• I grew up in the 1970s as one of the few overweight children at school, while eating the same food as parents who were not overweight.
• My mother followed the conventional low-fat healthy-diet pattern, and the nurse still accused her of feeding me too much.
• By age 50, I was 160 kg, had type 2 diabetes, and had already been vegetarian for 35 years.
• Vegetarianism came through early interest in yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Ayurveda, and I believed the diet was good.
• My vegetarian meals included homemade ghee from cultured butter, spinach curries, paneer, and other foods I thought were healthy.
• Every year I became stiffer, until I could not wipe myself properly or bend down to tie my shoelaces.
• A Radio New Zealand headline led me to Dr. Andrew Jenkinson's Why We Eat (Too Much), my first real exposure to low-carb high-fat eating.
• The next day I removed vegetable oil, sugar, grains, and processed food, and began a pescatarian low-carb high-fat diet at about 100 g of carbs per day.
• Those carbs came from foods such as sweet potatoes, blackberries, and raw honey, while the rest of the diet became much lower in processed food.
• Weight loss started quickly, stiffness disappeared within weeks, and I felt decades younger.

Skin flares, histamine, carnivore, and ferments

• Lifelong doctor-diagnosed psoriasis worsened during the early low-carb period, and food tracking connected flares to spinach, celery, aged cheese, and other foods.
• Most triggers were plants, and removing them cleared most of the condition that had been called psoriasis.
• Smoked wild sockeye salmon produced a major flare, which pointed the problem toward histamine, not ordinary psoriasis.
• Beef, bacon, butter, and eggs on a strict carnivore pattern cleared the skin almost completely, but high-histamine foods still required caution.
• Dr. Sean O'Mara's living diet added ferments to carnivore, including sauerkraut juice in drinking water.
• After three weeks of sauerkraut juice, I could eat anything without flares, my skin was fully clear, and the flares have not returned for over a year.
• Carnivore solved the main problems, and the living diet removed the remaining histamine limit.

Training, weight loss, fasting, and body changes

• I started the journey on February 1, 2024.
• I lost 70 kg in 10 months, reached 90 kg by October 2024, and kept the weight off.
• I later gained about 5 kg of muscle while my waist continued to shrink.
• Weekly 48-hour fasting, hill sprints, and sprint interval work restarted fat loss after a long plateau.
• Sprint training now includes work every second day, six to ten hill repetitions, plus one 10-second maximum-effort sprint even on rest days.
• Hill sprints reduced speed enough to avoid injury after a hamstring issue.
• At age 53 and 174 cm tall, I measured 2 cm taller than before the diet.
• Food cravings, hunger, and even ordinary like-dislike pressure around food disappeared.
• The freedom I had searched for through spiritual systems came through fixing food and health.

Current food routine

• I eat two meals per day.
• Breakfast at 9:00 usually contains six pasture-raised eggs, a can of sardines in spring water, sauerkraut, and raw A2 kefir.
• The second meal between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. usually contains 250 g of grass-fed red meat, especially lamb or beef.
• Lamb is cheap in New Zealand and tastes best to me, so lamb shoulder chops and slow-cooked lamb with bones are staples.
• I drink grass-fed beef bone broth daily.
• I also eat raw cheeses, including French Comté.
• Sardine quality matters because some brands pack fish in spring water or olive oil after frying them in sunflower oil first.

Family changes and medical markers

• My parents are in their 90s and are thrilled after watching me carry excess weight for my whole life.
• After vascular events in both parents, dietary changes improved their health, weight, and energy.
• My father lost weight and felt decades younger.
• My 92-year-old mother added lamb's fry and pasture-raised eggs for breakfast, and her iron deficiency resolved after low ferritin had been missed.
• My parents are not carnivore, but they now avoid processed food and vegetable oil, use allulose, and eat more saturated fat.
• My own triglycerides fell to 1.1, HDL rose to 1.54, and LDL rose from about 2.9 to 6.6.
• My LDL rose while I felt better.
• My HbA1c was 52 after three months of low-carb high-fat eating and later reached 31.
• Type 2 diabetes medication is no longer part of my life.

Adherence, work, and outlook

• Since February 1, 2024, I have not eaten sugar, processed food, or vegetable oil.
• I have not eaten restaurant meals and have cooked everything myself.
• Food noise is gone, eating is functional, and life is available again.
• An old boss gave up sugar after seeing my changes and could bend down without pain, but alcohol kept him from continuing.
• Before the health change, I worked mainly in call centers, Inland Revenue, and telecommunications.
• Occupational overuse, finger pain, frozen shoulder, sore shoulders, extreme weight, and sickness made work harder.
• When Spark New Zealand closed and outsourced the collections department, I took redundancy and did not apply for another role.
• At 53, I am not winding down; I am ready for something new.
• Growing older now feels like a challenge worth taking, not another decline to dread.

Advice for trying carnivore

• Cut ultra-processed food, sugar, flour, and seed oils from day one.
• Move toward carnivore gradually over a few weeks.
• A sudden dietary change is not ideal for the microbiome.
• The practical path is immediate removal of the worst foods, then a slower transition into full carnivore.

References

• [01:55] Why We Eat (Too Much) — https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/312913/why-we-eat-too-much-by-jenkinson-dr-andrew/9780241400531