Followed By Mercy

Bacon, Butter & Beyond: The Surprising Freedom of Meat-Based Eating

• W. Austin Gardner

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Are you ready to transform your relationship with food, not just for a short time, but for good? Join us for an honest conversation with Katie, who discovered a new freedom through the carnivore diet after years of battling cravings and confusion.

This is not a diet fad or a one-size-fits-all promise. Katie’s journey is about letting go of food rules and learning what it means to feel truly satisfied and at peace with eating. She says it plainly: fat is your friend. For her, embracing fat was the key to quieting cravings and finally feeling full and steady. The transformation came not from willpower but from giving her body what it needed.

In this episode, we talk through the ups and downs of starting a meat-based diet. Katie shares how to navigate the early days, how to stock your kitchen so you never feel deprived, and how to address the doubts that creep in when friends or family don’t understand your choices. She tackles real questions about fiber, weight, and what happens when you eat differently from everyone around you. Katie’s answers are honest and practical, free from shame or strict rules.

But more than any tip or trick, what shines through is the sense of freedom. Freedom from the old food chatter that used to run her life. Freedom from cravings and crashes. Freedom to be present for the people she loves, with energy to enjoy the best parts of her day. As Katie shares, “All the precious things in my life, good sleep, steady energy, joy with my kids, I’ve found through this new way of eating.”

If you are curious about the carnivore way or just tired of feeling stuck with food, Katie’s encouragement is simple. Try it for a month. See how you feel. You have nothing to lose but old struggles you were never meant to carry.

This episode is for anyone ready for a change, for those hungry for peace with food, and for anyone seeking hope on the other side of the struggle. Listen in and take your first step toward real freedom.

Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Austin Gardner:

I welcome you back to. Followed by Mercy, I am still here again today with Katie, our daughter-in-law, the wife of our son David and mama to three of our wonderful grandchildren, and we've had a good time talking about the carnivore diet. I really believe that it can help you make a major difference in your life, and so today we'll talk about some of the problems with the diet and maybe what it takes to get used to it and how to get started. So let's just start Katie with okay, I think I might try this. Okay, now, what do you tell them?

Katie Gardner:

Ooh, good for you. It's a good choice I highly recommend. But getting started hindsight is always 20-20, right. I made a lot of mistakes, didn't know what I was doing, spent a lot of time feeling hungry. I don't think I had to feel as bad as I felt. I think I just didn't know what I was doing for a lot of the time and then just slowly figured it out.

Austin Gardner:

I didn't feel as bad as you did. No, I felt horrible. I think I should have gotten a trophy for how bad I felt I was in your home. I was there for what? Two weeks? Because of the pastor school. I think so, yeah More, or less and you told me everything to do. Go ahead.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah. So what I would tell someone. What I learned is initially yes, if you're used to eating carbs and sugar, you are going to have cravings. It's pretty much unavoidable. But you don't have to be as miserable as I was. So anytime you're hungry, especially initially, you eat and you want to eat high fat. Why? Because fat is satiating and it calms your cravings. So I did not know this in the beginning. I did eat a lot of meat. I don't think I ate as much fat as I should have not know this in the beginning. I did eat a lot of meat. I don't think I ate as much fat as I should have, and so I would struggle really bad with intense cravings and hunger. But when you eat a lot of fat, like I said, that's very satiating.

Austin Gardner:

It's more satiating we're not used to eating fat. No, and that's scaring people that are listening Right now they're going what in the stinking world? I just got to go get a piece of fat and eat it.

Katie Gardner:

No, but if you look at even ground beef, when you look at the package, you'll see that there's like 90-10, 85-15.

Austin Gardner:

And so at the leanest I usually go 80-20 personally, and that's about as lean as I'll go because I want that fat in there, because eating just a pile of lean meats and typically most of us would have said no, I want all lean Right you want the 95.5 or something like that, and that is you know. There's nothing wrong with eating that Bacon is full of fat.

Katie Gardner:

Bacon is basically all fat, yeah.

Austin Gardner:

So, like, if you're listening and you're going, they're crazy. If I think I'm going to sit around chewing on fat Because I think some of you listening, it's what I thought of you listening, it's what I thought I thought because even when I would eat a ribeye, I would never eat the fat. I always push the fat over to the side. Now I eat all the fat.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, the fat is good If it's cooked like bacon is very fatty.

Austin Gardner:

Well, I don't enjoy the fat as much as you probably would, but I will just cut a little piece of fat and stick it with the other and eat it, because I know I need the fat.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, so there's nothing wrong with lean meat. I really enjoy lean cuts of meat. But if I eat lean meat, I will add butter or some other type of fatty meat with it, perhaps.

Austin Gardner:

And there's different ways of eating fatty meat. Oh yeah, so let's talk to them. I won't keep interrupting you because I want you to explain it. But like, even when you cook a steak and you're in a fancy restaurant, they put butter on the steak.

Katie Gardner:

I don't want you to explain it, but like even when you cook a steak and you're in a fancy restaurant they put butter on a steak A lot of times, yeah. Sometimes it can be margarine, but in the good places you should be getting butter, not that vegetable oil or margarine.

Austin Gardner:

But even I've bought a steak and it comes out with a slab of butter on top.

Katie Gardner:

It's because they know it's good.

Austin Gardner:

Help them understand that's fat.

Katie Gardner:

That is fat. Butter is a really great way to get fat into your diet.

Austin Gardner:

initially Butter tastes good, but not on toast.

Katie Gardner:

No, not on your toast.

Katie Gardner:

You smear it on your meat. You use it to cook. So, yeah, okay. So going back Fat. Fat is your friend. You feel a craving, eat some fat. You feel hungry, eat fat.

Katie Gardner:

I have been known to eat straight up butter in certain moments. Okay, and I know that's very weird, I understand how weird that sounds and looks and everything, but it's very good for you. It's fantastic for energy and it's very, very satiating. This is why I can eat twice a day and literally it's not like, oh, I'm intermittent fasting, it's like no, I eat when I'm hungry. And when you eat this way, your body usually naturally falls into a state of intermittent fasting. I have gone, you know, without really trying, 23, 24 hours sometimes without eating, and it's just because it wasn't convenient or I wasn't really hungry or whatever, not because I forced intermittent fasting. So it's really interesting, um, how that works.

Katie Gardner:

But when it comes to red meat, you can do ground beef that's like 80, 20. There are different cuts of meat, um that are cheaper and more expensive. A ribeye, obviously, is delicious, so I'm going to be more pricey. Um, you can do things like skirt steak that has the marbling throughout. I personally prefer a piece of meat with marbling throughout, not necessarily on the edges. I don't know why I like that, but I really enjoy meat that has marbling throughout. So experiment, see what you like, splurge and get some nice meat.

Katie Gardner:

Occasionally high fat foods that I recommend are eggs, egg yolks specifically, so you can eat eggs but then just even add the egg yolk um to your eggs and eat those. Uh butter, uh, I even ate cream cheese a lot more in the beginning because that's good. It's a really high fat. Uh, food cheeses. Some people have dairy issues. I don't drink milk. I do heavy cream in my coffee once a day. I eat cheese, uh, probably every week, but not all the time.

Katie Gardner:

That's also the hard cheeses can be really high fat, like Parmesan and cheddars and things like that, so that's a really good source of fat. Butter bacon is an excellent source of fat. Things like pork, belly that's fried up and crispy, delicious. And there are people who do like getting fat trimmings from their butcher or wherever and even just frying those up in a skillet if they need additional fat. But if you're going to start, you need to know you need the fat and the fat doesn't make you gain weight. Fat is going to kickstart your weight loss, if you're worried about that, also your body is going to get into a fat.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, your body gets into a fat burning. So when your typical diet you're burning carbs, you're burning sugar. When that runs out, your muscles can only store so much sugar and so when that's depleted, you start getting hungry. You need more. So when that's depleted it's you start getting hungry, you need more. Um, but with the fat it begins to, your metabolism switches over to burning fat. You not only burn the fat you consume, but you begin burning fat reserves on your body and it's very efficient, uh, energy source because you don't have the ups and downs in your blood sugar and it's a lot more stable in that sense. You don't have the lows, the crashes in the afternoon after you eat lunch and all that weird stuff. It's a very stable energy source.

Austin Gardner:

But, yeah, if you're going to start understand fat as your friend, I would like to say to anybody starting to you have to kind of say I will stick it out for a month.

Katie Gardner:

I would say give it at least a month. Most people would say three months, because in a month it's kind of hard to see a lot of change, and so I think if you're willing to stick it out for even three months, that's great. But if you, if you give it a month, I feel like you're probably going to start to see, you know, some changes, go through maybe that initial keto flu, as we called it, get through that and then begin to feel some changes. Um, I know, for me it was at least a month before I began feeling significant changes.

Austin Gardner:

Okay, I got a lot of questions. We may go a little longer on this one, since I said it'd be the last one, but we have been using vegetable oils for everything.

Katie Gardner:

Yes.

Austin Gardner:

And that's healthy?

Katie Gardner:

No, I hate vegetable oils. Even now, when I go out to eat or whatever, and I know I'm most likely going to be consuming something that's been cooked in a vegetable oil or has it on it, I feel it the next day. Now that I'm running a clean system, so to speak, I feel it the next day. But no, they are actually a highly processed food and they're not good for you.

Austin Gardner:

Oh well, you can look all this up.

Katie Gardner:

Yes, no, this is not like conspiracy theory. This is proven very. They cause a lot of oxidation in the body. They're very inflammatory. They're highly processed. They are not good for you?

Austin Gardner:

What about olive oil?

Katie Gardner:

Extra virgin, like cold pressed olive oil, is good. It's a good oil and avocado oil is appropriate also, the only thing you have to be careful with. From what I understand and I really don't even know how to look for a good olive oil there is a way to look for them and they come packaged a certain way and they're from certain parts of the world. But they even cut virgin olive oils with other seed oils sometimes and they won't be very clear on the packaging.

Austin Gardner:

I think everybody ought to remember people that are selling you stuff are doing it to make money, not to get you the best product. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Katie Gardner:

I feel like very few. I would assume that very few people in the food industry care what it's doing to you. They just want you hooked.

Austin Gardner:

One of the things. Okay, let's talk about what. If you're going to fry or cook anything, you're going to use butter. Tell me about that tallow.

Katie Gardner:

So tallow has a very high smoke point. I don't use tallow a lot. What I like to do, I cook a lot in butter and I cook a lot of bacon, which is adding fat to it even as you cook it.

Katie Gardner:

And flavor Butter is so good, but I keep all of my bacon grease. After I cook bacon I always strain it. I have a thing, a container, I keep it in and I cook and fry most everything in bacon grease and it is so good. But yeah, some ground rules for just starting. You definitely want to get rid of any seed oils, vegetable oils, canola, soy, peanut oil. All that stuff is very inflammatory, very bad for you and whether you do this diet or not, I don't think people should use those period. They're just not good for anyone.

Austin Gardner:

Sugar's not good.

Katie Gardner:

Refined foods aren't good Refined yeah, all that stuff is so bad, that pack of crackers you grab for a snack is like poison, no it's not good, it's all bad.

Katie Gardner:

Unfortunately it's just so processed. And even certain people do well with just a whole foods diet, eating some fruits and vegetables. I'm not opposed to that. I just know how I feel best and that is why I choose to be a little more strict. But even if you can start getting away from the package stuff and just eating whole foods like real food that you know was grown or raised or whatever, and stop with the packaged highly processed flavors, added dyes, added stuff, you would be in such better shape, I feel like.

Austin Gardner:

When I started, when I was a boy, on the farm we boiled all the fat from the pigs down and made lard. Yeah, and lard was considered country and hick and backwards and Crisco.

Katie Gardner:

And Crisco was fancy.

Austin Gardner:

Yeah, and so you know my family slowly swapped over.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah.

Austin Gardner:

But what would you say about lard?

Katie Gardner:

I think there's a reason these country people lived so long and were so strong into their old age. I mean, they weren't carnivores by any means, but they were more whole foods.

Austin Gardner:

They were whole foods, they were very whole food.

Katie Gardner:

They grew their food, they raised their animals. They were very whole food. They grew their food, they raised their animals. They did stuff like cook with lard instead of vegetable oils and I think you know, you see, that these people, like our grandparents and problems and kids, now younger and younger, struggling with diabetes and different health issues and mental health issues, and like the health has just declined so terribly with the introduction of processed foods and all these, highly processed oils.

Austin Gardner:

This is kind of off subject but I want to say it while I'm thinking about it. I think I've read or heard, listened to. If anybody keeps up, you would ADHD and other types of things. The carnivore diet has helped some people with that.

Katie Gardner:

It has.

Austin Gardner:

And we're not doctors but Dr Berry.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, certain behavioral issues like that, A lot of kids get diagnosed. I feel like I don't know. I don't love diagnosing, the idea of diagnosing children and labeling and stuff like that. But yeah, there have been parents and different people who have changed their kid's diet and seen definite benefits and improvement in these behavioral diagnoses like ADD, ADHD and things like that, and even in cases with autism, like I know, there's a spectrum and there's some very extreme cases but Well, you're not the doctor.

Austin Gardner:

No, I'm not the doctor, I'm just saying I have read but we've watched and read Right.

Katie Gardner:

I've read that in certain cases they've seen it benefit even children with autism, getting rid of all the refined foods, the sugars, the flours, the oils, and getting them on a very animal-based high-fat diet. So I don't know.

Austin Gardner:

I think it's really interesting and I think a lot of what we're doing with our diet these days is affecting our health younger and younger. Well, when I was a kid I'm 70 years old but when I was a kid I didn't know hardly anybody, with all those problems that everybody has now.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, everyone seems to have an allergy or some sort of health issue that plagues them, that they just have to learn to live with, basically, Okay, so let's just sum up a little bit about getting started.

Austin Gardner:

You said you think they ought to consider 90 days.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, I mean, if you can only do a month, that's fine, but if you really want to give it a chance, I feel like 30 days is good Go ahead. I'm sorry, 90 days, you're right.

Austin Gardner:

Go ahead and get lots of food that contains fat, which we've discussed. Tell them what to do, like I'm going to start tomorrow or I'm going to start next week.

Katie Gardner:

I would go out and I would buy ground beef. All right, so don't be super hard on yourself. Some people are really big purists.

Katie Gardner:

I know my father-in-law jokes with me because he thinks I'm super strict and he's not always as super strict as I am, but I mean, some people are so strict where they will only put salt on their food, right. So some things to consider. Don't be like super crazy wild. Don't necessarily give up your coffee right away. Um, if you enjoy that, uh, add butter and cream to it if you want. But, um, stock your fridge. Make sure you have food so that when you're hungry there's stuff there to eat. I would even cook up a lot of bacon at once and when I would get a craving I could get some bacon with some cream cheese, or I could have burger patties.

Austin Gardner:

I can have cream cheese.

Katie Gardner:

Yes, you can have cream cheese. I don't still eat a lot of cream cheese, but in the beginning someone said eat cream cheese. It's really fatty and it's good and that helped me.

Austin Gardner:

I'm just trying to get you to make sure everybody listens.

Katie Gardner:

So yeah, cheese, cream cheese, bacon, ground beef, If you like, taco flavored ground beef get your taco seasoning.

Katie Gardner:

I would recommend there are some decent brands that don't have a lot of taco shells no, I'm not taco shells, no, but you can do the taco thing. You can use pork rinds. There are pork rinds that are just salt and pork rinds cooked in their own fat. There are some with crazy stuff in them, but check your ingredient labels. But yeah, cheese, pork rinds, ground beef, some nice meat to grill, if you like that. Have stuff already prepared in your fridge, because….

Austin Gardner:

You will get hungry.

Katie Gardner:

You will get hungry.

Austin Gardner:

initially I kept thinking it's because I wanted to eat.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, and you're so prone to snack Like I was a snacker.

Austin Gardner:

You know, my family's a snacker family.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, I loved to snack, and so that was part of my problem. I didn't always have food readily available, and that would drive me crazy.

Austin Gardner:

So, here.

Katie Gardner:

it's really easy. I can get cheese sticks, all different kinds of cheese, cream cheese, bacon, eggs Um, you can't make eggs ahead of time, obviously, unless you're boiling them, but um, have eggs on hand. If you like chicken wings and have a way of cooking them, you know, uh, pre-cook some chicken wings that you can heat up. Um, any of the meats and things that you like have um, save your baking grease to cook in. I um, I love. You can buy what's called pork panko from I know it's on Amazon, you can get it at Walmart, but you can get flavored ones and just plain ones and I actually use that. It's like it looks like breadcrumbs but it's basically just chopped up pork rinds to act like breadcrumbs and you can dip, you know, chicken or steak in that and fry it in your baking grease and have a little fried vegetable oil.

Austin Gardner:

No, you fry it in your baking grease and have a little fried food. Don't fry it in vegetable oil.

Katie Gardner:

No, you fry it in your baking grease that you save, yeah. And then you know, have lots of butter on hand. Put butter on everything, on your meat, on your eggs. Don't be afraid of butter Like, drown your eggs. I love to drown my eggs with butter.

Austin Gardner:

I think everybody thinks butter is a bad thing Most people.

Katie Gardner:

Butter is so good for you, you and it's so yummy, and I used to. My kids used to try to eat it when they were little. I think most kids have tried to eat butter before. I don't know why, but they stick their finger in the butter and eat it and you're like don't do that. You know, but I don't know, maybe it's just like instinctual, like this is good and I want to eat this. I don't know.

Austin Gardner:

So try to go for 90 days, get a bunch of food prepared so you can eat and, by the way, stop counting calories.

Katie Gardner:

No counting calories.

Austin Gardner:

So I think I said earlier and stop being so conscious, I can only eat a four ounce hamburger.

Katie Gardner:

No, no, no, you eat until you are full. Okay, that is the goal here. You want to eat until you're full, all right.

Austin Gardner:

So if you're worried about your weight, initially, and when she says full, she means eat until you are busted.

Katie Gardner:

Like you feel like you're full, not like, oh, I think I've had enough, because diet culture says you only eat so many calories and then you stop, whether you're hungry still or not. But here you want to begin to nourish your body and you may, initially, if you've been on certain diets before, if you've been really restrictive, if you've had a really bad diet, you may find that you just want to eat tons of food. So go for it Initially. This is why 30 days is good, because initially your body is going to begin healing, correcting things, you're going to begin losing fluid, you're going to get some things back in balance and your body needs loads of nutrition to do so. And some people even gain a little weight initially, as their body is just taking in all of the proper nutrition it needs. But once things calm down and even out, your body begins to lose weight, like if that is a concern of yours, uh, and you're why you're considering doing this. You do lose weight and your appetite does calm down. But initially you have to realize you just need to feed yourself and it feels very contrary to what society says or what you may be learned in a book you read or a dietician told you.

Katie Gardner:

But I would say, since starting the carnivore diet I can, you know, there are days I can easily eat over 3,000 calories and guess what? I wake up the next morning and I'm still the same weight. And I've been doing it for two years and I've never had to worry about. Oh no, I've gained a few pounds, you know, because I ate all that cake last week or anything like that. I just maintain and after a while you get into a zone where you're like feeling you, you can read like it's like you have hunger cues again like legitimate hunger cues, like I'm like legitimate hungry, legitimately hungry or legitimately not, and you begin to follow kind of the rhythm of your body, or at least I do, and when I'm hungry I eat, and when I eat and when I'm not I don't, and I maintain my weight and my health and it's just so easy and there's no thinking. I don't think about how much I'm eating, I just eat fat and meat and get full.

Austin Gardner:

And that's it I want to say. Too. Well, you know, I think I tried this before you.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, did you.

Austin Gardner:

Years ago I would go on to Keto.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, Keto Okay.

Austin Gardner:

Atkins. Okay, I'm going to go Atkins and I would not make it. No, I would go a few and that's what you're going to think if you're getting ready to start this. You're new and the reason is I punished myself. I didn't get full.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah.

Austin Gardner:

I didn't have snacks, and so I sat there the whole day going I don't have anything to eat, I'm not going to get anything to eat, and I fought like that and that's what you explained to me when I was there in your house. Just eat.

Katie Gardner:

If you're hungry, eat.

Austin Gardner:

Yeah, and you told me just eat all you want, Eat what you want, and initially it might seem like a lot, but again you'll actually. You may actually end up eating less later. Yeah, I did.

Katie Gardner:

Initially, I you know, for a while I was probably over 3000 calories regularly in a day. For counting calories, I was curious. I wanted to know how many I was eating just for kicks and giggles. And I was like, oh my word, even when I ate all the cake and ice cream, I don't think I ate that many calories. But I would still struggle to lose weight and felt sick and everything else.

Austin Gardner:

So set a time period, prepare the food. Don't torture yourself, Anything else.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, no, yeah, just eat when you want. Initially, it's not always going to be that way. You're not always going to be crazy ravenously hungry, but please, it's not about restricting. You will be at first. Yeah, it's not about restricting.

Austin Gardner:

It's not about the need for food as much as it is.

Katie Gardner:

You're thinking.

Austin Gardner:

I'm depriving myself, and so I went crazy. Yeah, no, you got to eat, you got to eat, and so chicharrones what do you call them? The pork rinds? Buy pork rinds. They're a good snack. You can get jerky.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, be careful with jerky. There are meat sticks and jerkies but some of them have like soy sauce, sugar and different things in them. But there are really clean brands. I know Chomp makes really good meat sticks. You can get those on Amazon.

Austin Gardner:

Cheese sticks.

Katie Gardner:

Cheese sticks are great. I love having cooked bacon on hand, because bacon is delicious Cooked bacon.

Austin Gardner:

You said cream cheese.

Katie Gardner:

Cream cheese. Okay, I would smear cream cheese on bacon. That's so good, it was really good.

Austin Gardner:

Well, see, just be, and I would challenge all of you to just relax about it.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, if you make mistakes, if you eat something that you find out later had a bunch of sugar in it, don't sweat it. Just take it one day at a time. Try to do the best you can today and if you make a mistake you know it's fine. Just start over tomorrow and just start educating yourself, in that you're reading labels and realizing Because even in like I even eat hot dogs, but I eat an all-beef like really clean hot dog Even hot dogs can have really bizarre ingredients.

Austin Gardner:

But you can buy. There are hot dogs, you can buy.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, yeah, there are some good hot dogs. Just do some research.

Austin Gardner:

You haven't mentioned pork sausage.

Katie Gardner:

No, I eat sausage. I do love sausage. A lot of sausage has sugar in it, and since I don't do any sugar, I usually buy ground pork in Peru because I can get it, and then I just season my own sausage, but without sugar.

Austin Gardner:

But you can't eat when you go out. That's the problem. There's no food when you go out.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, that's not necessarily true. Usually you can get something most places you go While I'm here in the States.

Austin Gardner:

I'm actually able to do pretty good.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, I mean, while I'm here in the States, even at fast food, I can get burger patties. This sounds really weird maybe, but like what a burger has good burger patty patties. I've eaten at Wendy's their burger patties uh, mcdonald's Uh, and that might sound strange like just getting a pile of burger patties, but um.

Austin Gardner:

I will get the two. I will get. I will buy two double quarter pounders.

Katie Gardner:

Yep.

Austin Gardner:

No fries, no bread, no, no ketchup. Right no fries, no bread, no ketchup.

Katie Gardner:

Right.

Austin Gardner:

And that's what I eat.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, I got while we were traveling recently. I did just four quarter pounder patties. They'll give you just the patties and it only costs like $5.50 or something for my meal, which kept me full for a very long time.

Austin Gardner:

Well, we should do that. I didn't know about that.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, you can ask for just the patty and you're paying less than for the sandwich.

Austin Gardner:

Okay, now not Chick-fil-A.

Katie Gardner:

Chick-fil-A is terrible. Even the grilled nuggets at Chick-fil-A have like a thousand ingredients and sugar and all kinds of weird stuff in them.

Austin Gardner:

So I do not care, and it's fried in peanut oil. It's all fried in peanut oil.

Katie Gardner:

Well, obviously you don't want the fried. Anything fried is going to have flour wheat on it.

Katie Gardner:

Now, if you're listening she's already told you, you can fry. You can fry at home. Use your bacon grease and your pork panko and I season that. If I want a more Italian style or if I want just salty, I season it up however I want it. My kids love it. I make like fried steak. I make fried chicken for my kids that way and it's a lot more healthy and it's fun. I like fried food. I liked fried food, so I like frying things. You can fry shrimp. You can do whatever with that stuff.

Katie Gardner:

Well, you can also get a yeah, you can use, use the panko, but you can also buy um goodness, there's. This sounds really bizarre. Uh, I believe you can get it on Amazon. It's called chicken flour, I forget, I think some sort of brand called ancestral something or other, I think, but they make chicken flour. You can also get egg white powder and do interesting things with that, but there's different ways to like fry. I've used this, but it's basically like dehydrated chicken breasts, like in powder, and so you can use it as a flour for frying. I've used it before. It works pretty well. I like pork panko the best, I think. But even with egg white powder, that can add an extra layer for frying. There also there's different things.

Austin Gardner:

Tell them those that live in America.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, you can get everything so nice.

Austin Gardner:

And you eat tortillas.

Katie Gardner:

Okay, yeah, so are they called egg life.

Katie Gardner:

I think they're called egg life wraps. I know that Kroger has them, but I mean, just Google this Egg white, egg life, egg life wraps, I think is what it's called. But they're basically just like tortillas made from egg whites. They're not like super duper, like clean. I think. There's like one or two things in there I'm kind of iffy about, but I eat them occasionally and I like them. They have a cinnamon one. That's kind of fun. I put heavy whipping cream in there, whip it up, heavy whipping cream, and that's kind of like a dessert. And the regular ones. You can put taco meat in or steak or chicken, and it's just kind of a nice mix up.

Katie Gardner:

If you're looking for recipes and interesting things to do and cook, there are two people that I follow that they just do really interesting things on the carnivore diet all the time, and it's Courtney Luna. She is on Instagram, I know for sure she has actually a carnivore cookbook. Um, that's she. Just she loves to cook and so, beyond just your basic burger patties and eating a steak, she comes up with all these interesting recipes. And another one is Maria Emmerich and she also has cookbooks. That would be for people who want more than just the average piece of meat or cheese or whatever, but wants to do something a little more interesting in the kitchen with their carnivore diet.

Austin Gardner:

Okay, there's a problem. You're not eating any fiber. Oh, no, no fiber, you'll never go to the bathroom again.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, I go to the bathroom you go to the bathroom.

Katie Gardner:

I go to the bathroom, just fine. So it is true, it is true you won't go as much, most likely, but the fat that you eat actually keeps you very, very regular and keeps things. You would think you'd be constipated. All right, I'm just going to say you think, but you're not. The fat keeps that from happening and initially I found that I had to tweak the fat intake either up or down, depending on what was happening. Um, without going into great detail, the more fat, um, the softer your stool is going to become. So if you're having trouble going, you know you should up your fat. If you're having the opposite problem, then probably back off a little, but give it about a month to really regulate before you think you know what you need and don't need.

Katie Gardner:

But no fiber is absolutely not necessary if you're not consuming carbs and sugar and all that stuff.

Austin Gardner:

Well, we're not doctors. You don't know what. You're not consuming carbs and sugar and all that stuff. Well, we're not doctors. You don't know what you're talking about. So let's just look at this. So the doctors you follow help them understand what they. What is it called?

Katie Gardner:

The ostomy bags. They're called ostomy bags, okay.

Austin Gardner:

Tell them what they have found. Yeah, and Dr Kenberry and others have talked about this right.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, I think Kenberry talked about this. Patients with an ostomy bag, which people with ulcerative colitis or other issues.

Katie Gardner:

By the way, this is a great diet to avoid Ulcerative colitis, yeah, or even heal it before it gets too bad and you need an ostomy bag. So people with those types of issues who end up needing to have the procedure where their intestines are out, you know a piece of it is outside their body and they basically walk around with a bag to collect everything. It's a really sad thing. You know that happens, that you lose the ability to have your intestines function properly. But what he was talking about was and I think it was Kimberry found that people that ate predominantly meat. There wasn't a lot in that bag. Most of what came out of the bag or filled the bag was stuff like fibrous stuff, like vegetables, fruits.

Austin Gardner:

Well, they found whole kernels of corn.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, whole kernels of corn.

Austin Gardner:

And it just goes straight through you.

Katie Gardner:

You notice it because it's in this bag and you have to dispose of this bag. So what happens, um interestingly, on the carnivore diet is I can't remember the exact percentage, but it's somewhere in the 90s percent of what you're consuming is actually being absorbed and used by your body. There's very little waste.

Austin Gardner:

What blew my mind was when they don't find if you eat the gristle or you eat the fiber in the meat, what do you call that?

Katie Gardner:

It's not gristle. What is it called?

Austin Gardner:

What is it called that?

Katie Gardner:

weird fibrous stuff.

Austin Gardner:

Anyway, when you eat the gristle type stuff, the hard stuff in the meat, it doesn't even come out in their bag.

Katie Gardner:

Your body absorbs and uses it. They tell you to go ahead.

Austin Gardner:

You know when you're eating your steak and there's a piece of it's not skin. I don't know what you call it it's like tendon-y stuff. Huh.

Katie Gardner:

Kind of like a tendon-y type.

Austin Gardner:

And you will eat that. Your human body eats all of it.

Katie Gardner:

It's actually what they say is really good collagen. So that's part of the reason people's skin looks so nice and even firms up some, because your collagen intake is so much higher by just eating what's on the meat. But yeah, your body absorbs somewhere in the 90 percentile of what you're eating, so there's very little waste coming out.

Austin Gardner:

I think it's amazing that your body eats the meat and throws vegetables out, sometimes coal.

Katie Gardner:

A portion of you, it's true, the man of you there are.

Austin Gardner:

The man at Dr Berry Interviews says no, it's recognizable.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, like you can see what it was, that's pretty weird. That's kind of disturbing.

Austin Gardner:

Especially when you consider it went through foot after foot of yeah, through all the digestion process and it's still.

Katie Gardner:

That's pretty impressive. Corn's pretty impressive then, isn't it? We should be like corn.

Austin Gardner:

Okay, so do you ever cheat?

Katie Gardner:

My cheating would be that I do enjoy an avocado. I'm not going to lie. I like to have an avocado every now and then. Do I cheat with anything else? Have you seen me cheat with anything else?

Austin Gardner:

I'm trying to people listening are going to think I may want to cheat you may want to cheat, I don't know. I'll eat watermelon you're a cheater.

Katie Gardner:

I said you are a cheater, you do cheat. Okay, yes, that's, thank you.

Katie Gardner:

I do eat some grilled my wife is in your whispering so that nobody knows she's I have had grilled onions, I noticed though okay, so once you have been doing this for a while and you know what good feels like, then experiment and see like what you can maybe reintroduce back in. I typically avoid sugar always. That's like a rule for me and I noticed that when I get too loose and eat like avocados too many days in a row, or even um, you know, I like some grilled onions sometimes or whatever. You know something like that.

Austin Gardner:

I like onions, I like pickles.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, Okay, pickles, yeah, I've had pickles too, but I tend to bloat again and not feel my best. So I don't cheat a lot. But that's just me, you know. I give you a hard time. But if you know, to each their own.

Austin Gardner:

I just want you hearing this that you realize you may cheat, but hey, we're grace anyway. Oh, hearing this that you realize you may cheat, but hey, we're grace anyway. Oh yeah, followed by mercy. No rules here, but it affects the way you feel. That's what she's trying to say to you.

Katie Gardner:

Yes, it can affect the way you feel, so it just depends.

Austin Gardner:

I know that one of the problems you have and people that are listening are going to have. So you and David are going out and you're going to disciple that Venezuelan couple and they're going to prepare lunch. Tell them what you do.

Katie Gardner:

So the times because we're in ministry and people invite us to their home or we spend time with people, if it's ever in my power, I stick to my diet. But if I'm in someone's home, I eat what they fix for me and I might have like a breakout on my face or a sore stomach the next day. But you know, in that particular context I am definitely willing to break my diet Not that I want to, but I do like I don't.

Austin Gardner:

I don't make.

Katie Gardner:

I don't ever want my diet to become such an idol that I absolutely can't have a relationship with someone or make someone feel bad.

Austin Gardner:

And people sometimes are going to think you're weird when you're eating like this. But I was in the home of a good friend that's a pastor. I was preaching for him within the last year and his wife fixed lunch and they had a wonderful roast beef and they had some vegetables and she fixed cookies and a Jell-O or something. I picked mostly roast beef. I decided I'd eat a little bit less. I'd eat later when I got in the car, I could get a hamburger and I ate one cookie. She wanted me to eat a cookie less. I'd eat. Later, when I got in the car, I could get a hamburger and I ate one cookie. She wanted me to eat a cookie and I ate one very small cookie. And so you know, but I did that because she was so adamant. You know I made these cookies for you?

Katie Gardner:

Right, she made them. What are you going to do For her guests? So nobody is asking you to be rude to people, right? Yeah, that's that each person has to make their own decision there, but I don't. For me that's like I don't know. I I'm in that context. I will absolutely cheat and break my diet.

Austin Gardner:

Yeah, I don't. I don't think of that as cheating so much. Now, if I'm at a restaurant, I'm still. If I go to the Mexican restaurant for me Mexican restaurant for me I typically will get like the Texas dip, it'll be Mexican cheese and meat and I don't have any tacos with it. Or when we go because we live in the United States of America we will go get chicharrones. How do you say chicharrones?

Katie Gardner:

Pork rinds.

Austin Gardner:

Pork rinds and dip that in the cheese. Yeah, so you can make it if you work at it.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, you get used to it. You think of things, you experiment.

Austin Gardner:

It's not really. I think you would agree, I know you would agree, but you're not doing this because you have to. You're doing it because you want to.

Katie Gardner:

No, I definitely want to. I don't think. If I think in a way I have to, if I want to feel good. But no, if I, if I didn't, okay, that's true, I think that's true.

Katie Gardner:

You had to choose, with how you feel, what you eat, right and that for me, seriously, I almost went through this kind of like sort of morning period of my life thinking, oh my goodness, I'm never going to sit down and eat like a souffle or a piece of chocolate cake or an ice cream sundae or a piece of peach cobbler or any like, really Like. And it was this weird moment I had where I was like super sad but then I was like you know what? But I get. What do I get?

Katie Gardner:

I get great sleep, I have good energy, I enjoy being around my kids Like they're not, I'm not mad at them all the time, you know. Uh, I enjoy being with my husband. I have energy to spend with them and go out and be with them and do things with them, and I want to do things. So, like, all the really valuable and precious things in life are things that I indulge in and enjoy now, and secondary to that is what I happen to be eating. That is helping me be able to live and do the things I actually want to do.

Austin Gardner:

So if you're listening and you really are patient, because we're 37 minutes in here, but I would say to you, I have been a gas machine all of my life.

Katie Gardner:

Oh, my wife's covered her face.

Austin Gardner:

She's covered her face. She's like Austin you talk too much, but you know what? On the carnivore diet, I don't have hardly any gas. Comparatively speaking, I have almost no gas.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, lots of things get fixed that you didn't know could get fixed.

Austin Gardner:

You know, like I used to think it ain't beans, that does it to me. It's everything it does. Yeah, Unfortunately I think it. Maybe I think it's more sugar that did it to me.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah.

Austin Gardner:

And so I want you to consider that and to realize it. So how often do you feel deprived?

Katie Gardner:

Honestly, that's a good question. People think, two years in, people still feel bad when they eat something around me that they know I won't eat and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry, it really doesn't bother me.

Katie Gardner:

After, I got through the initial first month of really dealing with cravings and, um, like, basically, sugar withdrawal is what it was. Once you get through that, it's so interesting how you can watch someone have dessert or a piece of bread or whatever it is pasta that you used to really love piece of bread or whatever it is pasta that you used to really love and you don't get that weird like, um, almost, uh, uncontrollable urge to eat that as well. Right, Because that like this overwhelming craving or this uncontrollable urge to to have some of that also or to eat it even if you're not hungry, Like, for me it's all, it's quiet at all that noise, and I don't have urges like that anymore. So someone can eat something that I used to really really love, and you know they always feel bad.

Katie Gardner:

I'm so sorry and I'm like, honestly I'm not just saying it like it literally doesn't affect me anymore, and so I think, once you're done detoxing and you get the sugar out and you're done with the cravings, it's so nice to just not have to like have these impulses where, oh my gosh, you know, um, chips would be so good right now.

Katie Gardner:

Or, oh, my goodness, a piece of pie would be so good right now, or I'm dying for some ice cream. You just like that's, it's just gone and you just feel hungry and you're like I'm going to go get some meat or some eggs or whatever and you eat and then you're just done for a while and you don't think about food again and you don't crave dessert and you don't, you know, impulsively get on DoorDash or anything like that, ordering all this stuff, because the cravings and the urges just disappear. And this isn't just me, this is something that I've heard from a lot of people and is a common thing among people who eat this way you just lose all of the impulsivity and the weird urges and the cravings and you can just eat when you're hungry and that's that. And it's really wild to me. I've never had that.

Austin Gardner:

And I think that's worked that way for me. I can watch you eat anything and honestly, it's just not that big a deal to me. I don't really care. It's not like I'm, I don't say no to myself, I'm just like, yeah, I decided I don't want that and I'm not going to want it, yeah, and I can say no now, yep.

Austin Gardner:

Which I couldn't before. All right, last question, because we've gone a long time, but you're going to the grocery store this week and you're going to buy for the next week only your part for you. What are you going to buy for a week?

Katie Gardner:

Well, I cook a lot, like I said, of meat and more animal-based for my family. I don't restrict my husband and my kids. Obviously they eat normal foods as well, but, like I said I would eat, I like to buy a lot of ground beef.

Austin Gardner:

How many packets of bacon are you going to buy for the next week?

Katie Gardner:

Oh, for a week, I don't know, four or five, maybe six.

Austin Gardner:

And how many kilos or pounds of hamburger meat.

Katie Gardner:

Pounds of hamburger meat would I go through in a week? Ooh, that's a good question. I don't think I've ever counted. Probably I don't know maybe nine or ten.

Austin Gardner:

I will eat.

Katie Gardner:

I can put away a pound of meat in one setting pretty easily and then I'm good for a while and if I eat the second time it'll be smaller probably, but I'll eat. I can eat a pound.

Austin Gardner:

How many eggs are you going to buy for a week?

Katie Gardner:

Oh, eggs Oof. Probably probably four or five dozen.

Austin Gardner:

How many kilos or pounds of butter?

Katie Gardner:

Oh, the butter. I don't know how much butter I go through. I go through so much butter, though I love butter. We put butter in everything. How heavy are those boxes from Costco, those green boxes?

Austin Gardner:

You can talk, babe. If they don't hear you, that's fine.

Katie Gardner:

You know the Kirkland butter with the four big bars in it. Is it a pound? No, there's four.

Austin Gardner:

Probably at least a pound, okay so somebody's four Probably at least a pound. Okay, so somebody's scared Right now. There's a good amount of listening to y'all. Enough. They're scared. What are you going to say to them before we close?

Katie Gardner:

I would say if you're looking for a change, what have you got to lose? My mentality was you can do anything for a month If you absolutely hate it. It doesn't work for you. You don't like it. What you just stop Like it's not like you know you're going to lose anything, you just you're in control. You can do it or not. You can do it for a month, for three months, and if you just hate it and can't deal with it, you can stop. You can always go back Right, and so it's not like you're locking into a long-term commitment or you know, a house payment or something like that. It's like you can stop at any time.

Katie Gardner:

But, um, I would encourage whoever is maybe on the fence wanting to see a change in their health, their hormones, um, a change even in their weight, how they feel their sleep, even in their weight, how they feel their sleep um, you know, even sleep apnea and stuff like that improves and even goes away with this. So I mean, give it a try and see what kind of health changes you see. If you don't like it or you don't want to be so strict or you want to tweak it in a way that works best for your lifestyle. I mean, there's really no rules. I am a more strict person, but I know people who aren't so strict and that's totally fine, so I don't think there's anything to be afraid of.

Austin Gardner:

It's just food and all I got to say is nobody's going to judge you for it, but if you try it, you might just really like it. I have and I've enjoyed it. I'm very grateful, katie got me on to it and I think that the benefits. I will throw this at you, and I know Katie would be adamant about this as well. Sugar is bad. That's like the worst stuff we put in our bodies and it's in everything bodies and it's in everything you're eating. It's in everything, because Americans eat sugar and refined foods. I mean anything that comes in a package, even if it's a vegetable in a can. It is packed with sugar, katie.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, they say when you start shop, the borders of the grocery store, basically where you're going to find the produce and the meats and the eggs and the dairy.

Austin Gardner:

Yeah, I heard one of the doctors say that.

Katie Gardner:

Yeah, all that stuff in the middle, all the stuff in boxes with the shelf life, you don't want that, so yeah.

Austin Gardner:

So I hope you'll at least consider it. I'd love to hear your comments. You've heard quite a bit of material from us and we probably will do some more sometime in the future, but I really believe that the Carnivore Diet has helped me with the issues I'm dealing with and I'm excited I'm on it and so think about it. If you've got any questions, be sure and write me and let me know and we'll see what we can do about it. Thank you for listening to. Followed by Mercy.

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