Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
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Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
After carnivore, I'm not anxious, I don't have psoriasis, my depression is gone, I'm intellectually at my best right now, I'm stronger, I swim better, I sleep better, and my gum disease is gone! What the hell?
Your Mental Health
Personally speaking, I have looked at myself in the mirror and said “what is one more beer, piece of pizza, or Philly cheesesteak going to hurt? I’m already fat.” I can assure you this approach takes its toll on you mentally. You reach a point of giving up when you make statements like that. Deep down inside, you’re not believing “fat is beautiful” even though you say it to yourself often, hoping the lie will stick. You see media advertisements telling you it’s ok to be fat. You wind up surrounding yourselves with people just like you, yet you feel miserable. You see others your age and older, in seemingly much better shape. You feel hopeless. You feel you’ve done so much, yet you’ve seen so little change. Your weight fluctuates so much that your clothes fit one month, then don’t fit the next. This yo-yo is working overtime to deplete you mentally, and the next thing you know, you’re taking a prescription medication to help you feel better about your lot in life. Or worse, you turn to illicit drugs or alcohol. And then you resort to taking a prescription injection meant for Type 2 diabetics, thinking this must be the only way, yet you totally ignore the side effects, or dismiss them as “it won’t happen to me.”
Obesity is serious because it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes and reduced quality of life. In the United States and worldwide, obesity is also associated with the leading causes of death, including deaths from diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer.
– Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Among America’s top prescribed drug classes, antidepressants are ranked in the top 3. To be specific, 12 of the top 50 drugs prescribed are for mental concerns, whether depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or other mental illness. The other 2 in the top 3? Heart and Cholesterol medications, most of which are prescribed because of obesity.
There was a phrase once said about Elvis Presley: he took drugs to stay awake, and drugs to fall asleep. We find ourselves in very similar situations because of what we eat, and if we allow ourselves to lose control of the food we intake, then we find ourselves eating harmful sugary processed foods, gaining weight, then taking drugs to control our minds, cholesterol, and hearts. But taking a mind control medication more or less elicits a “don’t/can’t care” response. You become numb.
Alcohol
You may also be turning to drugs or alcohol to relieve pain, or perhaps just for fun. This is self-harm, whether you are willing to accept that right now, or not. I’m not saying that certain substances don’t help relieve pain, but I am saying that if you’re using something to mask pain without first attempting to heal the cause, then you are harming yourself. If you truly understood how alcohol affects your body, then perhaps you’d bypass it.
From personal experience, I can say there are many forms of alcohol that taste great. Sometimes there’s no replacing the refreshing taste of a beer with a burger. However, once you’ve weaned yourself off it, you discover you never needed it to begin with.
I can point to a dozen or more videos and articles to demonstrate what alcohol does to your body, but I feel the next 3 videos will make the point quite well. Dr. Berg hits you softly, Dr. Peterson hits you between the eyes, and Dr. Huberman explains the scientific understanding from consumption to hangover.
Alcohol, explained by Dr. Berg
Dr. Jordan Peterson discusses alcohol
Andrew Huberman discusses alcohol
Soda water with lime is my new go-to, whether I’m sitting by the fire at a campground, or out to dinner with my family and friends. Soda water (not tonic water) is totally harmless to your body. No, the pH level is not harmful to your teeth, and it will not significantly impact your gut pH in normal quantities. Avoid tonic water as it has sugar. Seek carbonated water that has no ingredients.
Your Past is your Present
We are all products of our past. Whether we learned from it and built ourselves to be stronger and rise above, or we allowed it to dictate who we are today, our past defined us. For many, they live in complete defiance of a harmful past. They’ve learned to rise above anything that may have victimized them. It could be as simple as raising children a different way, or as complex as walking away from a toxic family to realize a new healthy life. For others, they wallow in their past, never letting go and remaining a victim. You absolutely can change this. It may take help from others, it will take eating properly, and it takes significant willpower, but it is possible.
I’m not at all discounting the horrors that many of you reading this may have experienced growing up. Whether it was mental or physical abuse, it affected you. This is very real and very powerful. Through so many anecdotal (actual experiences of others) stories, you will learn from others that making carnivore lifestyle choices improved their mental health. I’ve personally met people who have cured their ADHD, others who are no longer taking medication for extreme bi-polar disease, and countless who no longer suffer depression. I urge you to consider the words of others that may lead to a dietary change, to improve your own mental health and to eventually stop taking medications. I also personally know someone whose son was born severely autistic. If the scale is 1-10, 10 being the most severe, he was a 12. Through diet alone, being a strict carnivore household with zero sugar, zero processed foods, and zero chemicals, her son 7 years later shows no signs of autism whatsoever.
Q: Who is going to disagree with diet control as a means to heal?
A: Anyone with something they’re trying to sell you as a symptom control.
What if the stories you’re hearing, from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people, all add up to improved mental health simply through diet? Can you fathom the power this has in your own life? You won’t have to be numb to your thoughts. You won’t have to be a victim anymore. You will be empowered, stronger, and thriving, not just in your own mind, in your private spaces, but in society as well.
The Comparison Trap
Don’t compare your day 1 to someone else’s day 1000.
Don’t let it get you down when someone else seems to do something so much better and more effortlessly than you. Chances are they’re just further along in their journey than you are.
Remember every expert was once a beginner at some point too. Look to them for inspiration.
– Emma Norris, Progress Over Perfection
Media Doesn’t Help
You’ve probably seen a trend over the years exemplifying the phrase “fat is beautiful,” either in direct statements just like that, or in photographic/video representations in media. This is a trend known as “body positivity” trying to combat the alternative: “body (or fat) shaming.” Let’s address this fat-shaming issue, please.
Are we so worried about “fat shaming” that we can’t discuss this health disaster openly? No medical professional talking about a health issue is shaming anyone. No one should shame anyone for who they are. We are all beautiful souls. I love everyone. I am here for everyone. But the job of health professionals and health institutions is not to promote and support disease; it’s to call out what’s going on and help shape policy to improve health, even if that is uncomfortable for you sometimes.
Why do we continue to accept a clear health disaster and try to normalize it? Normalizing morbid obesity in a health institution is sweeping the problems under the rug. Why are we trying to normalize epidemics of health?
– Dr. Joel Gator
I want to step back in time to the 1940s up to the early 2000s. Smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco were much more accepted than they are now.
Was it lung shaming for health authorities to identify that smoking causes cancer and therefor is a serious health risk worth resolving? I wonder if we could even discuss this issue today if it were a new issue in the media. I wonder if cigarette companies would normalize the spectrum of lung health?
Instead, we identified an issue and took steps to make a real difference because that is what health providers should be doing. Right??
– Dr. Joel Gator
The steps Dr. Gator is referring to include a reduced media presence of smoking, including banning advertisements in many places, most notably television. Smoking is banned in most public places in America, and in proximity to public entrances. Yet, we don’t seem to take issue with feeding our newborns an off-the-shelf diet of baby foods containing the sugar drug. We don’t have an issue promoting very unhealthy processed sugary foods in every single media space in the world.
Making accommodations for obesity
Well-known clothing manufacturers have made adjustments in their offerings to allow for large/plus sizes, at a higher cost passed along to you. In fact, many designers are specifically catering to the obese public, because it’s becoming increasingly harder to market to “skinny people.” I’ll cover this in greater detail in other posts, but I just want you to be aware that the media is influencing your cycle of accepting something you feel you have no control over. The more you are made to accept your lot in life, the less motivated you’re going to want to make personal changes because this requires sacrifice, and sacrifice is necessary. Don’t allow someone to tell you 2+2=5 when you know that’s not true. Being obese does so much damage physically, mentally, and financially, to you and those who love and care for you. People who profit from your poor health will do or say anything to keep you where they can make money from you, including normalizing a very serious problem.
What Truth Is This?
Shown is a billboard of a popular rapper (22 years old in this pic) named “Chicka” and this is sadly glorifying a deadly obesity illness. This glorification is disgusting for 2 reasons. First, it gives you the motivation to accept obesity as normal, when in fact it is killing our population faster than anything else. Second, because this woman is 22 years old. She should have another 60-80 years ahead to live, but the statistics prove she won’t make it to her senior years, and she certainly won’t make it without prescriptions and doctor intervention. What you don’t see on her inside is the amount of visceral and pericardial fat literally suffocating her organs. I’m not calling her ugly, I’m not shaming her. I’m saying she is very unhealthy, and her life expectancy is not in her favor. Click on the website link, and the very first model images are skinny folks. Now isn’t that something? What do you make of that?
(Photo Credit Calvin Klein)
In Summary
I’m saying what I am here because this needs to be addressed head-on. There’s so much more to our weight issues than just physical appearance. We have horrible moods, we get depressed, we lose hope, and we become angry. You probably find yourself eating what you believe to be healthy food, and it very well could be the thing causing you so much trouble. If you’re still gaining weight despite radical dietary changes, then you must consider your mental health and potential need for changes there. This is where physical activity becomes important because your mental stress has nowhere to go. Your body is presenting what’s in your mind and spirit. This needs attention before anything else! If you’ve heard the term “runners high” it refers to endorphins being released into your blood. Please read more about this here.
When you’ve chosen a sugar and seed-oil-free dietary intake on a regular basis, your overall feeling of wellness grows exponentially, and you find yourself with great energy. Now you have the ability to expend that energy with a reduced risk of injury when you visit a gym regularly, go on walks, ride a bicycle, etc.