Well, hello ladies and gents. Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Serena music on the line and we
dive deep into her carnivore transformation.
So she got long COVID back in 2020.
She was in all different kinds of diets.
Nothing worked. She couldn't taste or smell
anything. She was having extreme nausea,
couldn't keep any food down. So she started doing Carnivore.
And that worked wonderfully well for she's been doing strict
carnivore now for the past two years.
So we dove into what that journey has been like.
She also homeschools her four kids and I kind of want to pick
your brain there and see how that's worked for.
So we talked about corner where we talked about home school, we
talked about a little bit of everything.
Third, enjoy the conversation. I've got no depth that you will
take something from it. So that further ado, sit back,
relax, enjoy the podcast with Serena and we are live.
Serena, how are you today? I'm great.
How are you? I'm doing wonderfully well.
I'm excited to be chatting with you.
We finally got the podcasting thing figured out.
We didn't know if you were coming on my show, if I was
coming on your show. But here you are, my show.
So that's the main thing. We're all here together.
That's right, It all worked out in the end.
All worked out in the end. So let me get a little back
store on you. So you've been in the Carnivo
diet strictly now. For how long in total?
A little over 2 years a month. Two years in a month?
Yeah. Nice.
You know, whenever somebody's got zero carb in their Instagram
bio, they mean business. That is, you are darn right I
was trying to heal some stuff. Well, what was the motivation
behind going Carnivore, cuz a lot of people, I mean Carnivore
is pretty hot right now. A lot of people are doing it,
but whenever somebody's been doing it for two years plus like
yourself, like there's obviously a reason that it's working so
well for you. So what was that you were
recovering from? Well, initially when I started
it was because of a long haul COVID issue that I had that I
still have actually from having COVID back in December of 2021.
And I lost my sense of taste and smell when it came back.
It was very muted for about 3 months and then it came back
like putrid like. Just distorted.
Most things Smelled like a skunk.
Actually, I guess it was 2020 because it's it's 2 1/2 years
now. Since since that time I had
COVID and things smelled like a rotten skunk.
Somebody had lit on fire like it was it was hard to survive for
like 2 months. It was like I was nauseous all
the time. Everything.
We we go roller skating on Wednesday mornings.
We helped school our kids and we would go roller skating on
Wednesday mornings and I could tell every time they dropped a
new batch of fries. Because I could smell it out on
the rink, I would have to wear a sweater and put the sweater over
my mouth. I mean, it was just really,
really terrible. And the only thing that tasted
and smelled right were sweet foods.
So my girls have a gluten free baking business and they bake
and sell at the farmers market and we would come home with what
was left over. And I I was basically living on
that for about 3 months. It was all I could eat.
It was the only thing that tasted good to me.
I could eat like a hamburger fresh off the grill sometimes,
but it couldn't be refrigerated and then reheated.
It's just this really bizarre. There's some sort of.
Chemical reaction when you refrigerate it after it's cooked
and then try to reheat it, I don't know, but it was just
horrible. So I was basically living on
sugar and my birthday came around in May of 2021 and I was
turning 48 and the girls were like, do you want us to make you
your favorite gluten free cupcakes?
And I said yes and double the batch.
It was like I was so stressed out.
I was crying every day. I had tried.
You know, 15 different supplements that I saw online
that people said would help with this.
I had bought this little red, red light therapy thing that you
stick up your nose to try to fix it.
I mean, I was just miserable. I was gaining weight, I was
bloated, I was puffy. And I had gone to that from
juicing, eating, You know, 75% of the foods I ate were fruits
and vegetables. My blood work wasn't good
though, even though I was eating so well.
I was eating lots of leaky chicken breast.
I felt like I was eating like the perfect healthy diets.
And then this happened. And I was more bloated and more
puffy than I even was before. I was really frustrated.
I was about £8.00 for my goal weight at that point when I when
this started and I was just miserable.
And so I that was on a on a weekend I ate 20 cupcakes in 36
hours and I woke up on Monday morning and I said that's it.
I got to stop this and I had done low carb before I had done
keto and it turns out I had done Carnivore once before without
knowing that's what it was. I had a.
A muscle response testing doctor, like a nutrition doctor
put me on a very low carb diet about four years before that.
And he I just, I'm an all or nothing person.
And I thought, well, if low carbs is good, then zero carbs
must be better. And for like 8 months I
basically did carbore, but I didn't know that's what it was.
And then, of course, went back to eating normal foods, because
that's what we do as humans and we don't.
See results and we don't feel right and all that kind of
stuff. We just, you know typically go
back to what we know. And so that's what I did that
time. And so anyway, I woke up on
Monday morning after my birthday and 20 cupcakes in 36 hours
because I was a Ben Jeter and I said okay.
I got to stop this and I had had eating disorders and disordered
eating since I was 12. So that's 36 years of disordered
eating and I went carnivore overnight and just dove in head
first to. Podcasts and YouTube videos and
Instagram pages and just bombarded myself with this
information. But it wasn't to lose weight and
it honestly wasn't to heal autoimmune things or anything
like that. It was just because of this
taste and smell issue. Fruits and vegetables tasted and
smelled rotten. The only thing that tasted good
was sugar. And so I thought, well, if I can
just eat a hamburger and a steak fresh off the grill, then that's
what I'm going to have to do. And I was really frustrated.
And so that very day, I just ate the hamburgers and the steak.
And I was like okay, you know. So I made it through one day.
And meanwhile, I'm just bombarding myself with all of
this information. And it took about six months.
I had. I actually gained weight because
I wasn't eating enough and I was fasting too much, you know,
there's all this talk about fasting.
So I was miserable, but felt really good at the same time.
And it was about six months in that I realized I was better,
that although my taste and smell wasn't 100% still that I was
better mentally, like I didn't. Think about the sweets anymore.
I didn't want the sweets anymore.
I didn't want to binge anymore. You know, you don't binge on
steak. You binge on chocolate covered
popcorn and cake and cupcakes and and so yeah, like, six
months in, I just all of a sudden one day I realized I
didn't think about it anymore. This 36 years of disordered
eating and being obsessed with food was gone.
I mean, I was obsessed with food, but in a totally different
way. Like, I couldn't wait for my
next steak or my next piece of bacon.
It's a totally different obsession.
But, but yeah, so I didn't go into it, you know, like to lose
weight. It was out of desperation.
It wasn't even to heal necessarily.
It was because I had to quit eating the sugar because I had
hit rock bottom, kind of like an alcoholic hits rock bottom.
And I woke up that Monday morning just so sick and so
miserable and said something's got to change.
And that was the change I made. I didn't even know what
carnivore was. I just knew that all I could eat
was a hamburger fresh off the grill and sometimes a New York
strip. Brush off the grill.
And I was having to grill things every day for myself.
That was all I knew was that these were the two things that I
could eat that didn't make me nauseous for the day.
And that's how I got started. That's how it started for me.
So before, so right before you got COVID you were falling
pretty much like a plant based juicing diet, more or less.
I was also eating very lean meats.
It was really, I was falling kind of Weight Watchers with the
really low points. You know, and lots of some sugar
free things of course, you know the sugar free muffins you can
buy online and smart sweets, you know, it's like a like gummy
bears and gummy worms and stuff made with whatever sweetener,
you know, because it fit in my points plan.
But then after I had COVID, I was, I wasn't really following
the Weight Watchers plan at that point.
But I was juicing. I was eating lots and lots of
vegetables, not so many fruits because of the sugar and just
eating like chicken breast and. Very lean ground Turkey breast
and some ground chicken. I probably hadn't had red meat
in close to a year because it's bad for me and because it has so
much bad in it. Yeah.
Did you feel pretty good? Like physically, did you feel
pretty good at that point? Or was that like, I'm assuming
you're still struggling with the cravings for the sweets, but
like, did you feel and recover well from just the day today?
I think so, but I have to preface that with that I felt
like I think a normal. 48 year old feels in the morning when my
alarm goes off. I hit snooze two or three times
because I don't want to get up. And then when I do get up, I sit
on the other edge of the bed for a couple of minutes and kind of
stretch. And I stand up and I walk kind
of hunched over for the first couple of minutes.
And you know, like you got to stretch, you got to wake your
body up, you know, I thought all those things were normal.
I thought I would wake up and I would say to my husband
sometimes, is this what getting old feels like?
Like we, why do we feel like this already at this age?
You know, like it happened sooner than I thought it should
happen. Turns out it's probably lots of
oxalates, you know, but I didn't know that then.
But yeah, I mean, I felt pretty good.
I'm, you know, I was running several times a week.
I was lifting some weights, not as much as I should have been,
but I've always been pretty active.
So I was doing those things but didn't feel like I feel now
that's for sure. And then when you got COVID, it
was pretty much just out of desperation to find foods that
you could stomach and didn't cause nausea and the only thing
that. Yeah, Bill was the steaks and
the ground beef. Yeah, I mean, I was literally, I
actually had these little silicone rings that almost looks
like a nose ring that you can put on the very tip of your nose
and you can put like essential oils on it or something to make
it smell like that instead of whatever is in the air.
And I carry that in my pocket. And anytime we went somewhere
where I couldn't handle the smell, I had to put that on with
oils on it so that I couldn't smell like our kids do
volleyball. Basketball and we always they
always sell chili for potatoes or hot dogs, you know, or
whatever. Pizza.
And it's the garlic and onion that are like some of the worst
things that that smell terrible. They still do.
And peanut butter and popcorn. Most vegetables still smell like
that. Many, many things still smell
like that. But then it was much worse and I
would put that ring on. I would have to wear that little
nose ring at every basketball and volleyball game.
There were times I had to go outside, like in between games
or in between sets or at halftime.
I would have to go out to the car and catch my breath because
it smelled so bad. So when you started doing
carnivore kind of out of desperation, you didn't really
have much knowledge of the carnivore diet at that point.
Did you just assume that you were gonna die of a heart attack
because you were eating all this fatty food now?
Well, I started doing the research the very day that I
started, and all I knew was that I was in Facebook groups with
other people with this condition called purosmia.
It's distorted taste and smell. And I was in Facebook groups
with these other people who they were.
From one end of the spectrum to the other, they were.
You know, gaining 50 or £60.00 because all they could eat was
sugar. It was the only thing that
tasted and smelled good. And then there were people on
feeding tubes because everything smelled bad and they were in the
hospital and there was one lady begging for her son's life.
Somebody helped me. The hospitals wouldn't take him.
He needed to be out of feeding tube and the hospital wouldn't
take him. They thought he was just doing
your normal kids won't eat what you try to feed him kind of
thing. But this kid, this child was
dying because he couldn't keep anything down.
He couldn't keep down in sure. He couldn't keep down liquid.
He couldn't keep down anything. So I knew that there were two
ends of the spectrum and I was kind of in the middle and
heading very quickly towards the gained 50 pounds points and just
didn't want to do that. So that was really all I knew
was that I was desperate and I could only eat a hamburger and a
steak fresh off the grill. And so that's where I started.
And then I looked it up like. What happens if I only eat meat
like and that's how I found, that's how I found all the
people that you find. You know, when you when you
search for that like Kelly Hogan and the Joe Rogan Podcast with
Sean Baker. Of course that's how most people
get started. For our staff, you know you
start finding all these people. Judy Cho, I found you and
Crystal and you start finding all the two and you're like wait
a minute there are people that do this on purpose And then like
my perspective change like by the 3rd or 4th day I was like
this is pretty cool because I was I was eating bacon and.
Eggs and I went through a phase where I couldn't eat eggs like,
but within it, within the first few days I was able to add in
some other things. There was one point like a
couple of months in where one of my kids was making eggs and I
actually did have to leave the house for a little while from
the smell. So it was like it was adjusting
and it was fixing itself. But within within a week I would
say I was able to add a couple of things back in.
So I do think that it that it helped like right off the bat
and then it just kind of stagnated for a while and stayed
the same. But within a week I was able to
add other foods in, and the whole time I was just doing
research and reading about it and learning about it and just
filling my mind with all the information.
So I didn't worry about dying from a heart attack because I
did it first, of course. Yeah, totally.
So did you, like, notice that your cravings for sweet foods
subsided pretty quickly after adopting Carve?
Or did it take quite some time for that to occur?
You know, I'm really not sure because I was so determined.
You know, it's life when an alcoholic hits rock bottom.
And once you, for a lot of people, once you make that
decision that this is not what you were going to do, you're not
going to die here in a puddle of alcohol or with, you know,
frosting all over your face, is where I was.
And so I don't really remember whether or not I craved it.
I just was not having any. Like I was not going to.
It wasn't about the cravings for me.
I didn't start this because of cravings.
You know, I just once I made that decision, that was it.
And I was just going to do this because, you know, it was like
brighter flight. Like I was, yeah, like I I
couldn't live on cupcakes anymore.
I was so miserable. So I had to do something.
And out of desperation, this was the only thing I could do.
So I honestly don't remember whether or not I was craving
things. Even if I was, I was not having
them because it was like at that point.
I guess it was several months in when I heard about.
The difference between an abstainer and a moderator.
And then it all made sense to me.
It was like, Oh no wonder I can't have one Oreo.
I've never eaten 1 Oreo in my whole life.
No wonder I can't have just one cupcake, you know, and you know,
binge eating for a lot of people, they picture, you know,
the the big guy or lady sitting surrounded by food shoveling it
in, you know, like, you know, like grossly shoveling it in.
And for some people that's not what binge eating it looks like.
For some people, it's 20 cupcakes in 36 hours.
Every time you walk through the kitchen, you pick one up and go
stand in the corner and eat it where nobody can see you.
And before you know it, there's, you know, only four cupcakes
left. So binge eating isn't always
like all at once, just kind of shoveling it in.
But that's where I was. I was binging a lot like that,
just gradually over time. I mean, there were times where
it was a faster binge than that, but.
And I wasn't craving those things.
That wasn't why I did it. I don't know why I did it, but
once I started Carnivore I do remember.
Or at some point, realizing I didn't want those things
anymore, but I don't know if it was because I was just
determined or if it's because I wasn't craving them.
Does that make sense? Totally makes sense.
Were you also like purging? Like if you binge and you felt
guilty about it, did you like also purge or was that never an
issue for you? It was for years and years when
I was younger. That stopped a long time ago,
but even then I continued to binge.
And I would just restrict myself for like a week.
I would eat only raw foods. Or I would just fast for a week
after a binge. Or I would fast for a week after
a binge. It was a very unhealthy
relationship with food, all kinds of food.
It was an I had binge on kale. I had binged on an entire bag of
sauteed kale from Sam's. You know those giant bags?
The kale in pieces. I have sauteed that and coconut
oil with lots of salt and literally eat in the entire bag.
You want to talk about feeling sick?
Oh my goodness, I was so sick from that much kale.
My stomach hurts so badly. But, you know, so like, I could
binge on just about anything. And even after the kale, I had
to restrict myself for several days because I knew it was still
a lot of calories because of the coconut oil.
Plus my stomach was a mess. But yeah, I mean, I have, I have
binged on many, many things and then I would just punish myself
afterwards. Yeah, I feel like a lot of
people don't realize that. Like a lot of people, I think,
assume that people are only binging on sweet, hyper,
palatable foods. But when you really take it to
that degree, because I struggle with this as well back in the
day. Like when you become a binge
eater and it's just like you, you crave the volume more so
than anything. You just want to feel this
sensation of, you know, fullness that that volume brings.
And that can come from any food. Didn't have to be sweet, hyper
palatable foods. Like I've binged on salads as
well. Miracle Rice.
Like I had two and a half pounds of Miracle Rice.
One point that'll mess your stomach up too.
You know, Like it's. Like people don't recognize
that. And I think having that
distinguishing factory is key because if you can find foods
that don't entail as much overall volume but curb that
desire for binging, that's when you really start making some
progress. And for me, it's not like for
you too that came from the nutrient dense animal based
sources. Because I don't know if it's
like a it's probably part psychological, part
physiological, but once you consume those foods and you're
getting ample nutrition from it, you're able to just kind of
like, turn that shift, that switch off for a bit.
Yeah, I think so. And like I said, I didn't
realize it at the time. It honestly was later when cuz I
was just kind of cruising along and it was later when I found
out about the abstainer versus moderator thing.
That's when, like, the light bulb went off in my head and I
realized that the reason I wasn't eating those things is
because I wasn't eating those things.
You know, like if I'm not eating any of them, I don't want any of
them. But it took me months to realize
that it was just like, yeah, I was just better.
When I realized it, I was just like, Oh my goodness, I didn't
even realize that it happened. It was just it was very eye
opening for me. We I'm assuming you probably
want like tracking macros and things that extent when you
first started eating pretty intuitively.
For Carnivore, well, I kind of had a rocky start with
Carnivore. I was definitely determined and
started gaining weight. You know, there's lots to talk
about fasting in the carnivore space, lots of people fast.
And I just thought, well, I'll fast too because I still had
like 8 pounds to get to my goal. And I was like, well you know,
people are losing weight eating this carnivore thing.
And so I'll just combine that with fasting and I'll get that
£8 off really quickly. And I was in a Facebook in a
just a challenge group where there was lots and lots of
fasting going on. And you were like encouraged to
extend your fast 24 hours, 36 hours, 72 hours.
And so I was doing a rolling 48 hour fast.
I mean, I think fasting has a place.
I mean, I I think fasting, I'm actually fasting right now.
I just recently, in the last couple of weeks started
reincorporating it after this rocky start.
And so I was doing all these fast.
I was fasting every other day. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday I would eat.
Two hamburger patties with a little bit of butter or a little
bit of cheese on them. And that was it.
So my body just was like shutting down.
I was maybe 8 or 900 calories a day.
I was I didn't have that energy that I kept hearing people talk
about. I kept hearing people talk about
the energy from being carnivore, and I didn't have that.
But I did feel good, like I was able to get up in the morning
without hitting snooze. I didn't have those little aches
and pains that I had that I thought were just 48 year old
aches and pains. I wasn't having those anymore.
So I did feel good and I believed in it.
And I was enjoying the food so much and again, just still
watching videos and absorbing information. 345 Six months
later, eight months in, I had gained 18 pounds and I was
pretty darn miserable at that point and was ready to figure
out what was wrong. And so I started tracking and
realized how much I was eating. And like, I should have known,
but it's just so hard to eat more when you come from.
The background of distorted eating and eating disorders and
chronic dieting and undereating. I mean, you name the diet.
I've done it. Cabbage soup, you know, 14 day
juice, Fast them. Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine,
Jenny Craig. You know, you name it.
I've intermittent fasting, keto Adkins, you name it.
I had done it. And that's a hard place to come
from. Oh, you know, I've been trying
to lose weight since I was 12, Bought my first diet pills when
I was 12. And so for me, it was really
hard to make sure. That I ate enough and when I
realized it, when I put that food in my card manager tracker
and saw it, I was like okay, this is crazy.
So I upped my food over about 2-3 week period, didn't gain any
weight. I was able to kind of maintain
it and I stayed that way for four months and then I was able
to drop down a little bit and start losing.
So what I like to tell people about tracking is if you know,
don't do it at first I think everybody should eat it would,
should do what I didn't do, which is three really good,
filling, nourishing meals every single day for 30 or 60 days,
depending on how deep your damage is.
And then if it's not working like you want or you don't feel
like you think you should, then it's time to track it so you can
tweak it. Because not everybody wants to
track. Not everybody, everybody.
A lot of people come to Carnivore so that they don't
have to track and and I think that's great and for a lot of
people it works like that. But if it's not working, you're
going to have to track it so you can figure out what's wrong.
And most of the time, people aren't eating enough.
It wasn't just me. Most of the time people are not
eating enough that they're not losing weight.
You know, you get that thermogenesis, your body uses
more energy to burn the protein and fat, and so people tend to
undereat, which is what I did. And that was really, that was a
really hard lesson that I learned.
Yeah, that that is a tough one for sure.
I mean, you can have your diet optimized from a, you know, a
quality nutrition standpoint for sure, But if you're not eating.
Ample food or you're eating too much food.
You're still going to be, you know, not reaching the goal.
And a lot of people they will. So people respond differently.
It's like, so a lot of people will not be eating enough food
and then they'll be chronically restricting.
They'll be fasting too frequently and then they'll
become very catabolic and H so loose, lean tissue.
Their metabolism done regulates all very natural.
But then they certainly won't be primed to build a preserve more
tissue. So the thing just kind of become
a steady slope, downward, downward spiral.
But you don't see a lot of people gaining a bunch of weight
overall in that context. So you were gaining 18 pound,
You gained 18 pounds. And do you feel pretty confident
you were consuming around that 800 and 900 calorie mark that
entire time? Yeah, I'm sure because I was
eating most of the time. I was eating these precooked
hamburger patties from Sam's. So, you know, I could scan the
label. I knew exactly what was in it.
And I was, you know, I wasn't measuring my cheese, but I was
just putting a, a slice of cheese, you know, on each burger
or about a tablespoon of butter on each burger.
So yeah, it was definitely under 1000 calories.
And I was just packing on the weight.
I think my body was just freaking out.
I was fasting so much. So at the end of the week, I
probably had only eaten like 3500 calories in a week.
Yeah, and you probably were not sleeping very well.
Your hormones are probably all just dry.
Like everything is probably screwed up.
Yeah, and I went to the doctor right after that and my
progesterone showed up as zero, like like past menopause, which
I was not at that point. So.
So I definitely tanked my hormones.
You can really mess yourself up with not eating enough.
And women don't take that into account when they decide they're
going to do a 1200 calorie diet. 1200 calories a day is not
enough for most people. And people will say I don't lose
weight unless I eat almost nothing.
And that's because you eat almost nothing If you work your
way up and build your metabolism back up, you know where they
call it? A lot of people call it reverse
dieting. If you are sitting there
listening to this and you are saying, well that's ridiculous
because I eat, you know, 1300 calories a day and in order to
lose weight I have to eat 800 or 700 or, you know, whatever.
It is probably because you eat 1300 calories a day that you
have to drop that low to lose, and eventually that'll quit
working too. It's really important to make
sure that you feed your body. And after 36 years of, you know,
traumatizing my body, it was time for me to fix it, you know?
And I had a lot of making up to do.
There's definitely a point of diminishing returns when it
comes to dropping calories, and I've talked about reverse dining
quite a bit and I feel like, like you said before we started
recording, that's just not talked about enough, I think
people. You know, they've at least heard
the term. They don't really know what it
means, and it's it's very hard. It's a hard sales coach to get
people to try to increase their calories if they're wanting to
lose weight. And it's it's definitely a long
approach, like you're not likely going to start losing weight
immediately. I've had that happen to a few
clients, but more often than not, most people gain a little
bit of weight in the short term. But you have to just build that
foundation before you can ever hope to make losing weight in a
healthy, sustainable manner even somewhat possible.
Yeah, and that's really scary for a lot of people.
So they would rather just stay where they are than fix it by
eating more and gaining a few pounds so that they can lose
weight. It's so scary that it becomes,
like paralyzing for some people. Like they they start eating more
and they gain a little bit of weight and they just stop.
I talked to somebody recently who eats fruits and vegetables,
mostly vegetables because of the carbs, and only fish a couple of
times a week and then some beans and very rarely eats chicken
because she's so afraid of fat. And I was explaining I sent her
lots of different videos, lots of different, you know,
Instagram pages from people that I know that struggled with the
same thing, you know, the anorexia, the, you know, the
being scared of eating fats. And she said she thought that
she might die if she ate any of the fat that I was talking about
and telling her that she needs to eat and she didn't.
She said that I might I might die from eating that.
And if not because of my health, then it would be because of
suicide because she was so worried about eating the fat.
That's how scared we have made people about eating fat.
Now this is an extreme, of course, this is an eating
disorder. You know, for most women, it's
typically just that they're afraid of the fat because they
have been scared of it, you know, from news media, from
books that they've read, from things they've seen.
They are scared of the fat. So this is an extreme, but at
the same time, this is a reality for some people.
They are afraid of the fat. Yeah, it's very unfortunate.
I mean like there is. There is definitely a point at
which more fat is not necessarily better, like there
is a threshold there, but to think that you can't have any
fat is certainly not good either.
I mean every single cell in our bodies is encapsulated in a
lipid bilayer. So fat is very much so crucial
for our existence and certainly for optimization.
So yeah, I think when you definitely get the the dialogue
out there, that fat is not the enemy when it comes to.
How you've been able to to make this work with regards to
fasting, So you're doing fasting again now.
Like, how did you figure out a healthy relationship with that?
Because I agree with you and I think a lot of people are over
fasting, and fasting is great, but it's still a stressor on the
body nonetheless. So I typically say if you're in
a caloric deficit, then you don't need to also be fasting
because a lot of what you're not, the good that you're
accomplishing with fasting is also achieved through being in a
deficit. So don't do both simultaneously.
Yeah, I think when I normally eat like on a regular carnivore
day, I'm eating a lot of calories and I'm eating a lot of
fat typically for me, and I don't know how you feel about
this, but being I just turned 50 and I believe that the the
higher fat approach works better for me than kind of the leaner
approach. And I know that carnivore is
going to be high fat, you know, compared to a normal diet no
matter how you look at it. But for me, we're talking like
85 or 90% fat makes me feel really good.
You know, I lose a couple of pounds when I do that.
I feel really great. I feel like I actually lean out
at 50 by eating that and I've heard that from other women too.
But ultimately I just kind of decided that I wanted to try to
fast a little bit again and just kind of see if I could do it.
And so I started out with 24. I usually a lot of times I do
like a 20 hour, you know, 24 for intermittent fasting, I'll for
20 hours and then eat within a four hour window because it's
really hard for me to get all of my calories in in just, you
know, in just one meal. And so that typically doesn't
work for me. So I do eat a lot.
When I eat more than 2000 calories.
I'm sure I don't really track it very often, but I do every now
and then just to be sure that I'm eating enough and it's
typically above 2000 calories. And so I did like a 48 hour fast
a few weeks ago. And then we went on vacation and
I had gained a few pounds from eating too much cheese while we
were gone. Because that's what we do on
vacation, is we eat lots of cheese.
Apparently it's the thing, you know, cheese is so wonderful.
And so we came back and I was like, OK, so last week I did
Monday, Wednesday and Friday asking.
So I was doing like 4244 hours and then eating 2500 calories in
my eating window and I felt really good.
And then over the weekend I decided that I was going to do a
longer fast this week because the one thing that fixed my
distorted taste and smell about two years ago with a 5 day water
fast and everything went completely back to normal for
two days now. I wasn't carnivore yet.
It was in May actually, so two years ago in May.
And it was just a week or two before I turned carnivore and I
went and that's and I eat everything because it was the
first time anything had tasted and smelled normal in six months
since I had had COVID. And so I ate popcorn and I eat
peanut butter and I drink coffee because it tasted so good.
Otherwise it usually smells like a scum.
And I ate all of these things. Like I pigged out for two days
because I was so excited that everything tasted normal.
And then it went right back the way that it was.
And so now that I feel like I can have this maybe healthy
relationship with fasting, I decided this week I was going to
go for five days and see if I could fix that again.
And maybe it would stick this time because I wasn't.
Because I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go eat all the
things. I'm going to continue to keep
myself in a lot of ways in ontopagy several days a week
with, you know my higher fat days, I feel like keep me in
ontopagy. I'm going to stay, you know, and
ketosis. And so maybe the key is the five
day fast and then keeping the carnivore way of eating instead
of pegging out afterwards like I did last time.
And so it's kind of a science experiment and so but I do feel
really good. This is day three and I feel
really good and I have energy. I just got home from the gym and
so, so far, you know, my my biggest concern is because I'm
an all or nothing kind of person is getting to the end of this
five day fast and be saying to myself maybe I'll go a little
longer because that's what I do. It's just like maybe I'll have
another cupcake. So, so my, you know, the key for
me is going to be to absolutely end the fast on Friday at noon
because that's when I said I was going to end it.
And on Monday I wouldn't have said I'm worried about going too
long. This Monday I was hungry, you
know, Monday I was a little bit grossy.
Monday I wanted to eat, but today I feel really good.
Yesterday I felt really good. So we'll, you know, just kind of
see how it goes. But but what I'm hoping is that
this will give me back my healthy relationship with
fasting, which I do think can be good sometimes and hopefully
heal this issue with my taste and smell.
Yeah, I agree. I mean if you're doing the five
day fast, which is a pretty long fast.
I've done a five day fast two or three Times Now, but I don't do
it very frequent like I'll do a five day fast every.
You know, couple of years you could probably get away with
doing it every quarter without any issues.
But as long as you're feasting when you're not fasting, like as
long as you're eating amp calories, then like you said,
you're doing 2500 calories with lots of fat and protein, like
that's great. You know, generally speaking,
all of my, like I want to see all of my female clients
maintaining healthy composition north of 2000 calories on a
regular basis. Like, that's just a good simple
general rule of thumb when it comes to the higher fat, I'm
curious here, so. I I've got clients on all ends
of spectrum. I've got some that are very high
fat ratio like that. I've got some that are much
lower. When you're doing 80 to 85% of
your calories from fat, are you still getting in quite a bit of
protein then too? Yeah, I am.
It ends up being whatever, whatever it would work out.
I'm really bad with the numbers there as far as the grams go, I
just look at the percentage on my app and So what I typically
do is it's at least 2000 calories, sometimes more, and
ends up being 85 to 90 or to 90% fat.
So however that would work out what I typically do is I will
eat one whole egg and four or five egg yolks for breakfast
with six or seven really thick cut slices of bacon.
And then around lunchtime I will sometimes have a can of sardines
or sometime with the olive oil, and then I will drink the olive
oil and then I'll have some beef fat trimmings, air fried, also
some rib eye trimmings. And so that that does give me a
decent amount of protein, but the fat is really high, which
is, you know, also what I feel like I need.
Yeah, yeah. I think if I was, I mean, if I
was gonna do a higher fat day like those, I'd probably just
have a higher overall calorie day too.
That way I'm still getting, you know, the ample protein, but I'm
still able to push that fat ratio up quite a bit because I
think there's absolutely, yeah, that's a good idea, that for
sure that's a good idea. Yeah, having like a few days.
I've got one client right now that's doing.
He he's doing really well with a pretty high protein relative to
fat. His majority of his calories are
still fat, but we've been doing like a weekly fat refeed, so to
speak. So he's getting this massive
bolus of dietary fat once a week, and he's responding super
well to that. I think everything.
Can be made to work like based off the individual, what they
prefer, what the body responds well to as long as everything is
within a healthy parameter. So if you're gonna have a super
high fat ratio like that, more power to you.
Just make sure you're eating enough calories that the ratios
and the the percentages workout that you're still getting ample
protein. Oh yeah, next time I won't just
check the percentage. I'll make sure I check my
protein and then I'm, you know, getting enough of that too.
That's a good idea. Yeah, for sure.
For sure. All right, so I kinda wanna
switch gears. Totally here.
So you are a mother of how many kids?
Four. I have 4 kids, they are 22/20/16
and 14. Our 22 year old just got married
and moved out about a month ago, little over a month ago.
I'm still have a little bit of a hard time with that.
Our son still lives at home. He has finished college, he's a
full time graphic designer and still lives here and we are so
grateful for that. And then the other two are we
home school and they play lots of volleyball and basketball.
Very cool, very cool. Have you?
Been able to kind of like navigate the waters of nutrition
with them because you had them obviously much earlier than you
shifted your diets. Like were they pretty receptive
to you doing carnivore? Have you tried to kind of swayed
in that direction? Like, how does that work down?
They think I'm insane. Our daughter and her husband are
actually mostly keto most of the time.
I mean they go off sometimes, but but they do believe in keto.
I'm a little bit too much for them.
It's a it's a little bit too much for them.
And our son, he's your typical 20 year old, He just kind of
eats whatever he wants right now.
Hopefully it doesn't catch up with him, but when it if it
does, I will be here to, you know, help him.
I, you know, talk. We talked to him about it quite
a bit and our younger too, they don't need a lot of processed
foods, but they also don't eat as well as I would like for them
to eat. But they are heavy on the
fruits, a little bit of processed food and they eat the
meat that we eat. They just don't eat as much as
we do. Gotcha, gotcha.
Yeah, I feel like that's a tough one.
You know we we've got, I've got a son now he's just a year old.
But like when when you have your kids before you shift your diet
and they're kind of grown up on a certain, you know, type of
diet that they're familiar with their cousins.
They like the flavors. They, they like the
carbohydrates, like shifting them to more of an animal based,
natural, minimally processed that I would imagine would be
pretty, pretty unready beast for sure.
Yeah. And, you know, I I like to pick
and choose my battles. They're really good kids.
They have really good morals and values.
You know, we go to church. They love Jesus.
They do their Bible plan. And you know what?
They don't eat perfectly the way that I want them to.
But it's just not something that I'm willing to really fight
about right now for them. You know, they're very active
with basketball and volleyball and they like to go out with
their friends. And after basketball and
volleyball games, we always got to eat.
You know, typically they don't get something terrible.
You know we're at McDonald's or Wendy's or something like that.
You know and they'll get you know maybe just the fries or
just a burger without the bun or you know they're not going all
out. They're not getting a whole meal
with the soda, you know at 10:00 o'clock at night.
And for that I'm grateful. And so you know it's just not a
battle that I'm that I'm willing to fight with them right now.
I'm trying to leave by example and sometimes I throw some
challenges like hey you know let's not eat you sugar this
week or you know so we're they're they still eat a lot
better than you're a normal person.
We don't usually have soda in the house.
We they typically lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of meat,
and so I'm just not willing to fight that with them at their
ages right now. Yeah, that makes total sense.
I feel like a lot of people, they, they don't really know how
to navigate those waters. I think if you're leading by
example, like sounds like you're as the best thing anybody can do
cuz they'll they'll recognize that your health is improved and
they'll take stock in that. Like, I think, you know, they're
a lot smarter than people realize and they just know what
their environment and people around their environment is
showing. So, like, if you've been able to
turn your health around, you're not be plagued with what you
were suffering with before. That carries some weight in
their minds, I would think, Yeah, absolutely.
And they do think it's a little bit extreme, but I think they'll
learn and I think they'll eventually understand.
Totally, Totally. And you home school.
You said you home school. The two younger ones, we've
always home schooled. Our kids never went to school.
And the two older ones never went to school until they went
to college and they went to a local college here.
Yeah, we've always home schooled and it wasn't like for religious
reasons or anything like that. In the beginning.
It was just I couldn't stand the fact that at five years old they
were going to get on a bus at the end of our driveway and ride
with people. I don't know, to sit with kids I
don't know that have parents, but I don't know all day long.
And they were going to be learning things, so many things.
They were going to be learning great things but also not good
things. And bring those things home and
and then be away from me for 8:00 or 9 hours a day.
I just, it was a control thing at the time.
I guess I just didn't want that. I didn't want that for our
family. I just wanted them to be with
me. And it has worked out really
well, if I do say so myself. You know, they're they've always
been good kids and they, you know, they did school well and
then they went to college. And so I know that we can, I
know we can finish this out. I know we can finish strong
because the first two did what we wanted them to do and our
oldest daughter that just got married, she's a full time real
estate agent. Like I said, our son is a
graphic designer and so they have integrated themselves into
society and they are good people and they have friends and they
have social lives. And yeah, I'm really glad we did
it. How did Y'all navigate, like,
the whole curriculum aspect, but did you follow a curriculum that
is like incentivizing and working well with the home
school? Like, I don't really know how
all that works. Like I know.
There is a curriculum for the homeschool families.
Is that what Y'all did? Yeah.
So there, in a lot of states, there is a thing called K12 now
that wasn't around, I don't believe when our oldest was
little. I mean, you can get your school
books from the school. They will send you a box of
everything you need for the school year and it's free.
And they do their classes online.
It's like they're sitting in the classroom.
They can see the teacher, they can see their students.
They have to be sitting at a computer for all that time every
day and that was not available back then.
It is available now, but that's not something that we have
chosen to do. We started out with a Becca,
which is a curriculum out of Pensacola, FL.
And you can get just like a workbook for each subject and
you sit and you read the information to them.
You know, it tells you what to do.
It tells you what to tell them. And then they finish their
worksheets. And as time went on and it
started to evolve, you eventually kind of jump around
and get different curriculums. You hear about so and so is
using this math curriculum and this other friend is using this
English curriculum. And so you just kind of mix it
up. And as long as you're meeting
your requirements according to the school district where you
live, then it doesn't really matter which curriculums you use
or things like that. As long as they are passing
their classes, you know, according to you and passing
their. Some states require a state exam
at the end of the school year. It's not the Sol, it's a
different kind of state exam, but it has.
It's like online or you can administrate it yourself.
And then you just send those test results, and in a lot of
states you can claim religious exemption where the state just
basically has nothing to do with your schooling at all, and you
can just say, hey, we've got this, we're responsible, and
we'll handle it, and they're gonna learn stuff and they'll be
fine. Do they do like standardized
tests, like the ACT for college admissions and whatnot?
Yeah, they can do that. Or they can go in the state of
Virginia anywhere where we live. They can go to the Community
College for two years and then any State College will accept
that community, that two years at the Community College as
their score and accept them through that and not even use
any of their high schooling for it.
Interesting, yeah. What's been the the best part
about going the homeschooling around?
That's hard because there are so many things I have to say.
The best part is being able to be with them as much as we have.
You know this. You know, the days are long, but
the years are short. And I know that's a very cliche.
And I know you just had a baby and it's hard to hear, but this
is going to be over before you know it.
And being able to spend all of that extra time with our kids,
like we never missed a basketball or a volleyball game
unless, you know, one of us was sick or one of the other kids
was sick or my husband's a pilot.
So sometimes he's gone, but not usually.
And so we have been able to be with them, drive them to
basketball and volleyball games two hours away from our house,
you know, on a regular basis, and be with them all that time
instead of them being on a bus, you know, and not getting home
until 11:00, o'clock. And we weren't even involved in
any of that. You know, we have been able to
be involved in every aspect of their life.
And I know there are people out there that would say you can't
protect them from everything or that's your job.
They're supposed to go off and be by themselves and be with
their friends. When do they ever have privacy?
You know, there's lots of criticisms that go along with
homeschooling, but we can't get this time back, that time that
the time that people lose from being with their, you know,
kids. You can't get that time back.
And for us, that was the most important thing.
And that's not everybody's most important thing.
Most people just want their kids to be normal and go off to
school and come home from school and give them a snack and then
let them do homework for three or four hours before they, you
know, have to go to bed and do it all over again.
And that wasn't what we wanted. We used to be in a small group
at church with some families who would say, one of them in
particular would say they don't see each other except on Sundays
there, or they don't. They didn't see their dad except
on Sundays because he would get up for work before they got up
for school and when they got home for their sporting
activities at the end of the day he was already in bed.
So these, you know, and that really bothered me, that they
only saw each other and ate a meal together on a Sunday.
And we have been able to avoid that.
I mean, things get busy with our sports seasons and stuff like
that, but we at least are, you know, home with them all day,
every day. I just didn't want somebody else
raising my kids. Yeah.
And so it yeah, it definitely worked out for us.
And I know that everybody can't do it.
I know that it's hard. And so if you can't do it, I'm
not trying to make people feel bad.
But man, if you can figure out how to be with your kids all day
long, that is the best gift that you'll ever receive and the best
gift that you can ever give to your children.
Yeah, I feel like, you know, that's definitely the route that
we're heading down for sure, with rides, I mean.
It is crazy how many people just simply you know and a lot of
it's because that's just the life they live.
But they'll they'll like I've got a friend really good friend
that that visited with me this past weekend and he's got a
daughter the same age as Rigel, 3 days younger actually and he
works full time. She works full time.
So they have they had. They have to take her to
daycare, and the mother literally only gets one hour a
day with her. And then she's off on Thursdays
and she's off on Saturday and Sunday.
So she's got three full days. But literally every the rest of
the week she gets one hour a day.
And you know, not to judge them at all like to eat their own,
but that's just to me seems like such an impactful time and and a
child, you know, life and to be away from their parents the
majority of that time just seems like not not optimal by any
stretch of the imagination. So you know I'm at work more
often than not. I'm at the compound here now,
Podcasting with you. I get up early, I leave late,
but Crystal is with Rigel all day long.
And then she'll often bring him up here to work out.
So I'll see him intermittently throughout the day.
Then he and I spend time together in the afternoons.
But it's like, yeah, I mean that's that's everything to me.
I feel so very blessed that Crystal can do that.
And we kind of live on our own terms like that.
Yeah. And I think people don't realize
how much it's costing. Like a lot of people feel like
they the my mom can't be home with the kids all day because
she has to go to work too. Because you know, as a couple
they have bills to pay. And I remember this is years ago
Oprah, so I'm dating myself here a little bit.
This was Oprah probably 25 years ago and Oprah did this interview
with. I don't remember who who, like
the financial expert was or whoever, but she was doing this
interview with this couple who was talking about not spending
time together and their house was a mess and their life was
basically chaos. They hardly saw each other
during the week. It was, you know, that whole
same kind of thing. And once they figured out the
amount, like literally every penny, the amount of money that
she spent to take the the kids to daycare or wherever it was
that they went, you know, for the gas money, you know, the,
you know, the maintenance on the car.
You know, like if there was maintenance on the car because
of all the extra driving, the fast food meals, because she
didn't have time to cook because she was at work, The fast
lunches for the kids that were in school, like the Lunchables
or whatever. You know, whatever it was then
instead of actually, you know, giving them a healthy, having
them a healthy lunch because she didn't have time to do that.
And like, once you laid out all of the amounts of money that
they were spending, they were actually in the hole every month
compared to how they would be if she just stayed home and cooked
their meals and didn't spend the gas and didn't spend the money
on daycare and all of that. They actually, and they had
them. They had like a a recap later,
like it was, you know, they did the show and then they showed
them six months later and they were thriving as a family.
They had extra money and the bank that they didn't expect to
have, even though they were down one income, they had managed to
make it work and save money and have extra money and everybody
was healthier and happier and she got to stay home with the
kids. Yeah, that, that's that's
awesome right there. Like that.
Can't go in there. If I'm playing dead without a.
Kid, what's the worst thing about home schooling that you
all have experienced? Gosh, you know, I honestly don't
think there was a downside for us.
If I had to pick something, it would.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I do think so.
The younger 2 for sure, I mean the older 2, have never said
anything negative. I mean, every now and then I
think maybe they feel a little bit left out when other people
are talking about things in school.
But you know, but we we go on field trips with a group of
people. Our kids do sports, you know, we
go on vacation field. They did an actual graduation
where they walk across the stage in a cap and gown.
We have, you know, a home school prom or you know, we call it a
formal, but we have a home school formal, so they don't
really miss any of those things. The cool thing is that we get to
do it with people that we choose to be with instead of people
that we're forced to be with because we're in the same school
district. And that makes that makes a huge
difference for me. So if there was a downside, I
would say it's the judgment from people.
You know, the home schooling has a stigma about it.
And so I would say if there was a downside, it's that.
But But honestly there, I mean, I really can't think of what a
downside it would be, Robert. I mean, we just, we have enjoyed
it so much now. There were hard days, don't get
me wrong. There were days filled with
tears because somebody doesn't want to do their school and it's
not all, you know, it's not all roses and you know, things that
smell good. It was definitely bad, you know,
some days. But overall, looking back on it,
I wouldn't change anything about what we did for homeschooling.
There was no downside on a daily basis.
And I remember one time when our kids were little or somebody
asked my husband what about socialization?
And he said he just started laughing.
Because the truth is, we probably socialize too much.
Like we socialize a lot more than kids that are in public
school. And that's always the first
thing people say. What about socialization?
Our kids are with other kids and other people all the time.
And the cool thing is that at their ages now and even five or
six years ago, for the older two, like when they were
teenagers, and the two we still have at home, you know that
we're still schooling now. They can look an adult in the
eye and have a conversation. They are not uncomfortable in a
room of people, you know, with people looking at them and
talking to them. Like, there are a lot of kids
who can't have a conversation with an adult.
They can't look an adult in the eye, even after spending years
and years in the school system with adults telling them what to
do. They can't have a conversation
with an adult, you know, because it's awkward and uncomfortable
for them. So yeah, there really is no
downside for me as far as home schooling goes.
Yeah, no, I love hearing that for sure.
I feel like it's weird, like people are so judgment for their
judgment towards your nutrition, their judgment towards your
parenting styles. So I feel like, you know, I've
already got the the judgment from a nutrition standpoint, so
I'm battle there. So I should be good going to the
homeschooling realm. But you know, like if you're
able to simply socialize and have a conversation confidently,
I mean you could do anything in life if you can do that.
And I feel like there is a negative stigma about that
towards the homeschooling community.
But then you look at people that are going through this system
now and they're not really allowed to thrive necessarily.
They're They're just kind of. You know, put along this roadmap
and there's so much boredom with that because it's not really
catering to their strengths that they're so bored.
They just want to look at their phones all the time to make the
time pass and they don't know how to look up the people in the
eye and have a firm handshake and a legit conversation because
they haven't had to. So I think, you know, we've been
taking rides with all these conferences that I've been going
to. I mean, he was at Kilocon when
he was two months old. I mean he's he's, he's already
kind of inundated with this, you know, these people.
So I think. Just being out there and living
life and not necessarily following all these rigid
societal norms is much more educational than not.
Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100%.
Yeah, it's totally, totally worth it.
Awesome, Awesome, awesome. But what isn't the pipeline for
you? What are you excited about as
far as nutrition goes? Parenting goes?
Like, what's got you amped up for what the future holds?
Well, you know, I'm, I'm trying to build the YouTube channel,
the Carnivore Revolution YouTube channel and doing lots of
interviews and hanging out with, you know, with other carnivores
online. And you know, it gets me excited
to help people to spread the word about carnivore or Quito,
just basically low carb for me. Like, we're all on the same team
here. You know, we're all just trying
to be healthy and have longevity.
I want to be here for a really long time for my kids and my
grandkids. And this is the way that I see
this is the path that I see for that.
And so I just get really excited about sharing that with other
people and talking to other people about how nutrient dense
meat is and that if you just eat meat, you will change your life.
And so that's what I get mostly excited about is just talking to
people about that. And then my kids, goodness, the
younger two are, you know, they're going to graduate in the
next four or five years here. And I don't know what I'll do
then, but. But for now, I'm going to take
care of them. I'm going to homeschool them,
run them around to basketball and volleyball games and teach
people about eating meat. I mean it's it's honestly my
favorite topic. I love it.
I think definitely in the space
for the right reasons, you know what most people in the space
are like. They've had their own profound
health transformation. And when you have experienced
that, it's hard not to talk about it with this, you know,
vibrancy because you just recognize how much it's impacted
your life for the positive. So yeah, I mean, if you're doing
that for the right reasons, which it sounds like you are, if
you're being the best mom you can be like that, that to me,
sounds like a pretty fulfilling life right there.
Yeah. And I, you know, I have very few
regrets. And, well, I guess the big one
would be, I wish I'd have found carnivore sooner because it
really changed who I am, you know, it changed my temperament.
It changed my anxiety and my stress level, you know?
And so, yeah, I just want to share that with other people as
much as I can. Hey, don't waste time thinking
about last year. Just make the most of what you
got ahead of you. True.
Very true. And what was the name that
YouTube channel again in the Carnivore Revolution?
Carnival. Revolution.
Awesome. I'll link out to that for sure.
What are some other social platforms like?
What's your Instagram, website, etc etc.
I'll link out to that too. And so my Instagram is Serena
dot Carnivore and we also have a Carnivore Revolution Instagram
page and on Facebook. I'm Serena Music with the same
picture as my picture on Instagram, but it's really just
a carbon copy of my Instagram page.
And then the website's a little bit hard to find cuz it's a Wix
sites and SO, but it is in my bio on Instagram.
You can find it in my links there.
Awesome. Well, I'll link out to all
those. Make it easy for people to find
you, Serena. I certainly appreciate the time.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.
If there's ever anything I could do to help your endeavors in any
form or fashion, by all means let me know.
Awesome, Thank you and you'll have to come my mind.
And if you need any help with homeschooling, you just let me
know. Hey, I will most certainly take
you up on that cuz this is uncharter territory for me.
So you've done it. I've been with four kids now, so
I feel like you're you get a proven track record.
So I'll be hitting you up for questions for sure.
Awesome. Anytime.
Take care. Have a good one, Okay.
Thanks You too.