A “controversial” way of eating and how it cured my own medical issues
Remember when your mom used to always say “you’ve got to finish your vegetables!”
What happens if I told you maybe you don’t have to finish your vegetables?
I was that kid who always had to finish his vegetables before he could leave the table.
Today’s widely accepted “healthy” eating standards say that you have to eat lean meats, or plant-based protein sources, vegetables, a little bit of grains, and dairy in order to be considered healthy. Experts often suggest that we limit our fats and meat intake.
What happens if I told you there was another way, maybe even a healthier way?
Back when I was a teenager in high school, I was a pretty athletic and active kid. At the time, I was doing Tae Kwon Do, Soccer, and working out most days. I was all about fitness and it was not until high school where I got really into nutrition. Throughout high school I tried a bunch of diets like vegetarian, Mediterranean diet, plant based, low fat diet, and low sodium diet. There were so many options with everyone saying this is the way to eat but none of them felt good. I had intense seasonal allergies and struggled with acne for years. I also struggled with mental health issues like depression and anxiety for most of my adolescence.
Toward the end of high school, I would obsess over every calorie that I ate. I would be tracking it daily and I would not be eating enough, I felt horrible, and my health issues persisted. I would be in a calorie deficit, but I would be hungry then binge eat at night.
Around 2021, when I started college, I started to just eat freely because I realized how unhealthy it was for me to be counting my calories and continuing on an unhealthy cycle. There were so many different diets to eat it was all confusing and I did not know what was right for me.
You have to finish your meat.
One day, I was introduced to Paul Saladino by my mentor. Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD, was the first advocate of the animal-based diet that I was introduced to. The animal-based diet consists mainly of red meat, eggs, organs, pork, chicken, fruit, honey, raw dairy if you can handle it. Now seeing this was a shock because this was something against the whole narrative. I looked into the diet, did research for myself and I saw other people have done this and they felt amazing. For example, when people went on an animal-based diet it helped with their eczema, acne, hair, nails, weight, energy, allergies, mental health and more. For me, within months of following this way of eating, I spent my first spring season with absolutely no seasonal allergies and my acne was nearly clear. I was able to go off all of my medication and my head felt clearer than before.
Why no vegetables?
All our lives we have been told that we need vegetables to be healthy and strong. That’s furthest from the truth, unless you are a gorilla and you are going to eat 40 pounds of plants.
Most living things, if not all, have a defense mechanism. For animals, that would be running away, attacking, and etc. However, plants also have a defense mechanism because they don’t want their leaves to be eaten so they can survive. These chemicals affect other living things that would eat their leaves usually, but can also affect us as well. These chemicals can cause gut issues and long-term, low-grade exposure to toxins in our system Chemicals from plants are not the only problem. The other issue is the chemicals that humans put on plants like pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides. All these different chemicals put on the plant stay on the plant for long periods of time and we eat some of the chemicals. These chemicals can affect our gut, nervous system, and hormone or endocrine system. Some of these chemicals are even proven to be carcinogens in U.S. court cases.
Beef is your friend.
When eating animal-based one of the main sources of meat most people eat is beef. Most people try to aim for grass-fed beef because that is what cows are supposed to eat, but regular beef like grain-fed can be fine too. The reason beef is the main protein on the diet is because it has so many nutrients that you can’t get naturally from plants like iron, zinc, selenium, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and phosphorus. All these nutrients are beneficial for us humans, but many of us steer away from red meat or cholesterol because we have been told it is bad for us. The ideal sources of meat to eat are ruminant meats like cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo, deer, and elk. The reason is because these animals have not one compartment to their stomach, but four. This process helps the animal absorb all the nutrients of what they are eating, which then gets passed down to us.
What about cholesterol?
A lot of people might think this diet is crazy and wonder how people are still alive eating this way. The narrative we have been told that fat and cholesterol is bad for is not the whole truth. Fat and cholesterol is not only beneficial but necessary for brain health. A lot of people get scared of cholesterol in eggs but in fact eggs are one of the healthiest foods on the planet - especially the yolk. The yolk has all the fat, nutrients, and cholesterol. Now there is bad fat like seed oils that should be avoided. These are the ones that make you sick and unfortunately in so many foods. Seed oils are highly inflammatory and should be avoided at all costs. Animal fats are the best fats for humans to eat because they provide our body with healthy nutrients and it is how our ancestors supposedly ate.
Carnivore
The carnivore diet usually focuses on eating meat, eggs, salt, and raw dairy. Many people may eat animal-based and include other foods they deem less toxic like fruits. Some people have turned to meat because of their chronic inflammatory response syndrome, or CIRS. One example of this is Mikhaila Peterson who developed The Lion Diet. After living most of her life with severe auto-immune issues including rheumatoid arthritis, Ms. Peterson even had joint replacement surgeries as a young person. Today, she eats only beef, salt, and water and has had great success with it.
When people start the carnivore diet you may feel tired at first because of the sugar withdrawal symptoms, but within a couple weeks you will see a big spike in your energy levels. What all of these diets have in common is that they focus on a lifestyle where they consume most of their food from meat sources. I currently am eating animal-based and have not tried full carnivore yet, but I am looking to transition in the future.
A list of people that eat animal based or carnivore are:
Doctor Shawn Baker (Carnivore)
Joe Rogan (Mainly Carnivore)
Carnivore Aurelius (Animal based)
Mikhaila Peterson (Lion Diet)
Jordan Peterson (Carnivore)
Taylor Rapp (Animal based)
Judy Cho (Carnivore)
Ken D Berry, MD (Carnivore)
Paul Saladino, MD (Animal based)
Georges St-Pierre (Animal based)
Feel free to look into some of these people for more info if you are interested.
Final thoughts
I am not a doctor or a professional on these diets. Nor does any of what I write constitute medical or professional advice. I am just a person who had a lot of health issues like acne, bad seasonal allergies, and mental health struggles.. I did my own research to learn more and it eventually led me to animal-based eating. I have been doing mainly animal-based for almost two full years now and feel better than I ever have before. This diet played a huge role in turning a lot around in my life. I am not saying that this is the only way and it might not be the way for everyone. But if you are feeling chronically sick, unhappy, tired, or struggle in general with health, I would recommend at least trying one of these ways of eating.
Written by Erick Perez-Nagle
Company Blog Post
This week in Praxis we had to make a company blog post and I decided to create one for the Carnivore Snax company. This is not an actual blog post, this is just an example. Carnivore Snax is a company that makes meat “chips” out of beef, chicken, lamb, bison, pork, and game meat. I chose Carnivore Snax because anyone who is focusing on a meat-based diet or loves meat like me would probably love this snack.
Why we are one of the best snacks in the world
Stay Full
Remember that bag of potato chips that you would just keep eating because it tasted good, but you felt really bad after eating the whole bag. It's important to have a snack in your life that you feel good about eating. With our Meat “chips” you get a tasty snack, the crunchy feeling like a potato chip, but also a lot of nutritional value from the fat, protein, iron, and salt. Carnivore Snax could even be a quick meal replacement when you run out of time during your day. Our snacks help keep you full now, but wanting more later.
Eat Quick
Need a quick steak on the go? We got you covered with our Carnivore Snax. Our snack will help keep you fuller than that regular potato chip while also getting that same crunch. With our resealable bag you can take us anywhere to work, school, gym, and more. Our snack makes a good post workout snack as well. Having a piece of steak with you anywhere or anytime is definitely a good thing.
Best Ingredients
We are all about using the best and simple ingredients. You will often see on our website that our ingredients are quite simple. It's the meat and salt, only 2! We use high quality meats for our snacks and we source our meat from farmers who use regenerative agriculture practices. Most of our meats are 100% grass-fed finished and we add only Redmond Salt. When you shop with us you are getting quality and highly nutrient dense food.
Snax vs. Jerky
Most jerky uses lots of different ingredients like sugar, a lot of spices, non quality meats, and soy products. This makes most jerky unhealthy for you because it has so many different ingredients. Also, jerky is usually a very chewy type of snack and often tiring because of how much you have to chew to eat it. With our Carnivore Snax you get only 2 ingredients: meat and salt, plus our snack isn’t chewy, it's crispy like a chip!
Variety
Whether you are looking for beef, chicken, lamb, pork, or game meat like bison we have it all.
For our beef we have ribeye, skirt steak, new york strip, chuck, and more.
For chicken we have chicken sliders.
Lamb we have lamb shoulder, leg of lamb, lamb sliders, and farm sliders.
For pork we have pork loin, pork sliders, and farm sliders.
Lastly, our game meat we have bison sliders.
If you are looking for a meat based snack that has great nutritional value while also having that crunch then check out Carnivore Snax website www.carnivoresnax.com.
Written by Erick Perez-Nagle
Case Study of a Self-Directed Career
Mr. Matt Beaudreau is a leader, mentor, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and two-time Ted talk speaker in the education field. These are only just a few things that Matt Beaudreau represents.
Background:
Mr. Beaudreau went to college and then graduate school at California State University-Chico, UOP, Concordia where earned his master’s degree. After college, not knowing exactly what he wanted to do, Mr. Beaudreau eventually landed a job at Stanford University. While at Stanford, he worked with staff, students, parents, faculty, and administration and made many observations about the people he interacted with. On a podcast called The Legacy Minds with Will Ramey Mr. Beaudreau noted that “I don’t see a lot of happy people and I don’t see a lot of people that outside of academics have a whole lot going on.” He realized this “game” is not THE “game” young adults or students should be playing.
This ultimately led to him to have the idea to try and fix this by being a teacher at a public school. Through being a teacher for a few years he realized that he could not make an impact because all the school cared about was the grades of the students. He then decided to be an administrator at the public school. As an administrator he saw that administration had nothing to do with helping the kids. Ultimately, he tried helping through the private school system but he noticed that private schools are pretty much the same as public schools. As an administrator at the private school he convinced the school to let him do a self-directed project with a group of middle school students, and what he found at the end was the students were able to create big projects in small groups in only four months. For example, a group created a mobile home shelter for homeless people without him telling the students what to do, but instead only guiding them as a mentor. At the end, he got a lot of positive feedback from the parents and kids, but when he showed the rest of the administration they wanted to change it into a public school looking project with a rubric.
Throughout this journey, he found two things he enjoyed was self-directed education and communication. He decided to part ways with conventional schools and become the founder of the Acton Academy Placer campuses The original Acton Academy was founded by Laura Sandefer and Jeff Sandefer in 2009. Acton Academy is a network of schools and an education alternative where the kids control, self direct, manage their learning in the classroom. Their schools are all about individuality and you will often hear Mr. Beaudreau say “a hero’s journey.” What he means by that is they believe that everyone has their own special calling for their life and they will face challenges along the way. According to his Linkedin, Mr. Beaudreau moved on from his position with the Acton Academy Placer campuses in February 2022.
Here are some good resources if you would like to learn more:
What is he doing now?
Taking what he learned from his life experiences and the needs he identified in young men, Mr. Beaudreau founded Apogee Strong with Mr. Tim Kennedy in January 2021. Apogee Strong is a mentor program designed for young men who are looking to challenge themselves through the program in order to learn how to lead and be better men. Within his Apogee Strong programs, Mr. Beaudreau also has created a men’s mentor program, home education mentor group, and a podcast called The Essential 11. A women’s group is currently in the works as well. Finally, Mr. Beaudreau is in the process of launching Apogee Schools. Apogee Schools will be a network of self-directed learning centers for children. Interested owners will have the opportunity to audition for a chance to become owners and continue fulfilling this important mission of providing self-directed learning schools for children.
Takeaways
Mr. Beaudreau experienced many different things throughout his career and what he found was that he felt passionate about self-directed education and the impact that it has on children’s ability to succeed and be happy. He found what he loved and pursued it which led him to founding his own schools and mentorship programs. Mr. Beaudreau is continuing to this day to shape young people into leaders while also empowering their parents to support them in the best way possible.
Recently, I’ve reached out to interview Mr. Beaudreau about his life, experiences, and career. I am looking forward to that interview, and what I can learn from it.
Written by Erick Perez-Nagle