A Former Firefighter and Paramedic Battles Atrial Fibrillation and Obesity with the Carnivore Diet

Mission Carnivore Episode 5: A discussion about the benefits of carnivore diet, battling atrial fibrillation, obesity, high blood pressure, and arthritis with John Wood, a former firefighter and paramedic.

Carnivore Diet Planning Guide: https://4343867330708.gumroad.com/l/fqtjv
Website: https://www.carnivoresoldier.com
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I'm a retired US Army Chief Warrant Officer living the carnivore lifestyle since March 22nd, 2023. I lost 30lbs in the first 90 days, and continued my weight loss beyond that losing another 14lbs in the following 60 days. I have become much healthier, both physically and mentally in the process. If you’re seeking a sustainable and effective weight loss method, the carnivore diet might be the answer you’ve been looking for!

Join me as I give a military veteran perspective on the carnivore WOE, find great recipes, learn tips and tricks, review carnivore movies, and gain insight on practical ways to fit the carnivore diet into your life! If you follow me, I'm going to be your "Battle Buddy", setting you up for success!

Prepare to be motivated and inspired as I share my success story, offering valuable tips and insights for anyone ready to embark on their own weight loss journey. Don’t miss out on this incredible transformation – hit that play button and let’s dive into the world of carnivore diet weight loss!

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor and am not giving medical advice. This is simply a channel about my experience. Please consult your own physician if you have questions or concerns about nutrition, weight loss, or your conditions.

Transcript

Larry A: 0:01

All right. All right. All right. Carnivore soldier coming at you from Austin, Texas. Welcome to another mission. Welcome to another episode of Mission Carnivore. In this episode, we're going to be talking to a firefighter and paramedic. John Wood was a firefighter and paramedic for over 12 years, and he's a carnivore now. And we're going to talk to him, find out his experience of being a first responder and how carnivores changed his life. And I'm going to bring him in right now and let him introduce himself. And you go, Hey John,

John W: 0:33

how's it going? I'm doing good, Larry. How are you doing tonight?

Larry A: 0:36

Good. Okay. why don't you introduce yourself? Let us know who you are, where you're from. Tell us about a little bit about your service.

John W: 0:42

Okay. Well, I'm glad to be here tonight. Thanks for having me. My name is John Wood. I'm 56 years old. I live just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, and in the Concord area. And my time in the first responder service happened as an accident. So I'm what you refer to as an accidental firefighter. When I was 19 years old, I just graduated high school. I had no plans of going to college school. Just wasn't my thing. And my mom said, well, you've got two choices. Go live in the streets or get a full time job and pay us some rent. So I got me a full time job at a local lumber and building materials company that had opened up and they were hiring people. So I went there and got a job. Now at the time I didn't know a two by four from a sheet of plywood. I mean, I was so ignorant to this, but they brought me in and they trained me and they started me out loading trucks. So people would pull into their pickup trucks or their trailers. And I'd put the. Molding on there, the two by fours of the plywood. And I began to learn that stuff. And it just kind of came naturally to me that I would say, Hey, if you're getting some two by fours, you need some nails, don't you think you need a new hammer? And so the powers that be saw that and said, Hey, this young guys, he's got it going on. So they brought me inside. And I became an inside salesman after about just two months of working outside. And then I did really well inside. They made me an outside salesman. So I'm 19 years old. I think maybe I was 20 by this time. I have an expense account and a company car and I'm calling on contractors. So in way over my head. But it was doing pretty well, but at that time once we got going pretty well, the economy really took a nosedive back in. This is like probably 87, 88 and a lot of the builders went out of business. Houses were left unfinished and a lot of layoffs happened. Kind of like we saw in 2007, 2008, just many, many years before. So I found myself without a job. Well, at that time, one of the very first home improvement warehouses that opened up, it was called. Builder Square, kind of akin to Home Depot or Lowe's. Now it's the same principle known by the Kmart Corporation, and they were hiring. I got me a job there. They brought me in as a manager and working electrical department, working in the paint department, doing customer service. But then, because the economy had fallen so far, even they couldn't make it. So they laid me off. Well, between then and now, I met a young girl who had a kid from a previous marriage. We dated for six weeks and did the smart thing and got married. Just joking. So there, I have a new wife, a little baby. It was her child from her previous marriage. And I found myself without a job and because they cut me and shut down with laying everybody off. So I ran by my mom's house. My mom and my stepfather always give me sage advice. So I went by there the day that I got laid off and said, Hey, I don't know what to do here. I'm a young guy with a family now, more people depending on me to feed them. And as luck would have it, my uncle Stanley, my my uncle, my grandmother's youngest brother happened to be at my mother's house. Now, Stanley had been on the fire department for many, many years. He was a Lieutenant in the fire department. And he said, well, John, I hear your situation. You've been laid off. You got this wife, you got a young kid, you got him feed. And we have about three openings at the fire department and the mayor owes me a favor because I did some plumbing at his house and didn't charge him anything. So he made a phone call. And I never even considered working in public safety. That's, I never wanted to be a fireman or policeman. That was not something I ever aspired to do, but I needed a job. I got three mouths to feed now, and so he made a phone call to the mayor, the mayor called the chief. This is on a Thursday, Monday morning at eight o'clock. I'm a firefighter. I mean, it happened very quickly and I got in there and it did pretty well with it. I've always done pretty well in the books and I was young and healthy at the time. So they taught me how to load the hoses and drag the hoses and turn on the fire hydrants and stuff. And after about a week, they said, well, you're ready to go. We're going to put you in a company. So of course, my uncle being the Lieutenant had pulled some strings. And he brings me to his company. And that's when the education began because he was so hard on me, but he wanted me to do well. So I did that and I did it for I guess about 10 years or so. I really enjoyed it. Ended up my first wife and I were only married for about a year and a half. She left me and actually went back to her previous husband, which was fine. And so I was a single guy, met another girl and we dated and got married. We're still married today, but during that time, I learned to love the fire service. I appreciated the brotherhood. the camaraderie, the adrenaline rush, because when you run into a burning building, if that don't get your adrenaline up, nothing well. And so I kind of became addicted to that and really fell in love with it and did pretty well, made it into the training division as a lieutenant. And then the local hospital at the time was running the ambulance service. The demographics of our area began pretty dramatically. The local cotton mill closed down and a lot of jobs went away. The economy was struggling. And the hospital realized that the ambulance service was really not profitable. So they wanted to unload the ambulance service. So a private company from Arizona named Rural Metro came in and bought the ambulance service from the hospital. Well, the first thing they did was could everybody's pay 3 an hour and they took away everybody's retirement. So people in the ambulance service were quitting left and right. Because at that time, and this is, multiple years later, Home Depot and Lowe's had opened up several locations in and around Augusta. Most people that work in public safety, either on a lawn care business, or they do something on their days off. So, a lot of the providers left to go to work in other industries, so they came to the fire department and said, hey, guys, you guys got to start during this medical calls. We've seen this program, Rescue 911, and we need you guys to start answering emergency medical calls, because... For about two years, they had a 100 percent mortality rate. If you had a heart attack outside the hospital in that part of Georgia, you died. It was a hundred percent because we only had six or eight ambulances and they didn't run all the time because staffing issues. So the fire department was pressed into doing emergency medical service very quickly. So they brought in firefighters. weren't weren't really qualified to do that. They didn't want to do it. Their heart wasn't in it. They wanted to put wet stuff on red stuff, put water on the fire. That's what they thought their career would always be. Well, I'm still pretty young. I've still got a new wife and three kids. Well, with that wife. And so I signed up to go to E. M. T. School because they promised us 1000 a year raise if we got our E. M. T. They had to do a bangle of carrot out there for it. So I go to EMT school and absolutely loved it. I fell in love with it. Top of my class. Worked in the field part time as an EMT on the ambulance on the days that I wasn't on the fire truck. And went back to school for another year. Studied my paramedic, got my paramedic license. And got my national certification. Once you get your national certification, you start getting job offers from all over the country. And I've been a NASCAR fan since I was a little boy. I've always been attracted to NASCAR and Charlotte, North Carolina is the hub of NASCAR, all the drivers, all the teams, everything's based right here, North Carolina sent me a packet to recruit me packet. And I came up here and applied and they hired me on the spot. And so I had to tell the wife, I didn't even tell the wife I was coming to do a an interview. So I'd go home and tell my wife that we had just bought our first house. That I just accepted a job 200 miles away. Ended up she stayed behind. She was a school teacher. She stayed behind for a year to get the house ready and sell the house. And I moved in an apartment up here in Charlotte. We made it work. We eventually moved everybody up here, me and my wife and my youngest daughter. And I worked for the City Ambulance Service, Charlotte, the big city, for about six years, and then wanted a slower, a little less chaotic schedule. Went to work at a rural county, Lincoln County, which is west of Charlotte, worked there for about five years. And the problem is most of my time working there, I found myself working the night shift 7 p. m. to 7 a. m. I wasn't in the greatest health to start with, but working that night shift just took its toll on me. I was eating terrible. I'd get off from my shift, run through the drive thru at Bojangles, get a couple of gravy biscuits and a sweet tea, and then go home and go to bed because I've been up all night. Yeah. And started putting on a lot of weight, getting really unhealthy arthritis in my joints. And finally the ambulance service in Lincoln County pretty much had to let me go because I was too out of shape. And to inflamed to adequately do the job. So they sent me packing, which is what they should have done, because I really was not able to perform the duties that I was being paid to do. Yeah. And it's just like, Sean

Larry A: 9:18

White had the same thing.

John W: 9:19

I have, our stories are so similar, other than I'm a good bit older, but a very similar circumstance. And it wasn't something that I did intentionally. I mean, I wasn't an alcoholic. I wasn't a drug addict. I was just. eating terrible food because I didn't know any better. And it really changed my life dramatically for the worse because I go from, a pretty good position with a local government agency. To be an unemployed, with not a lot of warning. They sent me a letter in the mail and said I was terminated. I thought it was a joke. Somebody was teasing me. But I, if somebody was down, I could not get down and put them on a spine board and lift. I couldn't get myself up much less somebody off the ground on a spine board, especially if they were. A bigger person like myself I would drop and I did drop. How much were you weighing then, and what, how high are you? How tall are you? How much were you weighing? I'm one and I weighed 3 25. And the weight, I don't carry weight. It's all out in front of me, if that makes sense. Then really immobile. I couldn't bend over. I, if I had to get something off the floor, I'd get on my hands and knees to get something off the floor. Then try to get myself back up. Just not the person you would want. If you dialed 9 1 1 and I showed up, you'd feel sorry for me. Yeah. So I'm still, at the time I was 46 years old, 47 years old. I still got a mortgage. Young. Yeah, pretty young. I still have a mortgage. I still got a car payment, and I've still got my wife and my daughter. We still have to, so what do I do? I, the only thing I know is public safety. Remember I went to work in public safety right outta high school. That's all I know. Yeah. So I looked down for retail jobs and realized that. I couldn't really do that because my feet would hurt too bad. I was just my feet were inflamed, my knees, my hips. It was just I didn't want to go on a disability and I knew that might take a couple of years to get that process and we'd lose our house in the meantime. So I was driving down the interstate and I got behind an 18 wheeler and it had a sign on the back of the trailer that said, now hiring truck drivers, start and pay 50, 000, which is about what I made as a paramedic. I said, well, I can sit and I can drive. That's 2 things I know I can do. So I went to truck driving schools, a 6 week course, Monday through Saturday. Did well with that, got hired by a trucking company right out of there. And then I drove an 18 wheeler for about seven years. That can't be good for your health either. Right. Exactly. This thing's just got worse. They didn't get better. They got worse. Yeah. And ended up every year with the, when you drive a tractor trailer. You have to have a physical. The Department of Transportation requires that every driver have a visit. And there's only certain doctors and nurse practitioners and P. A. S. That can do these specific physicals and they have to be D. O. T. Approved. So I go for my physical in 2021. I was actually in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I said, well, it's time for me to go for my physical. So I'm headed back to Charlotte to do my physical and had a heart attack on the way back. Oh, wow. I've managed to being a paramedic. I knew what was going on. So I just started popping aspirin and Holland, but I didn't want to be, COVID was still going on at the time and I didn't want to be in Iowa or somewhere out there and my wife be here and no way to get to me. So I just took aspirin and, I said, if things get bad, I'll pull over and call nine one one. When I made it back, went to the emergency room. As soon as I got back, I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response. I had a heart rate of about 230, which means not a lot of blood was getting pumped. So they put me right in, they gave me medicine and got my heart slowed down. And so got me taken care of. In the meantime, I had purchased a truck. So I started out as a company driver as an employee. After two years, I bought my own truck or was in the process of buying my own truck and contracted with this company. So I'm self employed now and I have this 200, 000 truck that I'm buying. And when I go for my physical, I explained to The doctor, what happened? And they said we understand that you're better now. They did what they call cardio version where they put me to sleep and shot me. They did that it lasted a week went back. They did it again. It lasted a day. Went back again. They did an ablation where they go in through your groin and go up there and basically kill off part of your heart and try to settle it down. Wow. And they put me on some blood thinners and stuff. So I go and tell the DOT doctor that what's going on. And she goes, well, we need you to wait six months before you get back behind the wheel of a, 80, 000 pound truck with all this going on. Well, I couldn't go six months. I had a huge truck payment, insurance payments, and I'm not making any revenue because the truck can't move. Unless I'm the one driving. So I ended up selling my truck, kind of a fire sale. Fortunately, because of COVID, truck manufacturing had come to a halt. So you could really get top dollar for a used truck because they just were desperate for trucks. So I sold my truck for about 90, 000 and that gave me. I still live 40, 000 on it. So I got to keep the 50, 000 difference. And that gave me some time to try to figure out what's next. Yeah. I took up the sport of golf. My brother had talked me into playing golf with him a couple of times. He lives down in Georgia still. And so I started playing golf and walking and hoping that would get me better. Being outside walking. And it helped a little bit, but not much. And so finally I applied for and got a job at a local home improvement center at Lowe's. I'm just going to say a little bit and working part time there. I liked it full time, but you're on a concrete floor all day long. And my feet were still inflamed, my knees, my hips. And I didn't know that I could stay there until retirement age, because every day was just misery. Just trying to deal with how bad my feet hurt and my knees, especially. And if I had to get down. To get something off the floor, get something for a customer trying to get back up, the customer would have to help me up and just an embarrassing thing. Like, how did I get here? My wife and I, we live in the suburbs and we've considered selling our house and getting a homestead, get some chickens and get A little more property get away from the hustle and bustle of the suburbs and ran across carries video from homestead. How and we're watching his videos and one of them came on about the carnivore diet. And he was talking about some of the the problems that he had and how the diet had really helped him and I was watching it. My wife said, I'm not watching this. I'm going to bed. Well, I stayed up and watched it and I ended up being all night long doing the deep dive. I watched him. Yeah, found Sean. I found Dr. Care, Dr. Chae, Dr. Baker, the entire night. I was just, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It sounded like snake oil, it sounded though, there's no way, there's no way. This can be this simple, but there's no hook, right? Like, where's the hook? Where's the, where are they Scam? I didn't have to sign up for a program. I didn't, there's no credit card required. I didn't have to do anything. So this was like June 20th or 21st, and so the next day, I told my wife, I'm gonna start this carnivore diet on July 1st. So for 31 days, I'll try it. And if it doesn't work, then nothing ventured, nothing gained. That, does us buy some meat and we'll still eat it if it doesn't work. So she rolled her eyes because over the years I've tried low carb, I've tried low fat, I've tried everything, nothing, you know, I'd lose weight. Fasting, intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting, all that stuff. Yeah, I used to do 72 hour fast and I would just be thinking about food the entire 72 hours. Yeah, it's terrible. And you can't live long term like that. And then you binge, right? Yeah. It's not good. I can't believe the thing. I would probably put on more weight after the 72 hours because I would eat everything. So the wife, reluctantly said, okay, so I said July 1st. So I started July 1st full carnivore. I didn't do keto because I'd done keto in the past. So I just went, beef, butter, bacon and eggs. Pork, I was eating pork, we had a bit of pork in our freezer. We've got 3 freezers. So I bought out some of the pork and eating that. And after a week my right hip quit hurting. And yeah, after about 2 weeks, my left knee quit hurting. My left knee was really the biggest source of pain. And I had some kind of undiagnosed pain in the top of my left foot. I don't think it was a gap because I could match on it. It didn't hurt, but if I put weight on my left foot, it just sent me to the moon, I missed a week of work because it hurts so bad. Probably 15 days into carnivore, all that was gone. I'd lost 10 or 12 pounds from the water, obviously, but the inflammation left so quickly that I realized 21 days in that this was real, this was. Absolutely. Positively. Something that could improve my life. So I continue with it. And so August 1st came, I said, I'm just going to go another month and see what happens. And I'm losing weight, hand over fist. I'm sleeping better and I'm working 11, I work 11 hour shifts at Lowe's. We get an hour for lunch. So basically it's 10 hours on the clock with you there for 11 hours. And I noticed about a month into it that my, at the end of 11 hours, my feet didn't hurt at all. And before this diet, I almost had to call to my car cause my feet were just on fire. And so we're, we're 30 days in and nothing hurts. Nothing hurts. And I'd had some return bouts of that atrial fibrillation between the time I had the ablation back in 2021 and starting the carnivore diet. And about three weeks into the carnivore diet, I had a pretty bad episode but it resolved on its own. And from then to now I've had zero, nothing. And when I did have the atrial fib about three weeks into the diet, I was doing pushups and I probably was straining to get to the 20th one or whatever. And that brought on a bout of a fib, but it resolved on its own after about five minutes. But between then and now I've had none zero and I'm walking. Did you see on

Larry A: 18:28

backward carnivore? They had that Dr. Tony was talking about a fib and saying it was really linked to inflammation and obesity. And if the inflammation or obesity go away, the aphid pretty much goes away. Exactly. That's what he was saying anyway. And I

John W: 18:42

was pretty impressed with that. I didn't see the interview. I did see the thumbnail for it. I am going to go back and watch it. Brian's a friend of mine. I was actually talking to Brian earlier today, and I know he has a similar story with AFib similar to mine. Yeah. And yeah, he's a good buddy of mine. So the thing about it is When I had all this problem, remember I told you I had bought the truck and I was self employed. So when I had the two cardio versions where they shocked me twice, the first one lasted a week, the second one lasted a day. Then I go in and I have the ablation. I had just bare minimum coverage health insurance. All this stuff happened in a three week period. When I started getting bills from all this now they knew the insurance I had the local hospital. New the insurance that I had because I'd given him all my insurance information. They'd already contacted my insurance. No one ever told me what this was going to cost me. I just knew that without it, I'd probably going to die. I was, I was not long in this world. Once I got the my health straightened out, I started getting bills from the doctor. I received a bill from the hospital for 266, 000. Wow. My insurance is going to be paid 10, 000. It's 276. My insurance is going to be paid 10. So I owe 200, over a quarter of a million dollars. Let me point out. I never spent a night in the hospital. I had the ablation. I went in at six 30 in the morning at one 30 that afternoon. They turned me loose because of COVID. They didn't want people staying in the hospital. If it wasn't absolutely necessary. So I didn't even spend a night in the hospital. They sent me a bill, the hospital for over a quarter of a million dollars. And I applied for a hardship case. They granted it to me and they said, okay, we've knocked it down to, I think it was a hundred thousand. So I still owe a hundred thousand dollars. Then I started getting bills from the cardiologist, the radiologist, the anesthesiologist. So it ended up being 400, 000. And I never even spent the night in the hospital. I was treated and released the same day. And so that just speaks to the part, the power of the carnivore diet. Had I been on this diet before, I paid, I've been paying, I'm still paying and I'll die. owing the hospital money, I will never be able to pay this off. I'm a blue collar and So I need to watch that video that Brian did with that physician and find out about that. Yeah, because they were talking about Brian's

Larry A: 20:49

AFib and that's when he said that, that's, he said, when you, when the inflammation goes, so you probably never

John W: 20:53

would have had it. Exactly. Properly. There's a lot of things I would have avoided injuries.

Larry A: 20:59

I know that I have injuries that are permanent now that won't heal back, but. Sure. Probably would not have been incurred. And if I had been on a proper diet where I wasn't inflamed, because I think those injuries were caused by me being in a bad state. Sure. When I had the insult. Let's see. And then as far as your physical health, how has it affected the carnivore diet? How's it actually affected your physical health? What kind of things have you noticed physically?

John W: 21:23

Well, first and foremost, the pain has gone away. The AFib has gone away. I don't have any pain. I'm 56 years old and you you become used to having pain. Something's going to hurt every day. This part of aging. That's what we've been told, right? I get out of bed in the morning. I do my day. I work 10 hours on a concrete floor at work. Nothing hurts. Nothing ever hurts. And that is, that's the closest thing to a miracle that I've ever witnessed personally, that I can go through the entire day. For example, today I walked eight miles today, sometimes I go to the gym, I walk six or seven miles, go to the gym I do lunges, I do squats, I do pushups, things I would do when I was 19 or 20 years old that I haven't really done since then. And I do it now without any pain. And then the next day I'm not sore. So even when I was a young man, if I worked out really hard. The next day you're paying for it. I don't have any of that now. So it's to say that it has absolutely positively transformed my life would be a huge understatement. Yeah. I'm 57,

Larry A: 22:21

so I get it. I know the pain and I thought I was on this downward slope, the downward, downward trajectory. That's my life, I was, this is it. It doesn't get better than this, the only easy day was yesterday. And it's like, now it's completely opposite. It flipped it upside down.

John W: 22:37

But so before I started this diet, I really struggled to get off the couch. Sometimes the wife would have to help me up off the couch. If I got down on the floor to get something, I'd have to grab hold of a table or something to try to get, it'd take 10 minutes to get off the floor. And now I can, I can almost do burpees now. You know what I mean? It's yeah. And so I didn't tell you this, but I've told others this. I was on Dave Mack's channel. I expressed this, but during that time, especially after I lost my trucking company I was about as depressed as a human being can be. I when we first moved to North Carolina, my my youngest daughter was in middle school and, we bought this nice home up here, we're living in the suburbs. So I did the responsible thing and I took out a life insurance policy. I figured if something happened to me. I want my wife and daughter to continue to live and not struggle. And my daughter would be able to go to college if she so chose. And, so I took out a 250, 000 life insurance policy 15 years ago, a little over 15 years ago. My daughter has since grown up and moved away. She's on her own. She's fine. And so it's just me and the wife. And I don't want to leave my wife because things are so much more expensive. Now it'd be tough for her to live on just one income, yeah. So I thought if I could just die, if I could just die before the insurance policy expired May 31st, and I was just praying that I would die before May 31st so that she could have the money she'd be taken care of. And I would be out of the misery and pain that I was in 24, seven everybody would win. My wife would be taken care of financially and I would be released from all this pain. And I could not believe when I woke up on June 1st and I was still alive and I never got, I never, that 250, 000 policy is defunct now. And that was where I was at mentally. And now, I absolutely positively love life. I love my job. I love my neighborhood. I love my wife. I love. breathing. I love everything. And it's that's a huge transition to go from praying to die. I want to live to be 140. I want to live to be 140 years old. There

Larry A: 24:35

are, there are studies out and I've been looking at them that and the NIH has them that show that low cholesterol levels. Correlate with higher violent suicide rates and depression and mental illness. So they've got the whole country on a low fat, cholesterol lowering, high carbohydrate diet. And it's no wonder we have so much excess violence picking up and suicides, among... I think basically, everyone's had the same stresses in their life that would cause someone to do a suicide. It's always been there. But what's happened is the fulcrum has been pushed to one side by our diet where people can't handle it as well. And they, they're quicker to go that route, I think. And that's one of the reasons for this channel is I really think we need to talk about the mental health. My mental health completely changed. I didn't even know how bad it was. Really I thought it was, I was still pretty positive person and I had a pretty good career and I liked my life. But I was not optimistic about, like I was on that downward slope, the downward glide. Now I'm like going upward. I'm like, I'm planning stuff and I'm excited about, what's coming up the next month, next year, the next day, even, and I wasn't excited like I am now. So I think I'm with you with that, man. You get to that point where you just think that's just the way it is

John W: 25:53

and it's not. It doesn't have to be. No problem is 99 percent of the population. That's my, your demographic. They feel like you felt like I felt that yesterday was the best day and it's going to get worse from here and that, like I know, and all the other folks in the carnivore space know that that is absolutely false. Yeah, in 20, I think it was about 24 years in public safety total between the fire service and emergency medicine. I've had 13 coworkers take their own life. 13. It's way too many. And these are people that I work with people that I know I've probably had 10 or 12 die prematurely from cardiovascular disease. Because, it's a tough lifestyle, especially working shift work, working thirds and everybody's got a huge belly and, it's tough to get exercise in and the stress of that job. I've been to 200, 300 suicide calls in my career, and 1 thing I will say along your lines of the low cholesterol and low fat diets. One thing I've noticed is every, I don't want to say pediatric, but people that were 18 years old or less that commit suicide. And I've been to more than anyone should ever have to go to. And it's always horrific and it sticks with you forever. I've not been to one that wasn't on some type of antipsychotic drug. 100 percent every pediatric suicide or teenage suicide or attempted suicide. I've been to as on a cocktail of antipsychotic medicines, which is ironic because when you watch the commercial on TV, they say side effects may include suicidal thoughts, and yeah. What are we doing here? We're drugging these kids up and they're like zombies and they. And we wonder why the suicide rate, even before COVID is where it's at with young people, and that's a huge tragedy.

Larry A: 27:32

Well, we're feeding them a diet that's making them depressed and making their mind not work proper, and then we're drugging them, but it's because the FDA is the Food and Drug Administration, and, they're funded by those two industries. So they act in the best interest of those two industries. Those two industries want to do, they want to sell really cheap food, which happens to be the food we're eating on the standard American diet, and then they want to, and it's addictive. It's addictive. And then they want to treat symptoms caused by issues that the food creates. And that's exactly what we have a vicious cycle. Yeah. So yeah, I totally agree. And I know, so like I said, I've talked about this before I've lost more. Friends in the military to suicide than to combat even during the war years, right? And it's not uncommon for someone who's been in for a long time that would be the case. And there's got to be something done, and that, that's why I go out and, you've seen a lot of trauma, like you said, I know you have, and I know how tough it is. When you see it daily you say you get desensitized, but you really don't. You internalize. You don't desensitize. And when you internalize, same thing we do in the military. We talk about sucking it up. We talk about driving on. We talk about the guy next to us doing it, so we're going to do it. And you don't talk about it. And then that adds that's when, people talk about the physical weight loss that we had, right? But for me, the mental weight loss was greater. You just can't see it. When it came off my shoulders, that was an amazing feeling. And I know for first responders and military veterans that's a greater weight than it is for typical civilians, I believe. I haven't been a typical civilian in a long time, but I believe that's the case. And I just know that it makes a bigger difference. It did for me anyway. How did you feel about that when you had that lifted off? Did you notice like your motivation, your attitude? Tell me about

John W: 29:18

that stuff. Here's a, I've only heard one other carnivore say this, and this is something that speaks to what you're saying. When I was working in EMS, the last three years of being on an ambulance I've started having recurring nightmares. And just, but it wasn't from calls recently. It was from calls 15 years ago that just resurfaced that I thought I'd forgotten about. And it got to the point where I dreaded going to sleep cause I knew one was coming and that made, so then you're tired, you're sleep deprived, you're anxious, you don't sleep well, every noise you wake up. And then after I left EMS while I was driving a truck, those that kind of subsided, it got better, much better. And then I got to where I don't remember dreaming. If I dreamed at all, I don't, there was nothing remarkable. But since I've been on carnivore about a month in, I've started having fantastic dreams every night as I was telling my wife yesterday, and it's something different and it's always fun, funny, romantic, exciting, and have something to do with me and her and the kids or my mom who passed away five years ago. She's in my dreams and she was a nut. She was a lot of fun to be around. And I pretty much without exception now for probably the last 60 days, I've had just amazing dreams. To the point where I look forward to going to sleep because I want to see what the movie is, it's and I've only heard one I had one person comment on one of my videos saying that they had a similar experience But so that's so i'm sleeping better. I don't dread going to sleep. I love going to sleep and I sleep deeper I have great dreams And I still wear a CPAP machine. I had sleep apnea. Of course, that was one of the main, everybody, has it when you get to that point. And I still, I don't know that I have sleep apnea now, but I'm still using my CPAP machine because ultimately I want to go back to driving an 18 wheeler, that's where my heart is, that's what I want to do. But I have to get my DOT physical straightened out. I just need to go back to a doctor and do that. And because I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in the past, one of the things that I will do is... Look at the data card in my CPAP machine to make sure that I'm still compliant with it. Now, I guess I could go and pay for a sleep study to show that I don't have sleep apnea and that would negate that. But until that happens, I still use my CPAP machine every night. But I, it never was cumbersome to me. The first night I used it 15 years ago, I didn't like it. But from then to now, it doesn't bother me. It actually it's almost comforting now to have it on. But so the dreams that's the thing. So obviously, if you have a great dream, you wake up smiling mood that sets the tone for the balance of your day. And yeah I walk around on my toes on the balls of my feet all day long, just almost on a cloud, and. It's starting to fade. The memory is starting to fade of how depressed I was 120 days ago. And hopefully I've got to use that door. When you wake up, what's the difference, like your

Larry A: 32:05

routine now than it was when you were before carnivore? Like for me, I spring out of bed, like I don't need coffee or nothing. I just, boom, I'm ready to go. And I hit the ground running. What's your day like when you first wake up? What's,

John W: 32:16

how's it different? I've always been a morning person, so I've always been able to get up. I usually wake up five minutes before my alarm goes off. So not a lot of difference there, but before when I had all the, I think plantar fasciitis or whatever, I'd have to sit on the side of the bed and prepare for that pain, take a deep breath and kind of grunt, and you stood up because your feet would hurt. Your back would hurt. Your knees would hurt. So all that's gone. So I, I still am a morning person. I still enjoy getting up early. I just do it without pain now. So that's been the biggest difference is I can get up and take that first step right off the bat without having to prepare for the, the pain in my in my feet and my knees and stuff. I would

Larry A: 32:54

get up early like that too because I've been a morning person. I am a guy that wakes up before his alarm goes off. I usually wake up a half hour before my alarm and then I go in the bedroom and turn it off later. I go back in the bedroom, it'll be on. That's just the way I am. And my dog does too because I do, I feed him about 5 30 in the morning. So I get up around 4 30 or 5 and then I feed him at 5 30. But I've always been like that too. But the difference is I always had to go get my coffee right away. Wipe the sleep out of my eyes. I had allergies. Really. I don't know about you. I had really bad allergies all the time, so I would spend 15 or 20 minutes cleaning my allergies out, taking a pill, getting, all blown out so that I could start working. That's not the case now. Now I just pop up, I get a glass of water, walk right into the office with Duke, and I start, check some YouTube videos, and I answer some people's messages. I do that kind of stuff, and It's completely different for me because my whole morning was getting ready to get going. And then I got going. I was getting up at 4 30, I would be active by five or five 30, but now I can be active. Like literally 10 minutes after I get out, I go to the bathroom, I get my water, I come right in here and I'm ready to go. And it's so quick. I'm not making a cup of coffee anymore. I'm not taking an allergy pill. Did you have allergies before or do you still have

John W: 34:09

allergies? Fortunately, I never did. I've never had any problem with allergies or sinuses. My, I have a brother that's 17 months older than me and he, for the love of God he struggles with it all day, especially during pollen season down in Georgia where he's at. He said he's in Augusta pretty well. Yeah, I've

Larry A: 34:30

been out there for

John W: 34:31

several schools. My mom and dad actually met at Fort Gordon. My dad was stationed there and my mom was working at the canteen and that's where they met. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's an old base.

Larry A: 34:41

Yeah. An old base. And then my dad used to live out there. But he lived in gosh, I forget what city it was in. But anyway he's in he's in Alabama now, but he was there. He's out there for quite a while. One of the barrier Islands, I think. Yeah, that's cool. I enjoyed it there and my allergies were bad there too. So I feel for your brother for sure. And then in Austin's the same thing. Austin's got terrible allergies. So the fact that I don't take pills like I used to, I will take one maybe once a month now if I wake up and have a runny nose or something, but it's really rare where I would do it every day, religiously, sometimes twice a day, just depending on the day.

John W: 35:18

Sure.

Larry A: 35:19

So how do you stay motivated? Isn't this a boring diet? And what are you eating in a day? What kind of carnivore diet

John W: 35:24

are you on? Not really the lion diet. Pretty close. Usually during the week, I just have beef and salt and water, but on the weekends I do like eggs. I eat a lot of eggs and I like bacon, but I'm still struggling with my blood pressure. My blood pressure has come from, I took it the day I started July 1st. It was 210 over 106 and being a paramedic, I know better, but I just, I don't really want to go on blood pressure medicine because the side effects. I was on blood pressure medicine Several years ago, trying to get it down. And I took three different pills and it only brought it down a little bit and the side effects were terrible. So I quit taking it and I just said, one day I'm going to pop a vessel or have a heart attack and it's all be over anyway, but now that I'm on the diet, so I took my blood pressure earlier today, as a matter of fact, it was one 48 over 76, so we've gone from 200 over a hundred to one 50 over 80. Basically. So it's still pretty high, still too high for me to pass that DOT Yeah, but you're getting me from going and doing that. And but I know if I continue on the way I'm going that'll get down to where it needs to be. But as far as my diet I do eat pork and not a lot. I just eat beef and I know you say it's boring and people do say it's boring. And I guess on paper it does look boring. I don't

Larry A: 36:35

think it's boring. I just, that's, I'm just posing the

John W: 36:38

question, right? I love it. The thing for me is I wasn't a big steak eater before this. I would prefer just a hamburger versus steak, but since I really got into this and I started experimenting with. Eating a steak. That's not super well done, which was kind of always what I did. It backing down to maybe a medium. Or maybe moving towards the medium. And so it's not so leathery tough. I enjoy it a lot. I heard somebody say on 1 of the videos recently. I don't remember who it was. Maybe doctor or somebody. The best seasoning you can put on your food is hunger. Yeah. And so I'm pretty much doing m mad sometimes too mad, but almost m mad. And so when I eat, I'm hungry and it's delicious. It's like the first time I've had it, I put a little butter on my steak. I use redmond's reels. Yeah, I do use redmonds, but I also use a little bit of Montreal seasoning just a little bit. I'm backing down on that. That's actually, I

Larry A: 37:28

used to use that too, but I saw it had some seed oils or

John W: 37:32

sugars in it. Yeah. Yeah. It's no sugar and it's got cut sunflower seed oil. Yes. That's why I had to get rid of mine. I used to love that. Yeah. But so I'm using about half what I used to make, yeah. But so far so good. I'm still back. I'll probably use, I want to get some of that Redmond smoke salt. I've used that. How was that? Is that pretty good? It's really

Larry A: 37:52

strong. Use it lightly. I prefer butter and salt. just now. That's all I use. And I prefer getting my free, my ribeyes frozen and air frying them frozen. So the crispy on the outside, by the time I'm ready to eat the inside and just salt and butter, man. But actually, to be honest, I'm more of a burger guy. I eat hamburger. every day. And

John W: 38:14

some days that's all I eat. So what I've started doing, because I work so many hours at work, when I leave home, I usually leave home at 11 30 a. m. and I get home at 11 30 p. m. So my day of work is 12 hours between leaving home and getting home. So what I started doing, rather than cooking hamburger patties in a frying pan, I just make up some patties. I put this big cookie sheet and I cook them in the oven. Just salt and pepper, put them in the oven. That way I can cook like six or eight at a time. I take two to work and then I have two for the next day and two for the next day. I ate an awful lot and I watched when your videos are, you and I had a conversation on the Thursday night thing. You talked about the big Pat, the big rolls you can get at Walmart for the 73 27, I've started buying those on your recommendation. And that was easy, right? It's just easy. It's cheap. And it's if you get it, like I put it in the freezer and get it almost frozen, then I take it out and I can just, I can cut it. Into patties cause it's still around. So then I perfectly round patties. Yep. If it falls out too much, the knife tends to push it down, but if you get it when it's almost frozen and have a good sharp knife, you can just take and mark it off and just cut, cut the quarter inch or 30 inch deep patties. And I just bought one of those 10

Larry A: 39:19

pound rolls today. So I'm going to do a video on the the way to do it. Affordable BBB and E, which was which was, I was talking about doing. Three 10 pound rolls cost you a hundred bucks and then two 60 egg crates, or 15 bucks or something. So basically you, for$130 you can do bb, b and e, right? With salt and with Himalayan pink salt, not the cheap stuff. You can get good salt. So that's just a hundred percent pure salt, so you can actually do it. And I was talking to semi-retired Bob. I dunno if you know him, but. He actually lives on a budget. Yeah. He lives on a budget of 120 a month by, and just eating eggs beef and salt and really no bacon. I used to do a lot of bacon, but I've cut it out of my diet almost completely now. Yeah. I cook it for my son and I just don't, it's like, I don't, now you might, when I was a hundred days in, I was still eating bacon, but now that I'm over 200 days in, it's just, I'm not interested in anymore or chicken or pork at all. Like pork, I just not interested. And you may find yourself doing that. If your body just starts changing. First, the first hundred days, you're learning your hunger signals, right? And you're learning your body again, because it's actually operating normally. When to go to the bathroom, how it feels when you need to go to the bathroom, all these things that you didn't know because you had this crap flowing through you at a super high pressure, high rate. And you had broken hunger signals, your digestive system was jacked up, your toilet time was all jacked up. And then once you get all normalized after a hundred days or so, You start realizing, Oh, wow, this is what normal is. This is the real normal. This is the hunter gatherer normal. This is the Masai and the Inuit and these ancestral diet eating people, the Indians that still do in Canada aboriginals in Australia they, the ones that still eat an ancestral diet have our normal that we have now. So it's really awesome.

John W: 41:14

Yeah, but away from bacon lately because I told you I'm still struggling with my blood pressure and, bacon, even if you get one with no sugar, which I try to look for. It's cured with salt. So it's very salty and I usually eat, to eight to 10 strips of bacon at a time with my eggs. But I I started buying I bought it last time I did it. One of my videos, I talk about it. I went to Costco and bought a big thing of pork belly, which is completely uncured. And I brought it home and I slice it and I make my own bacon. I cook it in the oven 375 for 20 minutes and I flip it one time and put it back in for about five minutes and it crisp up. And so you get that same the flavor of the fat of the bacon, but without all the salt. And I really like that. And you buy these huge packs of it. I've got three freezers, so I've got plenty of freezer space. And so I've been making my own. I put it in, I cut it all up and put it in freezer bags. And then I'll just take one out with me. Five or six strips in it. And so it's getting rid of a lot of the sodium and I know we're not supposed to fear sodium, but because my blood pressure is where it's at still, I need to be conscious of that. But yeah, I've swapped out bacon for just pork belly. And I, like you, I found myself maybe not craving that quite as much. I still need a lot of eggs though. Yeah. Yeah.

Larry A: 42:22

I occasional hard boiled eggs and the occasional egg with my son, when I haven't having there this weekend now I made breakfast for him today and I didn't eat eggs. I just, I don't eat breakfast typically. If I do, it's a social thing. So I'll make an egg for myself and a piece of bacon or something and sit down and have breakfast with them, but I'm not really eating with them. I'm just doing the breakfast thing, but a lot of times I won't, I'll just make him breakfast and I'll come to the office and work and then drop him off at school. He's

John W: 42:48

14. He's a carnivore too. So yeah, I do feel myself. As I go forward, I feel myself needing less and less variety. I'm so satisfied with just the burgers. Now what I do like to do is make us a fried egg, but over, over easy, put it on top of a hamburger and let the yogurt spill out on it. Use it almost like a sauce. That's good. So I knew I do enjoy that, but I ate more hamburger than probably five to one hamburger versus everything else combined.'cause it's what you eat. What'd you eat today? I went to Wendy's today and I ordered a baconator, a triple. Oh I get those. Okay. Threw the bone away. And I just had the bacon, the meat, and they had cheese on it. I ate cheese sparingly. I've noticed a lot of people talk about cheese being having a histamine thing and I know it does. So far for me, it hadn't, I can't, if I eat a little cheese or if I don't feel a difference. But I don't go overboard on it. I hardly cheese.

Larry A: 43:36

Cheese is a condiment like on a burger is no big deal. And I, we had burgers. So tonight I made Wagyu burgers cause they sell them here at H E V, which are amazing. You buy the burger patties, pre made Wagyu, super fatty, right? And they're 70, 30, I think. And they're, they taste so good. So I made Wagyu burgers on the grill with a couple of hot dogs, a hundred percent beef hot dogs. I know they got nitrates in them. I don't care. I've lost all this weight and I feel great. It doesn't really bother me. And I don't eat. A ton of them, but my son likes them. I like them. So we had a hot dog, we had a burger patty, and we had cheese on there. I put some cheddar cheese. Stay away from the American cheese, cause it has seed oils in it, and it's fake. But if I I'll do the cheddar, and a little bit of cheese isn't gonna, isn't gonna hurt you, I don't think. It depends on the person, like Michaela Peterson does. So I would say, you have to figure out if it will hurt you. And the best way to do it, is to actually go on a full elimination diet, and then reintroduce things one at a time. Did that and I had the best results of I got a stall about 110 days in and then I was on BBB and E and I cut out everything except lion basically except for I added butter still So I was lying with butter and I lost 13 pounds in the next two weeks Just by doing that after stalling for a month and a half. So And then I made a mistake of reintroducing multiple things at once And then I got some pain. I like, okay, which one was it? I have no idea. So they have to go back to wean yourself off and go strict again. So right now I'm into a strict thing again, right? Because I'm not sure what caused the pain. And I'm going to reintroduce these things one at a time coming in. Yeah, it's weird, but it's really a great, powerful tool that we have.

John W: 45:14

But isn't it amazing and disappointing all at the same time that this was in front of you and in front of me and in front of your fellow soldiers and my fellow first responders? And just the human beings in general, the West, obviously it's been right in front of us the whole time and we fall into the commercials. And I asked my wife to this. Why do you think they put toys in kids? Cereal? Yeah, why do they have cartoon characters? Colorful cartoon characters and advertise specifically to children on Saturday morning? When we were kids, Saturday morning cartoons. There's a reason there's a reason they're trying to draw you to that, which you just didn't have any of that. And this way your whole life, all these elements and maladies would probably never even come into your life ever. Yep. And they did it with

Larry A: 45:56

cigarettes. When I was a kid, they had the candy cigarettes. Remember those we keep

John W: 46:00

buying and look, Oh yeah.

Larry A: 46:03

Yeah. And a candy, a big, big chew, like the chewing

John W: 46:06

tobacco. It was actually,

Larry A: 46:08

Oh yeah. I mean, so bad. Right. And then they also had cartoons. I think the Flintstones had a smoking commercial. Where Fred and Barney were taking a smoke break. I remember seeing that online on YouTube. So yeah they were going after kids. They've been going after kids for a long time. Yeah. So it's not a mystery. All right, we're getting close to the end. We're going to wrap up with talking about your YouTube channel and then we're, they're going to give you the floor. You've got a YouTube channel. I think this is it, right? The champion within nine, six, one, nine. Is that right? Absolutely. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. So this is your YouTube channel, the champion within nine, six, one, nine. Look, tell me why you started a YouTube channel. What, I have, you always wanted to be YouTuber. Is that what's going on here or

John W: 46:51

years ago. And so this as an old name, because one of the diets I did was the whole eat less, move more thing. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer and we knew that her life was coming to an end. She told me that she always wanted me to lose weight. I want to see you healthy. I don't want to leave the world knowing that you're so unhealthy. So I took that as, something I needed to do. And so I went really strict on 1, 200 calories a day, 1, 300 calories a day, exercising, intermittent fasting, extended fasting. And I dropped 100 pounds in about seven months. And my muscle, my, before I, before my mom died, she saw me get healthy. And so I started this channel cause I was really excited having lost all that weight. I still had arthritis. I still couldn't move. I still was a hot mess when it comes to just mobility and flexibility and stuff. But my mom got to see me. She died, we buried her. And the next day I started putting on weight. I was so hungry. I was so miserable. So I only had two or three videos on that channel, and obviously I started putting on weight the day after my mom's funeral, I was putting on weight. And so I deleted all those videos, but I kept the channel. And now that I found this, my, my hope with my channel is to reach 55 and older because I've, think about it, Larry, if you hadn't found this, you and I were just talking about, yesterday was the best day tomorrow is going to be worse and we know it doesn't have to be that way. How many people that are in your demographic or my demographic thinking that this is going to be normal, they're going to be in a wheelchair. They're going to use a walker. They're going to have to use a cane. They're going to be in constant pain. They're going to have to go to the doctor three times a week, every week for the rest of their life. And so I really want to try to reach that group of people, people who are our age, maybe older, who are stuck in the thought that this is as good as it gets. It's going to be worse tomorrow and show them that there is a better way. I know there's young people out there like Carnivore Kip and Sean's a good bit younger and we see Poco, Moonshine family, JT. I love seeing these young guys and even Kerry pretty young. I love seeing these young guys because they'll never go through with some of the things that you and I've gone through as they age, but I want my channel and I do my analytics. My biggest group is, I think, 45 to 54, and then it's 65 plus is actually, I'm gaining subscribers and viewers in the 65 and over demographic and that's who I want to reach. I want to reach, my mom was in her seventies, but she passed away in the last five years of her life was absolute misery. I see older people come into the store while I work and they're on a walk or they're having to use the the motorized shopping cart, because they simply can't stand, they can't do anything. They're not all there in their sixties or maybe early seventies. And we see other examples of people in that age group that are thriving on this diet. Yep. So that's where I'm at. That's where I want my channel to go. It's, it's helped people age better. It's so amazing. You

Larry A: 49:40

had amazing results by torturing yourself and doing all this extra work and in this diet. You're never hungry. You're never torturing yourself. You're never like obsessed with food. You're never exercising excessively. I walked. That was my exercise when I lost 46 pounds, I introduced a little bit of weightlifting 40 minutes a week, like four 10 minute sessions. I did not do and before this, like when I was in the military and I was in the gym for hours, I was, Running, miles and putting all this work in that I didn't really have to do apparently because if I would have had this diet back then I would have been in awesome shape like right now I'm in better shape than my last two years in the military. I guarantee you and I would, I could probably do my job better now than I could my last two years and I retired in 2019 so I'm talking 2017 to 2019 and I'm in better shape now after just being on this for a couple hundred days. Yeah, can't imagine what it would have been like. Not having injuries. And yeah, our age group going forward, not having injuries not being weak and frail, not being limited. I see Maggie White, I think it is on the ranch and she's gone to learn how to sail a boat to go sailing with her husband all around the world. At 83 and I'm like, dang, that's pretty cool. I, that's the kind of stuff I'm looking forward to in my. Future years. And the other thing is, after Dr. Chaffee says, our body's designed to live 120 years biologically. So if you die before you're 120 years old, something killed you. Either a car crash or your diet or a disease, but something killed you because you're designed to go into 120. So that means I'm not, you and I, we're not midlife yet. We got a couple more years.

John W: 51:23

And that's, we're thinking we're in the ninth inning of the baseball game. We're only in the top of the fifth or something, we're

Larry A: 51:29

not even in the seventh inning stretch, man. We're not even close. So it's pretty exciting. All right, well, I'm going to give you the floor here and I'm going to just. Ask you to tell people if you were talking to first responders, cause you were first responder, other first responders or people that were first responders and they said, Hey, I'm interested in this. I'd like to start what advice would you give them? How would you tell them to start? And what things do you tell them to do?

John W: 51:54

Well, I would tell them to figure out why what are you looking for? You have to, before you know the, how you need, in my opinion, you need to know the why, is it because of chronic pain? Is it because of inability to do your job? Is it because. Your clothes don't fit well. Is it because you're having problems, in, in life in general what is it that you want to get from this? Cause I think if you don't have a strong, why when those temptations come, it's really easy to backslide really easy because there's temptations. Every time you go into the convenience store, the grocery store, my wife is not doing carnivore. So there's all kinds of temptations in the house. So I would have them identify what is it that you're looking for? What do you want your life to look like? If you do this and you stick to it. So we nailed that down and I commit it maybe from a drill sergeant standpoint. I don't people want to do the low carb and then he's in the keto and carnivore. That would never work for me. I was July one. I was carnivore. I was. You are. You're not. That's just me. And I would say just do it. It's gonna be held the first two weeks. You're gonna have some problems in the bathroom. You got to get through it. But if you stretch that out over six months, you might not ever get through it. Just do it. What's the Nike thing? Just do it. And that would be my advice. And it doesn't work for everybody. But it worked great for me because I struggled through it. I had temptations the first week or so. And And now it's just part of my life. And I think if I would have strung it along inch by inch, I never would have got to where I'm at now. I would have backslid too easily, too many temptations. So I would just advise, just try it for 30 days, go all in at the end of 30 days. If it didn't work, then at least you tried, you gave it an ample amount of time. And and then I would give them my, my, my name and my phone number and my email and say, Hey, if you have any questions or you need some advice, or you need somebody to help you through this or guide you I'm available free of charge. Especially for first responders, because that's a Yeah. You need to find a community. And whether

Larry A: 53:48

it's here or, and YouTube or a Facebook page, I have a group, I don't know if you do, but I've got a Facebook page and a group. Yeah. I don't have a, I've got a Discord server where people can come join. And the thing is, and if it's not my group, that's great. There's plenty of other groups out there. Find one that you fit in, you plug in with them. This is the most accepting and helpful community across the board. I think that you're ever going to find, there is some dogma going on. There are some people that are, very religious. Carnivores, say you can't do carnivore this way. Cause you do this and just disregard that stuff overall. You're going to get good advice and good help. If you ask for help when you're starting out. And I really think, yeah. So having a community is a big part of it. Having a why I'm big into the why it's gotta be a big enough. Why. If your Y is losing 18 pounds, it's not big enough because you quit every diet in the past that had that Y and every diet failed. And then the other thing is, like you said, going all in in the beginning, that was my way. I'm not a moderator. I'm a binger. I think most people in our situation probably were bingers. Exactly. If you're a moderator, yeah, if you're a moderator, maybe you can do it. Maybe not. For me, the reason I fell off, I had initial success with every diet I've done. Initially in the past, keto worked for a while, fasting worked for a while, but they all failed because I always slid into like with keto foods that were actually had sweeteners. And I kept eating sweeteners and drinking diet Coke. And I always had cravings. This is the first diet I've ever done. where the cravings are completely gone. And I don't know about you. Have you cut sweeteners out of you? You did, right? You're no sweeteners in your diet.

John W: 55:30

Yeah. Yeah. The first month I had a bunch of diet coke in one of my refrigerators out in the garage and I thought I would finish them off, but eventually a couple of weeks into it, I just put them in a bag, took them to work and give them away. rid of all artificial sweeteners. The only thing I have is I do drink these sparkling waters and I have a couple of those a day, but it's just water and it's natural flavors. Yeah. They are natural

Larry A: 55:51

flavor. I've done a couple of those. I typically drink flavorless, but that's much less, you're not going to get cravings from that. For me, sweeteners would get me cravings at 6 PM every night. I'd be like craving something. And it was terrible. And I would always fail. So this is the first diet that's easy not to fail. It's like sustainable. That's, you're not torturing yourself. It's no big deal. It just works. So,

John W: 56:16

um, For me, Larry, I don't know about you, but for me my, my thought process going through this is if I'm hungry, I'm going to eat. I'm not going to deny myself. Oh, I do. Yep. And I may have three meals a day and I may go 48 hours without eating because it's my body saying. Some nutrients and I'm going to feed my body, but I've gone multiple times, 48 hours without eating, without being hungry. But I've also had three meals in one day because I was hungry. It's just intuitive, that's

Larry A: 56:42

the, yeah, that's the thing you actually do. Your hunger signals get repaired. They go, they normalize and then you can listen to them. And then you can actually never be hungry because whenever you're hungry, you just eat, whether it's like when I started, I snacked a lot, but it was all snacks that I had prepped. I'd fry up a pound of bacon every day and put it in the fridge in a bag and I go just snack on bacon or cheese, hard cheese. I cut cheese in cubes and I'd snack on some of that or salami, but I would always try to be a carnivore snack. I would never snack on anything. I threw away everything that didn't have that stuff the wheat and the sugar. And I got rid of sweeteners and after two weeks, I snacked a little less and I was on three meals plus snack all day when I started after four weeks, I was on two or three meals because I sometimes just get breakfast and then I snacked a little less by the time I was eight weeks, snacking was almost gone and I was on one or two meals a day. And then after that, now I'm just one or two meals a day. I rarely snack. If I do, I might get a slice of butter or something, but I mean, it's no big deal, right? It's not like I'm sitting there eating a bag of something or, so it's an amazing transformation in your body and it is. Learning your body. You have to become the subject matter expert of your body, and you have to learn all the signals again. True.

John W: 58:07

Right.

Larry A: 58:08

Man, it's been a great talk. We're running outta time, so I'm just gonna go ahead and wrap this up. But John where can they get ahold of you besides your YouTube channel? You have an email address and you have other, any other

John W: 58:19

social media you wanna share? Just my YouTube. I'll read all the comments on YouTube. They can reach out to me. I just joined John's online group. I'll look in. I'll join yours. Once we get off here, I didn't realize you had one, but I'll join your email. Your Facebook group and to drive it home. This community is has been as much of a blessing as the diet is and the way of life and all the crap being gone out of my life, the community, the welcoming the love and the support and all the good things about the community has been just unbelievably amazing. I had no idea that this community would wrap me up in their arms. Like I've tried to wrap everybody else up. It's just amazing. The support that. And we all give one another and we need more of that in this world. That's true. It's really a

Larry A: 59:01

positive vibe and a fun place to be. And the people are, because I really think, it's like we were talking about, everyone's really. Motivated and positive Attitude because our because we're eating a proper diet. Our brains are working I can't imagine how this country would be if everyone was eating like this what difference it could make right? I really think it would be amazing and It's really sad that we're on this diet. That's actually damaging our psyche, in, in mass. And yeah, so all I can say is, yeah, you can tell the difference when you go from a carnivore to a non carnivore community immediately. You can tell the difference. All right, John, I'm gonna drop you off. I'm gonna say goodbye. Stick around a minute. We'll talk

John W: 59:46

afterwards. Okay. Okay. Thanks.

Larry A: 59:50

All right, guys. That was a great talk. John's a fantastic carnivore and I'm super happy to have him on the channel to share as another first responder, all I gotta say guys is stay strong and overcome carnivore soldier out.