100 Pound Weight Loss and Depression Remission with Carnivore Diet

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Carrie Mann is the carnivore and thought-provoking podcaster behind Homestead How. Carrie packed up his family of 6 to leave the hustle and bustle, trading big city life for peace and growth of a sprawling 20-acre slice slice of rural heaven. He owns a small town movie theater but has big plans to help the homeless and change the world. As a driving force behind the documentary Healing Humanity: The Power of a Proper Human Diet, Carey is passionate about changing lives one health decision at a time. Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Carey Mann, and he has a really amazing story, uh, that includes 100 pounds of weight loss, and he is now working on a documentary. And I just think he has a really interesting background, so I was really excited to share his story with you. So welcome, Carrie. And if we could get started by you just, uh, sharing— first of all, I didn't— I don't think I said in that, like, how you ended up losing the weight. And it's kind of a, a thing that is very popular right now, a thing that a lot of people have heard about. Um, so when it gets to that point, I would love to, um, have you share how you found that and why that ended up working for you. So welcome, Carrie.

Thank you so much, Cheryl. I appreciate it. Yeah, I am— I'm down 100 pounds since my heaviest, uh, overcame all sorts of health issues. Uh, for me, I actually— I found the ketogenic diet maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and it was kind of life-changing for me. Uh, back then it was the only thing that had really worked for me. I had depression, I had anxiety, I was diagnosed with IBS, I had sleep apnea. I went in for a sleep study and I had to get a CPAP machine. My stomach was just always hurting no matter what I would eat. I tried many different types of diets, low FODMAP, plant-based diet, and my stomach was always bothering me. I ended up having a couple kidney stones a few years ago. I had my gallbladder was kind of borderline and the doctor was like, you could take it out or you could leave it. And I said, I have so many stomach issues. Let's take the gallbladder out. And then like 2 years after that, I lost my appendix. It burst on the operating room table. Could have killed me. Like, thankfully I went in for the hospital. I was actually thinking I was having another kidney stone, but I went in just before they were going to do surgery on the appendix. It burst and just had a whole bunch of health issues. I had arthritis in my foot. They said it was gout and it hurt so bad I could barely walk on it. And then amongst all that, my weight just kept going up. The biggest issue for me was mental health, depression and anxiety. For 10 or 15 years, I tried every antidepressant, anti-anxiety medicine, and it just never got better for me. The medication sort of made me feel like a zombie. I kind of felt numb to it, but I just didn't feel like myself. And the really deep, dark depression kind of never went away. But when I found keto, which was 10 or 15 years ago, I was watching a documentary on Netflix and I learned about keto for the first time and I tried it. It was the only thing that ever touched my depression. I noticed like, I feel a little better. I feel different. It was a whoa moment. I'm like, I feel different than I have with any of this other medication. And I started losing some weight and I probably lost more weight on a decent ketogenic diet than I have doing any other sort of dieting my entire life. And I've literally tried every diet. I just couldn't maintain it with keto. I remember at one point I lost about 60 pounds and my wife did too, and I started exercising and we're feeling so good. We have a picture of my wife and myself, and I remember saying, I will never gain this weight back. Like, I figured it out now. I think it was like 3 or 4 months later, I gained all the weight back and then some. I just, I would do keto and then I would try to go back to eating in moderation, which for me is like moderating an addiction to carbohydrates, and I could never do it, and I would end up gaining the weight. Long story short, I found carnivore diet, which is— sounds crazy, I know. It sounded crazy to me. It sounds crazy to a lot of people. Really what it is is just a very strict ketogenic diet. Um, I heard about it from a YouTube video from this guy. He said, I'm gonna do this carnivore diet for 90 days. And my wife and I were watching him on YouTube, and I'm like, That's crazy. Like, you can't eat only meat. You're going to have a heart attack. You're going to clog your arteries. But on the flip side, the guy's story, he was overweight, he had depression, he had IBS, he had all of the issues that I had. And I knew when he was talking about it, I knew the science of a ketogenic diet. I'm like, that will work. That's just a strict ketogenic diet. But there's no way you could just eat meat and sustain it. Well, long story short, I noticed that the video was 2 years old. On YouTube. And so I was watching with my wife. I said kind of cynically, I'm like, there's no way this guy's still eating meat. Like, let's fast forward. Let's go watch his most recent video. And I did that. You couldn't even recognize him. He lost all of his weight. He had a big smile on his face. He was talking like his IBS was gone. His mood had improved. His depression had gone away. And that was really what opened my eyes. I still, in my brain, I'm like, this guy's an outlier. He's crazy. That's not going to work for everyone. And then I did a ton of research. I found Dr. Ken Berry on YouTube, uh, talking about carnivore diet. I probably watched 1,000 of his videos. And, um, then I found Dr. Philip Ovadia, who's a heart surgeon that's been eating carnivore for about 10 years. He's performed like 4,000 heart surgeries. I'm like, wow, a heart surgeon's doing carnivore? And then I found, um, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, who's a neurosurgeon. He's literally done brain surgery on people. I heard Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan, and he had done the Lion Diet, which is a stricter version of carnivore. And, um, he said, uh, he was off all of his antidepressant medication and he stopped snoring the first week. And I was snoring and I was on antidepressant medications. I'm like, all of these really smart people— I'm like, I shouldn't do carnivore because these smart people are doing it, but it is worth further investigation. It would be foolish of me to just be like That's just crazy. I can't do it when all these other people are doing it. And one other thing I forgot to mention, the biggest issue besides my depression was about 7 years ago. I was at home and I got really dizzy. I stood up and my face was numb. My fingers were tingling. I was confused. My wife was asking me what was going on. I couldn't tell her what was happening. She called 911 and I spent the next 5 days in the stroke unit. I had a TIA mini stroke. In my late 30s. And they did all these tests on me. Thankfully, I had a couple of symptoms that lasted a while, like vertigo and numbness. And I went to physical therapy for that, but it wasn't like a full-blown stroke. So I didn't have anything like permanent paralysis. But they did all these tests. They're like, you're 37. Like, why do you have all of these health issues? What's wrong with you? And they tested my heart and they said, you have congestive heart failure. Your ejection fraction is 44. Uh, your heart— what that means is, for those that don't know, your heart doesn't keep up with the needs of your body. It's not pumping enough blood. That's why you're getting fatigued and tired. They said it's probably a downstream effect of my sleep apnea. That puts a lot of pressure on the heart. It probably didn't help that I was 100 pounds heavier than I should have been. That puts a lot of extra pressure on the heart too. Um, so all of those things were what was happening, uh, So when I saw Dr. Ovadia, a heart surgeon, that was one of my biggest concerns. I'm like, I can't, I can't eat meat. Even after seeing Dr. Berry and some of these other ones, that's going to clog my arteries. That's going to give me a heart attack. And then I heard Dr. Philip Ovadia talking about it. And I really started digging into some more research around the heart and cholesterol and a lot of stuff that I have learned we have been misled on that even like major institutions have reversed. But sort of the mainstream narrative is you eat meat, you clog your arteries. There's a lot of misconceptions there. So long story short, or maybe a little too long, sorry, I tend to rant a lot. I decided, I, what else do I have to lose? I'm, I'm so sick. I have all of these issues. I said, I'm going to just do an elimination diet. I didn't tell myself I'm going to eat meat only. I said, I'm going to stop eating sugar, rice, grains, seed oils, all this processed garbage, box garbage. Ultimately, what I was saying was, I'm just going to eat meat. Like, that was all that was left. Some people would argue, what about vegetables? And I actually did that for about a year. I did a strict ketogenic plant-based diet. I had just a tiny bit of protein, but it was salad for lunch, salad for dinner, all low carb. It didn't help me for a year. I still had IBS. I still had depression. And now everybody's different. So I'm not saying this for everybody, but for me, that did not help me. So yeah, I decided I'm going to do this elimination diet for 30 days. I'm going to do carnivore diet. I went out, I went shopping, I bought a bunch of meat, and I started from there.

So you'd said you'd found car— or you'd found keto a long time ago and that it helped with your depression, but then you'd kind of go off of it and, um, you know, then kind of go back to eating in moderation. What do you think it is about now having gone to the carnivore diet that you're able to stay with that? Is it just the effects are so much greater that you feel so good that you don't want to mess it up? Or is it like keto was almost like the training wheels for a more restrictive diet? Or do you have any sense of why you're able now to stay on this, um, better than you were on keto? Because you could argue, argue that, you know, carnivore is even more strict than keto. So why, why is it that you're able to stay with this one, do you think?

Yeah. That is a wonderful question. I'm really glad you asked that because it was an epiphany I had a while in. So when I started this carnivore, friends, family, my wife, they're like, here he goes again. This is the 47th diet, but this is the real one now, right? This bad, crazy thing he's going to do is working.

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The difference for me from keto to carnivore was I was always trying to moderate an addiction. When I had started doing carnivore, I realized I am addicted to carbohydrates, I'm addicted to sugar, and I can't moderate them at all. And I would do it many times. I would do keto really, really strict, like 20 carbs or less a day. And then every now and then I'll say, I'm just gonna have a couple raspberries. I'd count them all out and make sure like the carbohydrates were low and all that stuff. Every single time it was just like I'd get a little bit of that. I since learned like, you know, even if you eat things that don't have sugar in them, if they have carbohydrates in them, they break down in the blood as glucose. And if something breaks down in my blood as glucose, half an hour later, I'm like, I need more of that. I need more of that. And I look at it as more of an addiction for me in particular. I'm just speaking for myself because everyone's different, but it's like if I was addicted to cocaine or alcohol, I would never do that. And then, oh, it's Saturday. I'm going to have a little beer now. I'm going to have a little cocaine because I did good all week. That was the biggest difference for me. And I guess the second part real quick was all of the other diets I did, and I did all of them. I literally did all of them. Keto was the best by far, the closest, but counting calories, Weight Watchers, all of those things, they always felt forced. They always felt like, I just gotta get through this, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds, and then I can go back to moderation, and I could go back to doing this. When I started doing carnivore, it felt forced for maybe 2 or 3 weeks until I adapted. And then it was like a switch went off and something changed for me where it's like, I'm no longer eating food for entertainment. Or enjoyment. I'm eating food for sustenance. And I really, I really enjoy a fatty ribeye, like a big steak. I love it, but it's a, it's a, it's different than before. It's not an addiction like before. It's more of an appreciation. So that was one of the, that was the biggest thing for me that was different. And still I'm on day 600 almost. I'm about a week away from 600 days now. I have no cravings and it's the most natural thing in the world. Even at day 600, there are so many times where I have to remind myself to eat. And when I was doing keto, I would get that every now and then, but I'd add a little carbs and then I'd be hungry again. I'd be hungry again. The blood sugar on carnivore is just perfectly level. And I guess the last thing I'll say real quick, you kind of mentioned this in your question. I had a very deep why for doing this. I mean, I was begging, praying to God, like, give me something because my depression was just so hopeless. And he gave it to me like this changed my depression and my— I would have given anything in the whole world just to have a baseline. I used to get so jealous of people when I was in the deepest depression. I'm like, man, I wish I could just be normal like that person. And this took me on the opposite end of whatever hopeless is in terms of depression. I'm not just at a baseline. Like I am just full of gratitude. I'm thankful, grateful, blessed. Like I want for nothing. It's just It's incredible the mind shift change on carnivore. So like for that reason alone, it has been such a game changer. And then, um, I always show people this, but I guess for those watching, for those listening, I'm holding up a container of pills. This was about 15 to 20 medications I was on at one time, and I'm on zero now. It took a while for me to do that on carnivore, and I did it responsibly through my doctors and weaned off, but Not being on any medications, uh, it's been a big game changer for me too. But I, I have so many important whys that I don't want to change, but the biggest reason is it, it just, it feels so natural. I feel incredible that I, I haven't changed or, or even struggled on it.

That's amazing. And I, I wanna make sure that I mention this resource for people since that you mentioned that depression was one of the biggest things. Um, I'm sure your doc— I'm sure you're familiar at this point with Dr. Chris Palmer, and he wrote a a book called Brain Energy. I'll put the link in the show notes. Um, but what, you know, what Carrie is experiencing on this diet is not an isolated instance. And so Chris Palmer is a Harvard-educated doctor. He is doing all this research around using ketogenic— and, you know, carnivore is kind of a subset of the ketogenic diet— but to use that to treat really, uh, serious depression, uh, bipolar, schizophrenia, things that were not amenable to any other treatments have gotten exponentially better by changing the diet. And so if you've never heard of this before, I just wanted to put his name out there and mention the book, um, so that if you're— first of all, don't, you know, obviously don't go off your medication or do anything without talking to your doctor, um, but I do think exploring this diet-brain connection is really worthwhile, especially if you have not had success on, um, the antidepressant medicines that we have, because it's very common that they don't work for people. Unfortunately, um, they only work in— I think the last stat I heard was something like maybe 30% of cases, but most people don't get full relief from their depression just by drugs. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure I put that resource out there for people. Um, and then my follow-up question for you, Carrie, is, you know, you mentioned the heart component because you'd already had issues with your heart in the past before you went on this diet, and you said people were already calling you crazy and all of this. Did you do any of your blood markers before you started carnivore, and is that something that you continually follow? I'd just be really curious to hear what your experience with that has been.

Yes, so I was to the doctor so much before this, so I had blood work done. Um, the biggest thing I had was the, uh, I had a heart echo done before doing carnivore, not because I was doing carnivore. Um, I had just had a couple done because I have had a lifelong irregular heartbeat since birth, and highly erratic to the point every time I'd go to the doctor, you know, the nurse will take your blood pressure, they'll check your heart every single time they're like, oh, do you realize you have an irregular heartbeat? And every single time I'm like, yes, it's in my notes and you guys tell me this every single time. And I've worn probably 20 different heart monitors. I remember in kindergarten I had to wear these big vests and then in the last couple years it was just like this little thing, but to always check my heart. Um, so I had that done, cholesterol, blood work, I had most of that stuff done as well. One of the craziest things, so 6 months into carnivore, I had all my blood work done. And everything looked excellent. The only thing that was elevated was my total cholesterol number. But there's a lot of misconceptions with that as well. I've actually talked to Dr. Philip Ovadia now, who was my inspiration initially. I've since interviewed him for the documentary we're working on, but he talks about cholesterol, and it's not the quantity of your cholesterol, it's the quality. That's what Dr. Ovadia talks about as a heart surgeon. And you can do an advanced lipid panel to see if you have like the dense particles or the puffy particles. And there's a big difference. There's a lot of science into it when a lot of people just like, what's the total number? So my total number was up, but when you actually dig into the quality of it, it's, it's excellent. In fact, all of my markers are better now on carnivore than they've been my entire life. My blood pressure is like 120 over 80. The craziest thing is this. Everything I'm telling you right now is verifiable in my medical records, which I've shared on my YouTube channel, and we're sharing in the documentary. Anybody that wants to see it, because people just, they don't even believe me when I first started talking about this. One year into carnivore, I went to the doctor because I'm like, I want to check up this congestive heart failure. When they diagnosed me with that, ejection fraction 44, congestive heart failure, it's really scary. Like, am I going to die? What does that mean? Heart failure? What they told me was it's chronic. Heart failure is chronic. And they said the best you're going to be able to do, Carrie, is keep it the same, but it's probably going to get worse. You're not going to get any better from this.

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Now back to the show., but on one year onto carnivore, I felt like I could run a marathon. And prior to this, I would stand up and I would get dizzy. And I'm like, I just, this feels so much better. And then my wife and I were watching a movie at home, kind of laying down, and she had her head on my chest and she said, your heart is beating normally for the first time. And my wife and I have been together since age 14. She's been to many of my appointments and I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. You're not a doctor. There's like, there's no way. I went to Walgreens and I bought a stethoscope and I listened to it. I'm like, oh my goodness. This sounds normal to me, and I felt so much better. So long story short, I'm like, I'm going to go into the cardiologist. First time, all of these appointments I've had throughout my whole life on carnivore, I wasn't sick at all. That whole first year, I wasn't sick at all. Didn't need to go to the doctor for anything. But I'm like, I just want to check this out. They set me up for a heart echo. They checked my heart, and my ejection fraction is 65, which is normal for a lot of people out there. I thought Why isn't it 100? I want 100. It doesn't get to 100. You die. 65 is perfect. So my irregular heartbeat is the other thing. So I reversed the congestive heart failure and my irregular heartbeat that my wife checked. I then had— they checked it in the echo and the cardiologist checked it. The nurse checked it. Normal, normal, normal. For the first time in 43 years, my heartbeat is normal, which that almost blows my mind more than the congestive heart failure. I've heard of people like have temporary irregular heartbeats, but since birth I've had it and it's completely normal now. It's, it's just, it's, it's crazy. Some of this just blows my mind. Um, I talked to Dr. Philip Ovadia about it. I'm like, how is this possible? And he said, well, there's a couple things. You, the heart performs much more efficiently while in ketosis. When your body is burning fat for fuel instead of sugar, the heart and the brain perform more efficiently. But he hadn't heard of cases like this. It's, it's really uncharted territory. People that get congestive heart failure don't normally go, I'm gonna only eat meat right now. So it's kind of a rare thing. But he also said you lost a bunch of weight that first year. So I'm like, right now I'm down 100 pounds since my heaviest. That's putting a lot less stress on your heart. And then also I took some electrolytes on carnivore, like some magnesium and things like that. And he said that could help as well. So it could be a couple factors, but he's like, it's basically, it's uncharted territory. The last thing I'll say real quick, I I announced this on my YouTube channel. I had a ton of responses and I have had dozens of people tell me the same thing, that they've either reversed their congestive heart failure or their irregular heartbeat. I know it's all anecdotal and it's not real science, but a lot of people coming out of the woodwork saying similar results. So it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, that's amazing. And I hope that you have the ability to get some of those people on your documentary as well, because that's really interesting evidence. I mean, like you said, it's not a controlled study or anything, but you know, you can't deny, and especially when this is something that you've had your entire life and then you get this change from a diet. I mean, that's— it's almost like a legitimate miracle, honestly.

Yeah, I mean, I tell people it, it really saved my life. Like, I was— it was so hopeless there at the end. And, um, within the first 30 days of me doing carnivore, I stopped snoring almost right away. The depression, anxiety took a while longer, but 3 weeks in, I had this, whoa, what is going on? Like, I feel my mood is better. The depression wasn't completely gone, but, and then the IBS within a couple of weeks, my stomach, at one point I said to my wife, I'm like, I can't feel my stomach. Like, what is going on? There's always been this weight or this pressure there. It was just completely gone. And yeah, I was, I was just so excited from there. And then I started doing more research and hearing more people sharing similar results.

So what would you say to someone, somebody that's out there that's hearing this? Maybe they've had depression now or in the past. Maybe they feel like they would feel better if they lost some weight. What advice would you have for them, having gone through this process and having been someone that has tried every diet out there? What would be your advice to how to get started with carnivore?

I love your question. This is the biggest reason I'm so passionate about this. I was hopelessly depressed And I thought it was something wrong with me. There's just, it's a fluke. It's a genetic issue. It's a chemical imbalance. It's hormones. I don't know. It's just, there's something wrong with me that I'm always going to be depressed. And sadly, I think there's a lot of things that happen in healthcare that do that. They almost put the blame on us or it's a fluke or we don't know. And then you go, it's hopeless then because you're never going to treat the root cause of the problem. I don't believe anyone is hopeless or they have, from what I've heard. So you mentioned Chris Palmer. He's incredible. Absolutely incredible, the work he's done. There's also Dr. Georgia Ede. She recently came out with a book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, and it's speaking about a lot of the same stuff and expanding on what Chris Palmer talked about. So many instances of people overcoming horrible depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. It's, it's like, it's at the early stages because there's not— it's kind of a new area, but it, it's happening on just a huge scale right now. So my advice for people would be just try this. You don't have to be hopeless. And carnivore sounds crazy, but what I've realized afterwards is what I am doing is returning to what is natural for humans as close as possible. As humanity, we've gotten so far away from what is natural. The 60,000 products in the grocery store, that's a new phenomenon. Like being able to go on your phone and just tap and have food here The foods, the foods that we're eating now, it's crazy. Some of it's starting to come out now, but people argue like even vegetables, when you look at vegetables now versus 50 years ago, they have 1/7 the nutrients they did 50 years ago. Plus you have pesticides, plus you have glyphosate. Even on organic vegetables, 60% of those have glyphosate on them, 60% of them. And glyphosate is an antibiotic. So, We have escaped so far from what is natural. My advice for people that are hopeless with depression, try this. I spent 15 years on so many different SSRIs and antidepressant medications, and I would have given anything for just an additional tool in the toolbox that would get— would have given me hope. And I'm telling you, like, this is what it is. And it's not just me. I have interviewed hundreds of people that have done a carnivore diet. Both for my documentary and YouTube. And almost every single one of them had some component of mental health issues. Some of them had major depressive disorders, bipolar. Almost all of them, though, have brain fog, anxiety. And every single one of them has noticeable improvements or complete reversal or remission of depression, anxiety when they eat a proper human diet. And the encouraging thing is, for a lot of people, it happens within 3 weeks to a month. Not everyone, it's different, but there's a lot of people within 3 weeks. So I always tell people, if you're suffering this bad, 30 days goes by so quick. You're going to go by your whole life. It's such a shame to me that most people are going to go through their whole lives never feeling the way I feel right now, because it's absolutely incredible when that brain fog lifts. The depression's gone, the anxiety's gone, the energy goes up. But when that brain fog lifts, you can't see the fog while you're in the fog. And a lot of people watching this are like, I got a little bit of brain fog. I'm here to tell you, you have no idea how bad that brain fog is until you get out of it. It's not just myself saying that. I've heard it from probably 100 other people saying it as well.

So yeah, and I would agree. I, I've shared this on my channels before, but I had depression on and off my whole adult life, was on different antidepressants. None of them really ever worked. Fortunately, it wasn't a super severe depression or anything like that, but it was always there with me. And it was like, like I said, on and off. I'd try different things, it would never work. And it wasn't until I went keto that I really noticed a significant difference. And ever since I went keto in 2017, I haven't been on any antidepressant medication since. Um, and that's not to say, you know, every time— there's times in your life where things are going on and things shift. And it's not to say you never feel sad again or you never get depressed for a short amount of time, but it's not the same thing as what we're talking about as being like like you're depressed enough that you need to go on medication. Um, so yeah, I would totally agree with you. And we're not the only ones out there. There's plenty of people that have had this experience. And I think the more that people talk about it, and the people that— actually, somebody that you know in real life that knows you and has seen the experience of you changing from how you were, you know, for the last 20 years of your life to how you are today, Carrie, it's like they've got to just have no question in their mind that this is what promoted such a huge change. So I'm guessing like you, you know, you went through this transformation and not only like weight, but the mood and everything else and your IBS. And you, I just feel like you wanna shout it to the world. Right. So I'm guessing that that's how you got started with this documentary. And I'd love to hear who you've been talking to. I know you've got Dr. Ken Berry, you mentioned the I Fix Hearts guy. Uh, who else have you been talking to and what's kind of your goal with the documentary? What do you hope to accomplish and who else do you need to talk to in case anybody hears this and wants to tell their story to you?

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Yeah, it was day 67 of carnivore for me. I said, we need a documentary about this because this is powerful. I did a video on my YouTube channel on day 30, my 30-day update, and it just kind of went crazy, um, which was great. But the comments I was getting, it was like I had comments from people in their 60s, 70s, 80s. They're like, I've been doing carnivore for 5 years, I'm thriving and they're telling me all of these things, overcoming depression. And my worry was though, Dr. Berry and some of these other guys, they're doing a great job on YouTube, but I'm like, YouTube's such a small subset of the population. I learned about keto through a Netflix documentary years ago. So I'm like, we need a, we need a documentary on carnivore. There's a lot on keto that are very good. And so I just announced it rather foolishly actually, because I've never done a documentary before. And actually, it was sort of my idea and my daughter, my daughter Emma, my wife and I have triplets plus one. And my daughter Emma was vegan for 5 years and she decided to completely switch from vegan to carnivore. I didn't force her. I never thought she would even do it. She was just suffering. And she came up with this shirt. It was called Compassionate Carnivore because she's vegan for compassionate reasons. She'll only eat meat if it's compassionately raised. We get a lot of our stuff from our neighbor. It's grass-fed, grass-finished. The cows are good, no feedlots, nothing like that. So I said, you're a compassionate carnivore. She made this shirt, we were going to sell the shirt, and I'm like, I don't feel right profiting off of this. I feel like I was so sick for so long because of greed sort of run amok. I was like, maybe we could use the money from the shirt to do a documentary. That was how it sort of started, and it just went crazy from there. I, I just, I'm like, let me just try Dr. Ken Berry. This guy's a bestselling author, he's got 3 million subscribers, there's no way he's going to talk to me. Let me see if I— I'll just email him or whatever. And it was amazing how accessible these people were. I guess they saw my story too, and they saw that I had lost a bunch of weight and overcame depression. But Dr. Chafee was the first one I reached out to. I went on a YouTube video with him, and then I just said, I don't want to put you on the spot, Dr. Chafee, but I want to do this documentary. I need an expert in it. He said, 100%, I'm in. And then shortly after, I was I got connected with Dr. Berry and I did the same thing, and he's like, I'm in. And these guys have been just incredible. So, uh, after that, Dr. Philip Ovadia, then Dr. Shawn Baker, who was the original— he wrote the book Carnivore, he was on Joe Rogan. Um, I've since met him and interviewed him, and, uh, actually he lifted me up like a little baby because he's like a bodybuilder. We did a little thumbnail picture. We, uh, me and my buddy Adam lifted him up, and it wasn't as easy as him lifting us up, but Yeah, we've got Dr. Philip Ovadia, the heart surgeon, Dr. Georgia Ede. I'd love to get Dr. Chris Palmer in there as well, but Georgia Ede is incredible. She's a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. She's been doing this for 25 years. In fact, just last week I was down in Florida and we filmed her. The biggest reason I wanted to do the documentary was mental health and depression.

It's just—

was such a game changer for me. I was so hopeless and I've learned that it's helped so many other people. Initially, it was going to be, let's do a carnivore diet documentary. It's no longer— it has since changed. It's carnivore isn't even the name. The name is Healing Humanity: The Power of a Proper Human Diet. What I have learned is I am healing and doing so well because I returned to what is natural for humans. As crazy as that sounds, I believe eating beef, ruminant beef, grass-fed, grass-finished beef has like a multi-chamber stomach. If it's eating grass that has glyphosate or pesticides on it, most of that is processed out. So Given the 60,000 options, I feel like I am eating as natural as possible. But besides the food we're eating, it's like sitting under fluorescent lights all day, staring at screens. We're doing things that are so unnatural for humans. So that's really what I'm advocating for in the documentary is returning to what is natural, mainly through diet, but also our other everyday activities. It's mostly carnivore, but we have a woman that had stage 4 cancer and she did fasting and she used a strict ketogenic plant-based diet and she had really good success with that. So for me, I'm not like, it's not us against them or anything. It's just returning to what is natural. We also, the last thing I'll say real quick is we have Tammy Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife. She had stage 4 cancer and she's been carnivore for like 6 years. It turns out she's been watching my YouTube videos, which just completely blows my mind. She emailed me and said she wanted to have me on her podcast. And then in turn, I said, I would love to have you in our documentary. You overcame stage 4 terminal cancer. She was told she's gonna die and she's been in remission for years now. She attributes that to prayer and the carnivore diet because she's starving the cancer of glucose and she was doing some fasting, I think, as well. But long story short, she agreed to be in the documentary. So we're filming her in January and her husband, Jordan Peterson, watched our little teaser trailer with her and tweeted it out. This was just not a couple, like 2 months ago, tweeted it out, which just blows my mind. So we're filming Tammy Peterson. We have a couple more people to film, but, um, the whole purpose of the documentary, real quick, because I don't even think I mentioned this, is we're following real individuals over a year that are doing a carnivore diet, proper human diet, to overcome various health issues. One of them has obesity, one of them has cancer, one of them has horrible depression. We're going to check in in the beginning and then a year later. And then in the middle, we have a bunch of other shorter stories and then all of these good doctors like Dr. Berry and Dr. Shade and so on.

Yeah, it sounds amazing. I can't wait for this to come out. And if there's any way, anything I can do at all, I don't have a huge audience, but I would be happy to promote it in any way that I can. So, Carrie, that being said, when do you anticipate the documentary coming out? And in the meantime, where can people sign up to like be on a mailing list or something so that they know when the documentary is live? How can they follow you? Where are the best places to visit you online?

We're hoping to launch the documentary in the middle of next year, summertime. Um, the reason it's kind of taking so long is because we're following a couple of those people for a year and some of them haven't quite hit a year yet. And yeah, if you want to learn more, here's the interesting thing. So we're doing the documentary Healing Humanity. We have had so many incredible stories come through that I'm like, this documentary is going to be 9 hours. How do I cut this out? Like, how do I not share this story? So we've decided we're going to also do a series afterwards, and I'm really excited about the series because we're going to have a whole series on just cancer, a whole series on just type 2 diabetes, a whole series on depression. So whatever your issue is, you can watch that series. There'll be specific doctors and experts and individuals that overcame those things in that series. I believe this is going to go on forever. It's like, it's my passion in life now. I don't imagine I'll ever stop doing this. The series will probably have seasons. So if people want to share their story, they can do that. Or if they want to support our documentary, it's completely crowdfunded. We don't have any bias. A lot of documentaries nowadays are sponsored by Beyond Meat or some pharmaceutical or some bias. Ours has been completely crowdfunded. I've been doing live streams. We did a 24-hour live stream. So The website is healinghumanity.movie. You can go there to register if you want to share your story, to sort of follow along. We have a separate YouTube channel for that. If you're interested in donating and supporting what we're doing, we sell the shirts and every penny we get from the shirts, the donations, it goes 100% to the documentary. I'm not taking a salary. I spent thousands of dollars of my own money. I want to do this all as a passion project. I just want to do something where there doesn't have to be profit or money involved because like I said, I feel like That is why I was so sick for so long, was kind of greed run amok sort of thing. So yeah, healinghumanity.movie is the website, and we have a little teaser trailer on there if you click on the little About Us. That, um, that's the one that Jordan Peterson tweeted out if anyone wants to watch that trailer.

Yeah, amazing. And you also mentioned you have a YouTube channel, of course, so people should follow you there as well. Is that, um, something with homestead, right?

Yeah, it's a little unusual. So it's called Homestead How, H-O-W. I've been homesteading for years and doing YouTube, and then I found carnivore. Now I just do Carnivore videos. I have hundreds of interviews on there. In fact, just yesterday I interviewed Dr. Ken Berry again, uh, for the second or third time. That one's not quite live yet, but I do lots of carnivore interviews and, um, have the good doctors on and live streams and things like that. So that one's Homestead Hour.

Amazing. Well, Carrie, it was so nice, uh, hearing about your story today, and I am going to thoroughly enjoy following you now myself, now that I know about your story and, and know about your passion and your work. I just love it when people take something like this that has improved their life so much and start sharing it with others. And that's kind of how my little podcast situation got started as well. So I really appreciate that. But anyway, thanks for taking the time to share your story today, and I hope we'll be seeing a lot more of you.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

This has been the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Again, I'm Cheryl McColgan. Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow. You can find show notes for this episode at healnourishgrowpodcast.com. If you have feedback on today's episode or questions about the content, please email us at podcast@healnourishgrow.com. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to sign up for our email list at healnourishgrow.com and subscribe to the show with your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Join us next time for more information that helps you live your best and healthiest life. Thanks for listening. Content on the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast does not constitute medical advice. Content contained in the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is not intended as medical diagnosis or treatment. Neither the company nor its owner, Heal, Nourish, Grow LLC, nor any of the company's employees, agents, or guest speakers provide medical advice. The content provided on Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your medical provider with any questions about what health practices are right for you.