I'll be bold here and say, FALSE. I'm just a couple month's shy of my three year Carniversary (anniversary of starting the Carnivore Diet). For the first couple of years on Carnivore, I considered my slow and steady weight gain to be part of my "path to healing". I chose this view over a hard truth: I still engage in binge-eating behavior. Even if I select only carnivore foods, this obsessive overeating is unhealthy and unsustainable.
Yes. Transitioning to a Carnivore Diet worked wonders to quiet the food noise and constant cravings for non-carnivore foods. It's restored my mental health and significantly helped bring my hormones back into their natural rhythm. I've certainly benefitted immensely from this healing way of eating. I can only imagine where I'd be without having found the lifeboat that is this Carnivore Way of Eating.
However, I still frequently found myself seeking refuge in the wise words of people like Dr. Ken Berry who advises us to "eat until you're comfortably stuffed" and Dr. Anthony Chaffee who says we cannot overconsume fat. There is merit to what they say. Their advice applies to and suits many people. But for a binge-eater like me, these words were almost more of a call-to-action, a personal challenge, a doctor-affirmed "excuse" to continue stuffing my face and over-eating, in the name of health, mind you.
In Dr. Georgia Ede's book, Change Your Diet Change Your Mind, she discusses the impact of keto and even carnivore diets on mental health. Despite all the stories of transformation and the freedom many of her patients have found through dietary changes, she notes in her book that emotional eating and binge-eating disorders are often not healed by diet alone. Damn.
I read Dr. Ede's book in the Spring of 2024, just over a year ago. That one tidbit of info about binge eating disorders not "resolving" with keto and carnivore diets pinged around my brain for the remainder of 2024.
After a Spring season of frequent fasting, followed by a habit-disrupting summer vacation (during which we unexpectedly lost our 1 year old pup, Buffalo), I found myself returning to the numbing comfort and distraction of food. In late September, Hurricane Helene hit our area and school was canceled for over a month while we all felt the heavy weight of community-wide devastation. I failed to keep up some of the better habits I'd cultivated (daily meditation and journaling) and replaced them with eating and more eating.
Before long, I was including carnivore-ish foods, like cheese, heavy cream, pork rinds, summer sausage, hot dogs, pepperonis and other such processed carnivore-friendly foods. Typically, these foods would be fine to enjoy in moderation on occasion. I was far from moderating. Eating around the clock, I felt bloated and disgusting, collapsing into bed at night saddled with an immense feeling of hopeless defeat. Ashamed.
The shame and guilt of overeating on such a routine basis further perpetuated the cycle of feeling shame, overeating to avoid feeling the shame, and feeling more shame for overeating; wake up and repeat.
I had to get a grip. I had to admit the truth to myself: Carnivore did not cure my binge eating. I cannot keep doing the same thing expecting different results. I have to take responsibility.
I have to turn to self-discovery and personal growth. Again?? Haven't I done enough of that? Can't I just move on?? No. No, I cannot. This piece MATTERS. I must explore and address the root cause of this binge eating behavior. I must look at how it has served me in the past, thank it for serving me, and let it go. This never-ending self-examination and reconciliation process is ongoing.
Replace Self-Hatred with Self-Acceptance:
I have run the gambit of ways to try to stop overeating. My personal dietary history is rife with prime examples of the Binge-Restrict Cycle. Previously, I'd muster up enough self-hatred that I could bully myself into eating less, usually by following some self-imposed rules (this tends to be my modus operandi). I'd lose some excess before congratulating myself on my "success", at which point I'd forgo the "rules" and sink back into my previous eating behaviors; aka. binging.
Once I adopted a Carnivore Diet in 2022, I suddenly had the mental clarity to start sorting through many of my deeper issues, emotional wounds, maladaptive coping mechanisms, and all the other tough stuff I'd rather shove deep down inside to never examine again. Instead, I faced myself, my demons, my shortcomings, my imperfections, and all the ways I'd let myself (and others) down. I didn't always like the feelings that arose, but I allowed myself to feel them and worked to accept them. At that time, I lived with so much shame and guilt over how I was showing up as a wife and mother given that I was in the throes of Post-Partum Depression for what felt like eternity. Carnivore lifted so much of the depression and anxiety, yet the root causes of some deep-seeded emotional pain still had to be worked through the old fashioned way: sitting with hard feelings.
With this newfound tilt towards loving and accepting myself, I find it nearly impossible to intentionally restrict my eating as I've previously relied on self-hatred to motivate my restrictive efforts. Instead, I have to figure out how to "release the excess energy stores" through self-love. (Insert the deep sigh and eyeroll that accompanies this personal realization.)
I have to choose me, my happiness, my health, because I love and accept myself. This means I don't choose to harm myself with binging. It means I acknowledge and welcome in the parts of me that I'm less than proud of. It means that I focus on the sense of freedom and authenticity that comes from treating my body as as the sacred place to live that it is. It's a paradigm shift in how I view myself and my actions.
Which brings me to the tangible: how have I found what feels like the start of success in battling the binging?
This is What's Working for Me for Now:
Accept it. Call it out for what it is: Binge eating. I frequently engage in binge eating behaviors.
For some reason, this step has been integral for me in addressing the shame of binging. By calling it by its name, I can no longer run from or make excuses for this behavior. Spreading the warm comforting light of acceptance onto this part of myself somehow lessens the shame. When I say "I have a binge eating disorder", I remove several layers of protection brought about by the concealment of this issue. Instead, I'm left feeling vulnerable. Vulnerability is a hard feeling to feel, but it allows authenticity to make an appearance. Binging has been one of the tools I've used to hide from myself. By calling it out and naming it, I feel as though it loses it's power to bring about (as much) shame. If I can own it, if I can be accountable for it, then I have the power to change it.
Since the start of the calendar year (2025), I have been using a form of intermittent fasting to curb my cravings to binge.
In my experience, I have found that once I start eating, I rarely feel the urge to stop. That "full and satisfied" feeling never comes. It's as though a switch gets flipped in my brain and I feel compelled to eat more and more. For me, I found my binging would take off like a runnaway train in the evenings. Knowing that this timeframe is one of the most challenging for me, I've decided to not eat in the evenings.
Hear me out: my only rule is to stop eating by 3 PM each day. Simple. Eat anytime from the moment I wake up until 3 PM and then, that's it. Nothing after 3 PM.
[To aid this habit of ending my eating window at 3 PM, I set a daily alarm on my phone for 3 PM. When I hear the alarm (cue), I go brush my teeth (new behavior), and then smile and congratulate myself for following through (reward). I benefitted greatly from reading B. J. Fogg's book, Tiny Habits, at the start of the year and found his method for structuring new habits helpful.]
Initially I stopped eating at 4 PM, but wouldn't yah know, I can put down a whole lot of food between 3 and 4 o'clock. Once I tightened up that eating window by an hour, I found what felt like balance. I could eat plenty by 3, without spending the entire evening cooking and eating, engaged in an active binge.
This time limit was and is challenging. I certainly had my slip-ups. After a 45 day streak of stopping eating by 4 PM, I broke and binge ate into the evening for 3 days in a row. I pulled myself together and got back to the restricted eating window routine, ending my meals by 3 PM.
In March, with the 3 PM cutoff as my only "rule", I began to tango with dairy (after having given it up at the start of the year). Before I knew it, the additional cheese and cream everyday resulted in a much more calorically dense eating window and thus increased fat storage. Boo. I kicked out the dairy once again and have stayed on the straight and narrow for the last month or so, ending my relatively clean carnivore meals by 3 PM.
As of now, I can feel the shift occuring in my body. This is where the challenge comes in. I felt this same shift towards the end of February/beginning of March when my intermittent fasting efforts started to yield results. At that point, I could feel my fat stores shifting and releasing. Yet just as I was "hitting my stride" with the intermittent fasting and seeing/feeling the difference, I found myself wallowing in the dairy quagmire. Subconscience self-sabotage perhaps? I think likely.
As I've said, binge eating has been of service to me in the past. Often adding a physical and figurative layer of protection, keeping me playing it safe, sitting it out, and standing on the sidelines of life, never fully embracing the moment because I felt this secret unworthiness mascarading as overeating. The binging and the resulting body have been convenient excuses to not show up as my full, authentic, and unappologetic self.
This is where the personal work MUST come in. Each time I sense myself wanting to binge, or to eat when I'm not hungry, I have to ask myself: "What is eating allowing me to avoid? How do I feel right now and why do I want to change that feeling? What would make me feel good right now (other than food)?" It's tough stuff activating the metacognitive thinking, but it's like that childhood Going On a Bear Hunt story says: "You can't go under it, can't go over it, gotta go through it."
And you best believe, I'm going through it- the emotional exploration and self-discovery required to extinguish this binge eating habit has my full attention!
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Your Carnivore Wellness Community Host,
Rebecca Blackstock
rebecca.carnivorewellness@gmail.com
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