Introduction
Dr. Eric Westman: It’s my great pleasure today to have Laura Spath with me. How did you get into this carnivore diet and what has been your experience?
Laura Spath You have a background for 20 years and studying obesity medicine – I was obese for 20 years! I have a very long history of just being obese.
I was raised very simple. We lived in a very rural environment. We grew all of our own vegetables, my mom made homemade bread, we had meat that my dad hunted or was from a local farmer that someone had given us. It was a very simple life and we were pretty healthy. Right around the time I was going through puberty my family had some loss and some trauma and our whole world shifted. The way that we ate shifted and I was then shifted from an all whole-food, homegrown diet to boxed foods, processed foods, fast foods. At that point my health and my weight got out of control and I started this lifestyle of gaining and losing weight and this rollercoaster yo-yo diet.
I have been on pretty much every diet you can imagine just trying to lose weight over the years. I did Weight Watchers, I did this Bible study weight loss program, I did calorie counting and I lived on Lean Cuisines. I also went vegan for a while because I watched a documentary that said you should go vegan. I tried all of those different things and I usually could lose weight initially but I just could never stick to it. My weight crept up and up and up. I got married and we had a baby right away. My husband was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes when we were pregnant with our first child and got on the medications. The doctor said, “Just take medications, you’ll be fine. Maybe you should lose some weight,” but both of us kept gaining and gaining weight. I spent the majority of my twenties well over 200 pounds. I topped out at 263 pounds which is actually more than I was nine months pregnant with my second child.
He was almost two years old when I realized I weigh more now than I did when I went into labor with him. My health was out of control. Looking back on my blood work, I was pre-diabetic but nobody told me that I was pre-diabetic. My A1C was point one away from being diabetic and no doctor even told me that; they just always said your blood work came back within normal range. My husband’s diabetes was out of control at the time. It’s a complicated story but he almost died from a diabetic complication. He got a small infection and when you’re diabetic your body’s not able to fight off those infections. That small infection turned into necrotizing fasciitis, which is a flesh-eating bacteria, and he spent months in the hospital having dozens of surgeries. We were calling family and friends to come say goodbye.
Through all of this no one ever said anything to us about our health. Maybe a doctor here or there would say to lose weight, which, to be honest, I don’t think they would do nowadays. I think now there’s even a bigger fear of telling people to lose weight. There were never any suggestions on how we should change our diet and what we should do about it. A year after my husband had almost died he was doing a lot of research about how he contracted this infection and he found out that 70% of people who get necrotizing fasciitis get it again and that’s typically because they don’t change their lifestyle. In that research, he realized that it was simply because of his diabetes and the fact that he knew his A1C was like 11.6 at the time when he was on medication – that’s very, very high.
They were ready to put him on insulin because the metformin wasn’t even enough to control his diabetes anymore.
Dr. Eric Westman: I have to say, your experience is not uncommon. I think doctors either see pre-diabetes so commonly they just assume that it’s normal and then doctors will manage diabetes with medications. I have to say, today, doctors will say you have to lose weight but then they’ll also say, “Take this shot.”
Making Connections – Diet and Diabetes
Dr. Eric Westman: You don’t have a medical background, so, of course you’re going to follow the doctor’s orders. When was that wake up call or moment you realised that diet is related to this?
Laura Spath: I think it was honestly finding different doctors. When my husband was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes he did cut his sugar back a little bit thinking that he needed to go lower carb (I wouldn’t even call us low-carb then but he was trying to cut out ice creams and some of the more damaging things.) That didn’t last long because we both have such an addiction to processed foods.
He had lost a little bit of weight so we knew initially that some type of low-carb was going to be helpful for him. This was 2018. Keto was the big boom at the time and it was really the beginning of this keto popularity. We started doing some research and learning from doctors about keto. We were hearing from people like Dr. Jason Fung and people like yourself and digging into a lot of the research that was out there around keto. We met with in-person doctors but we did need to be convinced by a doctor but it was really the internet doctors.
Dr. Eric Westman: I always ask my patients or people watching my YouTube channel to consider the source because the internet is so influential and how do you know who to trust? How did you take the next step?
Laura Spath: Listening to doctors like Dr. Berry, Dr. Fung, combined with hearing people’s personal experiences, I could see their research and a lot of it made sense. When we started hearing about fasting, lowering your baseline glucose, carnivore, and cutting out all of those things, a lot of things clicked for us in terms of understanding why my husband was diabetic and why we were both obese.
We had started keto in 2018 just as a way to lose weight and go on another diet and pretty quickly we found out about carnivore. That was the biggest eye opener for us. My husband was on board to not eat vegetables.
Dr. Eric Westman: It’s amazing how many folks are like that. You look back to childhood when you hear that you have to eat your vegetables so maybe there’s a natural tendency to not want to have them.
Laura Spath: Absolutely. He was instantly convinced. The minute he heard Dr. Baker talk about carnivore and how you don’t need vegetables, he was sold. I took a little more convincing because I like vegetables. I had loved a good salad and I thought I needed salads to lose weight. It wasn’t until I cut out the vegetables for a while that I realized how many of my other health issues that I thought were just normal went away. To me, that was shocking. Even now, it’s not that I hate vegetables or salad; it’s just that they don’t agree with my body and they wreck my digestive system. They don’t make me feel good and so I just can’t have them for health reasons.
Seeing the First Signs of Improvement
Dr. Eric Westman: How did you first see that you were getting benefits?
Laura Spath: Kind of by accident. My husband does all the cooking in the house – I’m very lucky! He was cooking all of our food and for a week or so I just happened to not have any vegetables. I didn’t even think about it well until the end of the week, where I had a big salad. Everything was kind of carnivore but then there was a bunch of lettuce involved. Instantly, I was bloated and I had digestive issues. I didn’t realize that constipation and all of those other major issues that I’ve been having for years went away when I started doing carnivore and then just simply having a big salad instantly made me feel really terrible. It made everything click and so I was like, “Okay, maybe I’ll give this carnivore thing like a real try.” That’s when I said I’ll try it for a month or so and see how I feel.
The other benefits that happened I didn’t even think about were from taking out all sugar. I still don’t eat vegetables still to this day, seven years later, because they don’t agree with my body. They cause me inflammation, digestive issues, joint pains – just tons of issues digestively. Cutting out things like fruit, keto treats, and a lot of nuts, I didn’t realize how addicted to those I was and how much they actually were causing me to be thrown off track. It increased a lot of cravings for me. There’s a wide variety of people in the carnivore community talking about how all plants are killing you, fruits and vegetables and everything are toxic, but then I think there are also people like myself who say that we just do better without them. Something like a little handful of blueberries probably has health benefits. Maybe there are antioxidants, but that little handful of blueberries for me wakes up this part of my brain that was eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every day. It’s so much easier for me to have no blueberries than it is to stop at a handful of blueberries and not have that handful of blueberries turn into a pint of ice cream.
Dr. Eric Westman: Have you tested that even now seven years into this? I find that after 20 years of low-carb pretty much all the time, I can have a blueberry or two or a high-carb meal and then stop although I suffer the consequences of bloating. Are you thinking of adding back carbs ever or does it still tug you? Of course, early on we advise people that if they can’t moderate the carbs, to rather abstain. Like a cigarette: if you quit smoking and you still have a cigarette every day you’re not going to quit.
Laura Spath: I’m not somebody who will probably ever be able to moderate any amount of carbs or sugar. I am not perfect by any means but I know that any time I have tried to have those other foods it has always been a slippery slope for me. I can’t say yes to people asking me if I will be carnivore for the rest of my life. Honestly, that stresses me out to think that I’m never going to be able to have some of these foods that I loved so much before. From an emotional perspective, the minute you tell me, “You can never have those things,” it’s all I think about. I’m still in this place of saying, “Not now, maybe later, maybe someday,” but I know right now it’s not something that’s going to be helpful for me.
Levels of Carnivore
Dr. Eric Westman: What type of carnivore are you? Do you have coffee and tea or are you more like, “Well, if a wolf can’t have it, I won’t have it?”
Laura Spath: I would say somewhere in the middle. I was never a coffee drinker to begin with, it’s just never been something that I’ve enjoyed. I would rather have sodas and things. Sparkling waters to me just taste like the soda machine ran out. I have actually on and off had something like a Diet Coke, which is terrible for you, and that’s been my one vice. Over the years, when I’m having major cravings, that’s been a replacement. I certainly think it’s terrible and obviously a wolf wasn’t eating those things and I don’t encourage people to have them, but for me it’s making the better choice.
I think that is sometimes the problem in the carnivore community; we preach perfection and that is not realistic for most people. To be honest, if I had to eat raw organ meats, if I could never eat in a restaurant, if I had to eat only grass-finished, organic, all of these specialty meats with no seasonings, I would go back to eating pizza and ice cream.I have to enjoy what I’m doing. I am never going to be one of those people that’s like, “Food for fuel. I am just going to eat to fuel my body and get no pleasure out of food.” You don’t get to be over 250 pounds if you felt that way about food. You’re that way because food is pleasurable for you and it’s tapping into something emotional.
I eat with a lot of seasonings. I am trying to avoid MSG and sugars and I’m careful about the ingredients in those seasonings. It’s the same thing with some sauces. I eat in restaurants and I just make sure things are meat-based. I think the seasonings that we eat like barbecue blends and garlic, and chimichurri occasionally, somebody might consider non-carnivore. I definitely get accused of not being the perfect carnivore but I am doing it in a way that is helpful for me and is keeping me healthy. I’m doing it in a way that I can stick to. That’s really my biggest advice for people: if having coffee in the morning lets you have something that is important for your routine, you enjoy, and if it’s not causing you any health issues, keep that in, it’s totally fine.
I think something like having berries or vegetables are things that maybe I could lie to myself about moderating or they cause me health issues. If the food is not negatively affecting you or it’s not causing you to be triggered and overeat other things I think you should include those things. What does the perfect carnivore diet look like? I think that’s pretty different for everybody. The spices that I eat might cause someone else with an autoimmune condition to have an eczema flare up or some type of autoimmune flare up. I tolerate those things fine and I think that we all have to figure out what works for us.
Learning From Our Community
Dr. Eric Westman: I learned how to do keto from two of my patients 25 years ago. They read some books, came in, and taught me. I learned from my patients a lot. What have you learned from followers and comments? It’s just amazing what information can be gleaned assuming that people aren’t lying and they’re talking the truth. In your experience, can a lot of people do the relaxed version of carnivore that you’re doing and still get benefits from it?
Laura Spath: Absolutely. I think if anything, you have to figure out what it is that you’re trying to heal and what are you trying to accomplish. If your goal is just mostly weight loss, like me, I think you can be a lot more flexible than if your goal is to heal a major autoimmune condition. I think you have to go all-in. You may not even want to, but that’s the only way that you can heal.
This is a conversation for another time, but I also think sometimes if the food alone is not healing you, then there’s something else going on and you need to get to the root cause. The carnivore diet is amazing, but it also only can resolve things that are food related. It’s not this magic cure for every ailment that’s ever existed; we oftentimes have to get to the root cause. I think that there are many people who can include some sauces and some spices and a few other things like that. But I also think there are a lot of people that lie to themselves or are trying to fool themselves that they can handle more than they can. It is a very slippery slope.
I had posted a picture on Instagram and said, “I lost 120 pounds. Let me tag some people that I learned from.” I tagged Dr. Berry, Dr. Baker, and Dr. Fung and said, “Thank you for everything that you share.” That picture blew up and people started asking a lot of questions about how I lost weight. That’s how I ended up sharing online. It was accidental. I was just trying to answer questions that people had. I made my first YouTube video basically saying, “Here’s how I lost weight and here’s what I did in the timeline of that.” Through that video, I had casually mentioned that I started with keto. I could eat a spoonful of peanut butter, but then the next thing, I was like, hiding in the pantry and I ate the whole jar. That’s one of those shameful moments that I just mentioned in passing, but what I’ve learned from people and actually what my biggest eye-opening moment through all of this is that’s not uncommon. That this part of my brain that would cause me to drive out of my way through the drive-through on my way home from work and eat something and then stop at a gas station and hide the trash and throw it away.
This part of obsessiveness about food and eating when nobody was looking, I thought I was the only person that had ever dealt with that. I felt very alone and very isolated. It wasn’t until I started mentioning those things and how people connected to it and shared that they had the same experiences. I was like, “Oh, this is not me being broken. This is something we are struggling with in our society.” It was very comforting for me in a lot of ways. It really helped me to know that I wasn’t alone. It then made me want to share even more to try to help other people feel like they weren’t alone in what they were struggling with.
Signs to Go Stricter
Dr. Eric Westman: What are the things that may be a reason someone should consider cutting carbs even more? Symptom-wise, what have people fixed by going to that next step of no veggies?
Laura Spath: With no vegetables, I instantly see people’s digestive issues resolve. I have made some pretty embarrassing videos about hemorrhoids and constipation, talking about my experience with that. And again, so many people struggled with that. Everybody thinks that the minute you go carnivore, you’ll never poop again, but it’s obviously the opposite. I was seeing colorectal specialists for years and years and all they did was tell me to add more fiber. And the minute I cut out all forms of fiber, all of those symptoms that I had completely resolved. I was able to not have surgery and it was honestly very life-changing for me.
Joint pain, inflammation, and skin issues are all things that people are seeing a lot of healing in by cutting out vegetables. If you’re eating keto and your weight loss is fine and everything’s going great, but you’re still having a lot of gut issues, bloating, and digestive issues, I think it’s wonderful to cut out the vegetables. Sometimes if your blood sugar is not coming down the way that you want it to, people can overeat things like zucchini, cauliflower, and green beans. Those are all low-carb in very small doses, but they add up quickly. They can also cause a lot of gut issues for people.
Dr. Eric Westman: In our strict teaching, the the page of foods we use, the limit on leafy greens is two cups or two fistfuls and the limit on the vegetables is one cup of the non-starchy vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower. It’s not a whole lot.
In my practice I have even seen people go from a small amount of vegetables to none and fixing those things you’re talking about. I joke that I really should be a GI specialist. Of all the specialties, you would think a GI specialist would know what the food would do inside and it’s just not part of their training.
Laura Spath: There’s just such little nutritional information in any medical training. You’re taught in your medical studies to give a prescription to fix an issue and not to change someone’s diet. “Eat less and move more,” is really the only advice that I think doctors are told to give their patients, unless somebody like you goes out and does their own research.
Health Risks of Carnivore?
Dr. Eric Westman: You’re seven years into eating this way. Aren’t you worried about scurvy? You’re not a medical professional and you’re on a diet, aren’t you worried that you’re going to precipitously fall off this cliff?
Laura Spath: What helps encourage me is knowing some of that research like what Amber O’Hearn has done and seeing people that have been doing this for longer than I have. I also just have to go based on how I feel and where I am at. My health was terrible. I was seeing three to four different specialists. I was overweight and in such a terrible health position before I started all of this. Now, I am so much healthier and I feel so good. Shouldn’t that count for something? I think sometimes we get a little obsessed with blood work and looking for problems that aren’t there. How many times in our lives do we feel terrible and the doctors tell you, “No, everything’s within normal range.” Shouldn’t the way I feel count for something? We lose a lot of that confidence because of bloodwork.
Dr. Eric Westman: You saw your husband’s A1C go from 11.9 to 4.9.
Laura Spath: Yes. Before, he was sleeping with a sleep apnea machine, to the extent that when we had our kids in the hospital, he had to take his machine till I was in labor. He was taking a nap with his machine on; he couldn’t sleep without it. Within a couple of months, of eating this way, he was off dozens of prescriptions. He was off his machine. He’s ten years older than me, so he felt, “I’ve gotta get healthy. I have this wife and young kids and I have to do something.” He just turned 50 a couple of months ago and he’s been training Brazilian jiu-jitsu for the last few years. He goes to the gym every day. He’s super active, when at 40 we thought he was going to die. It’s a drastic difference.
I’m very confident I’m not going to get scurvy. In terms of how we feel and how healthy we are now, there’s nothing that could convince me that ten years from now something’s going to go wrong because I know that it was already going wrong when I tried it before.
Dr. Eric Westman: Twenty-five years ago, I was studying the Atkins diet. There was a slide of a doctor scolding his patient, saying, “You fixed your diabetes, you fixed your sleep apnea, you lost a hundred pounds, you fixed your high blood pressure, but I tell you, that diet’s going to kill you!” That’s prejudice. It’s prejudging and it’s because we were all taught that it was bad. And it’s not bad.
Laura Spath: I have no interest in getting regular bloodwork done because I feel so good. I do get regular bloodwork done and share it with my audience mainly because I am so public and I talk about this. My goal is to encourage people to give this a try because I think that it would have great healing for them. I try to be very transparent about my bloodwork. I don’t think people getting all of these in-depth yearly bloodwork panels is necessary for the average person as long as you’re going based on how you feel.
Dr. Eric Westman: One of the issues is that you’re comparing yourself to people who are not metabolically well. Something like seventy-five percent of Americans are unwell and, of course, they’re carb eaters. I’ve seen doctors obsessed and fear monger about a couple numbers.
Laura Spath: Oh, cholesterol obviously is the biggest one that everybody is so concerned about. In reality, I’m sure you believe and know that the high LDL is not an indication of heart disease or heart attack. If anything, in women we need a higher LDL for healthy hormones and to prevent Alzheimer’s. There’s so much misunderstanding about cholesterol. I’ve done research from people like Nina Teicholz, who talk about the demonization of cholesterol being one of the greatest problems that we have in the modern medical society. Obviously, I feel confident because of the research that I’ve done through these internet doctors. That’s what keeps me doing it, but I think you can’t discredit personal experience and how you feel.
There are probably not a lot of books or information that could convince me that something was good for me if I didn’t feel good. That, I will tell you, I can speak to directly because I went vegan for a while. I was eating six times a day. I was doing all the vegetables and the meal preps and the quinoa and I lost 50 pounds doing that. But my hair started falling out and I felt terrible. I had constant headaches, I was sleeping terribly, and my digestive system had never been worse. I was having frequent colonoscopies and just massive, massive digestive issues. Every research that I could find is going to tell you that the vegan diet is great. There’s a lot of movies telling you how healthy a vegan diet is. So it wasn’t that I needed research to convince me. It was that I was doing all this research, but nothing made sense because it wasn’t true for me physically. Then, you start looking into where this research is funded from and who’s paying for these movies and all that stuff awakens you to it. I think research is important, but we have to correlate that to how we feel. That’s been the biggest thing that convinced me to stick to this was just how much my health improved.
Dr. Eric Westman: Have you talked to your local face-to-face doctors?
Laura Spath: I usually just avoid it. I haven’t been to the doctor in a long time other than to get bloodwork done. What’s actually crazy was, I went in and I was like, “I would love to have a full hormone panel, it’s been a long time.” Everybody says carnivore tanks your thyroid and carnivore wrecks your hormones for women and so I was like, great, let me just get a full panel and show people what that looks like.
The doctor was saying to me, “Okay, what symptoms are you having for me to run this test?” She needed something to be wrong with me so she could code it in the system. It wasn’t until I said, “Just give me the numbers,” and then I took those numbers and went talk to a naturopath or go look at them myself in the research that I’m doing. They’re not allowed to run tests on you until something is wrong.
Dr. Eric Westman: Well, they can, but it won’t necessarily get covered. That’s another quirk of the medical care that we get that if we’re in the insurance system, the doctor is going to feel constrained by what insurance pays for. They end up treating people who are upper class or middle upper class because they can afford to go outside the insurance system. I decided to stay in the insurance system at a clinic at a university in order to understand what insurance does cover, what is necessary, what’s not necessary.
There’s a lot of nuance there and if a doctor sees some of it, doesn’t know how to compute in their usual system, I understand uh that reliance. Dave Feldman with The Cholesterol Code and the studies going on created a company, – Own Your Labs – to get around this whole thing of needing a doctor to get a lab test, which is kind of cool but then you need to have people to interpret it for you.
Reputable Online Sources
Dr. Eric Westman: Who should my followers follow? Who do you find are the most reputable sources?
Laura Spath: I’ve named a lot of names. I think, too, that it is interesting because if I wasn’t still in this world sharing this information, I probably wouldn’t be consuming this content because I’ve fixed my situation. I know what’s happening. I would move on with my life. There isn’t this need for me to be constantly consuming information because I know what works for me. I like to stay up-to-date on things. The YouTube videos I watch are on other political things or home renovation channels. I’m not usually watching a lot of health and wellness content because I go back to living my normal life. That’s what’s interesting about this space, too, is you tend to have people who are just getting started coming through and everybody gets very obsessed with it for a while and then a lot of people just figure out what works for them. Unfortunately, some fall off and go back to doing what they were doing before and then you don’t want to watch it and feel guilty. But also then we figure out what’s working for us and we move on with our lives and we are healthy.
People who I still always listen to include Ben Bikman, who has been on several podcasts lately; I’ve really been enjoying the stuff that he’s been putting out there. You mentioned Dave Feldman, that’s another one. I like to pop into some of these conferences occasionally, but I tend to go to the low-carb conferences in Boca. I went to several years ago; I know you spoke there. I tend to follow people who are putting out this research and just finding ways that I can help explain things to people. Dr. Fung is not even carnivore, but I think that he shares things in a way that helps people understand the mechanisms of lowering their blood sugar. I always recommend people go after some more of these doctors and reputable sources. There are a lot of people who share lifestyle tips online. I personally don’t watch that stuff just because I’m living my life and I already know what works for me in my life.
One thing I will say, the beauty of the internet now is that there is so much information out there. When I first started, there were a couple of these doctors that existed, but there was nobody out here sharing; there were no carnivore influencers back then. Nobody, especially no women, had YouTube channels that were talking about things like, “Here’s what I eat and here’s what I’m doing every day,” which is why I think I was able to grow so fast right away because nobody else was doing that. Now, there are dozens and dozens and there are wonderful resources with lots of people sharing great ideas. The downside to that sometimes is it kind of puts our head on a swivel where you’re looking for the next best quickest protocol for the routine, for the hack, for the, “If I do this, I’m promised these results.” And so, sometimes, I think too much information ends up getting people really overwhelmed and they’re switching from high-fat carnivore to lion diet to egg fasts to low fat, very modified fast, bouncing all over the place and then essentially they’re not getting the results they want because they haven’t been consistent and whatever it is that they’re doing doesn’t work for them.
I’m never gonna do a sardine fast because I’m not going to eat 8 cans of sardines a day for a week to lose weight. I would rather eat pizza. Some of those things are really hard for people. I love that there’s information out there but I would encourage people to take what they’re watching with this filter of, “Would this work for me?” I made some changes recently. I lost some more weight recently that I had been carrying over the last couple of years from eating too much dairy, which is”carnivore.” All of a sudden I had all of these comments of people going, oh wait, I thought I could drink milk. That’s carnivore. It’s technically a carnivore food, but I would gain weight and I’m never gonna lose weight and it’s gonna impact my blood sugar and things.
I think it’s important for people to know the mechanisms of what’s working for them by listening to the doctors and understanding, “What is my health issue, what am I trying to solve for?” because that is going to indicate what approach you should be taking. What approach you should take is based on what are you trying to do – heal, lose weight, like there’s a lot of different things. A lot of people need to go the “lion diet” approach (which is meat, salt, and water) that Michaela Peterson does if they are trying to heal similar things that she does.
Dr. Eric Westman: Like reversing rheumatoid arthritis.
Laura Spath: Correct. Those are major things where you can’t eat like I do because my goals are clear – fix my digestive issues, lose weight, and not spiral into food addiction. If that’s what you’re looking for, you probably could eat similarly to me, but it also doesn’t mean that your macros would be the same or your portions are gonna be the same because we are individual people.
Dig into the research, look at some of those doctors we’ve mentioned and then you can get ideas from people who share things. Just be careful not to bounce around too much and get yourself all tied up in knots where you go back to doing what you were doing before.
The Future of Carnivore
Dr. Eric Westman: Is there hope for this? Is this just another thing that’s gonna blip away and processed food and medicines are just gonna rule?
Laura Spath: I don’t think that carnivore itself will ever be mainstream. I don’t think you’re ever gonna convince people that they don’t need vegetables and that all plants are killing you and this whole thing. I don’t think that that matters, really. I think trying to convince the world that they need to be carnivore is like yelling at the ocean and telling the tide to stop. It’s not going to happen. I think the benefit is that we can focus on informing the masses. There’s a lot of people that are going to be helped by going carnivore, but you get them there by getting them to cut out the seed oils, to cut out the processed foods, to cut out the sugar, in a lot of cases. The more you can get people into those baby steps, the more they’re gonna realize how good they feel and the more willing they’ll be to go down the rabbit hole of looking at why high cholesterol from red meat is not a problem. Getting people to go down that route, I think, is more helpful.
I’m very confident that we are going to make positive changes. I think the current political movement of the Make America Healthy Again movement and what Robert Kennedy is doing is gonna be fantastic for making a lot of positive changes. It’s scary how the most vulnerable people in our society are the ones that are tied to the food pyramids or the federal regulations around food. I don’t have to eat what the federal guidelines tell me to eat because I am healthy, I have money, and I can make my own choices. But like you mentioned earlier, people who are poor, people who are in the school systems, people who are in hospitals, in nursing homes, they don’t have a choice.
My husband was hospitalized for months from a diabetic complication and his diet consisted of pizza, chicken fingers, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then they gave him insulin shots every day. I have a picture of him two fisting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while they pulled up his gown and his belly was purple from insulin shots. That’s what the medical system treats this with.
I think we are several cycles away from that changing. I am very hopeful that those types of things change. Do I think hospitals are gonna be providing carnivore meals to people? No. But I think that’s okay because I think the average person can find some balance between carnivore and keto and low-carb where they find what keeps them the healthiest. Restaurants are transitioning to cook in beef tallow and we’re making really positive strides with what Nina Teicholz is doing for the health regulations. What’s happening in our country right now is pushing us in a really positive direction.
Dr. Eric Westman: We need hundreds of people doing this, thousands of people doing this, sharing the information. To lower that hurdle of getting into the internet world is huge, thank you for what you’re doing. It’s amazing what changing the food can do and it’s disappointing to me now that the medical world just isn’t interested. It’s important for people to know that you can do so much by changing the food on your own.
I think your YouTube channel is phenomenal. I recommend people going to it to learn the details of how to do carnivore.
Laura Spath: I talk to people in my everyday life. Not everybody has to start a YouTube channel, but you can live in a way that you share your experience with those around you. I have people that have never watched my YouTube videos, but they just work with me in a corporate environment and they started carnivore and they’ve healed things and they’ve given it a try and then their mom starts because they did it as well and there’s this ripple effect that can happen when you impact those around you.
Nowadays when you’re losing weight, people are gonna assume you’re on a shot of some kind but just talking openly about what it’s healed for you and sharing with people when you’re asked is a really helpful way of passing along that information.
Watch the full video here.
Speaker Bio
Eric Westman, MD, MHS, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University, the Medical Director of Adapt Your Life Academy and the founder of the Duke Keto Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine and has a master’s degree in clinical research. As a past President of the Obesity Medicine Association and a Fellow of the Obesity Society. Dr. Westman was named “Bariatrician of the Year” for his work in advancing the field of obesity medicine. He is a best-selling author of several books relating to ketogenic diets as well as co-author on over 100 peer-reviewed publications related to ketogenic diets, type 2 diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, and more. He is an internationally recognized expert on the therapeutic use of dietary carbohydrate restriction and has helped thousands of people in his clinic and far beyond, by way of his famous “Page 4” food list.
Laura Spath: After having kids, years of poor diet and lifestyle, Laura found herself morbidly obese and in poor health. Attempts at many diets had failed to maintain any results so Laura turned to the unconventional carnivore diet, along with intermittent fasting, which calls into question most of modern health advice. Laura, lost over 100 pounds in under a year, reversing all of their health issues. Laura and her husband Chris, who is also Carnivore, have two children, Penelope (11) and Nathaniel (9). She works as a corporate trainer, finding time to produce content for YouTube and Instagram in her downtime. She shares a realistic approach to carnivore with an emphasis on long term sustainability in your everyday busy life.
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