My Journey Into The Carnivore Diet - Part 1

How I Lost Weight, Found Fitness & Health Through the Carnivore Diet

Part 1

I know it sounds crazy! Eat only meat or meat products, sleep better, feel better, and lose fat while eating fat. How could this be? This was the situation I found myself in. I had come to the point where I was going to give up. I resigned myself to accepting that I could not control my eating and see better days of health. That was until I heard a podcast on “The Bitcoin Standard” about being a carnivore. How crazy is that? A Bitcoin podcast talks about health and diet habits. After listening to the podcast, I thought, “Why not?” I have got little to lose at this point.

The following set of blog posts is an unfiltered, barely edited account of my journey into losing weight, finding fitness, and my search to be healthy. To say this has been a long and frustrating journey would be an understatement. This is the story of a 40-year journey. While I have not arrived, I have found what I was looking for, a health program where I am not always starving and in a constant state of temptation. I no longer have the ups and downs I have grown accustomed to, turning that into another opportunity to eat. This will be long, but I hope my story can encourage others to do what I did and keep at it. Continue learning, listening, researching, and moving forward to find optimal health. It will change your life.

In this series of articles, I am not giving medical advice. I am not a medical doctor. While I may be passionate about my beliefs, I encourage everyone to find their path. Do your research. Examine your health initiatives. 

At the same time, I hope my story can inspire others to do their research. Health is our responsibility alone. If we do not take care to read, listen to podcasts, research, get advice, and study to better ourselves in any area of life, then there is no one to blame except ourselves. One of my favorite sayings is:

“Don’t Be Upset By The Results You Didn’t Get From the Work You Didn’t Do” 

That says it all. We will not see results if we don't do the work.

The Beginning: Discovering Fitness 

I would be missing a massive part of my story if I didn’t start at the beginning of my fitness journey. Like most kids my age, I started out playing the three popular sports kids did in those days: Football, Basketball, and Baseball. I was a decent athlete and could manage to barely not make a fool of myself participating. As the old saying goes, I was a “Jack of all trades and a master of none.” That is until I discovered motorcycles.

Growing up, it was apparent to my parents that I was a venturesome kid willing to color outside the lines. Maybe too much. I would try almost anything, testing what was acceptable and normal. Some things I tested were probably not the best for a young man growing up, but I was willing to give it a shot as long as it was challenging.

Playing one of the big three sports led to one of the great disappointments and one of the most significant discoveries of my fitness life. After some struggles on my little league team, I quit team sports altogether. I was frustrated with the coach, my team, and the whole system. Looking back, I realize I was wrong, but God used this to set my path for the future.

I am sure this move of quitting sports panicked my parents. They may have been freaking out a little wondering what they would do with this crazy kid to keep him busy. How would they fill my spare time and keep me out of trouble?

The answer to this question came in the form of a minibike. Not just any ole minibike but the top-of-the-line Honda mini trail. Our house was on the city's edge in a relatively new subdivision that provided me with many wide-open riding spaces close to home. Every day after school, I rode and tested the limits of what that minibike and I could achieve.

It did not take long to wear out that minibike. My reward was a full-sized motorcycle at the early age of 13. Once again, every day after school, I was racing around the track with some friends, discovering the limits of what I could do. As one friend once told me concerning riding motorcycles, “You never know how fast you can go until you wreck.” That became my motto that I put into practice every day. After a while of racing around the same track, you get bored. You look for some adventure to go on. A new challenge had to be over the horizon.

That is when my motorcycle friends and I heard about a motocross race in our area. I had long ago, six months earlier, stripped off all the lights and any other unnecessary weight-bearing items on my bike that would slow it down. I was ready to race, and we did.

I got 3rd place in my first race and was off and running in the motocross life. I had finally found a sport that I excelled at. Every day after school, we rode. The guys I practiced with every day in SW Ft Worth were some of the fastest motocross racers in Texas. Competing against them day in and day out made me better1. The progression continued with me getting a new motocross bike, and at the ripe old age of 15, a motocross friend and I turned pro2. In that first race, I did well, receiving my first payment for racing, and there was no going back to the amateur ranks. 

You may be wondering what this has to do with fitness. One thing I should have mentioned was the fitness level that motocross required. According to Bruce Brown in his movie “On Any Sunday,” motocross was the 2nd most physically exerting sport in the world at this time in sports. I can believe it. There were times after racing a 30–40-minute moto or heat, I would have to peel my hands off the handlebars literally. I would come into the pits, hand my bike to my dad, and crash on the ground from exhaustion. I had to do it all over again in about an hour. It was tough, but I loved every minute of it. 

This was when fitness became a vital part of my life. If I wanted to win a race, I had to be fit. While I began lifting weights, my main fitness exercise was to race around our home track for hours after school each day. At 140 pounds, throwing around a 200lb motorcycle for a few hours was enough to build the necessary fitness. I was young, recovery came swiftly, and I was ready to do it all over again every single day. I continued to race from the ages of 13-18 years old. My last race was at 18 years old.

Even though I quit racing, I was hooked on exercise and pushing the limits of what I could do. Something about that dopamine in my system got me hooked. At 18, I slowly began to focus on Tennis and later bicycling. I took up tennis because a friend in college, Pete, was encouraging me in helping me get started. I had known Pete since Elementary school. It was not until college that we began to hang out since he lived a floor below me in the dorm. Pete’s best friend was a guy we had known since our junior high school days. He was an incredible tennis player winning his conference singles title in 1978. Watching him play and with Pete’s encouragement, I put all I had into Tennis. I would practice every day, hitting the ball against the wall for hours.

Sometimes I called in sick to my summer job to go practice. That is until my boss called the house one day, and my sister told him I was at the school practicing tennis. He was forgiving, but I was obsessed. I wouldn't say I liked the job anyway, so I resigned. I spent the rest of the summer practicing my tennis game. I loved the constant sprinting and how I felt so worn out when I finished at the end of the day.

While I continued to play tennis, bicycling came into the picture a little later in my early twenties. I had always ridden a bicycle, as most kids did back then. In college, I took my old bike to school one semester to ride to classes on the far side of campus. This turned into some fitness riding also. The tennis playing and bike riding continued providing excellent fitness and fun.

After college, I began working at General Dynamics (G.D. for short) corporation. The good thing about G.D. was that they had a fantastic recreation area. It had every sport you could imagine, including four tennis courts and a tennis league. This only accelerated my tennis playing and thirst for fitness. Being single, I would go every day after work to work out or to play in a league match.  

One of my first purchases with my paycheck was a new road bike to continue my bike riding. When I was not playing tennis, I was riding my bicycle. This paid off later in life. After leaving General Dynamics for grad school, I ended up in a school that had a great fitness center, where I spent way too much time.

One of the primary jobs I had while finishing my master's degree was at the local YMCA as a fitness instructor. My supervisor at the Y was a marathon runner with a master's degree in exercise physiology. One of the things I loved about Mike was that he trained me in everything he was learning at the time. He would send me to seminars or meetings to soak up the latest in exercise science. At times he allowed me to teach fitness classes at a local hospital.

My love for tennis came through a little later, and I started a tennis program at the Y. I would give private lessons to kids and play matches against adult players.

During this time, I rode my bike around 70-100 miles a week and played tennis almost daily. I was burning many calories. I was also beginning to eat carbs almost exclusively. Carb-loading was the latest science that said that to perform my best, I needed to cut my fat and protein and load up with carbs. All of this carb loading has an effect on your body. In part 2 I will talk about what that effect was and how it changed my life … for the worse.

1 I knew most of the guys in this article, but Danny Doss challenged me daily. We went to the same high school and became friends, and he was a guy I chased every day after school at our home track. He was a natural at MX, and his speed and skill made me better and faster. https://motocrossactionmag.com/kent-howerton-aka-bengt-hooperton/   and here is mentioned in this article: https://motocrossactionmag.com/jodys-most-unforgettable-men-of-motocross/

2 Bobby and I turned pro the same day. He went on to greatness in motocross, being named the fastest 125 rider in Texas at one point.  https://www.legendsandheroestour.org/post/legends-and-heroes-tour-to-honor-bobbu-pickard-at-monster-energy-supercross-in-arlington-tx