Why listening to your body matters more than following any diet protocol

I followed strict carnivore for four weeks and experienced both incredible relief and total physical collapse, sometimes within the same day.

What finally shifted everything? Cutting out beef.

Turns out, my body has become hypersensitive, and beef was silently making things worse. This post isn’t a food diary, it’s a reminder that your body, not the protocol, is the authority.

Even healing tools can become weapons when you ignore your own signals.

My 4-week strict carnivore diet: relief, crashes, and confusion

For the past four weeks, I’ve been on strict carnivore.

Zero plants, zero exceptions.

And strangely, it’s been both heaven and hell, often on the same day.

Some mornings, I’d wake up feeling euphoric. I’m talking “is this what normal people feel like?” kind of good.

But by the afternoon, I’d crash so hard I couldn’t sit upright.

The only position my body could tolerate was flat on my back. Standing or sitting felt like punishment.

Realizing how sick I really was - only after I started getting better

Now, I’ve been physically really unwell for the past six months. But these brief windows of clarity, those glorious mornings, gave me hope. Maybe this diet was working.

Maybe I was finally healing.

But then the crash would hit again, and I’d feel like a prisoner in my own body all over again.

Then, 6 days ago, something changed. My body started feeling more stable, even though I was fighting off a flu. And that’s when it hit me:

I had no idea how bad I’d actually been feeling… until I started feeling better.

Navigating Health Challenges

Three years ago, when I first tried carnivore, it felt like magic. My symptoms eased, my energy soared. Then I got COVID, and everything fell apart.

My symptoms flared up so badly that every attempt to return to carnivore over the next three years failed. I couldn’t even get past the first few days.

I didn’t know what was wrong. No one did. And because getting a proper POTS diagnosis is nearly impossible unless you already know that’s what you’re dealing with, I did what most people do: I blamed my mind. Or my weight. Or both. I let others convince me it was “just stress.”

If you know anything about POTS, you’ve probably heard of MCAS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. It often comes along for the ride. And with MCAS, your body starts reacting to high-histamine foods like they’re poison.

This was where I went wrong.

Eating beef made things worse - even while everything looked better

Before, I did carnivore intuitively, I ate what felt good. But once I got sick, I started doing it “the right way.”

According to the internet, that meant beef.

So this time I forced myself through the fatigue, dizziness, skipped heartbeats, and weakness. I ate one kilo of beef every day with plenty of fat. And I pushed through, convinced I just needed to adapt.

And it did work, in a way.

• I went from 500 steps a day to 5,000 in just three weeks.

• My weight went down 22 lbs.

• My function improved.

But my feeling didn’t. I woke up feeling amazing and ended the day wrecked.

That paradox kept gnawing at me.

The moment I questioned beef

Then my husband asked the question that cracked everything open:

“Are you sure it’s not the beef?”

I laughed. Then I paused.

Because every time I’d eaten pork in the past few years, I’d felt noticeably better. Especially compared to beef. So, as an experiment, I cut beef out completely, just for one week.

And something wild happened.

In just 24 hours, my body calmed down in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

The dizziness? Gone.

The heaviness? Lifted.

My nervous system felt quiet for the first time in years.

Turns out, beef isn’t my best friend after all. At least not right now.

When following the rules backfires: healing isn't about discipline

What really threw me off, and might throw you off too, was this:

I thought I was healing because I was following the rules. But I was ignoring the one voice that actually knew the truth: my body’s.

When your nervous system is dysregulated, doing things “right” can be the exact thing that’s wrong.

You can’t logic your way out of a collapsing body.

You can’t protocol your way through a system in survival mode.

Most of us are so used to overriding discomfort that we think healing should hurt.

We push through symptoms like they’re tests of willpower.

But sometimes, your body isn’t asking for discipline.

It’s begging for nuance.

So if you’re following a plan that should be working, but deep down it feels like something’s off, maybe it’s time to stop asking what’s “optimal” and start asking what’s true for you.

3 questions to reconnect with your body's actual needs

Start here:

• What foods actually regulate you in the moment?

• Which ones make you spiral, even if they’re “clean” or “approved”?

• Where have you outsourced your instincts to a protocol?

Your body is the experiment, and you are both the scientist and the subject.

It’s messy. Inconvenient. Frustrating.

But it’s the only way healing ever becomes real.

The biggest lesson: your body is the authority

Just because something is “right” for most people doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

Even within healing diets, bioindividuality rules. Especially when your nervous system is fried and your immune system is playing 4D chess with your food choices.

I’m still doing carnivore, but I’m doing it my way. Pork over beef. Nervous system aware.

And for the first time in three years, I’m starting to feel like myself again.

Journal prompts for you

• What’s one thing you’ve been forcing because it’s “supposed” to work?

• What would happen if you let your body have the final say?

Write one sentence your body’s been waiting for you to hear. Then share it below.

In case no one has told you, I'm proud of you

Mari

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Disclaimer: This post is based on my personal experience with chronic illness, diet experimentation, and nervous system healing. It is not medical advice. Trust your body. Seek the support you need.

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