the past 50, 60, 70 years, you and I have been taught the same three things over and over again. Number one, red meat will kill you. Saturated fat clogs your arteries. And cholesterol, high cholesterol, is the reason people drop dead from heart attacks. That's the story that most of us grew up on. It's the story your doctor probably still believes today. It's the story I used to believe, honestly.
But here's the thing. Over the last few years, I started seeing thousands, and I mean thousands, of regular people online in my community, my fat loss academy, but also moms, dads, business owners, athletes, people with autoimmune disease, reporting the exact opposite. They're saying things like, "Hey, I ate nothing but meat for 6 months, and my autoimmune symptoms completely disappeared. My brain fog cleared up. I lost 40 lbs. My blood work got better, not worse."
And one of the things I want you to keep in mind, there's actually a study published in the current developments in nutrition in 2021 from researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital in Harvard. They surveyed 2029 adults who had been doing the carnivore diet for an average of 14 months. Get this, 95% of them reported overall improved health. 93% of the people with diabetes reported huge improvements or full resolution and the adverse symptom rate was under 5%.
So I had a choice. I could keep reading the headlines or I could become the experiment. Look, I've dabbled with carnivore on and off since 2019. But I never went 90 straight days and tracked all these different metrics. I never did it with so much data on both ends. So that's what we did.
Day one, full panel of blood labs. I also did a full stool test. I did all this before I even touched a piece of meat only food. Day 90, I did the exact same tests. Same lab, same conditions. And honestly, going into this, I assumed at least some of the markers would get worse. I assumed I have to come on here on YouTube and tell you, hey, I have to walk some of this back because I expected my cholesterol to get ugly. I expected my gut microbiome to take a hit because I wasn't eating any fiber. Spoiler alert, I was wrong about mostly all of it.
Let's go through the 90 days. Day one, I call the last supper. So, my last non-carnivore meal, and I'm going to be honest with you, I made a count. It was a burger. Not a carnivore burger, though. Yeah, I had the meat, but the meat was sandwiched in between two gluten-free buns, tomatoes, pickles, and cheese on it. I sat there and I stirred up the burger for about a minute because once I bit into it and finished it, that was it. No bread, no rice, no fruit, no vegetables, nothing green on my plate for 3 months.
So, I finished the burger, drove straight to Lab Corp the next morning. They drew nine vials of blood. I also did a full advanced lipid profile, something called the NMR test that breaks down particle sizes of your LDL cholesterol size by size. I did inflammatory markers, a full thyroid panel, hormones, insulin, A1C, the whole thing. As a matter of fact, that panel retails for about $3500. Then I did a stool test. I'll spare you the visual, but you essentially poop on a piece of paper. You collect the sample, you seal it, and you drop it in the mailbox. First time in my life that I put poop in a mailbox. Then I went home, opened the fridge, and I started day one.
The first seven days, the adaptation period. Here's what was on the menu for the next 90 days. There are four levels to carnivore. I wrote about all four levels in my brand new book coming out soon called Ketolex Revised, which you actually pre-order right now and get some free bonuses over at Ketolexbook.com or scan the QR code on the screen. As a quick note, level one is just beef and salt, very restrictive, and it's mostly used for like severe autoimmune cases. Level two is all animal products. Level three, you could add dairy and eggs. And level four allows you a little bit more flexibility where you could add a tiny bit of avocado, some plant-based sauces like Primal Kitchen dressings and dips. So you have a little bit more flexibility.
I did a mix of level two and level three. So I had beef, pork, bison, lamb, seafood, poultry, organ meat. I had eggs with the yolk and sheep and goat dairy, but no cow dairy. I did have grass-fed butter and some bacon as well. Oh, and salt and that was it.
And look, in the beginning, I want to be real with you. There was some hiccups with that transition period. Like by day three, I noticed a slight decline in my energy levels, especially cuz I was very active playing basketball, working out. I had some weird digestive stuff going on. So, it was diarrhea to be blunt with you, as we call it here. It's disaster pants is what I had. And then I had some intermittent cravings by day four.
But the hardest part in the beginning was the social pressure. My mom, I love her. Her name is Hattie. She's the best. But my mom thought I was losing my mind. I have dinner with her and my wife every Thursday. And she kept asking me, "Ben, okay, you're doing this experiment, but can you have lentils? What about rice? A little salad?" No, mom. Carnivore means carnivore only from animals. And the hardest thing was I was doing this through the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, going to dinner parties, watching everyone around me eat mashed potatoes and pie. But I didn't do one cheat meal, not a single bite of a non-carn food because I wanted you to have clean data.
Now, around day six, something shifted. I went to play basketball. I play basketball almost every single day, but every Sunday, I play with a group of friends. And in the past, when I've done carnivore, some small bouts of it, I would bonk during high-intensity basketball after an hour or so. I would hit a wall by that second or third game. This time, I actually decided to take some exogenous ketones before basketball, and I I even put on a continuous glucose monitor to look at my blood sugar during the workout.
What was interesting is that my blood glucose went from 80s in the 80s milligrams per deciliter before I started working out and it hit a high peak of 130 during the basketball. Now, this spike in blood sugar is actually not bad. It's actually a good thing because this is exactly what your body does during high-intensity exercise. The cool thing about spiking blood sugar this way is that you're not pumping out insulin to clear it. That glucose is being sucked in by your muscle and liver cells. It's being used for fuel. And by the way, I won all three games. Like I always do. I'm the best in basketball. I felt good. A little tired after, but I felt good. Something at this point was starting to click.
All right, the first 30 days, this is the first payoff that I noticed. So, I showed you a photo of day one holding up the testing kits and the CGM. On day 30, I looked in the mirror. I almost didn't recognize myself. Like, I'll show a photo for those watching on YouTube. My face was already leaner. The puffiness around my jaw and under my eyes, that was almost completely gone. My skin looked clearer. I looked more vascular in my arms. My waistband was looser and the metabolic stuff was pretty wild.
I was wearing the continuous glucose monitor throughout the 90 days and my glucose according to that CGM I was wearing was sitting between 70 and 110 milligrams per deciliter all day every day. Fasted state, postmeal state, it it didn't matter. Almost no glucose and insulin spikes. My insulin was flatline low, which is actually a really good thing, especially if you're insulin resistant, have fatty liver, or just extra weight on your body.
And then there was the Aura Ring data. Many of you know if you follow my work that I've been using an Aura Ring since 20, I think 2017. I was one of the first adopters. And this is where it actually got really interesting. My heart rate variability, which is one of the most important markers to track for nervous system health. It's looking at how adaptable your nervous system is to the stressors you deal with on a day-to-day basis. In general, you want your heart rate variability to go up. That's showing a good sign. Now, my average heart rate variability was around 60. During carnivore, my average hit around 75. Sometimes I've seen 78 on some nights and that's really significant a significant increase.
My sleep improved. I was tracking my REM sleep and my deep sleep. And on average each night I was getting more of these stages of sleep. My body temperature dropped at night, which is what you want, and my resting heart rate dropped into the low 40s at night, which is also a really good thing. One of the other things I noticed on the Aura Ring, it shows when you wake up throughout the night with these little white bars. And I had less of those white bars, meaning I was sleeping more thoroughly and deeper throughout the night.
And here's the part that really messed with my head. This diet was supposed to be destroying me, according to the official guidance, because eating this much saturated fat is supposed to be sending me toward a heart attack, but I felt better than I felt in years. My mental clarity was insane. I was in deep ketosis for the entire 90 days.
Okay, by day 60, I weighed myself. I'll show you some photos that I snapped in front of my mirror here looking at my abs. I had lost 16 lbs. 16. I didn't even think I had 16 lbs to lose. I was already lean. But I also tracked my muscle mass. And none of it was muscle. It was body fat. I actually dropped 6% in body fat within those first 60 days. Yeah, 6%. I didn't drop to 6% body fat. I shaved off 6% body fat.
But here is where the doubt kicked in. Because at this point of the experiment, I still kind of assumed some things on my blood work and even stool tests was going to come back terrible. I mean, I was eating beef, butter, eggs, bacon, organ meat, a lot of it, every single day for 3 months without a single break. According to everything I was taught, my LDL should have been off the charts. My triglycerides should have been climbing and my arteries should have been screaming at me. And honestly, part of me was already preparing a speech for this lesson here. Hey guys, I felt amazing. But here's the bad news on the labs, right? Because that's what should have happened.
Now, real quick, one of the biggest reasons this experiment became dramatically easier for me after the first week was protein. Because once your body gets high quality protein consistently, cravings calm down, the food noise gets quieter, you stay fuller longer, and your blood sugar stabilizes, and fat loss stops feeling like a fight. So for me, I decided to make sure I was getting enough protein during the experiment, which was about 170 grams of protein per day, which is equal to my current body weight, which is my ideal body weight. But sometimes I was having trouble getting that protein or I was in a rush. So I decided to add in some high quality protein from Equip Foods protein. So I added this in when I was busy, post-workout, when I was traveling, or when I just needed something fast to keep me full and satiated.
Now, most of the protein powders on the market I would not use. It's loaded with gums and fillers and artificial ingredients, sometimes even seed oils. Equip is different. It's grass-fed and grass-finished beef protein isolate, which is carnivore approved. It's got minimal ingredients, no junk, no fillers. They do third-party testing. I've read their report. It's completely free of contaminants like heavy metals. And honestly, it tastes ridiculously good. So, if you want to add this to your carnivore diet or just add it in general, my audience gets an exclusive 20% off Equip Foods Prime Protein. If you want this, click the first link in the description box below or scan the QR code on the screen. Once you go to that link, you'll see this page, Equip Foods Prime Protein. They have different flavors. Now, the chocolate is incredible. They also have cookies and cream. Those would fit into a level four carnivore. If you want to be level one and two, a little bit more strict, you would simply get the unflavored one and make it stevia free. Add to the cart, try once and save. The coupon code is automatically applied. And they also have a money back guarantee, so there's no risk in actually trying it. And before you check out, one of the things that I did was I added their collagen. So, I'm going to scroll down. Their grass-fed collagen, unflavored. I'm going to add that to the cart. That's because protein from the prime protein helps support the muscle. But collagen supports the joints, the tendons, the skin, connective tissue, and recovery. Even more important if you're after 40, after the age of 40 like me, you hit checkout and the coupon code is automatically applied. So, if you're tired of cravings, food obsession, energy crashes, stubborn belly fat, constantly feeling hungry, then get enough protein. And this is one of the simplest places to start. One bag costs about 2 hours a day, and you feel incredible when you do it consistently. So anyways, click the first link in the description box below if you want this or scan the QR code on the screen.
Now the blood work reveal. Okay, so on day 90, I drove back to the same Lab Corp, same nine vials, same panel, and then I sat down with the heart surgeon I mentioned, world-renowned heart surgeon, Dr. Philip Ovadia. He's a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon. This guy, as I have mentioned, has done over 5,000 open heart surgeries. He wrote the book Stay Off My Operating Table. He's been on my podcast, The Benis Show, a few times. So, what I did with him is I pulled up my day one panel and my day 90 panel, and he reviewed both.
And here's where if you went to your regular doctor, they would have lost their mind. My total cholesterol on day 90 came back at 434. My LDL, the bad cholesterol, came back at 350. My LDL particle count, the LDLP, was over 3,000. For context, the normal range for LDL is supposed to be under 100. You heard that right, under 100. Mine was 350. If you walked into your cardiologist with those numbers, as I mentioned, they would have handcuffed you and force-fed you statins before you got to the parking lot, they would tell your family to put things in a in order, put your affairs in order to start saving for your funeral.
But here's what Dr. Philip Ovadia said. Quote, "Ben, LDL cholesterol on its own is one of the worst predictors of actual heart disease risk." He said, "The metric that matters far more is the ratio of triglycerides to HDL, because that ratio reflects insulin resistance." And he says it's insulin resistance, not cholesterol, that's the real driver of heart disease. As a matter of fact, he said there's only one cause of heart disease, just one, damage to your blood vessels. Now, he says there's many things that cause damage to your blood vessels, but he said high insulin is the number one cause.
So, my triglyceride to HDL ratio came back at exactly one. Anything under two is good. Anything under 1.5 is ideal. I was at one, meaning I took my total triglycerides and divide it by my HDL and I was at a 1:1 ratio. That's the profile of someone who essentially has zero insulin resistance. Then, we looked at something called remnant cholesterol. Remnant cholesterol is the actual damaging aoggenic stuff. Anything under 25 is considered good. Anything under 15 is considered ideal. Mine was 10. On day one and day 90, that didn't even change or move at all.
Then we looked at the LDL particle sizes. Because here's the real thing about cholesterol that most doctors don't tell you. LDL particles come in two flavors. They are small, sticky, dense LDL particles. Those are called pattern B. So think B, bad. Those are the ones that get lodged and trapped into your arterial walls and cause plaque formation. Then there are the large and fluffy LDL particles called pattern A. Those are perfectly healthy. My small LDL particles, the bad particles on day one were at 491. On day 90, after 90 days of beef and butter, they had dropped to 403. As a percentage of my total LDL particle count, I went from about 25% small to about 15% small. So, the dangerous sticky cholesterol got less dangerous on a pure meat diet. How about that?
Now, my high sensitivity C reactive protein marker, HSCP, which is kind of like the gold standard of inflammation markers looking at your risk of cardiovascular disease. On day one, my C reactive protein was 0.39. It went slightly up to 0.52 on day 90. Both are excellent. Anything under one is considered optimal. My homoyine, another inflammatory marker, looked great. They were both on day one and day 90 in the single digits. My fasting insulin, I said Dr. Ovadia mentioned high insulin is the number one cause of heart disease. Well, my fasting insulin on day one was a healthy 3.6. Day 90, 3.7. Anything under five is amazing. My hemoglobin A1C stayed the same at 5.2 on day one and day 90.
And when Dr. Avadia leaned back and looked at me, we were on a Zoom call. He said, quote, "Ben, based on these labs, you were at low risk of cardiovascular disease on day one, and if anything, you're at an even lower risk on day 90." I'm not making this up. This is from a heart surgeon who looks at lipids every day of his life. He told me that 90 days of eating nothing but meat made my cardiovascular profile get better, not worse.
And by the way, what I am is something called a lean mass hyperresponder. It's a phenotype that researchers like Dr. Nick Norwitz at Harvard and Dave Feldman have been studying for the last several years. Lean, metabolically healthy people on low carb diets sometimes see these massive LDL increases, but with low triglycerides and high HDL. And here is the wild part. In a recent study called the keto, they followed 100 of these lean mass hyperresponders for a full year with CT scans of their hearts. And what they found was that for a specific population, LDL and even APOB did not predict the progression of arterial plaque. The thing that predicted plaque progression was existing plaque, not the LDL number.
And there's a published case report. A guy who walked around with an LDL of 574 and a total cholesterol over 700 for 7 years on a ketogenic diet. They did a CT scan on him. No coronary atherosclerosis, none. Norwitz actually ran one of the most ridiculous self-experiments that I've read. He ate 12 Oreos a day for 16 days on top of his keto diet. His LDL dropped by 71% from 384 to 111 by eating Oreos. In contrast, taking a high-dose statin for 6 weeks only dropped his LDL by 32.5%. Oreos beat the statin by more than double. That's published in the journal Metabolites. You can look it up.
What this tells us is that in specific lean, metabolically healthy phenotypes like me. The LDL is being driven by the absence of carbs, not by any underlying disease. The body is shipping around fat as energy because there's no glucose around or I should say very low glucose around. That's it. Fortunately, a lie told often enough becomes the truth. Huh? We've been lied to about cholesterol for 50 years. And there's a term for this that I wrote about in Ketolex Revised called lipophobia. The fear of dietary fat based off of 50 plus years of propaganda and misinformation. Cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease the same way firefighters don't start the fire. They show up at the scene because there's already a fire. The fire in your body is inflammation. Cholesterol is your body's response, not the cause.
But the cholesterol stuff is only half of the experiment because the next reveal was the one that completely shocked the way that I view the gut microbiome. So when I told people I was going on zero plants, zero fiber, zero fruit, zero vegetables for 3 months, my colleagues and friends that were gut experts completely lost their mind. You see, the whole story we've been told about the gut microbiome is that you need plant fiber. You need prebiotics. You need probiotics. You need polyphenols. You need a diverse plant-rich diet to feed your good bacteria. Otherwise, your good bacteria will die off. Your diversity will collapse and you wreck the engine that runs your immune system, your brain, your hormones, everything.
So, when I got my day one stool test back, I use the same company on day one that I did on day 90. By the way, the test on day one literally told me in writing, here was their recommendation. Quote, "Eat more plants, increase fiber, avoid ketogenic diets, avoid meat, fish, poultry, dairy, and eggs." Well, I did the exact opposite. Zero plants, zero fiber, pure animal products for 90 straight days.
Then on day 90, I sat down with two health experts. First one was my friend and mentor, Dr. Daniel PMPA, one of the leading voices in cellular health and healing. And the second expert was Dr. Will Depalo. He was the chief scientific officer of the company I used for my stool test. He holds a professorship at the University of Washington and he spent his career researching the gut microbiome's role in inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, and the immune system. So, we pulled up the day one results, day 90 results side by side.
Here is what happened. My alpha diversity, that's the total richness and evenness of the bacteria in my gut. It went up. My species richness went from 118 to 148. My evenness went from 0.4848 to almost 0.6 after 90 days of zero plants. My keystone bacteria, these are the species that exert a disproportionate impact on the entire microbiome ecosystem. It's like the conductor of the orchestra. They're very important. Those keystone bacteria almost doubled on day 90. Actually gained six keystone bacteria species on day 90 that wasn't there on day one. I also gained five new core bacteria.
Dr. Will looked at me and said, "Ben, this changed the way I look at the gut microbiome." A professor of microbiology said that to me to my face on a Zoom call. How is that even possible? Well, here's what we know now. New research is showing that gut bacteria can actually ferment amino acids from animal protein, not just plant fiber, and it uses it as a fuel source. There was a case study published in the microbiota and host last year on healthy carnivore patients where the gut diversity was indistinguishable from a normal omnivore diet. And a long-term carnivore study published just this year in Science Direct tracking 10 long-term carnivore individuals for an average of 36 months. And they found that their alpha diversity was no different from their matched controls. And they actually had more richness, a key diversity metric.
You see, the gut microbiome doesn't care if you feed it plants or animals. It cares about change. It cares about variety over time. And what Dr. Daniel PMPA pointed out to me, this is the magic. Diet change itself forces the microbiome to adapt and become more diverse. That's why I don't think anyone should do carnivore forever. I love the idea of doing it for a reset, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. It's one of the most powerful resets that you can do for your body, your health, your autoimmune, and your gut. Look, I did the exact opposite of what the test told me to do, and I got better.
So, let me bring this all home for you. 90 days of nothing but meat. The results, I lost 16 lbs. I dropped 6% body fat. My deep sleep improved. My heart rate variability improved. My glucose was great. My inflammation stayed in the excellent range. My cholesterol markers all improved. What this experiment really taught me, and this is what I really want you to take away here, is that the body is way more adaptable than we've been led to believe. Most of what we've been taught about meat, fat, cholesterol, even fiber for the last 50 years at best is oversimplified. At worst is just plain wrong.
Look, Alvin Tooffler said the illiterate of the 21st century is not those who cannot read and write. It's those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. So, I'm asking you to question everything. Do your own experiments. Track your own data. Talk to your doctor. Read the studies. Show your doctor this lesson. Don't just believe me. And don't just believe the headlines.
And look, in my upcoming book, Ketolex Revised, I teach you exactly the four levels of carnivore. There's an entire chapter on carnivore and so much more. This book could be a game changer for you. And you could pre-order it right now on paperback, Kindle, even Audible, and Spotify if you love listening to books. I narrated that myself. When you pre-order the book right now, you get some free bonus chapters. So, head over to ketolexbook.com or scan the QR code on the screen or click the second link in the description box below to go pre-order and get your free bonuses.
Now, if you've ever tried carnivore, you're thinking about doing it, I want to know. Drop a comment down below if you're watching on YouTube. If you have done it, what improvements have you seen? Did your skin clear up? Did you lose weight? Did your joint pain go away? Or did it not work for you at all? And if you haven't done it or you thinking about doing it, let me know in the comment section down below. And hey, if you're new to the channel, hit the subscribe button. We publish incredible videos five to six times per week on the topics of fat loss, health, the gut microbiome, and so much more. And share this with somebody you know, maybe even your doctor. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. And if you love this lesson, I did another experiment where I drank 30 tablespoons of olive oil in 10 days and tracked some really key metrics and you won't believe what it did to my body. Here's a clip from that recent video. Then click the video on the screen coming up in a few seconds to watch this lesson. It's going to blow your mind. I'll see you there. I'm going to walk you through every day, the good, the bad, the part where I almost ruined the whole experiment by making one really stupid mistake. And after watching this or listening to this, trust me, you're going to want to try this. Okay, so here's the thing about olive oil that most people get wrong. When you say olive oil to the average person, they think, "Oh, yeah."