My Meat-Based Fat Loss Sprint

#1 Establish a baseline

When I began the challenge, I already followed a rather strict carnivore diet. Specifically, I eat red meat, organs, eggs, and raw milk.

But I had no sense of my protein or caloric intake, so I had to establish a baseline.

To do so, the rules were pretty simple:

1. Eat red meat (and eggs, if you like) when you’re hungry to the point that you’re full
2. Eat at least 1g of protein per pound of body weight (or target body weight if you have a specific goal in mind) each day

You can track this through any number of accessible fitness/diet apps. I’ll likely use MyFitnessPal moving forward, but I used the Meat Health Academy app while I was paying for the program.

This stage is the best. You can eat as much steak and ground beef as you want, and you’ll likely find accomplishing your protein goal relatively simple. Hitting my protein minimum of 205g was not an issue.

This phase lasted two weeks. The process helped others in the challenge transition to carnivorous eating and helped us all establish an understanding of our daily caloric intakes.

A good rule of thumb at this stage is that one should be satisfied during the day but go to bed feeling like, “I’m not starving but could definitely eat right now.” But, we were instructed not to eat more at that point.

For reference, I began this stage at 206.1 pounds and 15.1% body fat. When it ended, I was up to 208.4 pounds.

#2 Initial caloric cut

After two weeks of eating as much meat as I wanted, it was time to start cutting calories. But I also had to maintain my protein minimum.

At this point, I calculated the average calories I’d eaten daily over the first two weeks and subtracted 500. This number became my new caloric limit.

My average was about 3,000 calories during the first phase. Therefore, my new caloric target was 2,500 for the second phase.

This phase also lasted two weeks. To accommodate a lower calorie limit, I replaced fattier meat like ribeyes and 80% lean ground beef with options like top round steak (very lean) and 93% lean ground beef.

This approach was helpful because it enabled me to simultaneously rein in calories and continue to hit my daily protein minimum, the latter of which became easier, in fact.

Eating became less fun because fattier meat tends to taste better, in my opinion. But I was still filling up well.

I ended this stage at 198.5 pounds, down almost 10 pounds in two weeks. It was my first time hitting sub-200 pounds since high school.

#3 Second caloric cut

The third phase got harder. The next step was to remove another 250 calories from our stage #2 limit. I was down to 2,250 calories daily but still had to maintain my protein minimum.

This stage went on for another two weeks.

This new restriction mostly meant I had to remove some of my “indulgences” from the previous phase: limited raw milk and fewer eggs on top of my ground beef, as examples.

At this point, I was getting a bit hungry. But I was never famished to the point that I couldn’t resist overeating.

One of the things you learn on a carnivore-like diet is that cravings for other food are minimized or disappear entirely.

It felt like a longer two weeks; I just wanted to eat a ribeye. But I stuck to it.

I was down to 195.7 pounds after the third phase, a 10.4-pound decrease from the start and a 12.7-pound decrease from my peak weight during the challenge. The lowest overall weight I hit during the challenge was 193.0, during this stage.

It was at this point that I had another DEXA scan. My body fat had dropped to 12.9%: a decrease of 2.2%. I was happy with this result because I didn’t begin with a massive amount of adipose (fat) tissue.

#4 Reverse dieting

I’d made all of this progress, and now it was time to start building my way to caloric maintenance.

The program called for four weeks of reverse dieting. 

I half-heartedly stuck around for only about two weeks, though, because I had lost enough weight and had other goals to accomplish.

The first two weeks of reverse dieting mirrored the second phase: adding 250 calories back into the diet. Again, for me, that meant eating 2,500 calories a day for two weeks. I hovered between 2,500 and 3,000 daily calories at this point.

The next two weeks, which I didn’t follow at all, would have added 400 calories (up to 2,900 calories/day), just shy of my 3,000-calorie baseline.

The goal of reverse dieting is to 1) continue weight loss where necessary and 2) prevent a sudden spike in added fat. The latter could happen quickly if one were to gorge mindlessly on junk food or even too much meat.

Had I still felt I needed to lose more fat, I’d have continued diligently. But while I was losing fat, I was also losing a bit of muscle. I wanted to start reversing that trend and, therefore, chose to increase my calories more quickly. In doing so, I remained and continue today on a meat-based diet.

Additional Guidance

The process described above is relatively straightforward. However, there were a few additional suggestions we were given to optimize the program, as well as valuable tools I discovered along the way:

• Lift weights to avoid muscle loss. The Meat Health challenge included an optional resistance training program; I opted not to follow it in favor of my own weightlifting routine.
• Add Zone 2 cardio during phase #2 and phase #3. There is growing evidence that Zone 2 cardio is effective for aiding fat loss. However, I didn’t follow this guidance because other goals occupied my time working out. I believe the recommendation was 20-30 minutes, three times per week.
• Eat less fat in the evening. One tip shared with us was to front-load fattier meat intake earlier in the day. The hypothesis is that your body will more effectively burn body fat while you sleep if there is less dietary fat to burn at that time.
• Find lean cuts of meat. To be clear, the primary source of meat should be red meat (i.e., mostly beef). You could have some chicken or turkey if you wanted, but they are less nutrient dense and, since you’ll be restricting calories, getting your micronutrients becomes more challenging with that approach. Therefore, during the caloric restriction phases, I focused on lean ground beef and top round steak because they are high in protein and low in fat (fat is more calorically dense).
• Incorporate satiating protein smoothies. I’m not a big protein shake guy, but I came up with an unbelievable protein smoothie recipe that is low-calorie but filling due to its inclusion of a small amount of xanthan gum. You can find it on my recipe page. These smoothies are sub-optimal because they aren’t 100% carnivore (xanthan gum, stevia powder, almond extract, and cocoa powder) but can be helpful for satiety.
• Don’t forget the protein minimum! Eating enough protein will help you feel and function better and will help reduce the amount of muscle lost while restricting calories.