Imagine if one choice could change everything. Imagine if one change could transform you into a new human being. An unrecognizable machine. An unstoppable warrior.
For Brett Lloyd, that’s exactly what happened.
Brett is 57 years old. Every day for 40 years of his life, he suffered from depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
His pill cabinet looked like a pharmacy, and he was passed around the medical system like a hot potato.
In 2018, he decided to take his health into his own hands. Tired of empty promises, he decided to change his diet – but not how you’d expect.
He did the exact opposite of all the mainstream advice he’d been given – Brett started to follow the carnivore diet.
And damn, the results were remarkable.
Read on to learn more about his incredible carnivore diet results and how radical transformations like Brett’s are possible for all of us – even you.
Brett’s Unbelievable Transformation
Life Pre-Carnivore
Before the carnivore diet, Brett had a litany of issues.
He was diagnosed with depression in 1990 and went on his first medications in 1995. Little did he know that he was climbing aboard the equivalent of the medical titanic…and he was headed straight into an iceberg.
In Brett’s words:
“I was a very angry, depressed person with an extreme dissatisfaction with everyone & everything in my life. As the illness progressed over the years, I became more & more unable to hear & see my immediate environment accurately. I misinterpreted words and/or emotions, ascribing a tone or emotion to a state not actually present.”
He felt like he was seeing the world through dark-tinted glasses, interpreting everything in a negative light.
Depression and anxiety ruled his life. At times, he couldn’t muster the energy to do anything other than “cling to a pillow.” It felt like a death sentence, and Brett assumed he was doomed to simply “wait for a heart attack because the panic attacks were so intense and relentless.”
Brett never slept. In 2008, he went nearly two months with no more than 1-2 hours of sleep a night. He was unable to exercise and his meds were causing him to gain weight. In 2015, Brett weighed 289 pounds, his skin was flaky and rashed, and his eyesight was weak.
What Did Brett Try?
What didn’t he try is a better question…
Like many others, he ate a healthy diet, he thought — following the food pyramid to a tee. Three meals a day, a balanced plate, and “healthy” whole grains. He never suspected his diet could be the root cause to his illnesses.
Brett circled the healthcare system like a motion-sick kid on a merry-go-round. One doctor after another tried to numb his symptoms with pills, draining both his energy and bank account along the way.
Instead of figuring out the root cause of his issues, doctors papered over the symptoms. When one drug didn’t work, they whipped out their prescription pads and tried another. This is the height of ineptitude — like a babysitter who gives a kid matches to play with.
Brett was prescribed all of the following:
- Prozac
- Effexor
- Pristiq
- Ativan
- Trazodone
- Latuda
- Symbyax
- Risperidone
- Seroquel
- Abilify
- Lamictal
- Remeron
- Ambien
- Wellbutrin
- Lexapro
- Zoloft
He tried everything from antipsychotics, to SSRIs and mood stabilizers. He was even prescribed Abilify — a drug to treat depression caused by other depression meds (this is “off-label” by the way).
Guess what another side effect of abilify is? Depression and suicidal thoughts.
Saying this is a disgrace would be too kind. If you were to model the healthcare industry, you could do worse than a big firehouse that takes in pharmaceutical money on one end and shoots out toxic, addictive, sewage on the other end.
Brett Took His Health Into His Own Hands
Like Brett, so many of us carnivore diet and Keto diet advocates hit rock bottom health. We tried everything: medication, homeopathy, and online forums.
To be honest, I was close to even trying bloodletting if it would work. Desperation kicks in when you’re told you have poor genetics and meds are the only way out.
What we finally all realized — and what mainstream doctors still don’t seem to understand — is that all of these health issues are caused by the same things.
Instead of an array of toxic pills, Brett realized he could cure his issues with one simple change. CHANGING HIS DIET.
In 2015, Brett started a low-carb diet to try to lose some weight. To his delight, it started to work. But surprisingly, other symptoms improved too. He slept better and his anxiety eased up.
This was radical at the time… and still is today. The notion that you could “go on a diet” for some reason other than taking better beach photos baffles most people.
In 2018 Brett heard Jordan Peterson speak on the Joe Rogan podcast. Jordan and his daughter Mikhaila both cured their recalcitrant depression and autoimmune disorders with the carnivore diet.
Around the same time, Brett also heard Amber O’hearn touch on the anthropological evidence supporting a meat-based diet.
It was shocking. It still is shocking. How could eating the exact opposite foods that the mainstream media tells you to avoid cure chronic diseases? To many, it would be like saying cigarettes are the best thing for your lungs.
Would it work for Brett too?
At this point, Brett was willing to try anything. And his leap of faith paid off – big time.
What is the Carnivore Diet?
The carnivore diet revolves around a simple equation:
Animal products + water = health
It’s the exact opposite of all mainstream nutrition recommendations. Which, to be honest, shouldn’t be surprising given the disastrous health around the world. Of course the healthiest diet is the opposite of what everyone else is doing…
The carnivore diet is centered around the healthiest, most nutritious and tastiest foods in the world: fats like suet, steaks and organ meats.
Yes, it’s possible to be healthy and eat tasty foods…so stop eating like a rabbit and indulging in vegan cupcakes. This is a better way.
There are 16 main reasons why the carnivore diet works.
Like Noah’s Ark, anything that is an animal is allowed. There’s a reason Noah didn’t bring plants…
If you’re interested in discovering what a carnivore diet meal plan consists of, check out this article.
What happened when Brett adopted the carnivore diet? Did he develop scurvy and nutritional deficiencies because meat is bad for you? Nope. Meat didn’t kill him. In fact it did just the opposite.
If you’re interested in getting started with the carnivore diet, sign up below for my 14 day guide to mastering the carnivore diet.
Brett’s Unbelievable Transformation
After 57 years of unhealthy eating and 20 years of medications, Brett adopted the carnivore diet.
Almost immediately, his skin started to clear. Within 10 days, all of Brett’s joint pain was gone. Within 2 weeks, his sugar cravings vanished. And within 24 days, ALL of his depression symptoms disappeared.
Let that sink in.
For years, he had spent thousands of dollars on medications to cure his depression. He tried almost a dozen different “scientifically proven medications,” NONE of which worked.
But just 24 days of adopting a new diet did what no medication had been able to do.
This is how backwards our healthcare system is today. This should make your blood boil. Doctors are draining people’s pockets prescribing useless medications, when all along they could really just be prescribing a steak.
Personally, this makes me want to show up at every doctor’s office and cover their fancy, statin funded cars with beef liver. Every time they get into it, they’ll be reminded of the real way to cure disease.
At age 58, Brett’s libido is as high as it was when he was 18. He’s down to 178 lbs, his depressive issues are completely resolved, and he has a new lease on life.
As of today, Brett is no longer on any medication.
There are hundreds of millions of people like Brett out there, whose symptoms could be erased by a simple diet change.
Kids in 2040 will be reading about how doctors pumped us full of harmful useless drugs, like we read today about how they used to use leeches to cure health problems.
I get it… this reads like something out of a snake oil infomercial. Everything we’ve been “taught” in recent years tells us that meatless diets are healthier, more humane, and better for the environment.
But people everywhere are realizing that meat may not be the scourge they want us to think it is. Maybe meat could even be … dare I say good for us? Believe it or not, this idea is backed by science.
What Ties All Diseases Together?
The mainstream approaches disease as a chemical imbalance. Add meds to rectify the imbalances, and the problem will subside.
- Statins for heart disease
- SSRIs for depression
- Insulin for Type 2 diabetes
The list goes on.
If you understand the real pyramid of disease, you can get to the root cause of your ailment. And if you understand the root cause, you need meds just as much as a carnivore needs carbohydrates.
Imagine someone was smoking cigarettes all day and getting migraines. Mainstream medicine would treat it with Advil, but we all know the right solution would be to ditch cigarettes. It seems obvious, right?
Let’s change a few details.
The Carnivore Aurelius Pyramid of Disease
Behold, the Carnivore Aurelius pyramid of disease.
Inflammation underpins all chronic disease. You don’t get disease without some degree of inflammation.
Layer in hormonal imbalances like insulin resistance and sprinkle in some nutrient deficiencies, and voila!
You have the cake that is modern society.
What does that cake look like? Personally, I wouldn’t feed it to my worst enemy.
- 60% of the population with diabetes or pre-diabetes
- Obesity
- Alzheimer’s
- 350 million people with depression
Inflammation
Why are you inflamed?
Your immune system is like your own army. Inflammation is the result of it going on attack against injury and foreign objects.
For two million years it had extensive training. If hunter gatherers were known for one thing, it definitely wasn’t washing their hands.
Thus, your immune system had to get very good at detecting and expelling infectious diseases — or else you wouldn’t be here today.
But in a blink of an eye, things changed. While your army was hard at work training for war against measles, another foreign predator showed up instead: donuts. Okay, not just donuts — the entire Standard American Diet.
Just about everything in the Food Pyramid (scheme) is foreign. And your immune system is extremely xenophobic — it hates foreigners.
You think the US border patrol is ruthless? Well, when a foreigner shows up to our immune system it doesn’t even give them a chance to prove it belongs. It attacks.
It doesn’t read foreigners their miranda rights. It doesn’t allow donuts a chance to call their other baked goods friends to bail them out. It nukes them, sight unseen.
Yes…you practically have trench warfare playing out inside of you every single day that would make WW1 look tame.
Sure, it’s the safe assumption. If the foreigner happened to be an infectious disease…sayonarah. You’re dead.
But today, most of the time it’s not measles invading. It’s one of the toxins you’ve been persuaded to eat.
Everything you eat, from fried dough to tomatoes, is brand new to your system. Some people with stronger immune systems are more apt to handle foreign objects (if that’s you, I’m jealous).
But for many of us, foreign objects shut us down like LAX at rush hour.
The end result: constant inflammation. And when you’re inflamed, your entire body shuts down. You redirect blood flow and energy to the source of the attack, leaving you drained physically and emotionally.
If you continue to eat this way, your immune system will be so shell shocked it won’t function properly. You are at war with yourself.
Your troops are prepared for an infectious disease, but instead you drop bombs in your belly. Donut bombs, soda bombs, candy bombs, fast food bombs – sugars and carbs are weapons of health destruction.
According to the great Gary Fettke, inflammation is at the base of every single disease.
- Inflammation in the blood vessels leads to heart disease.
- Inflammation in the brain leads to depression.
- Inflammation in the gut leads to IBS and diarrhea.
Inflammation elevates proteins and cytokines in your blood like CRP and IL-6, and studies have shown that patients who don’t respond to depression medication, for instance, tend to have elevated levels of CRP .
Brett’s results make complete sense. If you’re treating depression as a chemical imbalance but it’s really caused by inflammation from the food you eat, how would meds help? It’s like trying to drink tea to soothe lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. And doctors telling you cigarettes are fine to keep smoking!
Brett was prescribed SSRIs to raise serotonin levels. But studies continue to reveal that low serotonin levels are not the cause of depression . What is? Elevated inflammatory markers .
This is why targeting inflammation works better than targeting serotonin. Instead of treating a symptom of depression, you’re treating the root cause.
Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia (elevated insulin) are related to almost every disease:
- Diabetes
- Cancer
- Alzheimer’s
- Dementia
- Veganism
How does insulin wreak such havoc on the body?
- High levels of insulin direct lipids to artery walls, causing atherosclerosis.
- Persistent insulin can lead to diabetes in the brain and insufficient glucose use, which can cause Alzheimer’s.
- Insulin holds body fat in storage, causing weight gain.
The list goes on and on.
Reversing insulin resistance is the most important thing you can do for your health. And it’s not just diabetics who have issues with insulin.
In fact, 25% of non-diabetics may have hyperinsulinemia and not know it (study 341). Yes, if you have health issues, this could be you.
For Brett, this was one of the most important pieces of the puzzle.
Diabetes, which goes hand in hand with insulin resistance, increases the risk of depression by 37% and bipolar disorder by 300%. 80% of people with Alzheimer’s have insulin resistance, leading some medical professionals to dub Alzheimer’s “type 3 diabetes.”
So many diseases are linked in ways the medical community doesn’t want us to realize.
Nutrient Deficiencies
Nutrient deficiencies are the cherry on top of disease.
Nutrients aren’t just the things on the back of the food label. They’re critical for every single reaction in your body.
If you’re nutrient deficient, you can’t operate properly. According to Bruce Ames, in a nutrient-deficient state, you deprioritize mechanisms for longevity and health and instead direct all your energy toward short-term survival. This, naturally, comes at a major cost.
A body deficient in nutrients is like a building made out of sand – It may look stable, but it’s about to crumble into the surf the second the tide rolls in.
Despite being overweight, most of the world is nutrient-deficient.
The rise of veganism and vegetarianism, believe it or not, is making this problem worse.
What happens when you’re malnourished? Here’s the impact of a few major deficiencies:
Magnesium deficiency: Associated with cancers, diabetes and hypertension
Zinc deficiency: Associated with depression, memory, ADHD and seizures. The highest amount of zinc is stored in the brain [*]
DHA deficiency: Associated with melanoma, cancer and depression
Vitamin B12 Deficiency: Associated with with cognitive dysfunction and multiple sclerosis
Folate deficiency: causes chromosome breaks and is associated with several cancers. Increases inflammation via the methylation cycle .
Vitamin D deficiency: Estimated to cause 29% of cancer mortality in males.
Iron deficiency: The most common micronutrient deficiency in the world, iron deficiency causes loss of mitochondrial function and oxidative damage. Iron is also necessary for serotonin synthesis in the brain. [*]
Reading this list above is like looking at a diagnosis of America.
Most of these deficiencies tend to make their mark in the brain, which is a nutrient- and metabolically hungry organ. If you have cognitive issues like Brett, nutrient deficiencies are a concern.
How Does the Carnivore Diet Work so Well?
So why does the carnivore diet cure all these issues? Is it a healing spell whipped up by the wizards at Hogwarts? Sort of.
The carnivore diet works via two mechanisms:
First, it cuts out the poison that causes insulin resistance and inflammation.
Next, it adds back in the nutrients you need for optimal health.
Simple as that.
First, It Cuts Out the Junk
The carnivore diet may seem radical. But it’s because almost every single thing you’ve been told to eat is junk. Almost everything you eat is NEW.
It’s like giving an iPhone to a neanderthal that hasn’t even discovered fire. Your immune system can’t even begin to recognize many of these foods.
And the safe assumption is to react as if it may kill you.
Thus, almost everything could be causing inflammation and insulin resistance. To figure it out, you must cut it out.
It’s time to ditch everything on the Mt Rushmore of disastrous foods:
- Polyunsaturated seed oils – you’ve been told these are healthier than saturated fats, but they actually cause oxidative damage, cancer, and Alzheimer’s . Cooking with vegetable oils instead of tallow has also been proven to — this is the scientific term for it — make your food taste shittier.
- Fructose – This is fermented in the liver, converted into uric acid and affects nitric oxide
- Glucose – this generates free radicals, glycates cholesterol. Glucose is linked to both inflammation and depression . And yes, glucose in bread and glucose in candy are the same exact things.
Even supposedly innocent plant foods can cause depressive symptoms.
Even many of our beloved vegetables are loaded with antinutrients and inflammatory components. Gluten, for instance, is associated with depression in non-celiacs . Lectins, like in tomatoes, can pass directly into the brain, where they’re deposited right onto your dopamine neurons.
Yep, that kale smoothie may be killing you just as fast as your Captain Crunch. And if you’re going to kill yourself, you may as well have a little fun with some good tasting desserts, instead of blended green goo.
Next, The Carnivore Diet Adds Back the Healthiest Foods in the World
Most of all, you’ve been told to avoid one of the only food humans were actually made to eat. The one food that can most efficiently give you all the nutrients you need. The food that made us human in the first place. And that’s animal food.
It’s crazy. We’re cutting out a primal human instinct, something we’ve been doing since the dawn of man. It’s like telling us that breathing, sex, or arguing with your family on Thanksgiving is bad! These are the very things we need to survive!
Back to meat… because your immune system can recognize it, it reduces inflammation and allows the body to focus on what it should really be fighting: infectious predators and preachy vegans.
Additionally, powering your brain off ketones reverses inflammation,
Step 1 – inflammation gone. Check.
Step 2 – the carnivore diet is the best diet in the world to reverse insulin resistance. Meat and fat raise your insulin levels less than any other food, and a low-carb diet allows you to burn all the stored fat that you’ve been wearing around your thighs all this time. Insulin resistance reversed. Check.
Step 3 – a nose-to-tail carnivore diet provides optimal amounts of every single vitamin in the world — if you eat beef liver, that is.
Conclusion
Brett, thank you so much for sharing this story. You are such an inspiration.
It brings tears to my eyes to see how much a diet can change somebody’s life. Yet it also makes my blood boil knowing how many people are suffering unnecessarily because of our corrupt medical institutions.
There are millions of people out there like Brett that need us.
We need to continue to spread this message far and wide.
If you’re interested in the most nutrient dense diet in the world, below is a free 30 day guide to mastering the carnivore diet.
Additionally, if you’re interested in learning more about the carnivore diet, join my Facebook group Carnivore Nation. I also post daily on twitter and instagram.
