About 10 months ago, I began experimenting with a significantly meat-based diet. I had, more-or-less, eaten vegetarian-style for several decades, and had tried veganism as well.

Eating mostly (or only) meat was something that went against years of my ethical, moral, and nutritional learning. The mindsets of vegetarians largely insist that eating a lot of meat will kill you.All of that knowledge had told me that consuming meat and animal fat clogs veins, toxifies intestines, and promotes carnal desires, leading to the onset of early disease and death. Most vegetarian literature, drawn from scientific studies, and religious and philosophical texts, teaches readers to be somewhat, or entirely, wary of meat.

However, nearly a year ago, after reading some reports and testimonials from long-time “carnivores”, I was intrigued. After a week of research on how best to begin, I waded into the meat-eating world, curious to see the results. Vegetarian friends were not happy about this, with some becoming seriously afraid for my well-being.

A full 24 hours after commencing, I felt really good.

I kept the diet simple – just beef, eggs, fish, butter, ghee, tallow, mineral-salts, raw milk and yogurt (and no flour, bread, beans, seeds, vegetables, fruits, sugars, and so on).

By the third day I felt even better!

Over the next two weeks I felt stronger and clearer with each passing day. 

Not having serious health concerns, I was not searching for a “cure”. But I noticed that I was sleeping better, and waking up fresher. My breathing was fuller. I was calmer, and more energetically balanced. Changes began happening to my skin. There was no mucus in my system. Digestive gas went to zero, and I was eliminating perfectly.

How could this be?

Alongside what I had previously learned and believed, this didn’t make much sense.

But the positive results were undeniable.

Continuing on with the meat, I kept feeling better.

After 10 months, this is my report:

• Sleeping, breathing, relaxation and balance are all remarkably good and steady.
• Skin is healing and rejuvenating. Earlier recurring skin cancers (basal cell) have disappeared. Various skin lines are reducing, and itchy skin is gone.
• Absent all fiber, elimination is excellent to perfect! There is almost no smell, and often no need for paper at all. 
• Joints, muscles, ligaments (old injuries) etc. are all improving.
• Flexibility is good, returning to that of earlier years.
• Muscular strength and mass are increasing.
• Blood-pressure is good, and the heart is relaxed and steady.

As an avid meditator, I was curious to see if a meat-based diet would hamper my practices. The literature extolls that meat will dull the body’s energies, and increase sluggishness, irritability, anger, and general depravity.

I found this to not be true. In fact, I have enjoyed the opposite. Physiologically, all my bodily systems feel more nourished, balanced, and streamlined in their functions. Chemically, I feel healthier, and more balanced. And I have zero food cravings.

To keep this article briefer, I am not going to explore the science of this, whether for or against. Nor will I share my thoughts on why eating meats has been demonized at various times throughout our previous 4,000 years – within and around entire cultures and religious ideologies.

The results I have experienced on this diet are so clear that I feel little need for explaining my new outlook on food. I might go into some of that another time.

I will say this, though… If you have not tried this yourself, your conclusions about it can only be based upon things you have read, and yours and others’ subjective prejudices.

I have directly experimented with fruitarianism, vegetarianism, veganism, raw green smoothies, instinctive eating, fasting, fast food, junk food, and “steak-potatoes-and-veggies”.

And this basic ancestral, meat-based, diet that I have embarked upon has delivered the best outcomes of all.

As a so-called “animal lover”, much of my life has included close involvement with horses, camels, pigs, cows, reptiles, birds and many other animals.

In Arabian deserts, where I was urged to “eat more goat”, my consistent reply was, “No thanks; some of my best friends are goats!” I did, however, partake in lots of raw camel milk, and delicious dried dates.

So today, I must reconcile my new choices around food with a previous life-history and philosophy that opposes my present experiment – but, I now think, wrongly.

And this is humbling…

I am now eating meat; the flesh, eggs, and milk of other animals, and every meal directly connects me with the fact of bodily mortality – mine and others’ – and of life’s inevitable sacrifice for further life.

I can no longer assume that I might be sitting on some moral high-ground, merely because I eat fruits and leaves.

Among all the humans who have existed over our 3-million-year span, those with the profoundest connections to animals, and life, were the contemplative and elegant hunter-gatherers. Without any reservation, they hunted, trapped, killed, and ate non-humans – doing so with a grace and gratitude that most of us today, “animal lovers” or not, can barely comprehend.

By contrast, the consuming of food for todays’ 8 billion scrambling humans is a hot mess.

The production and availability of food has become an insanely bewildering search for profits, ideologies, influence, and consolation against common fear. And food ignorance, as well as food itself, have become a serious part of the apparent threat.

Like gorillas in mountain forests, humans once simply ate food – whatever it was, whenever it came into season – berries, nuts, seeds, fruits, roots, eggs, meats and fats, milk, and wild honey.

Such days are long gone, and it is unclear if our food consumption will ever return to something we can consider to be “natural”.

Today, industrial meat production occurs alongside the vast agriculture of plants, and both of these civilizational “devices” are rapidly destroying soils, waters, and environments.

Wonderful farmers’ markets and local free-range ranches are worthy of support, rather than the big corporations that are becoming the rabid devourers of all existent life.

I am not going to tell you here to try the “ancestral diet”, but if you do, be sure to research it fully enough to understand what it is all about in order to avoid commonly-made mistakes. If you can afford it, go to local farmers for your food. But if you cannot afford that, just go to the supermarket for what you first need, and then branch out later if you are able to. There is ample information on the internet.

Ancestral eating is not a meat-only approach.

Instead, it is meat-based, with the natural fats being a really important component.

Eating in ancestral times involved all kinds of natural and wild-harvested foods, but it was largely animal-based – with fresh meat and fats being most highly regarded and utilized.

Here are some of the resources I made use of:

Dr. Bill Schindler & Mary Ruddick – ancestral diet researchers. And medical Drs. Shawn Baker, Ken Berry, and Anthony Chaffe.

Together with daily physical and breath exercises, and meditation, my adventure into meat-eating has been nothing but a positive revelation.

Probably the most unexpected outcome for me, is that eating meat has supported the deepening of my meditative contemplative practices.

This was something that I also did not expect, and I would probably have not believed, had I not pushed out from my old familiar fruit and veggie beaches…

Also read: Lightning Thunder Cows for

a different look at many other topics… 🙂