I marked June 17, 2024, as the day I fully committed to adopting a carnivore diet to heal my life. I remember the exact day when I had my first bite of steak a couple of months ago. I had been a vegetarian on and off, with my last cycle starting in late 2022. I chose vegetarianism because I genuinely believed that meat could cause stomach cancer, which had claimed the lives of several family members.

My dad was diagnosed with stomach cancer a few years ago. My maternal grandfather died in his 60s from stomach cancer, as did a couple of his brothers. My paternal grandfather died suddenly, possibly from either heart disease or pancreatic cancer. Gastritis runs in my family on both sides, and I somewhat believed that my fate in this world would be cancer soon, before my 70s.

At 38 years old, I had freshly moved to a new city with my Golden Retriever to start fresh from my previous life. Starting from 2023, due to much stress in my life combined with my long-term condition such as hypothyroidism and ADHD, my body was acting so differently. Not only did I feel and look puffier due to my hypothyroidism, but I also experienced severe brain fog that I had never had before. I thought I had early dementia or Alzheimer’s.

I remember messaging my mother via Instagram DM and telling her I no longer wanted to live. Every day was becoming so hard. I felt the ultimate pressure to run my chaotic life, divorce legal battles, and I couldn’t even do simple things because my brain was so hazy. I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt the worst ever at the time. I thought my diet was good, so most doctors, including myself, blamed external circumstantial stressors.

My diet consisted of lots of vegetables, lots and lots of fruits, and I was known to be someone who was always active in the gym. In 2024, I walked a lot, averaging 11,000 steps a day. I stopped drinking as a personal challenge in 2023 to prove to myself that I’m beyond what my ex-husband used to use against me to shame me, while he himself drank at the same rate or worse in my opinion.

The first couple of weeks after my alcohol detox, my brain fog got worse, which I read was a side effect. I waited a few more weeks. I definitely trimmed my body fat and looked so much healthier, but the brain fog got even worse to the point where I couldn’t even read a simple email to understand it mentally. I was dysfunctional, even though my physical appearance looked somewhat normal and ‘healthy.’

The story of me deciding to eat meat again started because of my dog. He had a severe allergic reaction or yeast infection, where a lot of carbohydrates and starches should be avoided. So, he needed to eat more muscle meat. I thought I should consider eating rotisserie chicken because of the protein value. It was so hard to meet daily protein needs without animal protein, and I ended up eating and spending so much money on plant-based protein and still feeling hungry, snacking on many random low-calorie snacks at night because my body was so depleted of ‘something.’

My alcohol detox played a part in this, as I was heavily craving sugar and naively replaced it with lots of fruits, thinking it was much healthier than alcohol, but I was wrong. In the midst of my hopelessness, I walked my dog around a new neighborhood and saw a lunch special at a local restaurant: steak and salad for $28. I decided to give it a go.

I ate the steak with my favorite English hot mustard, had a glass of Prosecco, and paid. All of a sudden, on my way walking home, my eyesight seemed to get brighter, then I felt warm (not hot), and then all of a sudden I wanted to run. Yes, I had a massive burst of energy and ended up half-running back to the Airbnb. I was stunned because it had been the longest time since I had any energy to do anything voluntarily.

The next day, I decided maybe I should give the carnivore diet a go. I went to the supermarket and bought a pack of beef steak. In the morning, I felt so hungry that I cooked the steak at 10 am and felt so ridiculously wrong. I ate it and felt satisfied. A few hours later, I felt the same energy burst again. It felt like someone had just injected me with a liquid dose of hope and life. I felt so happy that I ended up carrying my golden retriever and swinging him around out of happiness.

I recorded this because I was so stunned by this new feeling, and I wanted to make sure people, or my future self, would believe me when I told them my story. Since then, I researched more and more about the carnivore diet. On June 17, 2024, I decided to fully commit and go for it.

One day, I was on YouTube searching for answers for my chronic hypothyroidism and stumbled across a video discussing the carnivore diet and thyroid health. I started digging into this rabbit hole and found more videos of women testifying that the carnivore diet changed their lives. Some were extreme, eating butter like cake, while others had severe health conditions and swore by this diet as their lifesaver.

I began to slowly change my perspective on eating meat, warming up to the idea that my symptoms could be improved by incorporating more meat into my diet. I also discovered the aesthetic benefits of the carnivore diet, such as improved skin, weight loss, reduced puffiness, inflammation, better hair, teeth, and many more. These aesthetic benefits of being a carnivore played a big part in convincing myself to give the carnivore diet a go as a female.