30 Days Carnivore & Cold Brew Challenge: My Experience Swapping Energy Drinks For Caveman Nitro ~ By Joel Runyon
I’m finishing up a 30 day carnivore challenge and I gotta say - I never thought eating coffee and steak could be good for you.
Yup, basically for the past 30 days, I’ve been surviving on a diet of grass-fed steak from White Oak Pastures and Nitro Cold Brew from Caveman Coffee.
As a caffeine and energy drink addict in general (I’m a trash panda, I know), it’s been an interesting experiment as fixing my beverage habits was almost harder than not even vegetables.
I’ve messed around with the diet templates (paleo and keto primarily), but after 30 days on carnivore, here’s what I found:
Crazy, Sustained Energy
Typically, if I’m drinking an energy drink or getting caffeine from a coffee shop, I’ll find that it’ll spike my energy and focus and then leave me in a crashed state where I need to either keep drinking or take a nap.
But on Carnivore, it was different. First - cutting out the crap and processed food in my every day diet was a clear win. But I noticed even my caffeine sources - since I wasn’t including sugar - didn’t seem to come with the same drop to which I had become accustomed.
Despite drinking unadvisable amounts of nitro, I found that since all the other crap was cut out of my diet - I had longer, sustained energy in ways that I never had before.
I don’t have brain fog, I’m able to focus for long periods of time and be insanely productive.
Leaner Than Ever
Sugar is in damn near everything. Even stuff that you don’t think could have sugar in it - has sugar in it.
Quarantine had me sitting at a higher weight than normal and with carnivore, I basically effortlessly lost 12 pounds. It sounds really, really basic, but a mix of fasting and carnivore is probably the easiest diet I’ve ever done.
I knew this from my paleo experiments, but this challenge reinforced that in a way that was somehow still surprising.
I’m continually blown away by how well you can eat and the things you can do when you just remove the processing from your everyday foods.
Recovery & Bounce Back Time Improvement
I’m known to do stupid impossible challenges like run a marathon on every continent or run around a track on the longest day of the year.
As a result, I’ve found I have to be militant about stretching regularly or else I’m prone to injury or slowing down (neither of which are very fun).
Steak and cold brew by the case might sound gnarly, but I’ve found that my bounce back time after workouts is faster and my nagging peroneal tendon injury has basically completely subsided.
I’ve been completely surprised by this part as it was not on my radar, but I’m tagging it up to a short test cycle and a
If you’re gonna give the carnivore experiment a try - I highly recommend you supplement it with a side (or a case) of cold brew. It makes it a lot easier.
Now, if only the team could get those Carnivorous shirts back in stock ;)
Joel Runyon is the founder of IMPOSSIBLE. He has numerous other online projects including Ultimate Paleo Guide, a Meal Planner app, MoveWellApp.com, and StartABlog.com.