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An experiment with a sample size of one

I eat mostly meat and I train with my own bodyweight. No gym, no supplements, nothing for sale. What follows is a record of what I did and what happened to me — which is the weakest form of evidence there is, and the only kind I actually have.

Carnivore →

What I eat, why I started, what changed, and the honest case against it.

The diet →

Calisthenics →

Bodyweight training in my fifties, around twelve-hour shifts, with no equipment.

The training →

The log →

Numbers, dated. Weight, body composition, blood results and what I can actually do.

The data →

Why I write this down

There is an enormous amount of fitness and nutrition content on the internet and almost all of it has something to sell you — a programme, a supplement, a coaching package, or just the idea that the author has it figured out. I have none of those. I'm a man in his fifties who works twelve-hour shifts on a psychiatric ward and wanted to find out what actually worked on him.

So the rule for this section is simple and I'd like to be held to it: I report what I did and what happened to me. Not what you should do. Not what the research says you should do. What happened, including the parts that didn't work and the parts I got wrong.

One person, no control group, no blinding, and every incentive to believe it worked. That's what an n of 1 is worth — which is something, but not much.

Why bodyweight and why meat

Both choices came from the same place: I needed something that survived contact with my actual life. Shift work destroys gym routines. Meal prep collapses when you're leaving the house at six and getting home at nine. Anything requiring a facility, a schedule or a supplement order was going to fail within a month, because it had before.

Bodyweight training needs a floor and a bar. Eating one category of food removes every decision. Neither is optimal. Both are things I've actually kept doing, which turns out to matter more than optimal.

What I'm not doing

  • Selling a programme, a plan, a course or a supplement.
  • Telling anyone to eat this way or train this way.
  • Pretending the evidence base for carnivore is strong. It isn't, and I say so on that page.
  • Hiding results that don't flatter the argument. The log is the log.

This is a record of what I did, not advice about what you should do. I'm a registered nurse, not a dietitian, and I'm not your clinician. Nothing on this page is personal medical advice and reading it doesn't put me in a professional relationship with you.

Before changing your diet substantially, speak to your GP — particularly if you take any regular medication, have diabetes, kidney, liver or heart disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have any history of disordered eating. Restrictive diets can be genuinely harmful for some people, and "it worked for me" is the weakest form of evidence there is.