Dr. Westman's diet is carnivore for practical purposes

(charlie3) #1

I revisited Dr. Westman’s food guidelines for the patients who come to his clinic. ( search for no_sugar_no_startch_diet.pdf ) I’m sure it’s been the guidelines for some decades so well tested on thousands of people. It appears to me he allows for a carnivorous diet save 3 servings of green leafy vegetables per day. After that if you want to eat only meat and/or animal products you’re free to do that and I’m sure more than a few of his patients have done that over the years. If there were ill effects it should have been discovered by now.

It seems to me the self declared carnivore people reject a few cups of leafy greens, not because there is a metabolic benefit but to differentiate themselves from all the other low carbers.

If I reduce the size of my dinner salad, eliminate nuts from my work lunch and substitute with animal products, meat, fish, cheese, heavy cream, etc. it will be carnivore except for a few cups of leafy greens.

Am I missing something?

(Janelle) #2

I am on Dr. Westman’s plan at the direction of my physician (he’s an obesity/bariatric specialist).

The plan technically requires you have 2 cups of leafy greens and one cup of lower carb veggies. Half an avocado and several olives per day are allowed. Lower carb berries are mentioned as a snack.

I’m not sure how this qualifies the plan as carnivore.

(Running from stupidity) #3

+1

(John) #4

People seem to ignore this fact. He says you MUST eat the 3 cups of veggies per day. It’s not optional.

If you read all of the “page 4 rules” and reorder them, without changing the wording, you can see that it allows / requires a fair amount of plants and plant-based foods.

It’s definitely not a carb-free, or carnivore diet.

(charlie3) #5

Three cups of leafy greens has a trivial number of carbs. How do they interfere with the benefits (what ever those may be) of eating all all the rest as animal products? Just because somebody says a carnivore diet must be devoid of plant food, regardless of the merits, doesn’t make it so. I’m trying to say that the shift from Page 4 to carnivore is not that much. My read is the only required food on page 4 is the 3 cups of veggies. Some upper limits are put on certain foods. Some are forbidden, the carb foods, and then the rest can be eaten to satiety. I don’t see where any food is required except 3 cups of vegetables. What ever the practical benefits of eating only animal products I can’t see how 3 cups of vegetables will take those away. I think page 4 is saying you can be carnivore so long as you eat those few required vegetable servings.

(Janelle) #6

It kind of sounds like you’ve already convinced yourself, but really, what difference does it make? If you choose to believe carnivore can include leafy greens (it doesn’t) or that Dr. Westman’s plan is one step away from carnivore (it isn’t) so be it.

I will never do a fully carnivore keto plan and will continue eating my 2 cups of greens and one cup of broccoli, cauliflower, squash, brussel sprouts, peppers, green beans, asparagus, etc. I will call it “LCHF” or “Page 4” and keto on.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #7

Now you have me thinking about the cat grass next to kitty’s food dishes that he side gnaws on throughout the day…Oh brain, just shut up! :thinking:

(charlie3) #8

I’m intrigued by the enthusiasm of the carnivore people. Some have been doing if for years and appear healthy to me. With keto there is plenty of research and people to explain how it is different from other ways of eating. I wish the same existed for carnivore but then I wonder, what are the important differences between keto and carnivore. So far, if Dr. Westman deserves the respect he gets, the only difference is 3 cups of vegetables.

I want to try carnivore to see what it’s like but hesitated, fear of the unknown. It appears I can follow Dr. Westmans page 4 to the letter and the only depart from carnivore by a trivial in take of vegetables. So that’s where I’m going with this.

(mole person) #9

You’d be missing a major point that the carnivore people generally believe. It’s not just that the meat is so good for you, but also that the vegetables are actually bad. Their claim is that it’s going off the vegetables with all their antinutrients that is one of the key elements resulting in how well they feel. Otherwise they’d all eat vegetables. These aren’t mostly people that don’t like vegetables, they loved them, they just say they feel better ONLY eating meat.

#10

3 servings of vegetables a day is not a trivial amount. If you want to go carnivore, just try it and see how you like it. Sounds like you like the idea of it more than anything

(Nicole) #11

I agree.

I eat a mostly animal based diet, but I would not call myself a carnivore because I do get some plant matter in my diet like spices, coffee, some flaxmeal in my protein powder, and some sauces or small amounts of vege on my meat on occasion.

For example, for dinner today I had BBQ beef which had tomato sauce, spices and some onion in it (which I mostly picked out). It was an omnivore day that was heavy on the meat side of things.

What the OP described is omnivorous but heavy on the animal products side of things.

(mole person) #12

@nvmomketo I do exactly the same diet as you. I use vegetables mainly for spicing of meat dishes. I find if I have too many I feel poorly, but that I can get away with a bit of onion, garlic, spices, coffee, etc, but just the amount for adding flavour and not so much as a meal component. I’m still experimenting though. I’ve noticed that the cabbage group (broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts) doesn’t seem to affect me and have been having a side of those ones every fortnight or so as well.

I don’t have faith that the carnivore diet that many seem to be doing is actually good for long term health. They look far too high in protein and many aren’t getting any organ meats. I’m trying hard to keep my fats as high as I can and to eat meat foods that come with a large nutrient punch.

However, I do agree with the carnivore crowd that the diet we evolved with was very heavy on meats. I was heavily into edible wild plants for many years and one thing that always bothered me was how LONG it took to collect them. The amount of time and energy expended to collect “leafy greens” rendered them not worth the calories spent and there were similar problems for other edibles. A small tribe would decimate an area of vegetable matter very quickly. It always bothered me. “How did they get their vegetable nutrients??” I now think the answer is that they just didn’t have anywhere near as much as we generally think. They probably had some fruit in season, but fruit weren’t what they are now either. They were tiny and much less sweet.

So I think we did evolve on a highly meat based diet and it’s possible that we don’t actually need any plant nutrients but that doesn’t mean that we can’t tolerate any. Humans ARE omnivores and like wolves or bears do have the capacity to digest some plant matter.

(Janelle) #13

Just an observation - the average caveman lifespan was probably 25 years old - 35 at the very oldest so I have no idea why people are concerned with the diets of prehistoric hunter gatherers as it relates to us now. We are omnivores - we have the teeth for it. Just as vegans manage to put themselves in the hospital for malnourishment at times, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that carnivore diet peeps who do it wrong will also show up with issues later.

(mole person) #14

Those age figures include infant mortality rates which were massive as well as violent deaths which were much higher. We have zero reason to think that people didn’t live long healthy lives when those things didn’t affect them and a fair bit that shows that extant peoples on all meat diets do very well. BUT, they do eat very high fat and include organ meats. People who insist on the importance of vegetables in a diet just love to toss away examples like the Inuit and the Masi but they actually have no good reasons to do so. And those exceptions are solid evidence our biology works fine without vegetation.

(Justin Jordan) #15

That’s not how lifespan works.

Or rather, that’s life expectancy not lifespan.

Paleolithic (and pretty much all of human history prior to just recently, and a lot of the world still) life expectancy is short because infant mortality was sky high, and compared to now, death from injury and infection was much more likely.

The current life expectancy in Swaziland, for instance, is 49. This isn’t because people from Swaziland get old and die at 49. It’s because lots of them die in infancy and in violent conflict when they’re young.

It’s probably stupid to fetishize the diets of hunter gatherers, but it does gives us some insights. We can look at what the skeletons of early man was liked compared to after agriculture, and we can look at the difference between indigenous populations before and after they adopted different dietary habits and get a sense of what we probably should and shouldn’t be eating.

Which isn’t a defense or condemnation of long term carnivory.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #16

I’m no expert but working with wildlife and understanding how varied the diet of a wild animal is based on regional availability, migration, seasons, etc I feel like humans probably ate a bunch of meat in the winter, green stuff in the spring and summer, nuts and fruit as they were available, etc. I mean, we didn’t just figure out this stuff was edible in the modern age, they were consumed long, long ago. Was it easier to kill a bison and sit around and eat it for days or go out and gather greens? Bison, I’m sure. Work smarter not harder, right?

(Chris) #17

This is exactly why it’s not carnivore. Leafy greens contain antinutrients that compete with or block the uptake of micronutrients. Just call it keto without all the garbage fatty plant foods people love so much.

(Chris) #18

Yeah, that’s probably what they did. Of course before plant agriculture was invented, they had to try to find it. In addition to this, some ancient fruits and veg in their natural form were not nearly as palatable and full of deliciousness as our current-day GMO versions.

(Janelle) #19

Garbage fatty plant foods.

Hmmmn

(KCKO, KCFO) #20

So true USA is not one of the world leaders in life expectancy.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html