The Weight Came Back Anyway

[00:00:00]Penny, how did you find Carnivore?

[00:00:04]>> Okay, Dave. Well, first, thank you so much for having me on your channel. I just absolutely love it. I watch it all the time, as often as I can. Um, well, so really, uh, probably bit over a year ago. Um, my husband and I are both carnivore and have been since the 1st of May, uh, 25 officially. So, a bit over a year now. But like a couple 3 months beforehand um we saw a video that Dr. Elizabeth Bright had put up and uh what caught my eye was she was talking about couple tablespoons of butter before bed that's going to help your sleep help with the cortisol so on etc. And uh why that uh struck me was my husband at the time was sleeping terrible like you know for a solid 3 months or so he wasn't getting through uh the night at all. He was waking up all hours of the night um and uh and just very quickly about 8 years ago he had like a psychotic breakdown.

[00:01:11]Him and I are both nurses or his background was nursing. Um I'll come back to that Dave because one of the things that's happened uh over the past eight years is that he's had a couple of strokes. Uh one was an obstructive stroke. Uh the other one was a bleed. Uh but um and he also had this uh MBA where he was run over by a fully loaded uh 40 ton truck uh in his truck. He had a kind of a little quick uh near-death experience for a moment there. Uh but when he was taken to hospital at that point, um you know, the police and ambulance um extracted him and my brother from the vehicle, uh they found that he'd had this previous stroke. They couldn't say when and um uh you know uh but that he'd had scarring there. Uh both Steve and I are nurses. As I say, our background, I'm still nursing and uh our money is on the fact that possibly uh it may have occurred, this mental breakdown might have tied in also with when he had this first stroke that the hospital are now saying. They can't say when that happened, right? Uh but at the time he had this mental breakdown.

[00:02:34]what I was noticing was suddenly sudden personality and behavior changes so on and so forth. Anyway, uh so that's why we think possibly that's maybe when something to do with, you know, the stroke that he had this breakdown and there were other things happening as well. But anyhow, so moving forward, we're watching Elizabeth Bright and I'm watching this video. Oh, look. Right.

[00:02:58]Okay. So I say to him, let's I watch this video and this doctor's saying if we try a couple of tablespoons of butter before you go to bed, um it's going to help you uh to sleep. And um so he's on medication for blood pressure. He's on an anti- depressions as well. And we thought and like he's waking up in the middle of the night two three like I say Dave and he's going uh you know I won't swear out loud but he's like effing freaking you know and he's wanting to spit the dummy because it's oh my god it's effing freaking 2 3 in the morning and what have you. So we we go to try the the butter. I give him a tablespoon an hour out. I give him another tablespoon half an hour out to bed. Off we go. I'm almost beside myself to ask him the following morning, how did you sleep? You know, and um he says, "Well, I woke up and it's dark and I thought he f you." And he goes to look at the time and it's half 5 in the morning, Dave.

[00:04:00]The first night he's slept through until in like over 3 months. And we think, "Okay, don't get too excited. Night number two, you know, let's do it again." So, we do it again the following morning. He sleeps through till 6:00 a.m. We can hardly believe it. We're like, you know, this is miraculous.

[00:04:22]Unbelievable. 2 tablespoons of butter.

[00:04:25]Are you kidding me? You know, we're thinking like we're talking like this.

[00:04:29]Could be a fluke. Could be a fluke. You know, hey, wait and see. So, we go for night number three and um another 5:30 in the morning. So, three nights in a row. First time he slept in through the night um in over 3 months and uh all we've done is introduce the butter and of course Dr. Elizabeth Bright is talking about carnivore and so I had watched a couple of things and uh you know the the gang Dr. Chaffy, Dr. Barry um you know Bellar um and so forth all all the ones Dr. B was and of course I'm starting to watch some of you as well. So we dive in on the the first a couple week of May last year and a couple weeks beforehand I'd kind of started to sort of cut out the pasta and the mashed potato and the and the rice and stuff like that. And then we're into it both of us on the on the first of um May last year. So just after a year now. Um so Dave just a little bit of sort of backstory. You know, I grew up on the east coast of North Island and New Zealand. My dad had a fabulous garden. Uh we didn't eat a lot of junk food. It was really, you know, Christmas, those sorts of things. We had one little fish and chip shop in our in our township. That was it. There were no Chinese takeaways and stuff like that.

[00:05:50]Um you know, so I didn't eat a lot of junk. Uh you know, I I liked a piece of cake or a dessert and stuff like that if we happened to do baking or something like that. But right up until my 20ies, my mid20ies, I could pretty eat much, you know, eat whatever I wanted. I didn't have a weight problem. You know, my my sister would go, "My god, you've not got a an ounce of cellulite on your body." You know, all this kind of thing.

[00:06:16]And um and looking back, I pretty much ate the rainbow, ate the pyramid, although no one was telling us kind of that. But I thought I ate well. A lot of fruit and veggies. I was pretty active as well, Dave. you know, I I um hubby and I did the gym for years and I used to uh you know, run and jog. Wasn't unusual for me to do 5 10k uh you know, walks, run. We've got a local hill here in our township where uh and you know, look out and uh you know, we would I'd go up and down that several times. I'd do be doing the tracks and and then at one point I was swimming. I loved swimming. I'd swim with a mask and I'd do like uh 2ks in an hour freestyle non-stop. Um if I had more time, I'd I'd swim uh 2 hours, do 4Ks freestyle non-stop, you know, and I I loved it. I I really felt like I could swim all swim all day. Uh but what happened there is I started to get these hideous vicelike cramps. Uh, one day I was stuck in the pool for literally 25 minutes, Dave, and I thought, I'm going to have to put my hand up to be rescued out of the pool cuz I've got this full leg length uh, hideous cramp. And by then, I was already supplementing with the maximum uh, dosage of uh, magnesium that I could take for that. Even phoned up one of the uh, manufacturers of a product and said, "Look, you know, this is what's happening. Can I take this?" Yep. Yep.

[00:07:48]And then I discovered a magnesium topical oil spray. Uh, fantastic and a lifesaver. I mean, the cramps were so bad sometimes I would wake up thrown myself out of bed a couple of times and they would reduce me to tears. In fact, you know, I'm thinking, "What the hell?"

[00:08:06]And I I supplement more than anyone else I know. You know, I'm getting these uh cramps and stuff like that. But uh listening to Dr. Chaffy on a couple of his videos. I've since learned that um magnesium can be depleted if you are kind of you know stressed or chronically stressed and I think I have been under a lowgrade chronic stress uh particularly you know these past 8 years plus I'm a nurse and the last 12 13 years I've worked in the inpatient psych unit here in our city and um you know that comes with its uh its issues and stuff like challenges and stuff too. So, and also Dr. Chapy says, "I do still drink coffee." Um, that can also deplete your, you know, magnesium a little bit. So, I still have those things kind of going on and, you know, I drink the coffee and to some degree the chronic lowgrade uh stress. Um, but anyhow, so otherwise, I think I ate mostly, you know, pretty good by your typical, you know, dietary kind of standards. Um, one thing though when I look back now having been poundable this one year, Dave, is that uh when I was about 17 and 18 and uh you know I'm half I was half the woman I am now you know and I'm young and I ended up at one point I hope this is not too much information but you know I'm a nurse so you know physiology the body doesn't sort of bother me you know um so there was a year where literally a year Dave where I had thrush uh you know vaginal thrush. I was getting thrush in my mouth. I you know I was having every pesery, every cream, every medication that the doctor could prescribe me for literally a year. A year you know and again Dave maybe a bit much information. At one point it was so painful for me to void or urinate in the L. I would sting so badly I peed in the bath one time because I was in so much discomfort and pain. Anyhow, but later on sort of towards the end of that year, I discovered at a health shop a um a homeopathic or supplement capsule made from a you know native uh like a like a tea tree mana style um you know plant that we have here in New Zealand.

[00:10:42]took a course of that and also I discovered this herbal soap that kind of soothed and helped when you were, you know, bathing or showering and stuff like that. Honest to God, I mean, this was such a distraction and a thing for me that I wanted to tell anyone who was prepared to listen. Oh my god, if you, you know, if your pets rush or anything like that, try this supplement, try this soap. And I still use the soap today and it, you know, it made such a difference.

[00:11:09]But I look back now and think that um you know so obviously I had systemic candida and didn't uh you know didn't realize where it was coming from and I totally know now that it was uh you know uh dietary dietarydriven and then I also got ended up with you know tinier in my toes which I I blamed my sister giving that to my husband and I using our nail clippers and so wearing our socks but of course now I realized that that's all part of this whole, you know, high carb, heavy uh way of eating and stuff like that. Uh so that was that I've got the cramps going on. Um but then I met my husband and we got married uh back in 1990 and up until then I never had a weight issue at all. Uh you know, felt like I could eat what I wanted and I was seemingly getting away with it. Then I got married and I ballooned in weight. I like I put on massively uh huge weight. At my heaviest as a youth up until that point uh 10 stone 140 lb, right? Um at my heaviest Dave, I ballooned up to so 128 kgs. And because I put the weight on quickly after I got um married, you know, I'm going to say, you know, within a year or so of sort of being married, probably some comfort eating, whatever.

[00:12:43]But anyway, um it just, you know, it just wiped me out. I just felt like, wo, so sudden. And one day, Dave, I'll never forget it. Um, I burst into tears because we were going to go to town, uh, you know, my husband asked, you know, pop into town and do something and I just burst into tears and it was summer and I just thought, "Oh my god, I'm I'm so lethargic. I'm so wiped out." The thought of having to get in the car, get in and out of the car, and I burst into tears, and I didn't I didn't go. He went I've never forgotten that. I thought, "What the hell is wrong with you?" you know, well, I knew it was the weight and stuff like that, but and you know, I'll say that I've always considered myself an optimistic person, you know, a happy bubblyish person, glass half full type of girl, you know, and to to be crying about having to go to town and get in and out of the car cuz it's too hot and I just feel so terrible was just uh ridiculous to me. But anyway, sort of, you know, on we went, carried on and uh with all the, you know, the running, the walking, the 10k, you know, hikes up and down the hill, the tracks, the swimming and everything like that, I did uh drop a considerable amount of weight and I managed to keep it off with the exercise, right? So, that was yay. And um but all the while Dave um you know I I ate like I never knew when my last meal was coming and I just could not understand you know I'm thinking I'm not eating a lot of rubbish. You know I'm cooking home-cooked meals and you know decent meals at that and what have you. I'm eating my fruit and my veg. How can it be that I, you know, we might have pasta for dinner one night, you know, shrimp pasta or something like that and I could polish off, you know, a pole of pasta and then half an hour I could be eating more pasta and then if it was any left that my husband hadn't eaten, I could wipe out the rest of the pan of pasta and then yeah, and then soon after that I'd be like, you know, I couldn't sit down and have one or two nectarines. I would sit down and have, you know, one or two kgs literally at a time. And we've always had fruit trees. And for instance, I would have a half 10 kg uh you 10 liter bucket of our beautiful feed jars from our tree sitting next to me. And I would be munching on them continuously, continuously.

[00:15:22]And periodically I'd be saying to myself, how can I be just managing such quantity, such sheer volume of food and yet still in an hour, half an hour be feeling like I can stick something else more in, you know? And I did. I did. I would literally graze and eat all day long.

[00:15:46]And and when I wasn't eating, I'd be thinking to myself, like so many have said on your videos, um right, uh what can I eat? When can I eat? Uh what did I last eat? You know, and the food noise, you know, that was a term that I became familiar with, you know, that that's what I had going on for like decades, right? for decades and didn't realize that I had I had this uh this food food noise. Um so when you invited I I got your invite and that was in response to I commented to that uh retired dietician right and I told her how you know um you know a few years back I went along my doctor said your cholesterol is a bit raised penny off to the hospital dietician. So, I went and uh she told me all the things, the food pyramid, the rainbow, cut the fat of everything, no cream, no butter, all of that. So, you know, and I'm nodding my head, yeah, right, right, right. But all the while, I didn't know about carnivore, but I did know about kind of low carb. And I did know what I was doing wrong. I was eating too much too enjoying the desserts too much, you know, too much of the carb processed treats and stuff like that. And so I nodded my head and I off I went and I did the exact opposite of what she said.

[00:17:12]Did email you that. And um uh I listened to nothing she said. I ate the cream. I ate the steak with the fat on the chicken with the skin on, you know. Um I went meat heavy. I radically I just stopped all the the crap stuff. I did eat still some fruit and veg cuz I I wasn't a carnivore. I went back a month later and smuggly told her, "Oh, great, Penny. Your cholesterol's back in normal range. What did you do?" And I could hardly wait to tell her nothing that you told me and this is what I did. But anyway, she was pleased for me. And so so I I carried on. But that that uh reminds me, Dave, that um you know, I'm a nurse in the hospital, right? For 23 years, I've been asking the house officers, the house surgeons, the new house surgeons coming on board every year. So, you know, are they teaching you anything about nutrition or anything like that? They just do not, you know, they they they're lucky if they get a couple of hours and things, uh, you know, let alone a couple of days in their seven years or whatever it takes them, you know, electrolytes, vitamins, stuff like that. They are simply not taught about nutrition at all. the new wave of um physicians coming through now in some cases like the integrator physicians, the functional u medicine doctors. Yeah, they're they're a different breed and thank god they know way more about nutrition and they are certainly looking at at that uh you know dietary focus for people but um it irks me Dave because now we know you know you and I know and the carnivore community know that um you know we're all told the world over uh go to your doctor for health advice and you know lifestyle and nutrition advice and if you need you know to lose weight or whatever like you know ask your doctor.

[00:19:04]Well, why? Because they just don't they don't know. And the dieticians are no different because they're all taught the same, you know, uh pasta, bread, lots of that. Cut your red meat, don't eat red meat at all, you know, lot you all this kind of thing, which we know is just not working for people. So, that that really irks me kind of now to kind of know this and like you know what I'm saying. Um but so you know dietwise like I had tried weight watchers um I read the uh Dr. Akins book and I did that for a bit and uh and that certainly made a difference in health. Uh, one of the extreme things that, uh, I did, and I don't know that I've heard any of your viewers um or your guests share this, is that I had a neighbor, Dave, when we uh, you know, when I was a young adult still, and I'm 62 now, but um, anyway, had a neighbor, hadn't seen him for a while. He was actually uh the um president of the local mongrel mob chapter back back then. But anyhow, nice guy, nice neighbor to us. But anyhow, um I bumped into him in town one day and I'm like, "Oh my lord, you know, he's like half the man I remembered him being." So we stopped and say hi cuz we were neighbors obviously previously and um I said, "What has happened? You have lost so much weight." Well, Dave, um, he had had his jaw wired shut by a dentist and lost over six stone and had to eat through a straw for, you know, however many months and stuff like that. And I was like, that's obviously what I need to do. And so, the most extreme thing I ever did was get my my my dentist, one of the local dentist, wired my mouth shut. And I did the same thing. I had to eat through uh a straw, you know, liquid foods for a number of months. Um I lost a lot of weight. Uh you had to go in periodically to get these wires tightened. That was traumatic. I burst into tears. It was just so painful and uncomfortable. But of course, I lost the weight. The minute the wires come out, you carry on eating like you did. The weight just comes back on. And so so the weight the weight did uh come back come back on for me and anyway so I'm chugging along for the uh next few years and right through to my uh you know 40s I'm I'm swimming I'm doing all of that still able to do that to try and you know maintain the weight and not balloon out of control altogether until the cramps got to beyond a joke. I had to stop the swimming and then I went to walk my dogs one day. We live near a golf course. I went to step out and step onto the neighboring property lawn and I tripped in a hole and jarred my my knee.

[00:22:22]ripped my knee and then that was the beginning of the end basically of the running and jogging and the um you know the 5 10k walks that I could do. It came right. I felt like I ripped my kneecap half off type thing. I fell obviously and uh it it came right but then when my husband and I would go like up the hill and we'd be jogging down and then suddenly out of the blue um I would get this random sharp pain across that knee and I thought I'm going to end up eating tarmac here you know um road seal if I fall while I'm jogging down this hill.

[00:22:59]So I I stopped doing that and slowly but surely I became sedentary.

[00:23:07]So the weight is starting to go on and honestly Dave if I thought you could be fat and get away with it I'd be more power to you. But you cannot be fat and get away with it and it will it catches up with you you know with a vengeance comes back to bite you. I think um everyone will agree uh healthwise you know with various ailments and conditions and so on and so forth and so that began to happen to me and really uh by the time I was sort of into my 50s I'm thinking wow you know I used to be able to do these long physical days Dave and I would love it I love being in my garden the yard work I could get up at the crack of dawn I would I could go all day you know physical physical in the yard and all the rest of it and uh do it again doing it again the next day. But then I got to a point in my 50s where I couldn't do that anymore and I was definitely starting to feel like um no and I'm not a doom and gloom person as I say but I am a nurse and I was starting to feel like I am some kind of health event cardiac stroke or something like that waiting to happen. I could just feel it in my physicality. My energy just got to the point it was in in my boots. It had just bottomed out. I worked three nights um a week night shift and stuff like that. So yeah, and I' I've been a night owl for years and that worked for me and it's not like bouncing around doing shift work because you're just doing nights and then I have you know 4 days off whatever uh you know to to recover and do my thing and what have you. And so that was a better work and home life balance for me. But now I was starting to feel like these nights are starting to knock me around. I don't know if I'm going to be able to sustain this and keep this upright. And I'm talking to my colleague and stuff like that. And we've been doing the nights together for a number of years. And I'm like, wow. you know, uh, also at that time, um, some of the health issues that had sort of crept up for me and were making me think like, you know, the writing's on the wall. This is not looking good, Penny. You know, I don't know what you're going to do. But, um, if you're still on the planet in the next 5 to 10 years, I'll eat my hat. I really did believe that that's where I was at kind of physically and stuff like that. Never been on any medication.

[00:25:42]um you know still not on any medication but I'm I'm thinking wow this is you know this is not looking good and so a bit more on how I was eating um spices and herbs and of course we know about Sally K Norton and her book Toxic Superfoods. I now realize looking back. I mean, I was an oxalate Lincoln magnet and I I I ate spiced coffee. It was probably easier for me to say what I didn't put in my spiced coffee, what herbs and spices I wasn't adding. The cinnamon, the cloves, the turmeric, the ginger, the raw ginger, the garlic, the, you know, it was all going into my coffees, the green smoothies. You know, I mean, my workmates would laugh at me when I turn up with your my coffee.

[00:26:33]Don't go don't try it. It's all good for you. And all the cinnamon and everything else, the black pepper and oh my gosh, sweet potato or kumra we call them here in New Zealand was my favorite vegetable, roast vegetable. And of course, Sally K. Norton's telling us um I made my own almond milk. I mean, you know, crumbs. I mean, if it had oxalates in it, I was eating it. And you know, I was double down on the amount that I ate. Seriously, I just cringed out thinking, you know, how how was I even functioning at all at that point with the amount of oxalate type stuff I I was eating herbs and spices. And so I'm thinking like so many that I'm doing the right thing and yet watching myself, my health, you know, decline uh year by year by year.

[00:27:23]And you know, uh my my mom died, she was short and dumpy. She died of a a sudden heart attack in her early 50s, Dave. You know, and uh that was 2 years after my dad died. He wasn't short and dumpy. He was a um a bridge builder and an engineer and so physically fit and strong. Uh but both my parents, they liked a bit of their be beer and they both smoked. My dad suddenly died from a a pulmonary embolism at work and that was back in 1978. My mom died two years later of a heart attack. uh her sister, my only aunt on her. So I died two years after that. She came and looked after my younger sisters and I cuz we were still at school. She died a couple years later and she was a big lady. Smoked, didn't drink, uh but you know, ate all the the typical uh you know, diet that we've all grown up and stuff like that. So, so here I am thinking I'm in my 50s and now I'm feeling kind of terrible and I'm thinking, "Oh my god, you know, I'm going to be I'm going to fall off the planet like mom and dad." I you know and and they didn't walk around saying how bad they felt or they didn't look like they you know felt as bad as I feel. And so one of the things that was happening at the time Dave I'd got to the point where I was walking around and my feet were uncomfortable. It hurt it hurt me to walk and I'm trying to walk and look not look uncomfortable although I felt uncomfortable.

[00:28:55]And for instance, one weekend my younger sister and I, we went up to uh Oakland to see a show and you've been to Oakland. So the sky towers right up the top of Queen Street. We was kind of staying across the road from there. And every time you walked out the door, it's all downhill and we'd go walk down to the bottom of Queen Street and then I'm thinking, my god, I've got to walk back up now, you know. And literally I felt like I felt like not a healthy 80year-old like a clapped out 80year-old you know walking along you know thinking oh my god this is just a marathon this is so hard walk hard work got to get to the top of this damn hill back to the hotel you know walking was just a an effort I'd got to the point where I couldn't just sit down like a regular person in the chair I'd literally slump down and then I had to kind of use my if I needed to stand up again, get up again, I'd have to use my hands to kind of support and push myself off the chair. You know, I could not put my shoes and socks on with kind of without sort of hauling my leg up and then putting my shoes and socks on. I'd had to start using a shower chair. Um I was starting to have some issues with bowels, having to rush to the L and you know I stopped um I stopped uh you know going out to certain you know for certain activities and stuff like that because I thought no I might need to rush off to a loo suddenly. Um also at that stage when I went to bed I was sleeping rubbish and of course uh oh the other thing my feet they burnt like they were on fire Dave I mean and particularly at night they they would be feeling as though they were burning through the day but when I went to bed at night they just felt like they were on fire you know I had I had to you know douse them in this heavy uh moisturizing cream which I found which would kind of cool them down enough I could go to sleep and then trying to go to sleep, stay asleep was I just slept rubbish. I was waking up tossing and turning all through the night. When I lay in bed, my skin literally hurt. Um I'm pretty sure I was starting to have some, you know, um uh you know, signs of immune disorders or something, fibromyalgia or something like that. It literally hurt to lay on my skin and I would toss and turn and toss and turn. Couple nights I woke up and I had um acid reflux which I'd never experienced in my life before and I thought, "Oh my god, wow." You know, that was crazy and and so hideous having this acid in your mouth and these people that put up with it for years and are on all these medications. I thought like that happened to me twice and I thought that was enough for me uh you know to kind of put me out uh put me off and I've since found out and realized of course that this burning in my feet was you know neuropathy and so I although I was never officially diagnosed I'm pretty confident I was at least um you know uh insulin resistant pre-diabetic if not diabetic. I was getting up to the L several times a night. Once was a good night. Two or three times was pretty, you know, common for me. Um, so, you know, metabolically, I'm pretty sure I was metabolically resistant and stuff like that. I was also my gums bled for years. Every time I brushed my teeth, my gums would bleed.

[00:32:40]Not not hemorrhaging, but they would they would bleed, you know. I had uh chronic lower back ache, neck, neck ache. I was starting to get joint pains.

[00:32:53]My knuckles were starting to swell in my hands. So I'm pretty sure I was getting some arthritis if not slash rheumatoid arthritis beginning but um as I say never sort of uh you know officially diagnosed for any of that and never on any um you know medication and still not on any medication.

[00:33:15]Um told you about the herbs and spices.

[00:33:17]Oh, also, uh, rosacea, my face was like, you know, I looked like I just hopped out of a sauna all the time, like I had a red face. And sometimes people would ask me, "Oh, you know, um, no, it's just my face, you know." And of course, I was permanently bloated and uh, you know, puffy. My face looked like a uh, believe it or not, it's gone down somewhat. Um, but I just look like a puffer fish, like a blown up balloon. My face was just so puffy. Now, weight loss wise, I have lost uh 10 kilos in this last year and kind of kept that off.

[00:33:59]That's huge for me, but you know, I appreciate it's um nothing compared to the weight loss that you know, many of your guests have had. Uh but the non-scale gains for me u you know definitely more of those than the weight loss. On the flip side of that for my husband he was 134 kgs at his he heaviest. He's lost 31 kilos and he's now down to here three uh k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k kgs. Uh you know, props to him.

[00:34:34]I'm a little bit jealous, but but I'm I'm really pleased with the um nonscale victories and uh you know gains that I have had. I'm I'm okay with that. I'm I've still got you know I think considerable um you know weight to lose.

[00:34:50]I feel um if I could get back to kind of you know 140 um pounds you know 10 stone type thing you know that would be my dream weight. But uh having said that, I'm pretty confident uh Dave up until I started carnivore that I had had a dramatic amount of muscle loss. Um since being carnival, one of the things that I've noticed improve is only 10 kg weight loss. But um you know, I feel feel like I had no muscle strength. I I couldn't support prop myself up properly to stand and walk and all these things.

[00:35:30]But now I can do that. So I do believe that I've had u muscle muscle come come back. I don't know how to um you know measure that what I can do to measure that. But I know just in my in my own personal strength. I'm walking now where I couldn't walk. I you know I can you know walk several case. I'm biking. I'm I'm walking taking my dogs. We walk them on the beach. I'm back in the yard doing these things. I can walk work for several hours in the yard. uh whereas I wasn't able to do that at um that point.

[00:36:02]Um I couldn't balance uh you know one of the uh indicators for cardiac and you know really declining health is if you can't balance on one foot um you know that's that's not great. You need to get on to that. I couldn't balance for even a second. The last time I did it which is you know over a couple months ago I I could balance on one foot for 6 seconds you know which is a big deal for me. So I I know that my strength has come uh come back. So you know all these things my clothes are fitting me looser. I I definitely know that my uh shape has changed and I I took some video uh some photos uh I wished I'd taken more and um uh some measurements I wish I had taken more but certainly the clothes I was wearing when I started are now sort of hanging off me. I've had to go out and buy new jeans and things like that because my legs are flapping around and the jeans, you know, I used to wear which were pretty snug. And so those you're talking about like a lot of non-scale victories. So things like the rosacea, the neuropathy, things like that, they've gone. the joint pain, the back pain.

[00:37:17]>> Oh, 99% 90 95 98% uh gone. Like, you know, my my face was just permanently, you know, red and stuff like that. And uh puffy. I don't think it's nearly as puffy. A lot of that puffiness is gone.

[00:37:34]A lot of that rosacea has gone. Uh the the knee pain has definitely gone. I have a little bit of back pain still. Um but I think that is to do with several things. I think you know still oxalate dumping and Kelly say Sally K Norton says that can take years for that to really uh resolve. So I think some of my lower back discomfort which is nothing like it used to be Dave um is probably due to some of that that maybe I would be concentrating you know oxalates in those areas like the behind my neck and my back. Uh my neck discomfort that's resolved. The bleeding gums is dis you know resolved as well. Um I don't have that full-on puffiness and the redness in my face like I used to have. Another thing that was happening was I was getting you know what they call those uh liver spots or sun sunspots. Well I I don't know whether you can tell I've got one there but they were start to kind of pop up all over my face. This is one of the main ones kind of still still to go.

[00:38:41]Um, but that's quite indicative actually of fatty liver. So, I'm pretty sure I was riddled with fatty liver uh back then as well the way I ate. And of course, I was a seed, you know, I'm I'm surprised I just didn't drink seed oils, you know, olive oil and all all the other ones. And, you know, I I cooked with them, used them all the time and what have you. So they they've all gone by the wayside. Um, another thing was like I I my feet would be burning, but I felt like I couldn't really tolerate the cold. But nowadays, um, you know, because we're burning ketones, autophagy, all that sort of thing, um, thermogenesis, and so on. Um, I'm tolerating the cold way better. You know, we're in our autumn winter now and I, you know, I can throw the covers on when I climb into bed. I'm tossing the covers off in the middle of the night, you know, cuz I'm too hot, you know. Um, and so, yeah, tolerating cold way way better. Uh, the other thing was um the sun. I seem to tolerate the sun way better, which I've noticed that some of your guests have, you know, commented about. And um and in fact I had a like a month off uh work earlier in the year when I went back to work and it was kind of our summer time. Uh several of my colleagues well look at your lovely tan pen you know have you been on holiday somewhere? No you know I wasn't doing anything different except I'm except carnivore and stuff. So I tolerate the sun way better. I tolerate the cold way better. I tan kind of more easily.

[00:40:30]Another thing which I'm I'm gonna say, you know, must have something to do with, you know, how I eat and being carnival now is prior to that day, I was a mosquito magnet. I mean, honest to God, you know, I would be swarmed by mosquitoes and the insect repellent uh dimp is a prop, you know, one that's common here in New Zealand. I would have it next to my chair in the lounge. I would have it in my bag. It's in the car. It's by the bed. I'd take it to work. When I went to work at night, I'd had to go around and I'd be shutting doors and windows because if they were open and mag mosquitoes came in, they would be hovering around and attacking me. And if I got bit by them, it was um you know, I I would want to rip my skin off. I mean I they would be so itchy.

[00:41:27]And another thing that developed over the years was uh my youngest sister and my niece, they developed an anaphylactic reaction to bee stings in adulthood and they had had um you know be sensitizing uh you know treatment for that for 2 three years I think it was. Uh, I never got to that point, but my husband was beekeeping at one point and, uh, if I did happen to cop a beasting. Um, I noticed that, oh my gosh, I wanted to just rip my skin off. It was still a local reaction, but much worse than I ever recalled. I'd have to get in the shower to help soothe it. And if I didn't have, we have in New Zealand a um, an antiseptic cream called Sablon Cream. I would have, you know, tubes of that everywhere and stuff. If I didn't have that, I'd be wanting to rip my skin off.

[00:42:18]>> Over the last year and year or so, how have you been eating dayto-day? What does it look like?

[00:42:25]>> Yeah, pretty much. Um, well, this is a complete turnaround because as I said, previously before carnivore, ate non-stop. Now, my husband and I, we are typically OMAD, one meal a day. Um sometimes I'll eat uh you know I might have a little lighter meal usually within a 4hour period. Um typically you know dinner time we we will eat uh but I'm actually trying to bring that back a little bit earlier to you know maybe between sort of 1 and 300 p.m. eating for me. My husband will still eat a little bit later, you know, 5 to 6 uh p.m. Uh but I I want to bring it back a bit earlier for me because your digestive system is firing, you know, like a furnace if you eat earlier rather than eat later. So I want to capitalize on that. But yeah, one meal a day. Um usually we're like a a rump steak kind of household. Um it's either steak uh or I I eat quite a bit of uh ground beef as well. Um if I do that, we call it mints here. Um back in the day, I like to chili conc. So what I do now is I I will still chuck in if I'm having ground beef, uh a sache of chili concing, but I don't have the beans and all of that anymore. Um I'll cook up cook up like a kg of uh the mints. Uh, but I might eat that over, you know, several several days type thing. A bowl of that.

[00:43:52]I eat a lot of eggs as well. My husband is kind of, you know, hit and miss with the eggs. He's got to feel like them and then he'll have eggs and that's fine. I eat a lot of eggs. Uh, we both like um fish. Uh, you know, fresh fish. I'll make get a snapper and he'll um he'll whip that up, chop that, fill it that for me, and I'll make marinated fish.

[00:44:15]That sort of thing. I'll eat sardines.

[00:44:18]Yeah. I discovered uh cod liver oils thanks to Dr. uh cod liver. Cod livers in their own oil. The pate or the livers thanks to Dr. Berg. So sometimes I'll eat a small can of that like small cans of sardines, chuck it in a um a fish broth or something like that and drop in a couple of uh you know whisked eggs at the end and stuff like that. So yeah.

[00:44:42]Yeah. Yeah. So pretty much that's kind of, you know, me um what I eat. And the amazing thing too, Dave, is that, you know, once upon a time when we ate previously, how we ate, I I just never felt uh satisfied for long. But now on Carnival, of course, you uh I eat when I'm hungry, we eat when we're hungry, we eat till we're full. Um and then, you know, you are literally full. So the body hunger signals and satiety signals are, you know, fully functioning again.

[00:45:13]Thank God.

[00:45:14]>> And so how are you both sleeping these days?

[00:45:18]>> Oh, way better. Way better. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and if I do wake up, I I still do wake up occasionally and stuff like that, but uh I get back to bed uh back to sleep much easier and what have you. And now since we've been on Carnival, um I'm pretty good anywhere between, you know, 5 to 5 to 7 hours. I I I just don't need the 8 hours. Um stuff like that. And I do wake up, we both wake up feeling, uh feeling rested and uh you know, try to get to bed kind of early and stuff like that. But even on my night shifts, I can do, you know, five or six hours is pretty good for me after after a night shift. So yeah, sleeping so much better.

[00:46:03]>> When we first became carnival, uh, one of the things I noticed, which other guests have commented about, was I mean, literally I felt like for a few weeks almost euphoric. I just could not believe, you know, my energy levels and how good I felt. And, you know, my husband was the same. That that has leveled out. We're not walking around euphoric, but we're way happier than we used to be. The brain fog, all these sorts of things that you didn't realize you were putting up with have resolved and we're, you know, a lot clearer and brighteyed and bushy tailed and the energy is just consistent throughout the the day. We I still, you know, I'm 62, but pace myself and stuff like that. But where I did truly feel like I'm going to fall off the planet within um, you know, five or 10 years if I'm lucky, now I feel like I there's no reason why. I really do genuinely feel like, you know, I can live to be old, healthy bones, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's very cool to me.

[00:47:09]>> Nice. Um, so people who have seen you eating this way, especially with you being a nurse, um, do they comment? Do they think it's weird? Do they think it's strange?

[00:47:23]>> Yeah. No, they they think I'm kind of crazy. I, you know, I don't go there too much anymore. You know, we're all a bit evangelistic, I think, initially up front when we become, you know, we want to tell anyone. My sister kind of got irked at me one day, my younger sister, and said, "You're banging on about it.

[00:47:39]you kind of I didn't think I was preachy but she obviously felt I was a bit preachy so I I kind of buttoned off my colleagues are just not interested uh sadly Dave and you know just uh one thing I want to say to that is that like I' I've got a colleague who's told me um that you know she's taking the Zimpic medication right and stuff like that and so she's you know losing weight with that but you know when you look at a lot of those videos if they stop the medication it's uh it's not good. You know what happens after that for the majority of them. My one of my brothers, he had a beriatric procedure. He was good to about the 3year mark. He's put, you know, putting that weight back on.

[00:48:21]Not to the same as beforehand. I had a stepdaughter who also had beriatric procedure. She lost a massive amount of weight. She's 3year mark again. She's put some of that back on. Not to the same extent and what have you. Um, but you know, back to my work trying to talk to colleagues and and stuff like that, nurses and doctors about it. Uh, I watched the Dr. Chaffy video of um, Valerie Smith. I don't know whether you ever saw that episode. Yeah. So, she had five mental health diagnoses including paranoid schizophrenia and uh, you know, I cried when I watched that episode. I was like, "Wow." you know, and so as a nurse in a inpatient psych unit, when you're looking after people and you think, you know, please if they could would only just try this.

[00:49:10]And I've sent a couple videos to a couple of our psychiatrists. I've sent a couple videos to um my ex-manager who's now not the manager anymore. She's nursing back on the floor with me. Um you know, none of them have feedback and said they watch it. Well, this is amazing and stuff like this. And when you feel like you've got the, you know, chalice of youth, you know, um, at your fingertips and could be helping these people. I'm nursing people who've got Parkinson's and dementia. Our dear friend who's got dementia and, um, you know, her father was a doctor, vegetarian. She eats almost no meat, very little meat. It's all carbs, cake, and, you know, veggies and stuff like that. And I've, you know, watched her dementia, you know, progressing over these past couple of years. She comes to our house now and she can't remember the front door from the back door and gets lost, you know, uh, coming in and out of our house or finding our house. When you think that, you know, try this, try Carnival, and they they don't even watch the videos and they, you know, they're dismissive about it. It's it's, you know, it's a bit of a gut-wrencher that one. It's it's heartwrenching. We all, you know, understand that now. So >> yeah.

[00:50:23]>> So so no to the colleagues.

[00:50:26]>> Yeah.

[00:50:27]>> My my husband does have a friend he goes walking with. He's he's away out of town for a few days at the minute. But um and you know we if we get the opportunity, we try and plant the seeds. I don't care who makes them sprout and grow. We had planted seeds with this friend of his, both my husband and I. He had a son come back from overseas on holiday for a month who was uh essentially carnivore and dad yeah you know you want to try this give this a go. So, dad's been doing it for I think a couple of weeks and couple days ago my husband said uh he's having some issues with constipation. Of course, we know constipation and or diarrhea. So, I've said you tell him to up the fat up the fat you know d so he has told him that but uh so far one friend my husband's friend has taken carnivore on board uh at this point. So, so imagine that someone came to you and said, "Okay, Penny, I I want to give this a try. Tell me what to do." Would you tell them to just rip the band-aid off and jump in cold turkey or would you say go in slowly, cut things out gradually?

[00:51:42]>> Uh, probably probably the transition. I think there are those people that can, you know, be all all in and what have you and just go for it from the get-go, but uh I think after I've talked to people and stuff like that and you think, "Yeah, I kind of said that stuff." It's a lot of information that you're trying to give them, you know, you're trying to kind of pace that and stuff, but I feel like I've tried to give people maybe too much information.

[00:52:08]It just goes in one ear straight out the other or it just, you know, washes straight off them. So yeah, so probably transition rather than say cut all the cra, cut all the carbs, cut the processed oils, cut all the fruit and veggies, plants trying to kill you and all of that, which is true. Um, you know, maybe say if they like the pasta and the, you know, the the cake or whatever, you know, ditch the fizzy drinks, you know, ditch the fizzy the soda for starters. That was something I did try once upon a time. I I thought right just liquids soda for the weekend and I put on£4 you know but tell the I would tell the people maybe start with your potatoes which you know something you feel like you can ditch or the soda or the pasta or the rice and then you know something else. a transition probably for most folks I would suggest.

[00:53:01]A >> nice um so Penny if people want to reach out to you um can they find you anywhere online?

[00:53:11]>> No, not not really. I don't kind of email so much. I I do have an email and I can give that to you if you want, but uh pretty much if people they can find me on Messenger, they can friend me on Messenger and we could we could do that if they really wanted to. Dave, maybe look at that.

[00:53:28]>> Yeah, no problems. Well, I'll I'll include the link to your messenger in the show notes. Penny, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. I really appreciate your time.

[00:53:39]>> My pleasure. My pleasure, Dave.