The Carnivore Diet TURNED My Life Around! | Issy Watson

Looking Back Now I probably wasn't healthy back then you know I was underweight because food was upsetting my stomach and now the only thing that's made me like a healthier weight is meat and fat and it's I'm not saying you're going to get fat from meat and fat but it's just it makes you healthy it makes you feel more alive you know people are going to judge you either way what you do what you don't do so do whatever makes you feel good like I don't care what people think of me people think my diet's weird but you know what I feel good I feel healthy in the end of life all you have is yourself and if I feel good I'm going to eat the way that makes me feel [Music] good welcome to the plant-free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chaffy where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the plant-free MD podcast I'm your host Dr Anthony chaffy and today I have a very special guest Miss Izzy Watson who is a Guinness World Record holder and all-around athlete and just came off the back of a very big performance in her first ever Triathlon uh Izzy thank you so much for coming on thanks for having me I'm excited yeah not a problem so not only are you a great athlete but you're doing it in in a different way one way that that people say you can't do which is is your carnivore is that right yeah so tell us a little bit about that how long have you been carnivore and how have you seen it affect your performance as an athlete yeah so I probably about maybe two and a half years ago I started animal based and then after that I just still didn't feel great so I was like you know what I mean I I saw people like you on social media Sean Baker and I was it's like let's give this a go took me a while to try it just to have the confidence because you you grow up with people saying you need carbs for performance and you know all that so I probably started full carnivore maybe last November but before that I was still only maybe 50 grams of carbs so I just kind of eliminated the small amount of fruit I was having and I mean around races right now sometimes I'll strategically add maple syrup here and there just to experiment but other than that most of the time it's just meat and fat yeah good have you have you noticed a difference with the that strategic maple syrup or what was your results with that um I really only used it during the race and not much um I think it mentally kind of just quickly perks you up and then yeah I think it's a I think it is a lot of a placeo but I think I would not be where I am today if I ate the way I used to because I just know the fat is keeping me so much more um longterm in the game so yeah yeah great so tell us something about the um your Triathlon so you just you just finished a triathlon uh is your first ever from what I understand and uh how how'd that go it was actually really fun uh usually I don't say I have fun in races because it's pretty gruelling I've only ever done running races mostly so I've never swam in Open Water I've never biked on a road bike like at all so um it was definitely out of my element but again coming back to the fat situation I think if I were to go back years I probably would have had that hypoglycemia feeling and just the shakes and just probably right after the swim kind of you know head spinning but no it was so fun um I enjoyed every second of it and and I mean I was a bit injured so I couldn't go crazy all out but other than that it was a blast so okay and then I ate a nice big steak that night and it just made everything better yeah did you did you train fasted or or sorry did you did you perform fasted or how what's your your routine on that um in the morning I had uh a protein shake from a CP so I used their protein quite a bit with some MCT oil that's basically the only non carore thing I have is MCT oil and that was pretty much it because I don't like swimming on a full stomach and the race was pretty early like I got up at 4:30 to head over there so no I didn't want to do it fasted but um a lot of my morning workouts and endurance sessions are fasted so yeah good and you find you find you feel better with that I do yeah you just kind of roll out of bed and go right and your head gets into that flow State and you just the ketones kick in um and it just feels so much better and your head is so much more clear so and your body's not working as hard to digest food so it's it's you're relying on the food you've had the day before and the week before so it's all those fat stores that push me through keep me through yeah yeah that's something that that most people don't understand is that even for someone very slender you know um one of the figures that was calculated by a friend of mine Dr Paul Mason was for someone who's 65 kilos and only 6% body fats are very very lean they still have 150,000 kles of energy stored in their fat and you'll only have about 2,000 K of energy stored in your glycogen and so that's it's just a complete and utter disparity and energy sources available and that's why you know if you're doing like you know big Marathon or this or that you have to just keep sucking down sugar water previously they never did they just uh they keep going until they hit the wall and they broke through the wall and those are the ones who could perform on those medic endurance race is on that broke through the wall which is basically forcing yourself into ketosis and and um going into fat fat oxidation as opposed to just you know you run out of carbs you run out of glycogen you force yourself to start running on your fat whereas you know you get to start start like that and you're always just you're fat and you don't need to rely on it so that's uh that's really really key I think for especially for endurance athletes yeah definitely yeah yeah so what are some of the other other um athletic events and things that that you've done and like to do yeah well growing up I I mean I've been active since probably I was two or three I grew up doing competitive gymnastics and competitive lacrosse and then eventually I switched over to hockey and Lacrosse um was going to go on scholarship for lacrosse to the States but then at that point I was really getting into fitness and exercise so then um did CrossFit for many years the high intensity Fitness and then ever since then like I just remember you know I'd see the odd commercial on TV of people just you know slamming weights around and throwing weights around I like I want to do that and then so I just got so hooked on it and then played probably every sport possible in high school and it just it was just all I did Train played sport go to school do it all over again um and then I just reached a point where I was like I want to do crazy achievements so that's when I decided I wanted to do a burpee world record um I did the most burpees in an hour for females so that was three and a half years ago and then it just kind of kept continuing on so then uh two months ago I ran a 50m mile Ultramar marathon and then a week ago I did the triathlon I hope early next year I'll do the Iron Man the full Iron Man um but still got quite a bit of training to do so yeah I'm always just kind of pushing for the next thing I don't really know why but I just feel like we're given this body it's cool to see what you can do with it so same in terms of eating right it's just cool to experiment and see what works yeah and it's so it's it's uh obviously more important when you're pushing your body to that extent but it's also more interesting because you can see the little changes and how much they affect because they're going to have much larger effect on your body and your performance yeah and so I think that's that's um it's really interesting when you do that when I when I would do that I had I would see massive differences and that's why I eat the way I do because it's just like my body feels better and performs better when I eat a certain way and when I completely keep out everything else and when um when you're just sort of sedentary it still makes a massive difference but at the same time you know it's um it's a bigger impact when when you're you're trying to push yourself to that level so yeah is it is very interesting to see how the body reacts at those levels yeah and just thinking back to when I did play sports kind of like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast has it's you're just constantly shoving carbs into you just you're always eating and it just eating this way it takes that all away you know you can rely on your body you can trust your body that it's going to push you through a workout without always having a snack in your backpack or just worrying about it that way yeah well I think it and I think it's a testimony to you I mean you you you your first ever Triathlon and um you know you weren't didn't hadn't done all the different constituent Parts you know to that great extent together yeah and and you came in third and your first one ever that probably pissed off a lot of people that are doing these things for like years and they're like this and like just like come out of nowhere they're sipping on gels and yeah yeah and uh you know so it's it's just well it's a testimony to your hard work so that you know that's great congratulations but also you know you obviously you're fueling yourself with something that's good now people can do these things with carbs as well but you know what's opal what's going to give you the best Advantage um and is it really optimal to be sucking down sugar gels all the time the other thing to remember is that uh Professor Tim noes who who studied a lot of you know top ultramarathoners marathoners and high high-intensive athletes and things like that and they have a keto group and the carb group The performances could be similar um some actually benefited the the keto group especially if they were longer term adapted they were they were over six months keto adapted um but the main thing was is that the blood markers on the on the carb groups they were becoming pre-diabetic and so they're they're actually destroying their health by by doing this and it's not like they were getting massively improved performances or anything like that you know I mean you can make an argument for eating carbs or or taking some sort of substance like you know Peds Etc you know this gives you a massive performance advantage and like look it's it's costing me my health but you know what I'm a professional athlete I've got to take care of my family I've got to perform I've got to make this money now and you know if I die in my 40s then so be it but at least I've taken care of my family and i' I've heard you know NFL players who you know were known to have taken copious amounts of uh Peds say that they're like listen this is what I need to do to to take care of my family and so I'm going to do whatever I have to do um and when you're doing that as a professional athlete there's an argument for that but if it's making a massive performance but when the carbs don't actually increase your performance potential and that's been shown on on you know Time After Time After Time After Time in clinical trials with you know just recreational athletes and high performance top you know worldclass athletes as well again and again the carbs do not give you better performance than keto it's either comparable or maybe slightly less and you actually get less uh glucose and glycogen restoration actually the keto athletes restore their their muscle and liver glycogen faster than carb athletes sucking down sugar packets which is completely the opposite of what we've all been told for decades but so they're not getting a performance advantage and they're hurting themselves and causing metabolic disease and and pre-diabetes so I think it's h it's really important for for athletes to understand that especially young athletes coming into this you know before you wreck your body and make yourself metabolically sick and have to deal with the ramifications of that down the down the road um you know to understand this and then and just get amazing performance and at being healthy the whole time yeah yeah it's it's pretty wild ever since I started eating this way it's almost surprised me at which it I don't know why maybe because you know you've grown up eating the typical athlete diet but all my times all my performance markers have just improved I remember this one r Le exactly like two summers ago um I went out fasted and I probably PR my 10K I think it was by like almost two minutes and it's just everything just keeps improving and yeah I it's it's almost speechless because I just I don't know how to explain it and I wish more people had the guts to kind of experiment with that because yeah we have all these athletes now that are showing it's possible B to train and eat this way and they're not they're not dying you know yeah hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show for everybody down in Australia Stockman staks who are delivering highquality grass-fed and finished pasture raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed tood door something that I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well they also have a great range of specialty items such as high fat keto mints and carnivore be and organs mints with liver kidneys and beef art as well so use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at Stockman stakes. comom and I'll see you over there thanks guys and and they're and they're performing very well and the studies um you know just had a thought there you know the studies looking at these athletes they're either you know fresh on the scene for ketogenic they're being either either they have crossover trials going bar keto and then switching over and seeing how the performance is there's absolutely no uh loss of performance ability and the keto group even you know assuming you give a um a decent adaptation phase which in these studies were 42 days so it'd be six weeks and um there was no drop in performance and then it crossed over and still no drop in performance so they were able to to Really perform at that that peak level and um and then in the longer term ones they were they were on a keto diet for at least 6 months we would be more keto adapted then um actually had slightly better uh results and the thought I had is that if you're eating a lot a lot of carbs and you're giving yourself pre-diabetes and metabolic issues what's that doing to you down the road I mean obviously if you're metabolically sick your body's not going to be able to perform as well long term you're not going to get the same results and benefits from your workouts you're not going to get the same recovery from your workouts as if you were not metabol Al sick and so it could very well be that in athletes especially top athletes who've been training as you are with little to no carbs long term that your performance is going to start increasing faster at a faster rate than than these other athletes because you're never going to damage yourself metabolically and you're going to have a better uh recovery and and Physiology as a result of that so I think that's that's um sort of an interesting thought and that I think that most likely we'll see I mean I certainly experienced that myself and I certainly talk to a lot of athletes that have done this for a long time and they just feel that they just get better and better and better and that and that compared to their peers they their improvements accelerate faster than the others I I certainly noticed that and yeah I almost feel like when you're eating a diet high in carbs you're almost just kind of staying the same and you don't really make improvements whereas eating a higher fat diet you you might not see it in the in moment but when you look back to where you were a couple months ago you're like wow yeah I have made a ton of improvement so it's pretty insane Yeah well yeah it's also good with um you know in competition you know sometimes sometimes people don't see it in themselves but when you're competing against others then you start seeing that or you play a team sport and you're training with people every day and you just see yourself start accelerating past your peers um in their practices and then in the games are getting better and better performances but then Triathlon a marathon all these sorts of things uh an Iron Man very clear you know there there are winners and you know first second third fourth all the way down you get you get a number you know I came in 497th in this thing like okay and this time I came in third or or first or whatever so it's it's a it's a big difference um that you can see and it's uh you know and your times and you're like hey my times are getting better and lower and lower and lower and lower you can track that progress very easily so it's uh yeah it's it's very good to be able to do that yeah um so walk us through the that Guinness World Record you have the burpees because that sounds awful I mean I think burpees are probably my least favorite exercise of all time like every time we do this in in wrestling we did a lot of them in wrestling and I I just hated them it was just like I you could go for hours and just training and going this and as soon as they say okay now do 10 burpees you're like oh my God no I don't know what it was but it's just like I just hated those things so it walk us through that hey why did you just why did you hate yourself so much that you wanted to do that and how did you train for that and um uh did you knock it out on your first attempt or you know how did that go yeah so well during the pandemic we were all kind of isolated of course um so I mean like I said I grew up doing CrossFit so burpees were a huge part of that Sport and during covid you know minimal equipment you did a lot of burpees in your garage and then I just happened to see one day that I don't know I saw this Guinness World Record pop up maybe on my social media that somebody had done and I was like I could so do that like I just need a goal I need something to do I'm bored there's nothing to train for there's no races so I mean it was just looming in my mind and then when I moved out west a couple years ago I was like I don't really know anybody why don't I just kind of establish myself here um I'm going to throw on this small event I'll meet some people it'll be good for me so the thing with the Guinness World Records is it's such a lengthy process otherwise you're paying up front and it's very very pricey so I really trained specifically for probably two to three months I would just do um like every minute on the minute I would alter the Reps of burpees so maybe I would do 10 reps every minute do that for 20 minutes straight um the max I got up to was only half an hour and then I knew come the day to do it I would just go all out because I knew if I trained too much I would have just dreaded it even more um so it's all a blur now um but again that's when I started switching over to more animal based so I think that the fat was a big um bonus for me to not make me Bonk like I don't know it was yeah even I don't know why I did it it's it's just I guess I wanted to do some sort of goal and it's pretty cool to say you have against world record and be in the book because you grow up reading the books and seeing everybody in there so it was I think I really needed it just cuz like I said in the pandemic it was very lonely and yeah you couldn't do any races or goals so yeah and it's and it's actually like a one of the cool records as opposed to like you know the fattest twin that can on a unicycle or something like that you know there are some very strange ones as well you know I'm the first person that ever did this I'm like yeah it's because no one ever wanted to do that that's not something that pit people do you know but those can get in there as well um yeah so the previous record was I think 775 and I got 829 yeah right an hour um but yeah I only attempted it once and who knows if I'll attempt it in the future but yeah just crushed it well if you kept doing burpees and just kept training like that like imagine like three years of burpees training I me you just be like you know like David goggin and just rip out like 4,000 of them in an hour and just like just like set that and St like no one's ever going to beat that yeah they they have the same records for the burpees but you know you could do it for 12 hours you could do it for 24 hours and I said no an hour is good enough so I don't want to stand there all day just flopping down on the ground and coming back up no and is it um is that something that they had to officially come out and record or you like record it with like a timer in the back so they could make sure that it's kosher or or how did that work yeah so I did it all myself because I don't know I think you probably had to pay $10,000 if not more to have a judge come out so um just got a couple friends together two video cameras front and side and you had to be really picky with the standards you even had to submit cover letters and witness statements after the fact it actually took 6 months to become official by the time they reviewed all the evidence because they came back and they said well you can't upload it on YouTube you have to send it through our website and it was just it was a bit chaotic but in the end it was all worth it so yeah yeah that would have been wild if you did all that and then and then they were just like no there's like some sort of problem or something like that yeah there was a couple times when I was in tears I was like I just want this over with can they just like like you know confirm it so yeah it was very difficult but you know you live and learn so yeah well it's it's a huge accomplishment too and um more burpees than I ever want to do and most people in the world so hopefully that that record stays there for a while people just be like she can have it I don't yeah yeah yeah that's good um and then the the 50 mile ultra that was an overnight Marathon wasn't it yeah yeah so had you probably feeling the fatigue yeah and yeah right because you know they messes up your sleep cycle as well so yeah s like you're just waking up and and getting into it um and you're you know footing I mean they have proper lighting and things like that or is it nope no okay yeah that's it was quite dark Yeah couple stakes in the ground but they were like Amazon Stakes so you couldn't really see the light flashing or anything so okay pretty it was a pretty raw race it was just kind of go in and do it yeah yeah had you done marathons prior to that no the most I'd done was a half marathon that I did by myself um I think during the pandemic so this Ultra kind of came up on short notice this company put it out two months in advance and you kind of threw your name into a lottery system and I just kind of put my name in and I didn't think I would get picked and I did so I just training quickly took a turn lots of running um and yeah so before running 50 miles the most I'd ever ran was probably 15 or 16 miles yeah wow yeah that's a big jump big jump very big yeah yeah and um how how did that feel making that such a big leap up in in output yeah well during my training I injured my foot pretty bad um they didn't say it was a stress fracture like they couldn't see anything um but I had no option but to be in an aircast for three weeks leading up to the race and then the week before started feeling a bit better and I was able to do a couple warm-up runs and then me I'm just I'm doing it either way so I went and it was honestly the most pain I've ever been in my entire life I could I was like shuffling my legs because then my knee started hurting and my foot was just like a knife saving through my foot but so then turns out after the fact yeah I was broken and I'm just getting back to running two months later so yeah it was it was a journey but it was on honestly the best experience of my entire life and I mean other than the pain I had a blast so not many people can say they ran a 50 mile ultra overnight with a broken foot yes not even less people can say that and um yeah I think it sort of gets us back to the whole sort of masochistic Tendencies you know with like wanting to do wanting to do nearly a thousand burpees and you know doing an ultramarathon on a broken foot you know things like that yeah there's something about suffering I guess I kind of enjoy might be some some psychology there you might want to get yeah yeah get it checked out yeah yeah but that's I mean that's that's amazing first of all it's it's really really impressive I mean just doing a 50 mile run in the first place especially competitively or you're doing this against people and not being able to train for nearly a month leading up to it and then turns out it's on a broken foot and actually being able to to keep doing that like obviously um just the the doctor and me Sort of hope that you you know wouldn't do something like that because you know obviously you don't want to have you know permanent issues going forward but it is extremely impressive that you're able to sort of get through the pain on a on a broken foot and have that just that stabbing pain every single step for 50 miles and um yeah so it's it's you know hats off to you it's very impressive yeah if it was a different race a different Ultra I would have you know forone it but this specific one kind of meant a lot to me just CU who was hosting it so I knew it wasn't smart but I knew I would deal with the consequences after um and I definitely won't ever do anything like that again but yeah it's healing now so again I credit the way I eat too to speeding up that recovery as well yeah so how how is your foot doing it's it's a lot better yeah I've started running um the last two weeks and I mean I've have a bit of tendonopathy in my other knee which has been on and off for a few years so that's bothering me a bit more but I think in a couple more weeks the foot will be pretty peeled up and good to go so your foot's not actually fully recovered and you did a triath one yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean I it's just it's more like just a little bit achy here and there so I can walk on it I can do anything but I don't know it's just sometimes I need to learn to slow down a little but it was it was fun I'm glad I did it yeah yeah well I mean just imagine you know when your foot works and then isn't like that probably get first you know yeah yeah hopefully yeah well I hope that you get your your foot yeah well I I hope you it does I'm sure will heal but you know obviously yeah you know the the inclination especially when you're competitive as you are is to you know just stay out there get out there stay out there you can do it and and sometimes you can end up hurting it worse and then sending yourself back and all that sort of stuff so um hopefully it just sort of keeps healing and and doesn't cause you a problem you know anymore and it sounds like it is which is good but and that's the one thing that I'm actually pretty proud of of myself the last two months is usually as an athlete you're just like okay I'm just going to keep pushing through I'm just going to keep pushing through and this was like no you can't do that anymore you know you're injured enough so I actually really slowed down and just started being very smart with everything and that's why I think it's healing so well um because yeah years and years before I would just especially when you're younger you just grind through everything and you're taught to just push through especially Sports just keep going keep going so yeah this was the first real time where I was like nothing's going to happen to your Fitness you can always get it back and yeah yeah well that's good I'm glad you I'm glad you let your body heal a bit and you got and you got a great result and So the plan is to do an Iron Man is that right yep um I'm hoping early next year maybe March or April depending on the location so yeah not not really planned out about it yet but I'm sure I'll figure it out or you know me I'll probably have a different goal in the meantime so yeah see what happens there yeah it's um it's one of those things it's great to see you out there and you know promoting this in this way and actually showing that you can you know not only do it but Thrive and that you're you're getting better performances uh than yourself certainly and other people uh by eating eating properly and and being this metabolic State you sort of really just need to just get that whole idea that you have to have corbs to train that whole concept needs to die um a lot of people don't realize that there are actually a lot of low carb or even full carnivore athletes out there specifically for the Iron Man there's one of the one of the you know all-time greats uh Dave Scott um low carb and he and he talks about people doing the Iron Man said hey if you're doing an Iron Man do not eat carbohydrates you don't want to eat carbohydrates it's really bad for you and um and he had done you know um different competitions with cars and then sort of in his late 30s 40s something like that or just 40 he um you know he switched and and it just completely revolutionized his health completely um you know change things around and then competed again I think he was at 40 at the time maybe a bit early for 40s and up coming second in in the Iron Man um you know 15 years older than most people been doing it zero carb and he just did zero carb after that um and then guy who was world champion Pete Jacobs I don't know if you sure you probably yeah yeah he's openly carnivore and he was openly carnivore when he won his world championship and and had done I remember seeing um an interview with him just like um you print media where where they they even preface it by saying there are a lot of Iron Man athletes that are going ketogenic they're going low carb ketogenic diets but you know world champion Pete Jacobs he's gone full he only eats meat he's doing just a meaton diet and talks about that and um and and yet like almost no one knows about it it's it's not really getting a lot of publicity um but it's it's out there and it's it's great to see you know more people like yourself coming in here and just like you know shocking everybody do your first first triathlon with a still broken foot and um and not even training as much as other people have you know in the specific aspects of the event and you know and getting third on your first event you know so I think it's a really good proof concept and I'm glad that you're you're sort of out there you know adding to that yeah and I wish more people knew about it too which is unfortunate I mean the whole reason why I started eating was this way for like autoimmune issues and so you know my whole life I just kind of struggled and just didn't really know it was up right and then once I started eliminating certain things that's when I noticed my performance improve so a lot of times athletes you know have aches and pains and they might not realize but it's actually the food that's causing that so I just wish more people could experiment and not be afraid to experiment because for me it changed my whole life in terms of health and performance yeah so well to that end you know I was going to ask you as well you know what other sort of um changes have you seen in your health since going animal base and then carnivore yeah so I mean when I was younger I got pretty sick I was hospitalized for like five weeks um just from lots of stomach issues I couldn't keep anything in everything upset my stomach so um eventually a couple years later they kind thought maybe it was just autoimmune they couldn't really figure much out um and only a couple years ago they kind of mentioned it was most likely lupus and kitis kind of a mix of the two so um that's when I started diving into well it's my diet right I'm tired of food upsetting my stomach I can't perform the way I want to perform I'm frustrated every day so tired so when I made the switch instantly I felt so much better like I like stomach pain was gone um I was just mentally more clear inflammation in my body felt like it was gone more regular bowel movements and then yeah my performance just started improving I was less tired and everything's just kind of been slowly improving from there I still have issues here and there but yeah it's it's all diet I really believe that yeah yeah so that was the main driver wasn't the Athletics um that that drove you to sort of start eating this way was more more the health reasons and health concern it was definitely yeah it was definitely the health reasons because I mean like I said at the beginning I've been my whole life and the only thing that I always felt was holding me back was my stomach issues um the little flare ups in my body that I have like that I would have and I just was frustrated to the point of Tears almost once a week twice a week and I was like I can't do this anymore like I really can't and so that's when I was like the only thing I haven't changed in my life was my diet and not that I ate super super bad before but you know it was just the only thing so once I removed all the plants um all the grains and fruits I just felt a ton better like just so much better yeah oh that's really good to hear and yeah oh that's great it's yeah it's quite surprising how much how much better people feel and and then they as a as a happy happy side effect they start seeing other improvements like you know your athletic performance which is sort of yeah wasn't wasn't the main reason you were doing it but it was uh but it's still nice when that that happens then you you you have better athletic performance and Recovery as well uh which is really good you know some people say that well they they just try to dismiss you know this and all the reasons why it works you know but it's just excuses really they're just trying to they're trying to say well some people have IBS and you'll have react to something but you know it's only going to be like a couple things they can certainly eat all these no actually you know there are a lot of people that eat like a very clean ketogenic diet that that carbs don't work for them they have all these problems but then e even eating you know very clean uh vegetables and things like that Whole Foods they can't do it and have horrible autoimmune issues I mean I had one lady who uh was um actually you know first nation in in Canada so she's Inuit descent and she'd been carnivore for 40 plus years her daughter had been carnivore her entire life but she had four autoimmune issues and um turns out is because all the spices and Seasonings she was putting on meat she was only eating meat but she was using spices and Seasonings on them and and she thought that that that can't that can't be what it is and it was and so even for her just plant-based seasonings were enough to trigger her autoimmunity and obviously you know because her her heritage is such that all her ancestors would have been almost exclusively carnivorous maybe just a generation or two back so um they she really didn't have time to to adapt to this and and so even that small amount was um was a problem for her but you know other people with autoimmune issues I I see that as well they're just much more sensitive to these things they really can't they really can't have any of this stuff in their diet some people can but I I have yet to see anybody who has reintroduced certain things and said I feel better for having reintroduced these things I've been seen a single person do that every single person I've seen says I've reintroduced things and I feel fine but I always feel my best when I'm only eating me and that's the point is that you know you you can eat other things but is it going to make you feel as good as you possibly can is it the optimal way for you to eat and um and and is that what you want for me me I do I want I want to be optimal I want to have the just I only want to put things in my body that are good for me I don't want to put anything in there that is bad for me and so I'm very happy eating this way um other people just want to be uh a lot better than they were and but they don't they're not too worried about being perfect and optimal and the best they can be because they already feel amazing you know eating eating very differently and that's totally fine you know i' I've never said ever it's so funny I get I get accused of saying that everyone no one is ever able to eat anything else I'm like I don't care what anybody eats at all just I truly don't care I just don't want people to shy away from me because they think it's bad for them because it's not and I don't want them to just eat tons and tons and tons of of veggies and plants and all this other garbage uh because they're told that it's good for them it's not good for them it can help you survive it can add you know benefit in certain circumstances but it's not the best thing that you can ever eat and there are things that can be that that are harmful to Greater and lesser degrees you smoke one cigarette it's not going to kill you but if you smoke cigarettes every day for years and decades eventually you're going to have a problem it's the same exact thing you get low grade exposure for years and decades you know it's going to build up and you're not going to feel your best the whole time so one cigarette a day I'm sure I'll never develop any disease from that but I'm not going to feel my best it's not the best thing that I can do for my body so I don't want to do it and that's how I feel about all these other things as well and it's it's um yeah so I don't know I think I think we're getting to the point where people are having to make more and more elaborate excuses as to why this works and uh and try to explain it away in the context of me still being bad for you and uh fat still causing heart disease and plants just being the best thing you could ever it's it's actually kind of fun to watch the the menal gymnastics and and watch them generally fall flat hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25% off total all right thanks guys yeah there's so much drama around it all lately and it's like ultimately eat what makes you feel good I mean when I look back to the way I used to eat and again it wasn't bad it was just lots of plants I still I've always loved protein but I would have you know sweet potatoes lots of nuts and seeds and every day I just felt you know worse and worse and worse and worse whereas now it's I eat meat and fat I just feel a little bit better every day so it's just total opposite roads and I mean I am one of those like very like I have to be pretty strict which is unfortunate I can't have I can't even eat eggs because I'm just really sensitive to it all but I mean I'm still in the process of healing like healing takes time because it's years of damage that um causes that so I'm hopeful that one day I can start adding them here and there but yeah any spices I can't do them it's just and I don't I don't miss them once you get rid of them you don't miss them and I'm a pretty bland person and I like the taste of just straight up ground beef um but yeah it's I just wish people you know kind of got rid of the old views and ways of nutrition and just switched it up a little bit Yeah and yeah well we're making some Headway and getting some mental gymnastics as to as to why it still isn't a good idea but yeah uh but it works I mean and that's that's really the only thing that matters is it does work and um you know the only only thing that you can get is you know these fearmongering of oh well there's this survey study that says that you know you know we ask a whole bunch of people what they ate and people that tended to eat more vegetables you know did better but it's like yeah well they also tended to smoke less they tended to drink less they tended to eat less sugar they tended to eat you know hundreds of of calories Less on average than other groups uh they tended to exercise more they tended to do all these other sorts of things so um does that mean the plant's doing it or is it that eating plants makes you healthy or that when you're healthy you're more likely to eat plants because you're doing other things that make you healthy so does does eating plants make healthy people or do healthy people eat plants you know and so that's the question and you can't make a cause and effect Rel statement based on you know a survey study you just can't do it and so you know it's hard to you know glean what's going to happen long term but you know one thing people say they talk about well these people and this population the blue zones that eat more plants and they do better that's that's been shown to be a fraud time and time again because they they eat actually far more meat than they said they did some places like Sardinia and elsewhere uh they're nearly full carnivore they eat way more meat than the average population way more meat and and very little uh plants and fruits um some olives fresh tomatoes basil things like that and the rest of it's just meat and dairy and at least in Sardinia anyway and um and then what about the the anti-blue zones you know the places that are largely plant-based and have horrible Health like the entire subcontinent of India you know you have 1.4 billion people that have one of the low lowest life expectancies on Earth and that could be from you know living in poverty and having you know High infant mortality rates which something that other people don't take into consideration but I'm happy to but they are also some of the most metabolically sick people on Earth they have some of the highest rates of metabolic disease diabetes heart disease cancer and other very serious health issues um malnutrition is has rampant all throughout India and they eat on average three kilos of meat per year so this is a vegetarian population and they're some of the sickest people on Earth in America where everyone says they're just you know the fattest sickest most horrible wretches of human beings as far as health is concerned Everyone likes to bag on America and um and in America there 9% of people are have type two diabetes 9% that's a lot it's a lot of people and that that counts for that and it's very expensive to treat that too that accounts about 75% of uh um uh medical expens expenditures is on diabetes and particularly type two diabetes but then India who's largely vegetarian have 25% diabetes rates so it's nearly three times the diabetes rates and they're largely plant-based and that's in the cities and in the rural areas as well both are 25% and and that's just the people they were able to test because a lot of people don't have access to healthare and so you know there could be a much much larger proportion of people that are just undiagnosed and then we have no idea um and you know some of the highest rates of metabolic disease one in four people in India will die of a heart attack one in three men will die of a heart attack I mean that's insane that wasn't like that years ago yeah and um and in fact I spoke to a friend of mine who's a doctor um was in India then he then he moved to Europe and he was he was a physician out there but I was talking to him about how you know sugar and fructose uh was now being shown that it could cause metabolic disease and Dad liver disease and diabetes and things like that and he just he said you know that's funny it's funny you say that because there's there's an area in Indian this is well known you know in in India and you from the doctors in India there's this there's this whole region in India where the mangoes just grow so plentifully that for about you know couple months out of the year two three months out of the year the people there eat nothing but mangoes and so it's just the just mangos all day every day and they have uh the highest rates of diabetes in India and it was so bad to the effect that the government actually realized what was going on and this is secondhand information I don't I you know this is coming from uh my friend who was a doctor there but he said that the government actually had to intervene and uh and limit and say no you can't just eat mangoes like this is causing a problem you have to eat other things as well you have to limit how many mangoes that you're eating so they sort of pass an ordinance that they had to limit the amount of mangoes but oh you're not going to get it from fruit and this and the other well the fruit that we have now is really candy um it's just you know natural mango you know probably isn't going to give you diabetes you know you're not going to eat enough of it to to get enough sugar the mangoes we have now I me these things are just it's just candy really I mean that's what DED fruit is it's actually candy it tastes as sweeter sweeter than candy so you know we need to recognize these things and and recognize that we are we are absolutely destroying the health of the planet uh doing the exact thing that we were told to do so it's not that uh we people just aren't listening to doctors or not listening to recommendations no they no they are they were just bad recommendations they only 9% of people follow the guidelines good thank God we'd have a lot more sick people it'd be way worse um because other people are you know leading up to that moving more in that direction and we've just completely we've become the fattest and sickest we've ever been in human history and and we haven't even gone all the way it's just we've moved in that direction we're eating a lot less meat a lot less fat a lot more fruits vegetables grains seed oils and uh and sugar as a result of that and a lot of fruit a lot of sugary fruit so yeah it's um it's pretty crazy how how you know how much damage this it caused and how people trying to dance around around the issue but it works and so you know eventually you'll get enough people that it just works and they're just going to have to stop living in denial or or not and they can just eat whatever the hell they want they can eat Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs feed it to their kids um but they're hurting themselves and they're more importantly hurting their kids which hopefully they'll come around to and realize that you know Cocoa Puffs is not food for kids no no child should ever be fed sugar cereal it's it's honestly I think it's just awful um and uh should not be allowed to to be given to kids I think sugar should be age restricted and I'm I'm a Libertarian on like almost everything but like I think that that that's a that's a harmful substance that shouldn't be criminalized but should be age restricted I don't think that developing brains and kids should be stuck onto an addictive substance just like you wouldn't give cocaine and and cigarettes and alcohol to a kid they can become addicted to it you know curtail their development and damage them and sugar does that and uh it is that and so I think that should definitely be age restricted and kept away from kids 100% yeah and when I think back to because you know I was a kid once I did that but when I look think back to it I was like I just can't believe that I can't believe it but especially back then we didn't have as much information as we do now but yeah it's it's sad to see too I just wish people like I said before just experiment and I mean ultimately you can eat what you want to eat but you're just harming yourself down the road and yeah it's just sad yeah well I'm glad that um yeah there's more people coming out and checking this out and and I appreciate you sharing your story too um because I think I think it really helps I think it really helped you know is is a classic thing too that um then you know the next stage in the uh sort of the disinformation is that well it's really just a bunch of you know carnivore Bros trying to be like alpha male on the internet and things like that and so it's great to have which is complete nonsense but um but it's great to have uh you you know people like yourself speaking out and showing they're like no this isn't just you know and and and women message me sometimes and say hey is this is this safe for women I don't want to turn into like a big bulky man and all this is not man juice you know this is just just human juice this is this is just the stuff for humans it's going to make you as healthy as as you can be for you know whatever your situation is um but yeah so I appreciate that and um I appreciate you being out there an example for people especially you know young girls and women who are thinking about this and like oh is this going to make me fat is eating fatty meat does that make me fat and um am I going to be is it going to make make me break out and get greasy skin and oily hair and all that sort of stuff so you know if you had a like a message to you know that young girl like you know 16 year- old early 20s girl you know who's one like is this gonna is this going to screw me over what would you say to them I mean it's tough to say because if anything like thinking Looking Back Now like I probably wasn't Healthy Back back then you know I was underweight because food was upsetting my stomach and now the only thing that's made me like a healthier weight is meat and fat and it's I'm not saying you're going to get fat from meat and fat but it's just it makes you healthy it makes you feel more alive and it is tough because not many people know about Carn War yet not many women and young girls especially know about carnivore but you know people are going to judge you either way what you do what you don't do so do whatever makes you feel good like I'm kind of as you get older like I don't care what people think of me people think my diet's weird but you know what I feel good I feel healthy so in the end of life all you have is yourself and if I feel good I'm going to eat the way that makes me feel good so um yeah just don't worry about other like what other people think of your diet or you know it's it's not weird you're feeling good um yeah yeah and that's a good point too is that it it doesn't you know some people who are underweight or or just that at the you know at a weight they're happy with you know they we like is this going to make me lose too much weight and but the the whole point is is it's not going to make you just lose weight you know it's just it's going to make it's going to optimize your weight and your body composition so if you're underweight it's going to increase your weight and increase your lean body mass and if you if you if you don't have enough um you know fat stores it's going to increase that as well to a to a safe healthy level and if you have far too much uh out of host tissue and far too little you know lean body mass it's going to improve that as well you know the fat mass is going to come down the lean mass is going to come up and so it's just going to optimize things and especially when you're developing and you're going through all these hormonal Chang is it is really really helpful to you know eat this way because it it helps normalize your hormones as well I mean I have I have ladies in uh patients in my clinic um six so far that have come out of menopause um in their mid-50s mid to late 50s you know 56 57 years old they come out of menopause they've started you know getting their periods again they're making completely normal amounts of estrogen their uh LH and FSH are all nor Al levels it's just like they're just they're just young again you know and um and you know it's always concerning when someone hasn't had their period in 10 years and or you know five years and and all of a sudden they start having bleeding again um and so you have to check them and you you make sure they don't have any you know fibroids or you know tumors or cancers or something like that uh they didn't nothing nothing was there they just they actually were just they had their periods again and they were regular just normal monthly cycle and um and normal estrogen again so you know if it's going to do that for someone in their 50s you know that's going to that's going to help anybody in any other age as well especially going through puberty when your body's you know developing and and and turning you into your final adult form it's it's very important it's very important to do that and to be properly healthy and and get your hormones in check it makes a huge difference it's most important time is development and so it's um it's uh yeah I I just encourage anybody with you know children things like that to really think about you know what is the best nutrition possible for your kids and whatever you feel that that is obviously you go with that and most people do they just don't necessarily realize the junk food processed food garbage is just is that bad for them and um and please hopefully recognize that meat and and animal fat is not bad for them that's what their body and brains are are made out of and it's so important to get enough of that while developing even if they're eating other things they they at least need that they at least need those nutrients it's vitally important yeah and the great thing about food and especially carnivore is you just tailor it to like your activity level your needs right so some people need to gain weight just you're going to need to eat more fat some people just want to get more lean well you're just going to need to eat more protein so the great thing is you just adjust it towards your level that you're looking for and just see how you feel like I I do going back I really blame the way I ate when I was younger to the health issues I had and then now I'm just trying to fix that so I just wish that people now families now can just start at a younger age so they don't have to deal with issues that I had and it just saves them so much stress and time and visits to the doctor and hospital so it's just yeah just try to start young and I think you'll notice a big difference because it's actually changed my life a lot and I've healed so many issues still have a long way to go but I think I'm just on the way up so yeah oh that's really good to hear yeah I I think I like you know it's that simple Paradigm where you can sort of do the same thing and just apply it in different slightly differently in different circumstances but you do that sort of naturally I think is sort of a testament to the fact that this is just uh our natural way of eating it's the same thing you when when people say What's the best way to lose weight it's like well just eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good listening to your body and eat as many times a day that your body needs it okay well what if you want to put on weight well you just eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good you do that as many times as your body needs it and you know and and you just cut out everything else well what if you have autoimmune diseases you eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good you you do that as many times a day that your body needs it and you cut out everything else you know what about it's exactly the same and you but your body will tell you your body will tell you if you need a bit more protein your body will tell you if you need more fat it will just taste better and so sometimes people go through phases where lean meat just doesn't taste good to them but the fat is tastes amazing okay well then you need more fat you know you're getting constipated that means your body's just sucking in all the fat that your body's that that you're eating and there's none left over so you're probably not satisfying your body's uh demand for fat okay so you just sort of increase that and uh and sometimes you know the the leaner Cuts you know with a bit of fat that tastes amazing okay well great you focus on that you know and that uh it makes you feel better so you just listen to your body you just as as needed and um and you let you let your body get on with it and um I just I just you know love that Paradigm and and and it should be like that because every animal in nature that's how they eat they just listen to their body and their Natural Instincts and they just they just eat and they're all just naturally healthy they don't have any of these diseases they don't have health coaches and doctors you know telling them you have to do this differently and this differently and here's all these medications they're just healthy you know the natural state of life is is that of Health for I mean single cell organisms all the way up and so you know the fact that we're we are sick all the time means that something has gone horribly wrong and you should be able to just be healthy doing something naturally just a natural instinctual sort of thing now oh I got to count this and track this and do this and make sure I get this make sure just eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good do as many times a day your body needs it and cut out everything else and just listen to your body and it and it works at least it it works for me yeah it's so funny like sometimes I'll just be at the gym and I'm like I'm cing some so fatty then other times I'm like I just want something a bit leaner and then I mean I do track my food but it's only to make sure I'm getting enough and then like days where I'm like oh I still feel a bit hungry I actually have your voice in my head saying that same thing because I heard you say it once and it's like you know what Anthony said you know if you're still hungry for protein just keep eating so that's I thank you for saying that because it just it makes me eat more good yeah yeah it's really easy to undereat I mean I I ran into that head first and um face first um in my early 20s when I I didn't have anybody I wasn't I wasn't doing carnivore there wasn't wasn't a movement on that I just wasn't going to eat plants because they were toxic and they um that I wasn't going to put anything toxic in my body to to any degree you know and so I I under at I really under at and I was was working out to uh yeah I was working out a lot you know I'd be in classes until 3:00 then I'd be in rugby training at 3:30 and for my University team at University of Washington and then directly after that I go to the men's training so I'd be going from 3:30 to 9 9:30 every night I might go to the gym after that and go lift weights and um and so it um you know it was just sometimes I get home it' be very late and like well I got to get up early and I didn't feel hungry so I'm like all right I'll just drink some water and go to bed and I'd wake up I wouldn't be hungry in the morning I wouldn't have time to eat during the day and i' get home i' be like I'm not hungry I'll just go to bed and then every now and then I wouldn't have like that evening you know nighttime practice and so it's just like you know I was back at like you know 6 o'clock and I was like oh okay I have time I can cook um yeah I should probably eat because I didn't eat yesterday I didn't eat the day before I'm like I eat the day before that like okay I need to eat like this is ridiculous and eventually I just I ran out of stores and um my body every every time I trained and I felt better and better and better I could just feel myself improving every single time and it got to a certain point where every time I trained I felt a littleit worse and a little bit I mean I could still perform I could still play and perform far better than um people around me but it but I felt like I was getting going backwards and I eventually realized it was just like look it has to be I'm just not eating enough um because I figured out at one point that I was averaging for the week like 400 calories a day that's just not enough and so so that wasn't obviously that wasn't enough and so I uh I just said like it doesn't matter if I feel hungry in the traditional way now I know what hunger feels like it's very different but back then it it you know it's a very different hunger signal and so I just no one told me that and so um I just I just ate every day and that was it I was like it doesn't matter I'm just going to eat every day and then you I found that that you know your body stops you you're just like I don't want to eat anymore and that's where you should get to and so yeah so if you finish your plate and you're like yep that was great you should make another steak or another you know you know meal anyway yeah yeah and like now that you say that it's just I underrate too even though it looked like I was eating so much but the majority of my plate was like plants and raw veggies so it's like I was actually undereating but I was bloated like I was having twins or something it was just like now I'm just it's a lot easier to actually eat more because if I'm eating rendered fat you know it feels like there's no volume at all so with athletes I need like you need to eat a lot so it's it's saved me if anything because I'm able to eat more yeah yeah great it tastes good yeah it does um great so what's next for you what's a what's On Your Horizon yeah like I said before I think it's going to be the Iron Man um might have some things thrown in there in between but right now it's it's kind of my I'm still training but it's kind of my downtime just trying to heal those injuries and not permanently damage anything so um getting there but I can't wait to be fully back and crush the next thing yeah definitely well Izzy thank you so much for coming on it's been an absolute pleasure and um I think it's really inspiring uh the work that you're doing and just getting getting out there and and killing it and being an example for so many others um where can people find you and support you understand you do some uh you know nutrition coaching things like that as well how do people find you if they want to get in touch with you yeah um you can follow me on Instagram um Izzy Watson ISS y w a TS o n 2 NS um I'm just starting up a YouTube channel so I'm that's Izzy Watson fit um and yeah uh in my Instagram bio and everything like my website's linked there for nutrition coaching and stuff like that but yeah Instagram and YouTube are my main thing right now um so yeah if you want them if anybody wants to message me I'm always happy to answer questions and my um DMS so I just love helping people so yeah well thank you for that I will put all those links in the description and people uh should go and follow Izzy and uh follow her YouTube channel and her Instagram and um yeah and if people are in a similar situation want some coaching and help then uh you know she has that contact information as well so Izzy thank you so much for coming on it's been an absolute pleasure I really appreciate you taking the time thanks and thank you everyone for watching I hope you enjoyed that please do share this with others you think would benefit from this either parents with kids or athletes that uh that uh would benefit from this and please do like comment and subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you next time thank you very much hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcast and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you can share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys