How to Thrive on Carnivore with Kerry & Emma
In a Nutshell
Kerry and Emma share practical carnivore success strategies from their 3+ years of experience and interviews with hundreds of people: maintain strict adherence until healing occurs rather than 90-95% compliance, prioritize electrolytes, meal prep, and written goals while building community support. They emphasize that sugar addiction is harder to quit than cigarettes due to similar brain chemistry effects, and warn that food industry manipulation through addictive processed foods targets children for lifetime revenue. Healing stalls require protocol changes like switching to lion diet or one meal a day, while ketone monitoring helps achieve therapeutic ketosis levels for deeper healing.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Kerry has been doing carnivore for almost 3 years, mostly consistently, and has learned extensively through personal experience. Emma has been doing carnivore strict with zero cheats for over 3 years. Together they have interviewed hundreds of carnivores for their documentary Healing Humanity, conducted 60 interviews for their YouTube channel, and compiled thousands of carnivore stories through their Healing Humanity book project.
Meatstock was an exceptional event with 1,600 attendees where speakers were incredible and many inspiring healing stories were shared. VIP tickets for Meatstock 2027 sold out within one day. Rancher Maggie received standing ovations and referred to Kerry, Adam, and Dr. Chaffee as her kids, having been one of the first people filmed for their documentary almost 3 years prior.
Healing Humanity was screened at Meatstock with over 700 people watching, generating incredible reviews and approximately 50 recorded testimonies. The film is being released in theaters worldwide. Locations include Chicago with Jenny Midich and Dr. Tony Hampton featuring an optional VIP Brazilian steakhouse dinner in June, plus screenings in Tennessee, Michigan, United Kingdom, Canada, and Arizona. People can host screenings by visiting healinghumanity.movie and filling out the screening champion form at no cost. Montello theater sold out in 48 hours. The documentary will also screen September 26th and 27th at Low Carb for Better Health in Tennessee.
Emma initially avoided electrolytes because she disliked their taste, believing she could get everything needed from meat. This led to severe headaches and fatigue. After resuming electrolyte intake through morning shots, she felt dramatically better. She discovered Salter electrolytes which taste good, making consistent intake easier.
Kerry emphasizes having a compelling reason for carnivore beyond weight loss, as the scale is deceptive. People may lose fat while gaining muscle and bone density, showing zero weight change despite significant progress. Carnivore heals fatty liver, insulin resistance, and systemic inflammation. The scale often stalls while healing continues. The greater the wound, the longer healing takes. Kerry's wife takes longer to heal due to birthing triplets, which created significant bodily trauma.
Without meal prep, people reach for non-carnivore foods. Plan meals in advance and get excited about upcoming dishes like egg, ground beef, and bacon quiche or power muffins. Keep boiled eggs, cooked bacon, and burger patties in the refrigerator for easy access during cravings. Barbara from Grandma's Crochet Corner recommends keeping carnivore foods available at all times, including cooked bacon and hard-boiled eggs, to handle sudden cravings.
Power muffins made from eggs, ground beef, and bacon can be spiced up with cheese if desired and taste excellent cold or reheated. They can also be made into quiche. Butter bites are created by browning butter, cooling it, and pouring into silicone molds to create carnivore toffee that can be added to coffee, steak, or burger patties.
Write down your reasons for carnivore and maintain a 30-day food and feeling log. Writing goals creates powerful focus and paves new neural pathways. Studies show people are significantly more likely to achieve goals when written down. Document what you plan to eat, what you ate, and how you felt to reflect on progress.
Plan meals 24 hours in advance by removing items from the freezer the day before. Unlike standard American or vegan diets where food could be grabbed spontaneously, carnivore requires preparation since most food needs cooking or thawing.
Community is crucial, especially when family and friends aren't carnivore. Online communities provide inspiration through watching others' journeys and engaging in discussions. Carnivore practitioners are outliers in society, making community essential for success.
Carnivore is difficult because food addiction carries less stigma than other addictions. Unlike alcohol addiction where abstaining is supported, everyone must eat. Admitting addiction to carbohydrates is rare, yet carnivore requires abstaining from foods that convert to glucose.
Be 100% strict until healing occurs rather than attempting 90-95% compliance. Strict adherence was motivated by Kerry's severe illness and search for relief. A switch occurs where food no longer serves as entertainment or addiction. Those who maintain strict carnivore until healing find cravings disappear as new neural pathways form. Partial compliance perpetuates addiction pathways, making holidays and gatherings constant triggers.
Carnivore buns, tortillas, bread, and pizza can serve as bridges for people transitioning to stricter carnivore. While Kerry doesn't use these alternatives personally, they help many succeed who couldn't transition directly to strict carnivore. These options may be needed temporarily or as ongoing variety for some individuals.
Every penny from memberships goes to Healing Humanity, supporting the power of a proper human diet. Members-only live streams occur every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Central, usually with Kerry and Jean. Upcoming events include speaking at Robin Haren's Carnivore Event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Healing Humanity will be shown, and potential attendance at Hack Your Health in September. Details are available at healinghumanity.movie under the events section.
Grandma's Crochet Corner shared her transformation after discovering carnivore through an interview of Kerry Man interviewing Bill Nott, stating she is no longer waiting to die but now loves to live. Lane reported being off four and a half of five blood pressure medications, off gout and triglyceride medications, greatly helped with Crohn's disease, no joint pain or headaches, and hair growing back after attending Meatstock.
Thinking for Myself recommends keeping cooked steaks and chicken in the fridge for cravings. Community support is emphasized as crucial, with the healinghumanity.life membership site offering 50% off using a promo code in the description. The site hosts 12 Zoom calls per week with doctor experts including Dr. Eedon, Dr. Baker, and Dr. Ovadia every Wednesday.
Sugar is reported as harder to quit than cigarettes, with many people sharing this experience. Sugar lights up the brain similarly to cocaine and heroin according to MRI brain scans. This addiction factor particularly affects children, as their developing brains respond to sugar the same way they would to hard drugs.
Kerry is collaborating with Kent Carnivore Elite Copes on a video exposing Kellogg's Froot Loops and their addictive properties. The cereal contains petroleum-based food coloring dyes including Red 40, yellow, and blue dyes that cause neurological issues in children such as ADHD and mental health problems. These dyes are banned in other countries like the UK and Canada, where Fruit Loops use natural food dyes instead.
Froot Loops are spelled with double O's because the company cannot legally use the word "fruit" as there is no actual fruit in the product. Kellogg's previously promised to remove petroleum-based food dyes but reneged on this commitment in the United States while implementing the change in other countries.
Cigarette companies used cartoon characters like Joe Camel to target children, recognizing that getting a 15-year-old hooked meant lifetime customers. This same strategy is employed with sugary cereals, using cartoon characters to create early addiction in children.
Amanda reported being strict lion diet for 15 months and can now bake treats for her children without temptation. Kerry plans to return to lion diet due to excessive cheese consumption. The initial 70-day period of strict beef, butter, bacon, eggs before introducing dairy resulted in the best feeling experienced, including first-time tanning without burning while building a wood shed in summer heat.
Chemical sunscreens contain harmful ingredients that enter the bloodstream and are particularly dangerous when aerosolized around children who inhale the microscopic particles. Tallow RX or XR offers 100% natural sunscreen alternatives, though they may leave a white cast. The recommendation is to either use natural alternatives or maintain strict carnivore without dairy for better sun tolerance.
Skin cancer concerns are attributed primarily to inflammation from seed oils and dairy rather than sun exposure alone. Historical context suggests people did not suffer widespread skin cancer before seed oil consumption became common.
Food companies deliberately create highly addictive products to ensure repeat customers, particularly targeting children for lifetime revenue. Ellen noted that sugar provides the same dopamine hit as cocaine without the high, but still satisfies the addiction through lab-created highly addictive formulations.
The concept that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" originated from Kellogg's marketing campaigns that purchased magazine articles to promote this idea. This messaging has been so deeply ingrained that many people feel they must eat before school or work, despite no scientific evidence supporting this claim. The opposite appears to be true - fasting until naturally hungry is often beneficial.
School breakfast programs have included items like funnel cakes with chocolate milk and grapes that children discard. Testing environments provide peanut butter and jelly, goldfish, chocolate milk, and fruit snacks. Students spend 8 hours under fluorescent lights, particularly problematic in Wisconsin where winter months mean leaving school in darkness.
Children are experiencing epidemic levels of insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. The cycle involves giving children sugary breakfasts, confining them under fluorescent lights for 8 hours, then medicating behavioral issues rather than addressing root causes through diet.
Most health messaging represents inverted reality where the exact opposite of recommended actions would be beneficial. The advice given is to recognize that conventional wisdom is frequently backwards, particularly regarding breakfast consumption and processed food marketing.
"What you're not changing, you're choosing" serves as a motivational reminder for personal responsibility. Hippocrates stated "All disease begins in the gut," which remains relevant as mental health issues including depression, PTSD, ADHD, and schizophrenia originate from gut inflammation caused by food choices. "You are what you eat" extends to "you are what you put on your skin."
Deodorant, lip products, and toothpaste chemicals enter the bloodstream directly. Homemade toothpaste can be made with coconut oil, pure baking soda, and peppermint essential oil. Compassionatecarnivore.store offers tallow-based body butter, proper hair hold, and lip balm with code "tallow15" providing 15% off and two free lip balms.
Ketone testing is optional for most people but valuable for those seeking deep therapeutic ketosis for healing purposes. Kerry tests daily and maintains around 3.0 ketone levels with blood sugar super low and GKI measurements of 1.0 or under. This deep ketosis state is believed to be when healing occurs, particularly for cancer, seizures, and mental health conditions.
People reporting lack of healing on strict carnivore may not be achieving deep ketosis. Six daily servings of chicken represent strict carnivore but won't produce the same therapeutic ketosis as concentrated eating patterns. Working with doctors or metabolic health professionals is recommended for achieving therapeutic ketosis levels, especially when trying to gain weight.
A lot of recommendations focus on increasing fat and lowering protein, but if you have significant body fat there's nuance in how to apply this. Fasting, one meal a day, exercise, and mindset all play roles. Most people don't need these adjustments and do fine without them. For healing purposes, testing is recommended. Keto Mojo is useful, and continuous ketone monitors will be available in the US soon and will be game changers.
Continuous ketone monitoring reveals how eating, sleep quality, two meals a day versus one meal a day, and other factors affect ketone levels. More importantly, it shows how ketone levels correlate with how you feel. At this point you can often tell you're at a three without looking and verify the reading matches.
When eating out, four things can ruin results. Say you're allergic to oil and request food cooked only in butter. Confirm the butter is real butter. Bring your own salt because table salt often contains bleach, sugar, and additives. Seasoning is the fourth consideration.
Testing is important because restaurants may add unexpected ingredients. At IHOP, an omelet caused a blood sugar spike and kicked someone out of ketosis because they add pancake batter to omelets. This is another reason eating at home is always better, though many people still eat out with friends and family.
When ordering fast food, request the patty from the a la carte menu rather than asking for a burger with no bun. This costs less than ordering a full burger and removing items. Some locations require triple-checking because staff may still charge for the full burger even when ordering a la carte.
One comment noted that when looking back at childhood photos, almost nobody had autism, ADHD, depression, diabetes, or was overweight, and everyone was outside playing. People weren't poisoning themselves with processed foods.
Tallow works well in hair and can be applied to beards with any leftover product. It can also be put at the ends of hair for hydration.
A viewer reported feeling great on carnivore and keto for 17 years but now feels awful, struggles with daily activities, and blood work showed high likelihood of rheumatoid arthritis. The advice given is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. When healing stalls, a switch up often helps - going from carnivore to lion diet, or from lion diet to one meal a day with a 24-hour fast.
Joining a group or community provides access to shared knowledge. Free groups exist, including Dr. Kilts' community and Facebook groups. In paid membership sites, doctors participate in weekly Q&A sessions where members can get specific feedback on what they're eating, supplements, electrolytes, and other factors. A 30-day membership can cost around $15 and provide clarity that prevents months of stalled progress.
The favorite part of Meatstock was meeting people and hearing inspiring stories. Recording attempts failed due to microphone issues - a $12 mic produced no audio at all. Approximately 15 interviews were lost.
For mission trips to Mexico, prepare food in advance by dehydrating thick-cut bacon, making homemade beef jerky, and bringing Chomps beef sticks. Carnivore snacks from a Meatstock vendor were expensive but excellent for travel, particularly on long flights.
Making your own snacks is recommended. Pork rind chips made at home taste better than commercial versions. Store-bought pork rinds work if ingredients are just pork and salt with no other additives. The blue bag brand 4508 available on Amazon is noted as particularly good.
Going to the gym regularly has been a game changer. A step-up class proved challenging and humbling, with older participants having more endurance. The class was mentally engaging because it required remembering repeated step patterns.
Swimming once a week is effective exercise. Swimming for fitness is more demanding than swimming for fun as a child.
Most healing on carnivore happened without exercise. Energy to exercise came after nutritional healing. Seeing overweight people jogging brings awareness that you can't outrun a bad diet. Weight loss and healing come primarily from nutrition, then energy returns and exercise becomes desirable. Exercise is beneficial but fixing nutrition first is essential.
Making healthy carnivore ice cream alternatives is preferable to ultra-processed ice cream. A clean protein powder from Equip has lasted months and mixes well with milk. Raw milk from neighbors was obtained and used.
Raw milk can be obtained from local farmers. At Meatstock, raw dairy cottage cheese was labeled for cats and dogs only because selling raw milk for human consumption is illegal in many places. Some farmers use workarounds like requiring customers to buy a portion of stock in the cow. Meanwhile, cigarettes, alcohol, and petroleum-based food dyes are legal.
Keto Mojo is recommended as the most accurate option available on Amazon for around $50. Continuous ketone monitors like SIOBIO are not yet FDA-approved in the US but are available in other countries.
An Amish family contacted for advice about their daughter's seizures. Ketogenic diets have historically been used to treat seizures. The recommendation was strict carnivore and using Keto Mojo to track therapeutic ketosis levels. A Keto Mojo was ordered and will be delivered with instructions.
A cat named Sweet Pea had seizures approximately three times a day, eyes were always shut and foggy, couldn't see or hear well, and would bump into things. After slowly transitioning from kibble to raw meat diet, seizures stopped completely, eyes are now wide open, hearing and vision returned, and the cat no longer bumps into objects.
No other animals get sick like humans except those fed by humans - dogs, cats, and notably raccoons eating human garbage from dumpsters develop fatty liver and insulin resistance. Dog food ingredient lists are extensive because the veterinary industry profits from pet illness.
For a 5-7 lb cat, feeding amounts depend on weight. Research is required and transition should be gradual to avoid stomach issues. With dogs, too much fat can cause illness, unlike humans who generally benefit from higher fat intake.
People often claim they cannot afford proper food for their pets, but when comparing the price of mid-range kibble to real meat, the economics shift dramatically. Kibble is expensive, and roughly 50% of it gets excreted as waste, meaning owners are effectively paying twice as much for the portion their animals actually utilize. Beyond the immediate waste factor, owners also face substantial veterinary bills when their pets develop conditions like diabetes, which is becoming increasingly common in dogs fed kibble diets.
The long-term health consequences are equally significant. Animals fed improper diets typically lose approximately 30% of their expected lifespan while experiencing numerous health complications. When these factors are properly calculated, feeding animals their natural diet proves less expensive overall than relying on processed kibble.
When animals receive their proper diet rather than processed foods, they naturally eat less while maintaining better health. Some butchers provide suitable organ meats including liver and heart specifically for cats and dogs, offering clean nutrition sources.
A butcher's mixture that had previously worked well for dogs and cats suddenly caused severe digestive issues. The animals began experiencing extremely poor stools and excessive flatulence despite thriving previously on the same source. Investigation revealed the addition of vegetables including kale and pumpkin to the meat mixture, with small green specks visible in the food that were not listed on any labels.
When contacted, the supplier defended the vegetable additions as beneficial, yet the immediate negative effects on the animals demonstrated otherwise. This experience highlighted the importance of verifying exactly what goes into pet food mixtures.
After this experience, investing in a meat grinder allowed for complete control over pet food ingredients. While grinding meat requires additional time investment, it reduces costs significantly. The process involves doing large batches at once and freezing portions for extended storage, with a dedicated freezer used to stock approximately one month's supply.
Grinding requirements differ between species, with cats needing finer grinding than dogs. Initial attempts with bone grinding proved insufficient for cats, requiring a second grinding pass to achieve appropriate texture and safety.
Hatcher's Pass in Alaska offers exceptional conditions with fresh salmon available. Previous visits to Alaska benefited from favorable weather and minimal mosquito activity compared to typical visitor experiences.
The documentary Healing Humanity will be shown in multiple locations including Chicago with Dr. Hampton and Jenny Midge, Tennessee, Michigan, the UK, Canada, and Montello, Wisconsin. Additional screening locations are listed at healinghumanity.movie, where visitors can access the homepage to find local screenings.
The film is seeking theater screenings worldwide, and individuals can become screening hosts or captains by completing a form at healinghumanity.movie. The process involves specifying location and preferred movie theater, following a model similar to The Cholesterol Code's distribution approach.
The documentary will screen in theaters globally before becoming available on streaming services, with wider availability following shortly after theatrical release.
Emma is available through compassionatecarnivore.store under the name Emma the Carnivore. Future collaborations between Kerry and Emma depend on viewer engagement through comments on their respective channels.
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