Special Guest Interview with Bella Steak and Butter Gal!

[Music] everybody this is dr anthony chafee i'm here today with bella the steak and butter gal uh as a special guest thank you very much uh for coming on it's my pleasure thank you for having me anthony yeah not a problem um for for those of us for people that don't uh know who you are can you tell us a little bit about yourself of course so i've been carnivore for three years now and i started off as a vegan so i was vegan for six years before i decided to go all in carnivore and what happened was i started to see a lot of health concerns specifically losing my cycle so amenorrhea i lost my cycle for two years and i actually got my blood tested my doctor literally had to sit me down and tell me you are deficient in some very vital nutrients i was extremely deficient in vitamin d i think my number was six very very low yeah and she told me you either have to supplement intensely as a vegan or just eat some meat so she kind of like slapped me back to reality when she sat me down and i decided to google and youtube ex vegan to carnivore just to see if there was anybody out there who did that and to my surprise a lot of people a lot of videos a lot of success stories uh i have to shout out azer khan lou she inspired me a lot so that's how i went carnivore oh very good all right so how long how long ago was that now that you've gone carnivore three years three years yeah and so what were the the benefits that you found in making that switch yeah so i went from vegan to carnivore overnight and you know at first there were a lot of things that i had to struggle with for example loose stools for me it lasted for about a month but i have to say the benefits really outweighed the difficulty of me just going carnivore and eating only meat the first thing that i felt was energy i felt like i could finally just see from black and white to hd color it was that big of a difference my first bite of carnivore was eggs cooked in kerrygold butter and i actually dreamed of that meal for months leading up to going carnivore and so it was this sensation that i never felt before and i just felt like this is exactly what my body needs what it has been crying out for so it was really the fats and the nutrients and i really did not limit how much fat i allowed myself to eat i also did not limit how much quantity i ate in general and i think that went a very long way in my healing i had a lot of healing to do the biggest one of course was my hormones bringing back my cycle but at that point my skin was a mess i had a lot of cystic acne i had psoriasis i had eczema so i would say three months i saw some really big changes and benefits to my skin but the immediate benefit was mental clarity energy and finally satiation yeah yeah i i see that a lot as well obviously there's more longer term uh health benefits that people get and then slowly healing and changing especially the hormonal things take quite a lot of time to uh to normalize and then have it have the effects on your body as well but yeah the mental clarity thing seems to be just very quick uh i noticed that myself as well where i had just i remember just always being like just in a fog just in like a fuzzy state and and i remember thinking i was like this doesn't make any sense like i feel like i'm tired all the time but i i'm not i had a great sleep i felt good in the morning then all of a sudden i'm feeling foggy and and and tired the rest of the day and like what the hell is going on and then instantly when i stopped eating these things i started eating more meat and fat it was like yeah like like you say just your brain just wakes up and um you know we certainly see that in in people especially in like in alzheimer's or people that are getting older and they have this the insulin resistance in their brain and their brain starts to just slow down and it really doesn't work as well as it should and then they go even just keto but especially carnivore and they're just it's like a light switch comes on so that's great um yeah you were saying you had you had some uh autoimmune issues how are those how are those now how long did those take to resolve yeah the autoimmune were mostly skin related psoriasis and eczema so the eczema would really concentrate throughout my body but mostly my chest and my arms and i just remember ever since i was a little kid i would be suffering with eczema and it would itch so bad that i would literally wake up in blood just bleeding because at night yeah it would just be uncontrollable the amount that i would just itch because it was so dry so i also remember always going to the doctor renewing my prescription for eczema ointments and creams upon going carnivore i am completely ointment uh medicine free whatever it is that these doctors prescribe me i don't need it anymore because it really just healed it went away um with psoriasis that focused all over my face mostly temples and that really just naturally went away as well uh as well as my acne my acne uh improved just it's like night and day when i look at my old pictures of how it used to be when it was at its worst i cannot believe it because i would have bright red cystic pus-filled pimples all over my face and you would think that it would at least leave some really deep dark pigmented scars but you know it the skin just really has a way of repairing and healing on carnivore yeah well that's awesome and you haven't had any problems since then nope it's really just uphill from now uh i just feel like the more you know dedicated consistent i am with carnivore eating it's effortless to me now i keep seeing benefits in pretty much everything yeah and so how um are you very very very strict or what what is your sort of normal diet at the moment uh so i would say i'm 100 all in carnivore since day one i'm pretty good with you know making a decision and sticking to my decision of course if i feel my best so you you were talking a little bit on mental clarity i basically uh am very passionate about chasing mental clarity chasing how can i be most productive as possible because i am a musician i actually started carnivore when i was studying for my masters at juilliard so it was a lot of stress lots of competition when you're at school there so obviously i wanted to be able to practice as little as possible but get in as much work as possible in progress so i really liked to tweak what i was eating on carnivore after i adapted i would say two months in i started playing around with okay what if i add in some raw salmon how do i feel what if i really up the fats with butter how do i feel and that's kind of what i do to this day i'm super passionate about just tweaking things on carnivore but i am pretty strict good that's very great do you have do you have coffee or or artificial sweeteners stevia things like that so i say pretty strict the only thing that i have that is not carnivore is black coffee one cup of day and actually after i interviewed you i felt so bad that i kept the coffee because you you had like a segment where you really you were talking about how you know bad coffee is and i was like man you know i this is my last vice yeah well you know i mean the thing is though is that you you know if you're down to that then you're like you're obviously doing better than nearly anyone else out there um so yeah i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't stress too much about that i mean for me i i definitely i noticed a huge difference um with coffee like yeah i i as i've said before i i don't really get sore after i work out it doesn't matter how long i've been out of the gym yeah i go when i work out and and i feel fine and then i have one cup of black coffee and i'm sore for two days and you know and someone's like well that's not that's not that's not what i want obviously but it's also like that's that's clearly having a bigger effect on my system um you know than than i would have realized before certainly and so for me you know just having having even that effect you know i don't want it and you know and i do talk to people they're saying oh yeah no i still kind of get sore after working out and it's like you drink coffee and like yeah well that's why i had um i had a doctor i was working with um and he uh he's an orthopedic surgeon really good guy and he he started getting really interested in a carnivore diet and so he started doing it himself and you know we would have like you know take lunches together and just hang out and talk about it and he was feeling great and then we went he went to the we went to the gym together and like i put him through like a very serious workout you know and he and he somehow hasn't hadn't been to the gym as obvious as much as i had and so you know he i was pushing really hard he's like well you know while i'm operating tomorrow i don't want to go too hard because i don't want to be sore and i'm like well you won't be you know if you you have actually been just eating carnivore and so he was like really nervous about it but you know we did we did like a lot of you know a lot of stuff it wasn't just like three sets of a certain workout we were doing like you know six or eight sets of multiple different exercises in the same body group and you know he was saying he's like oh you know he's like i'm interested you know i'm interested to see if you know if i you know actually you know don't get sore tomorrow and i was like yeah well i'm actually interested to see how pure you've been you know because if you have been pure you won't get sore and so he was just kind of you know looking at me quizzically the next day he was fine he was just like yeah that's crazy like i'm not even sore like i feel fine halfway through the day we're sitting in the break room and he's there and you know one of the drug reps uh or or device reps came you know brought coffee for everyone you know i didn't have any and you know he was there he's sort of like you know halfway through his cup of coffee and he's just like you know what i am kind of feeling sore actually actually i am kind of feeling sore that and i just like just pointed at the coffee in front of him and he just goes god damn it because it was that quick it was within you know 10 20 minutes of him drinking this coffee he was already feeling sore and so you know when you sort of see that contrast when you have it out of your system sometimes making the decision but at the same time you know if you're you're already in it and you're already feeling okay then you may not have too much reason to to quit it so i understand that look i'm listening i'm considering everything that you say so the day will come i promise and i will document it for everyone all right yeah that's good um uh what made you go vegan in the first place like that's um you know that's interesting as well you really for six years that's a long time six years yup and with the whole thing like when i make a decision i really just follow through and i would say by year three is when i should have stopped because that's when my health declined and i started seeing zero results but i went vegan from a standard chinese slash american diet so uh i was really obsessed with just staying in shape and i was 18 at that time so i was in high school i was gaining that freshman 15 so i was like oh my gosh i don't want to gain weight i need to start losing so it was this mentality where i was very much focusing on my weight and on top of that i had to make sure i fit in these tiny little dresses so i can go on stage so i started obsessing over how to lose weight quick and for some reason at that time when i googled um how to lose weight freely the banana girl showed up i don't know if you know her but she's like oh okay so quite a lot of vegans will know her because she was quite a big vegan diet guru at that time and she was touting this diet where it's like if you eat raw till four so raw fruits raw veg until four pm you start eating cooked starches you will be able to get a six-pack like me says freelee right and she had this ripped figure um and i was like oh i'm gonna try it so i tried it and i saw weight loss but thinking back i think i lost so much weight because i was cutting out all of the junk right so i was eating lots of seed oils rice every single day well i i kept eating rice actually when i was vegan but tons of junk uh fast food as well so of course when you cut out that junk and then you just focus on whole foods plant-based yes you will see some weight loss possibly some results but then you know it really didn't stay for long my weight started fluctuating i started gaining a lot of water weight lots of water retention um but that is why i went vegan yeah that's that's something that you know i was watching because i do like watching uh you know oppo i do oppo research all the time i want to make sure that you know i'm not missing something good you know so i'll look at like different you know vegans um uh and and i try to look at you know doctors and nutritionists and and uh and different people that that really do try to bring facts and and studies and i'm always very interested you know i don't want to be missing something i don't want to be you know a victim of confirmation bias and just and just look at the things that i want to look at i want to i want to see everything and see what the merits are behind it and so uh which has also you know benefited me when i do these debates with with vegans uh as well is because i know all their arguments already and i know why they're wrong already so like they'll start saying something i'll like finish their sentence for them and show them the studies and show them the things and show them why that's act that's actually not the case but you know i was watching uh one the other day where they were talking about all these different studies showing that you know plant-based diet was was so much better and you know did a lot of benefit when you when you switched over to it but all of these studies you know we're comparing it to the standard american diet standard western diet with a lot of you know processed crap and sugar and then you're going whole foods obviously you're going to get benefit and then they they they would talk about they talked about the carnivore diet and keto and they were like well yeah you know some of these things have benefits some people do benefit from but you know that's really just compared to like a standard american diet like i mean so obviously you're eating all this crap but then you're going to something i mean obviously that's going to be some improvement but obviously it's still bad it's like all of your studies and all of the stuff that you were touting as like all this is conclusive are only comparing to the standard american diet as well but you're saying that that's that's a you know you're detracting from uh you know people going carnivore for the exact same reason so that that never um so i thought that was pretty pretty flawed but yeah you're right i mean when you when you're going from eating a bunch of high high octane crap to them eating more more whole food i mean whole food anything by and large is going to be okay unless you're eating something it's just just straight up poisonous like you know hemlock or something like that you can make a salad out of that too you know or you know tobacco's a leafy green vegetable it looks like kale you know make a salad out of that sometime you know but you know if as long as you're not doing doing that um it's not too bad um that was one of the things too uh how do you feel about you know how much people are eating you know that people talk about calories in calories out but obviously when when you're eating different things you know i feel that you know you get you get sort of different results what has your experience been with that oh yeah my experience with that is uh it just goes to show that calories in calories out is not entirely true so when i was vegan i would really restrict i counted calories i really made sure i was monitoring that number on the scale in that calorie tracker every single day and yet i still struggled with weight i still had lots of weight fluctuations i still had a lot of weight gain during that time of the month um and then when i go carnivore right i literally started off eating five pounds a day um and at least yeah i have a big appetite by the way very proud of that um but five pounds a day every day and sometimes um well one stick of butter per day usually i was just craving so much food but especially the fats so i was eating a lot of fatty meats and a lot a lot of butter um initially i gained weight i gained 25 pounds actually so during that time i was listening to a lot of kelly hogan's podcasts and episodes because she was similar to me she kind of went all in carnivore and she started gaining weight so i was like okay if she can walk out of this with a healthy body uh body weight after adapting i can too so i really stuck onto that and i allowed myself to eat for once in my life i stopped restricting i started eating as much as i wanted hence five pounds a day and yes the the the weight really packed on quite quick but i would say after six months my ravenous hunger really settled down and i think that's key you kind of have to just honor your cravings honor your hunger eat as much as you need to heal especially if you're coming from such a restrictive diet especially if you're a female who is malnourished and i was um after six months my cravings hunger settled down and i was like okay i don't need five pounds anymore i feel like you know two meals a day three to four pounds will do and then my appetite started continuing to settle down and that's when my weight dropped so i do feel like there's a correlation when you are not ravenous and you're not eating all day every day and you feel satiated and nourished that's when your body is ready to let go of that extra weight yeah yeah like um that is something that i noticed as well is that when especially when people are coming from a very restrictive you know lifestyle before that their body is just really craving nutrients and it's really trying to you know just catch up and try to you know fill in the corners uh of of their nutrient deficit deficit and you know we were talking about you know being in late adolescence in early adulthood and worrying about your your figure worrying about your your weight and your appearance which is very important to i'd say everybody really uh to a certain extent even even though people some you know it's not healthy to to dwell on it it is something that we naturally do we want to be attractive to people we want to you know have a nice appearance um for a number of reasons but especially in adolescence when you're going through puberty and you're going through high school and you're and you're trying to fit in and you're trying to you know you know grow up yeah that's a very big concern for people and i think that a lot of people go to certainly since since the 1980s when they said you know if that caught that makes you fat and so if you you should eat low fat you should if you eat vegetables you'll lose a bunch of weight and so a lot of people have just you know went to that especially you know young women who were very very conscious of that and i think that that has caused uh well i think that that's the reason why most why more people more females have gone uh vegan and vegetarian than than males have but also uh i think that's probably where eating disorders you know really started to take off that's that's the timing works with it anyway and you're you're eating things that your body doesn't necessarily want you're not really healthy you are kind of starving yourself and you sort of get this unhealthy relationship and like you're saying you were craving butter you were craving meat well you know your body's sort of craving those nutrients before anyway and so people can get into that and they can start you know eating something that is bad it's quote unquote and you know has high fat maybe high sugar as well but your body's craving that fat your body's craving that meat and you eat and you gorge and then you binge and then you purge and that that develops bulimia or maybe you just don't like the taste of this but you're certainly not going to eat anything that has fat on it and but you're not you don't want to eat any of that you know uh vegetables because it makes you feel like crap and it tastes horrible and so you just don't need anything and um that's my my theory anyway but it's uh it seems to you know sort of describe what's going on and i think that that's um you know that's that's obviously not not the way that we we should be eating if you if you find yourself into it you're getting in into that sort of unhealthy relationship with food something's wrong you know because because nature is natural it just happens on its own you don't see deer going on you know different yo-yo diets you know they just eat you know lions just eat zebras just eat and you know we should just be able to eat too and so that lines up perfectly with what you're saying you just listen to your body you eat what your body's asking you to and then you know your body takes care of the care of the rest which is great yeah that theory is very intuitive and accurate it pretty much summed up my whole uh phase of being vegan for six years i started as a very healthy teenager who was pretty you know in tune with her body she had pretty a pretty good healthy relationship with food but then when you go through those six years this person became um completely out of whack when it came to hunger she had no idea if she was hungry or full lots of binging lots of force fasting you know fasting for punishment you do become obsessed with food and like how much you eat when you're not eating the right nutrients yeah definitely um that was the thing too you know with all calories and calories out thing um which is i i think is you know just doesn't make any sense anyway you know anyone who studied biochemistry or organic chemistry which all doctors should have because that's those are prerequisites for medical school but then they just forget that these complex organic molecules actually have different effects in your body you know we measure calories by literally burning setting them on fire and see how much energy comes off of them but that's not how your body works you don't have a internal combustion engine in your body you know these these molecules work differently in your body and so there isn't a one-to-one relationship between what is burned and what it actually you know how much atp your body gets out of it um you know so so these things these things just you know work differently they interact with your your or you know complex organic chemicals differently and they have they have an effect they have a chemical effect and reaction in your body you know the amino acids you know you know carbohydrates do not respond the same as amino acids in your body different amino acids don't respond the same as other amino acids in your body and different fats don't respond the same as other fats in your body so it doesn't matter what their calories are in a bunsen burner like it's it's that's not how your body uses these things uh so i've always thought that was um you know not i thought that was a pretty superficial look at things anyway uh and when you scratch the surface you know think about it for a minute you know it sort of doesn't make sense but also you know like you're saying you know people can eat a different amount like you're really counting calories you're really limiting yourself and it was still a struggle and then you start eating this different way and i certainly was eating like five times the amount of calories uh that i had been before when i went carnivore and i just stopped eating vegetables and i started eating way more meat and fatty meat probably quintupled my calories and i dropped 20 25 pounds in in two weeks most of that was water weight you know but that's that's part of weight and so and then my body just composition started really changing dramatically um but there was a study that looked at uh you know sort of several different different groups they had and it was it had a control group as well but they looked at high carbohydrate group a high fat group and a high protein group but they kept it the same iso-caloric so the same same calories so everyone was eating the same amount of calories but they were getting those calories predominantly from carbs in one group predominantly from protein in another group and predominantly from fat in another group so what would we expect you know if it's only calories in calories out and you know they try to control for people's uh you know activity levels as well um and so what did they find they found that the carbohydrate group gained weight and the protein group lost weight the fat group lost a lot more weight oh yeah exactly so the whole idea that fat makes you fat you know isn't borne out by the evidence um and wasn't based on any evidence in the first place you know there's so many things in this world that were just supposition and they just said oh well if that makes you fat you are what you eat you eat fat you'll get fat so eat broccoli are you going to turn into broccoli i haven't seen that yet you know and um you know and so that's where it comes from but it just gets repeated and thrown around all the time becomes what everyone knows and everyone knows it you know i was like well everyone knew the earth was flat too like how'd that one work out you know and so you know you look back and you don't actually find there's actually any basis for that and but yet people still still push this stuff around doctors still push this stuff around like you know notable uh doctors and uh you know nutritionists well self-proclaimed uh um you know experts in the field you know say this sort of thing but it's you know it's it's not even it's not based on anything and then you have these studies as well um so that's so you were at uh juilliard which is awesome that's fantastic and you play the piano is that right yes i am a pianist and when i was at juilliard i also studied violin so i play both oh nice great what's uh what what's your favorite uh piano or violin you mean definitely piano yeah yes i would have to say you know if you try to pursue a career as a pianist just get ready to be very lonely a life of solitude because with piano playing you usually are the soloist on stage and when you're a solo yes you have this whole beautiful orchestra behind you but you are pretty much there alone all of the work that you deliver on stage you did it alone but when you're a violinist it's a lot of chamber music you know a group setting lots of big orchestra so you get to be surrounded by colleagues and friends but i don't know for some reason i prefer to be alone so for me you know the piano means spotlight just on me yes yeah yeah that's fine as uh yeah i mentioned when we spoke on your uh on your program my mom was a was a singer she was she was a classically trained soprano and she went to berkeley and did music there and studied you know english and music and anthropology um and they actually required that that any music major had to play the piano as well and she's like i don't want to play the damn piano i want to sing like i don't want to do this and so she she sort of ignored that but actually that was what um she actually had a very promising career and um you know saying yeah and so she had she was just you know uh getting these these sort of offers to be you know this this diva going around europe and and going around these big um uh big productions but she she was sort of the opposite she really didn't like the spotlight she she just loved singing and she just loved music but she really didn't like being you know the forefront of the attention she was very very shy person and so that wasn't really the lifestyle that she wanted she just loved to sing and and so she decided not to pursue that career and and decided to pursue a family uh instead uh which is like you know you talk to her her siblings and and my grandparents they were like it was like honestly they looked at it like it was a crime against god you know that she was like they were like saying like my grandparents were like she had the most spectacular voice that i've ever heard it was the most beautiful voice and it was just a crime that she didn't you know share that with the world and keep keep singing and yeah at least does she teach she could be a pedagogue she could be a teacher uh no she doesn't teach um but she would always think when we were kids and so we were in the car she would be listening to music and she'd be singing along it was always really lovely and it was always always nice to hear her sing and you're always gonna you're always gonna you know enjoy your mom singing but um but my mom was uh i especially liked her singing and of course yeah it was very sweet um so you were did you so you transitioned into um carnivore while you were doing your masters at juilliard is that you did um where we got before that were you jeweler the whole way through or yeah so i did masters at juilliard and before that i was still in new york at the new school not sure if you heard of the new school yeah so the new school has a branch just for music called manus the school for music so i was there for undergrad and then i went to juilliard but i did um start carnivore when i was uh doing my masters at juilliard and i literally went from like vegan for a few months of juilliard and then straight to vegan no straight to carnivore and um i just remember i kept it under the table because everybody who knew me in school knew me as that vegan girl who all she talks about is the vegan diet and why that guy is the best guy in the world yeah i was definitely sucked into that culture and that mindset of just like preaching it into people's faces so yes i admit that i was brainwashed and i was very naive um so yeah i kept it under the table quite embarrassed but i i knew that meat was needed because i literally dreamed of it for months and months and months and my doctor literally gave me permission to eat the meat so i felt like it was the right thing to do um and i i just remember like that first night of going carnivore was definitely a night to remember because i felt so good so instantaneously and then from that night on i just was enamored with meat the flavor the flavor of butter just how good i felt um i actually didn't season my meat from day one because i was so impressed by the flavor of plain meat and plain unsalted butter and just plain eggs so i really like started carnivore with uh endless ribeyes endless eggs as much curry gold unsalted butter as possible and here and there some raw salmon yeah that's funny and because you kept it under wraps and you were you're then getting all these health benefits people are going wow that vegan diet is really working out for you oh my gosh it's so funny people started noticing because they were like you look real good like what are you doing what are you working out right now you know and i that's when i was confident to share that oh i'm not vegan anymore i'm actually on the carnivore diet go carnivore and so this is why this is actually the best forget everything that's dead yeah yeah but no people noticed before i even had to say anything that's funny that's good well you know and that and that sort of you know is really uh reassuring that you're you're doing something right is when other people are like wow you know this you've had some very positive changes so that's really good and then so um you know what made you decide to actually just share your stories publicly and and and and build a platform uh as you have you know the steak and butter gal on youtube is very very popular and i think you have something close to like 70 000 people subscribed to you which is which is amazing and uh you know and obviously they're getting a lot of value out of that or they wouldn't be there so what um what what made you decide to sort of make that jump uh the pandemic actually i had nothing to do i literally graduated on zoom i did not even have a graduation ceremony i'm still so sad about that but because of the pandemic i realized like wow i could literally just stay home and practice 24 7 just practice my butt off but what am i gonna do with this skill that i spent my whole life with if i have you know i don't know what's gonna happen next right so i thought that maybe i can do something wiser with my time yes i'll continue practicing piano violin but i want to explore what the internet can give me and at that time i was hoping to share music online maybe play piano live or do some type of channel but for some reason my big sister kind of had this vision for me because she always thought i was like the crazy one in the family who was super extreme with everything uh and super committed so she thought that my personality was pretty good for youtube or some type of you know social media account she thought it would be something fun but she said why don't you just do mukbang's eating steak i don't know if you have heard of the word mukbang but okay mukbang is a korean style of video where literally asians will film themselves eating huge meals and it's like this very popular form of entertainment and so she was like you should do that too because you have a gigantic appetite and all you do is eat steak that's pretty cool i was like maybe she bought me this nice camera i use it to this day and i kind of actually started off just sharing yeah i'm this girl who loves music and i just eat meat and that kind of blossomed into me just intimately sharing my carnivore diet and my journey and i i have to say i got a lot of great feedback from the audience who followed me early on and they really encouraged me to share more details of what i'm healing what i eat in a day and i feel like that kind of guided me to where i am today just like a very passionate carnivore channel a very passionate instagram page where i really try to encourage my fellow ladies to eat more eat more fat focus on healing focus on health yeah well that's good and well and then so what when it exactly did you start there's during the pandemic but but when exactly it's how long have you how long have you been doing it now uh two years two years now yeah cool yeah yeah and then so now you have uh you were saying before that you have you know several sessions a week where you you actually meet with people and talk with them and discuss everything as well um have you been doing that that the whole time is that more of a recent uh recent occurrence yeah so that started as a just a support group so again one of my uh followers urged me to just start a support group where you know fellow carnivore ladies can just communicate and inspire each other so i was inspired to either do it on facebook facebook group or possibly find something off social media and i was lucky enough to find this platform called mighty networks which is completely off social media it is very much community based so i started it on there and it grew like overnight i had so many people who joined and at that time it was just online it was like a forum and then a few months down the line a lot of these members were like let's meet on zoom especially with the pandemic we're all bored and lonely at home right so i was like that's genius so let's actually just hang out chat about carnivore together on zoom and i think that's the that's the beauty of this thing called zoom we i can literally talk to you across the world you know and i can connect with carnivores all over the world and we can make sure that we are on track we can make sure that we inspire answer each other's questions so that kind of blossomed into what i do now uh 30-day carnivore challenges is what i call it and i really like to make it a monthly thing to make sure everybody is just pumped up for each month it keeps everyone on track year long i have members who joined since month one and they're with me like almost two years in and it's pretty much like a family now we have eight hours every single week we just update each other i have coaches there to help answer questions i have guests for example you dr chafee who will visit as a guest speaker so it's like this awesome you know family community where we focus on carnivore yeah that's awesome yeah yeah thanks yeah and so obviously that sounds it sounds very positive how are how are people going with that do you find that this is this is something that's helping people stay on track and and and yeah get benefit out of it yeah i have come to learn that community is quite essential especially for our newcomers especially for those who are really struggling with uh staying committed to such a different diet and especially for my female ladies who i care the most about i have females who join day one and they're completely lost but a couple months down the line you know they've reached their goal weight they've healed their eating disorder they're growing hair again like we have members whose success stories just blow me away we have members who cured cancer okay so it's just it's crazy gone off all medications just today somebody told me that they're completely free of depression they don't have to take any medication so it just makes me grateful every single day after these meetings that i have this community to connect with because i get the inspiration from this community to make myself work harder to spread the word yeah well that's awesome yeah the um i think the yeah a community aspect is very important too because like you say like there aren't necessarily too many of us like you restaurants or bars or something like that you can have like a vegan community vegan restaurant and this is all those those people would go into that but um you know because it you know people are dispersed more lightly around the population you know people feel like they're the only ones doing this that they're just feel like a freak and they feel weird that everyone's watching them no one is no one really cares but you know that that's how you feel you just feel a bit self-conscious uh about this and then you know having a community having people to talk to and like oh actually there's a whole bunch of people that are doing this and they're enjoying it and they're finding benefit and okay maybe that's not that's not so hard exactly yeah when you see when you like align yourself with a community who eats like you who lives like you who has the same exact goals as you it makes it so much easier because you don't feel self-conscious anymore you can literally just think oh my tribe doesn't eat this anymore my tribe only eats that so it's really helpful yeah yeah and um [Music] yeah i definitely think that it's a benefit like you know when i was when i was sort of first doing this i was doing this just anyway but you know when i was first my early 20s you know doing this i just did because i knew plants were not good for me and so i just didn't eat them but and and i didn't know i didn't even think about it at the time i i wasn't even thinking like oh my gosh i'm gonna be self-conscious people just look at me i'm just like yeah i don't need that crap and i just yeah and no one no one batted and i they no one cared and then then i you know i did it again and but then but then at the same time i fell off it without really realizing it you know because there was no one else doing it and everyone was talking about eating plants eating plants eating plants i'm like oh really and you know but i sort of slipped off of it for for that and other reasons and you know now going back in it again um you're looking at different different groups on facebook obviously you're you know you're you have your community as well and so you have these these social structures you have people talking about it you're like oh okay actually you know this is there's more to this than i than i originally thought this actually is a bigger deal than i would have thought and and i think it helps reaffirm things and it and it helps you know solidify your convictions uh you know for right or wrong but it you know uh hopefully for right in this case but you can see people getting benefits and you can see people you know losing weight and and dropping their medications and you know people coming off dialysis that's crazy like maybe i i that was one of the early early things i saw people were coming off of dialysis going on a carnivore diet and their doctors are saying you're going to kill yourself if you keep eating like this and they said you know what i don't i don't believe you you know everything you've told me has only gotten me sicker and so you know i'm just gonna try this and um and then you know nine months later this lady came off of dialysis which is just incredible and then i was able to you know mention that to a friend of mine that had a kidney failure he was like at 19 kidney function and three months later he was at 80 kidney function you know and he was worried that he was going to you know not make it to see his daughter graduate high school you know that's a devastating thing to have to deal with you know in your 30s when you have when you have a young child and so and all his doctors again were like you're going to kill yourself you know if you're eating all this protein you know you need to go plant-based low protein and take all these meds and he's just like no not doing it and sure enough just reversed all of his issues and so when you when you see those communities and you see these sorts of things and people all that's anecdotal evidence like i don't give a rat's ass these are real people this is real life you know and um you know what you know my experience is is anecdotal but you know the the the plural of anecdote is data you know you have a lot of people having a lot of you know very similar results and positive benefits and at the end of the day i don't care what study says what if i'm eating a certain way and i'm healthier that way i'm just going to keep doing that like well well you know but this study says that you should actually you know eat and you know stab nails into your legs i'm like oh i guess i have to do it you know harvard study said that i'm like well i don't care yeah that sounds awful and it's uh dumb you know so you know i'm i'm eating this way and i feel fantastic and people are eating this way and they're and you they're they're you know uh you know getting able to clear cancer they're getting rid of autoimmune disorders they're getting rid of heart disease they're reversing their calcium you know uh the cac scores for for arterial plaques uh they're reversing their diabetes they're coming off all their medications and you're telling them that that well because there's no study that that says this should happen that it's not actually happening yeah anecdotal or no it's happening and so i think it's very good when you have you know communities and some of these facebook groups have 30 40 50 000 people in them yeah there's and the keto groups are even bigger oh yeah you know and so those kind of millions of people in it and so you have tens of thousands of people showing significant benefits um you know then then you know it's like okay well you know maybe i don't need you know all of the studies or exact the exact piece of information that this guy says i need you know this is clearly working for people might as well try it and you know and if it's working for you you know anecdotal or no that's what matters yes i think the power is in the success stories yes scientific evidence and all these studies are great but for some reason when somebody hears a success story of somebody else healing the same condition that they want to heal successfully and it's cured it's gone it's very convincing so that's why i feel like anybody who has seen success on carnivore share it with the world it can be on youtube it can be through a blog on facebook just a post or on instagram you know i always encourage my followers to create a carnivore instagram document it use those carnivore hashtags so people can actually see it yeah yeah well that's a very good point and you know and just trying to get that out there because i mean how many how many you know vegan uh you know success stories or whatever are these people talking about this you know um but i think that's very powerful and and i think what's even um you know more powerful are stories like yours where you were vegan for a number of years and probably very conscientious vegan you were probably probably looking and like you said you were looking doing things exactly you were measuring things you were calculating things and then you were getting very unwell and you had nutrient deficiencies um which of course you're going to have on it on a vegan diet because you know the plant and fungus kingdoms don't have the requisite nutrients for human beings they just don't and that will never change so you have to take supplements so we know that's not our evolved diet we know that's not our biologically appropriate diet because if you have to take supplements then by definition your diet is deficient so that can't be what we evolved on that can't be what we were designed to eat um and so that's an aberration that's a that's a that's a you know you know stepping aside from from what we were designed to eat by by definition and you know when people say that well you know if you failed a vegan that means you were doing it wrong i don't know what that means but you know uh doing doing veganism right or or vegetarians right you know actually would mean not taking supplements you know because you shouldn't have to you know and so you know you're taking something you know outside of the food that you're eating just to get basic nutrition you know no animals in the wild have to take supplements and so if you do you know that's something wrong and so you know having people like yourself who were very very careful you know they weren't like you know vegans eating oreo cookies and shooting heroin all of which are vegan and plant-based you know and um you know you're trying to do do it as healthy as possible and yet you were having serious health issues and then converting over overnight as you say to carnivore and immediately having benefits i think those are very very powerful stories yes and to this day i get comments and dms from vegans who are saying you totally did not do the vegan diet correctly how dare you right how dare you go back to eating animals and they're definitely sucked into that whole belief you know protect the animals for ethical reasons and i also get dms almost every day of vegans secretly wanting to eat meat and what do they ask me they ask me how do i start eating meat i feel bad you know right and like we're now guilty to to eat meat but i can say for a fact like i have never ever ever felt as good as i feel now on carnivore it doesn't matter if i was vegan or whole foods plant-based or the cleanest diet when i was eating everything carnivore diet just makes you feel on a different level good yeah i know it really does and like you know even i was i was always very meat centric i always ate a lot of meat but even just just dropping the rest of the plants and going exclusively to me i mean it just it just changed my entire existence and so i couldn't even imagine like going from from vegan to that you know because i always had always had a lot of meat in my diet but you know i had all the other things that were detracting from my health and i wasn't eating as much fat as my body needed and i wasn't eating as much meat actually as my body needed because i was you know trying to limit calories to you know to stay in shape uh you know for rugby and or get back into shape to to get back on the field and you know i i never felt better as compared to myself as a professional athlete when i was on a carnivore diet versus just an omnivorous meat heavy diet but still as a professional athlete training hours and hours and hours a day and and you know um working very very hard it was just it's just night and day i feel better now barely ever working out than i did back then training all the time but eating a mixed diet like it's it's crazy how much difference that makes um yeah sorry you want to say something oh no i'm just agreeing with everything yeah um you know that's the thing like you know you know people are saying this is like oh you just weren't doing it right how dare you like how the hell would they know how do they know what you were doing you know but that's the thing is the automatic well they just weren't doing it right now they're trying to bring down the whole movement it's like you don't know what these people were eating and in fact you know a lot of people who were very public and vocal about veganism well you know exactly what they were eating they're like oh look i'm doing this fresh thing and this fruit here and this this and this and they're saying look at look at how great this is and everyone can see oh yeah that's the right way to do it that's right they're even looking at them for inspiration on the right way of doing and directions on how uh to do it properly and then they're going no this isn't working oh they just weren't doing it right right look even a lot of those vegan gurus who i used to follow back in the day when i was vegan a lot of them are eating meat again so there really is no way this vegan diet is going to sustain for more than a few years yes some people will bite their tongue and make it work for five six seven years like me but there is going to come a day where you have to eat meat unless you want to be sick for the rest of your life yeah or to take copious amounts of supplements as well and you know but even if you and that's what they say too well you can take supplements it's not that hard right but you know you're still getting all the toxins you know that are that are in there you know i mean like kidney beans if you don't cook kidney beans they will kill you kill you you know and you know cassava melons you know that that's you know that's like the the um like in the developing world that's the third most important source of calories is the cassava melons you don't prepare that right it will kill you it has so much cyanide in it and then some people i've had people saying you know because they're cyanide and almonds they're cyanide and uh a lot of different seeds you know because the seed is a plant's baby like we were talking about um you know with with uh you know coffee coffee's a bean a bean is a seed a seed is a plant's baby this is where you'll generally find the highest concentration of poisons and you know so you have you have cyanide and quite a lot of these things and people were saying this oh well that's not true you know you it cyanide's only dangerous if you inhale it you should know that as a doctor i'm like well first of all you're not a doctor and i do know as a doctor that that's garbage and so like you know like you know there are people that die from these things people die from eating cassava melons from the cyanide content now is is uh is gaseous cyanide more deadly absolutely it's way more toxic uh than ingestible uh cyanide however ingestible cyanide in in certain forms obviously because you have you have cyanides for bound up and other molecules that don't uh necessarily cause harm however you know actual cyanide if you're if you're ingesting actual cyanide that that will cause harm and and will kill you after a certain point um and cassava melons are a perfect example of that yeah and um you know so you know whether or not you're taking supplements which you shouldn't have to do uh you're harming yourself you are you're bringing harm to your body um yeah that was the other thing that i was going to mention the idea that shows the ethical side of things you know i totally understand you know where vegans are coming from you're wanting to be healthy and wanting to not harm animals and and not harm the environment i totally agree i'm with them on that we agreed completely we just disagree on on the best way of going about that you know there was a study in australia that showed um that you had to kill 25 times the amount of sentient animals uh to get one pound of plant-based protein than the animal-based protein and also you know if you look at you know bioavailability and what your body can actually absorb it's going to be much different than that because it's actually one physical pound of uh of plant-based protein which you're not going to absorb all of that and some of that's actually going to be crude protein which actually isn't even proteins just it's just free nitrogen so you actually do cause a lot of harm to animals you kill a lot of animals and and in nasty ways they get caught up in the combines and the tractors and they get they get just scrunched and melt and they're animals coming in you know deer pigs kangaroo they come in to you know eat the crops and they they shoot them you know because they're like well you know you're messing with my money like you got to go and um you know and so you know a lot of these animals do get killed you know anyone who's worked on a farm anyone who's who's who's been a farmer or rancher knows just how much uh how many animals you have to kill to grow a crop and then you have you know chemical you know waste and spillage you know that gets into the groundwater that gets into the water source and that causes pollution that causes a lot of uh you know mess in the environment in the ecosystem and you also have to destroy an entire ecosystem just to grow one massive field of wheat or corn or soy or acai berries and you'll say well well you know those are all going to feed animals anyway in livestock anyway no they're not the hay is the stems and the stalks are they're not the actual product 93 of the feed that animals eat that livestock eat are inedible to humans they can't they can't eat this is the waste stuff that that normally farmers when they when they can't sell this stuff off uh they have to burn it you know or it would have to get get thrown away but they don't throw it away you'd have to put in a landfill if you are not going to burn it so they just burn it so that that's also causing causing issues as well and that people really aren't aren't realizing that you know animals play a very vital role in agriculture you know you cannot have plant agriculture without animal agriculture it doesn't work you know this is where you get all this is how you get rid of all the stems and stocks and leaves and hay and uh is you sell it to people who are trying to feed their animals and this is where you get all the fertilizer for your crops is from animals and so you know it's i think it's important to talk about these things i think it's very important because they're very important matters but to actually understand what is really going on because it's it's much different than what we're being told yes well said so glad you said that because i feel like a lot of a lot of vegans who are contemplating you know eating meat again they're gonna watch this video and they're going to finally realize meat is okay to eat they have permission to eat the meat yeah yeah absolutely um very conscious of your time and you say we had about an hour um thank you very much uh for coming on is there anything else you wanted to to say or address uh i just i just really am passionate about like expressing this message to my ladies because i really try to make content for the women out there who are struggling with eating disorders or who are struggling with uh chronic weight fluctuations and they're just obsessed with the weight i really strongly believe when you allow your body to heal first through nutrition the proper nutrition which is carnivore diet fatty meats lots of meat whatever meat that you want when you let go of that restriction of that fear of gaining weight and you just let your body heal and get nourished i do believe all of those all of those goals and the results that you want will happen but i do want to stress the consistency is super key so whatever you can do to stay consistent on carnivore do it so if that means uh surround yourself in the right environment online find a community watch more videos that align with your goals watch more of dr chaffey's videos make sure that you connect with people on instagram who are carnivores all of this will help you stay consistent with this lifestyle and also i know you're really passionate about this going pure carnivore does make a difference so i will cut out the coffee for sure that's how i feel that's on my mind awesome well yeah i mean and i agree with absolutely you know everything you say i think it's very important um you know eating disorders or can be devastating and your hormonal issues are are devastating as well and when you i did a couple videos on women's health and hormonal health and pcos and and pmdd um recently just because i've gotten a lot of people from different women's groups asking me about these things specifically you know can you address these things uh because and they were always asking well those were just seventy percent of the of the questions like can you do that can you do pcos can you do pmdd and so i was like okay these are obviously something people are really struggling with right and and um yeah so i think it's yeah exactly i think it's very important that people uh try to educate themselves and and uh you know people like you know you and i and dr baker and then and everyone else dr you know ken berry was amazing you know we're trying to sort of get this stuff out there but um it's available and and and so people can just just just start just really ingesting this stuff and and see what they think um that's good on the coffee i think you'll be i think you'll feel amazing once you do and just just so you know and everyone knows it takes about two weeks to get the the addiction of caffeine out of your system and so if you can make it two weeks usually about you know the first few days if you're very heavy coffee drinker you might get headaches and a bit of other withdrawal symptoms usually that only lasts a few days i haven't really seen it last more than a week and usually it's getting better after sort of the third day and then after that maybe you have a bit of an addiction but after two weeks it's really gone and it's getting better the whole time and so if you can sort of get in your mind you know okay and this is the same for smoking too nicotine takes about two weeks to get out of your system and so you know if you just say okay two weeks i'll go two weeks and then you have a light at the end of the tunnel and then after that it's sort of habit you just remember enjoying it and and wanting to do it in certain circumstances but that's that's more of a habit you can always change a habit but the addiction side is is too weak so just keep that in mind and so if you go for it that's your those are your goal posts and then you should be fine after that got it thank you all right well uh thank you so much where can where can everyone find you and support you and see your work uh you can find me on instagram at steak and butter gal same for youtube steak and butter gal and if you would like to join a community that will support you in your carnivore goals and lifestyle you can come join my steak and butter gang i will give dr chafee the link you can put in the description box if you want to join the community yeah absolutely i'll put all of those in in the descriptions as well and uh great i love the names this steak and butter gang um okay great well thank you so much for coming on i've really enjoyed it and i hope that uh everyone finds this useful and and uh checks out all your stuff because i really like it and i think it's very beneficial for people great thank you all right thank you so much [Music] you