I Waited YEARS For This Interview! (With Kelly Hogan and her all-time-bucket-list guest, Charlene.)

[00:00:00] Kelly Hogan: hey everybody i'm kelly hogan and welcome back to my zero carb life when i say that today's interview is my number one bucket list interview let me tell you exactly what i mean by that from the moment i started this channel back in 2020 this was before 2020 this was january before you know things got weird i'd started this channel and the first thing i wanted to do was interview today's guest i kid you not immediately it's what i wanted so i have waited six and a half years for this interview and i've asked many times i've been nice i've pleaded this is a long time friend of mine so it's really 16 and a half years in the making but i only started begging unapologetically six and a half years ago please welcome to the channel charlene anderson hey charlene hi you've started me crying already dang it kelly i wasn't ready for that let me just quickly tell why personally you have meant so much to me and that is because when i first joined in at zeroing out on health and that was the big forum for those of you who haven't heard me mention it a million times it was the forum where i first found people who were doing carnivore and i had been going at it on my own as a charlene before she found this group and i didn't know there were other people doing it and it was hard and then i found these people well one of my main reasons for wanting to start carnivore at that point was i wanted to have a baby and i was not having a cycle my body wasn't healthy even though i'd already cut out almost all carbs and some things had gotten better i was not having a period at all and then when i did finally get pregnant i became very nervous because almost everyone in my life said oh you'll have to stop this carnivore thing now right and i didn't want to stop this carnivore thing because i felt very good but i did not know one single person in my life who had ever even done a low-carb pregnancy i had never even heard the word keto so i certainly didn't know of a keto pregnancy and i had not known a carnivore who had carried and birthed babies until i heard the name charlene anderson and y'all you and joe were at the forum from the get-go but i didn't really know that part of your story until it was time for me to have a baby and they were like oh charlene has done it twice i can't even tell you what a relief that was and i would tell my doctor my husband my family i said oh yeah i know somebody who's already done this twice so charlene thank you for that you gave me not only a story to tell other people but a lot of peace of mind myself so that i too was able to just stick with animal products for three pregnancies no regrets there but i'm going to turn the mic over to you and ask what what were your health struggles in the first place why did you go carnivore [00:03:12] Charlene Anderson: well i really had no choice um it started when i was born and my parents wanted to get me off of breast milk by three months so they started me on formulas at three weeks and i responded to every one of them poorly so they kept me on one that was the least damaging i guess so i didn't start off great i mean it wasn't as bad as some babies but um i had that and then at four i had a pretty scary asthma attack at nursery school when i jumped into some leaps and so they called my mom and she picked me up and we went through all the allergy tests and i was sensitive to everything um and i had asthma and so i was on shots and i always had a lot of medications and sprays and drops and all that stuff horrible i hated it i absolutely hated it um this is one of the things that got me probably the most and it may seem ridiculous to people but when i was in second grade i was sitting in story time and i had like a sore on my eyelid and so i pulled my eyelashes right where that sore was and they they all came out and i you know it kind of startled me i didn't know what to think about that but then that that it felt good to pull those out and that urge to pull spread so it spread that eye eye and eyelid and then the other eye and my eyebrows and by the time that day was over i pulled out every single one you know and that started trichotillomania my parents thought it was just a bad habit that i had to break and i dealt with that all the way through school middle school high school college and into working that was like one of the worst things um i didn't always have nothing but at times i would have nothing when you said nothing like no no eyelashes or eyebrows okay okay so fast forward age 12 i started my cycles then and almost immediately developed cystic acne so you guys know pretty much what that is it's really painful and it's really ugly and i picked and squeezed and all that stuff you're not supposed to do um and i was put on tetracycline and um i also had retin-a that i used um and so i also developed lower back pain at that point i developed fatigue at that point i was always hungry i didn't know how i'd get from one meal to the next and i would tend to snack especially if i was home and i'd always go to sleep when i get home i was tired i should also say that my grandpa was a doctor so we had a lot of medications on hand we had a closet full of them especially antibiotics so i used a lot of antibiotics a lot of times they were given to me just for preventative purposes which i just don't think that's a good idea but um so i you know that's part of also my base growing up is a lot of antibiotic use a lot of medications and stuff like that okay so so i got through high school went on to college and i studied art i loved art and i studied math i was going to major in math but i minored in math and so but as soon as i started college things really went downhill i began having a manorrhea which is lack of cycles it really just kicked in when i decided i wanted to lose some weight i wasn't happy with how i looked my body fat was too high my muscle mass was too low i thought well everybody you know all these girls look great i want to look better at least i you know come on i can do something and so of course went to the library and the only books i would see is the low calorie low fat books counting calories all the stuff and so i did it and i lost weight but i lost my cycles immediately and so that started and then also my fatigue became so bad i would fall asleep in class all the time i would would take naps all the time in the dorm i would go to sleep early but what i remember as well is this is when that black curtain fell over me of depression i felt so disconnected to everything i didn't care about anything anymore it felt like i wasn't living in my body like i was living in somebody else's body looking onto some life it just it was very very uncomfortable i didn't i didn't know what to do but again i was on a low-fat diet um everything was kind of going downhill i didn't know what to think about anything but i got through college and then i worked at this great place navistar they engineer and design international brand trucks with that came a lot of stress and a lot of chemical exposure to to um paint and to the clay models which were life-size clay models of the trucks that were being designed i was like just a few feet away from my desk i mean it was always kind of smelled like melted clay and i don't know if that's toxic or not i don't know but just that combination stress and chemicals i i really my my rashes eczema was getting worse fatigue was getting worse back was getting worse depression was getting worse this was around when i met joe so he was getting to know me as i was failing health-wise but he was always into health fitness family uh rockabilly he was a upright bass player in a rockabilly band he stole the show i mean he's just amazing and we hit it off and but we were we were in this together to figure this thing out and it was not easy it was not easy at all so um i tried doctors and i tried things um before our wedding i i went on the birth control pill and i went back on tetracycline because i had acne i didn't want acne it kind of worked before sort of i thought maybe i'll give that a shot yeah oh man i had horrible vertigo my poop my poop turned green i mean not like that's huge but i mean it's just kind of weird yeah and um but um i started binging i had over always overeaten and my hunger was always more than it should have been but i started binging and then toward the end i started purging and i thought oh my gosh this is what my my dad had been concerned that i was doing the whole time when i had lost weight earlier i said dad no i i haven't i promise you i haven't done that but now i have and it's like you know all that confidence of anything goes out the window because you think oh my gosh i'm seeing a cycle here i can't believe i'm doing this but i just continued to have problems so we got married it was okay i mean even with all that adrenaline i was so tired i was the first to leave the reception i just i wanted to go home and we knew we had to do something joe we had already known that a low carb diet seemed to help some things yeah some things got allergies got better some things but oh but joe also knew that that the that a zero carbohydrate a an all meat diet had been used by people and for some reason it sounded right i mean don't ask me how but it sounded right to him way back in the day when he heard about like vince grande and he he heard about like marilyn monroe going on a steak egg and coffee diet something like that to prepare for a movie but a lot of athletes a lot of people that had to perform at their optimum we're using that and so he knew this and we just didn't know though what okay if they're using this to be optimal let's try it i mean all these reactions to all these foods it's like let's just go meet yeah and so it was right around her wedding so it was august 1998 that we said all right let's look we gotta do and i knew i don't think i even told joe that i was purging i i i told him later yeah so um but i okay so we started to uh experiment i still was developing more problems though it wasn't good enough um i my i had a really really bad lower back that was getting worse so i went in for mri and it's degenerative disc disease so i had that and then we tested we found um this oh this this was this was the worst other than the trichotillomania is when i went to an allergist again hoping to maybe get some relief got the allergy shots within 24 hours i would have paralyzation every single time and so i would call the office and i'd say this is what happens within 24 hours nothing else changes and they said oh no it couldn't be the shot we keep you there for 20 minutes for an allergic reaction i said yes i understand that and i know why you do that but this doesn't happen till later but it's every single time they wouldn't listen to me they said no no i couldn't be the shot so i said fine i'll do it a couple more times and i did and every single time my fingertips my toes would become paralyzed and they would work up my limbs and once it got to my core i was out i mean i was paralyzed i could barely reach the phone to call joe to come get me from work or wherever we were i had to be carried out so i said enough of that i don't need that in my life and so they stopped but the only thing is then now my system is used to that and so when my body would become overwhelmed with anything uh like a bad test like if we tried a food and it didn't go well i would start to get paralyzed it would start with my fingers and toes and work its way up sometimes it would stop before it got to my core but a lot of times it would go all the way to my core and i'm i'm that i'm done i'm out wow so that was very very difficult so but we kept experimenting and we finally found out that we cannot use medicine and i tried supplements and they worked for a little while and then they didn't work i tried homeopathics those did not work um we did find an alternative md and she tested me for lyme disease and found with the illicit test and then the western blot yes we're dealing with lyme disease chronic lyme disease and so it's like okay we've got a diagnosis it's something to focus on so then we just were guinea pigs and that's all i can say is we were guinea pigs we tried everything we knew it was about the animal world we would occasionally try something again we were never beyond thinking retest or well this is different now let's test it again nope nope didn't work so our journal stack became bigger and bigger and our failure trophies were stacking up every time we failed it was hard i wanted to give up so many times kelly i i was so mad because i i couldn't feel the truth in it i could not feel things were going to get better joe did i did not and so many times i wanted to give up because i just felt like a big failure i felt like a big burden i i didn't know how to have a life but we kept experimenting and we kept going and then my periods started returning when i gave myself enough food enough animal fat it was what i remember a couple dozen egg yolks like day after day i look i literally must have ovulated within a day or two of doing that and then two weeks later had a period and literally never stopped had two easy pregnancies no problem oops pregnancies you know had them at home one with a midwife one unassisted not that i'm suggesting unassisted but that's just how it worked nursed them no problems no complications nothing so that reversed the trichotillomania that reversed pretty much when we when i said yeah no more vegetation obviously no grains uh but i had to give up like ground meats did not work well for me that kept that tendency of me like feeling a little bit irritated pulling the degenerative disc disease as well um so it would be getting rid of carbohydrates that was huge huge huge huge for that but i had to be even stricter within the animal world you know getting rid of things that were high bacteria um so ground meat and cheeses cheeses have like a mold content and so i had to give up some of those things and trust me we didn't draw any line when we learned something okay it's like we learned it but then we'd often retry it or we would come across a different method of cooking or or buying or whatever or raw versus pasteurized you know what i mean we always tested stuff and it was easier when we got closer and closer to the answer because now we weren't testing like 20 things we were testing more like one or two things and then it was easier to tell okay did that raw cheese work okay did that raw local thing work what about organ meat what about fresh versus frozen all this stuff so as we went everything reversed the lyme disease took a long time for me to feel like the issues that the fit the deep bone deep fatigue the depression the darkness that comes with that and i kind of associate the paralyzation with that that took a while i mean that we were like six years in before we realized red meat only okay we had to figure that out red meat only that's and it didn't stop there so pemmican was like the best thing i could put in my body that was the dried red meat mixed with tallow at that point that was the best so we were on pemmican for about four years and then that's around when we joined zering and on health so around 2009 i believe is when we joined zering and on health me too 2008 2009 it's hard to remember exactly you know what i mean i don't know joe was more into that stuff i was just trying to still survive and and then the kids were you know young and all stuff so i had other things i was focused on he was the main guy on zering and health and anything like that so [00:19:16] Kelly Hogan: yeah in 2009 when i found zeroing in on health joe was the one doing most of the posting and he was the one saying oh well charlene had two carnivore pregnancies charlene had this i was like oh my gosh but you and i we did interact a little bit but it was mostly i was hearing about you from joe yeah but you were a lifeline to me so by 2009 you had already been on pemmican for four years yeah right around [00:19:46] Charlene Anderson: yep because around 2004 just before charlie was born in 2005 joe is heavily heavily experimenting with pemmican and trust me every batch he made he learned something from and he tried to experiment more i mean it was not this easy oh oh now we know what how to eat nope it so i wasn't every single detail mattered for me and i hate that it was like that i still hate that it's like that but even like ribeye steak now we learned about ribeye steak which is what we've been eating now for like well since around 2009 10 i don't know when it was you know right around there the learning curve with just that has been huge i mean even a year ago we changed how we fixed them and it's like well i feel even better now well tell me about that what changed a year ago i don't know that geez well everything changes i'm just thinking about the biggest last change was about around fourth of july and that's when we got our grill our outdoor grill um we were cooking in on a induction burner with an induction pan joe had this perfect way of making it with that but he had to make one steak at a time and it's like oh my gosh we had tried grills before i couldn't handle gas licking the meat okay so i couldn't have anything open um also we tried grills that were uh cast iron type yes and so the metal mattered for me what it was cooked on mattered so this halo grill it was in about a thousand dollar risk because it was either gonna work or it wasn't gonna work or it wasn't gonna work and that was our whole life kelly for all these decades is we threw away so much stuff that didn't work my mom and dad helped us out for so long i i am not proud of how this whole thing is gone at all but so we got this halo grill and it's a flat top grill so it is gas powered so it does get super hot and that's what we needed we needed super hot to sear it we take it from cold cold french to super hot searing you know wait a while flip it we cook it to about medium medium well awesome crust huge interior beautiful pink no hardly any even rainbow i mean joe's perfected making steak it's an art form it really is so even that that halo grill i felt better because i wasn't getting quite as much rendered fat so when you have it in a skillet you have more rendered fat yeah you can get great temperature you can get it in an instant because it's it's induction it's awesome but get allowing that rendered fat to just kind of roll off gradually you know not horribly so it there's just enough to let it sear and and sit in that nice grease but not to penetrate it so again that little bit made a difference i i just floored i will never ever think [00:23:07] Kelly Hogan: we know it all ever for somebody who's watching now they might think well i wonder why they didn't just immediately think well do the lion diet or something where you just eat red meat seems so why does it seem obvious to all of us because of people like joe and charlene there was no one who would ever coin the phrase lion diet there was no dr baker doing carnivore there was there were no carnivore diet books youtube channels we're talking 19 in the 90s right but there were doctors that we [00:23:45] Charlene Anderson: realized had been doing this with patients for over 100 years and we thought what the heck why don't we know about this stuff yes you know how different not just my life but so many people's lives would be if we would have just known about that if it hadn't been squelched why in the world isn't that knowledge why in the world doesn't the medical community get that out in the open or at least accept it i think it's slowly being accepted now because they have to if they don't they're going to lose people more and more we are it is going to be so obvious that as humans what we eat is wrong it has to be a meat based diet i believe it's an all meat diet i do i sure want to try to encourage people to try yeah but what i mean that information has been out there we didn't know about it we knew about it afterward it's like really that i mean i'm so excited to tell my parents because they never believed in what we've done and it's like oh okay i'm glad for you guys yes what yeah i'm glad that works for you that's what [00:24:59] Kelly Hogan: i've heard so i'm glad that has worked for you and you're like no it's not just me i know it's not just [00:25:05] Charlene Anderson: me because they think if it's true everybody would know about it all doctors would know about it right treating cancer treating heart disease all this stuff people would pay millions and millions of [00:25:17] Kelly Hogan: dollars to have that information i'm sorry it's true yeah i'm sorry doctors talking to the choir here but you know no i get angry look i had a conversation with my mother-in-law recently who type 2 diabetic for nine years has been on insulin she knows exactly what i have been through exactly what i eat we have obviously spent a lot of time together in our my 25 years of marriage she was diagnosed her a1c was 14. oh no yes not good 14 not good oh no and she asked her doctor on the day of diagnosis about the carnivore diet because she knew what i do and that doctor told her do not do that it is dangerous he said you need a minimum of 60 carbs at every meal she came to me said look i talked to my doctor and he says it is not right for me like no this is exactly what you need so now charlene nine years later she is still on so much insulin she is still i know and i get so angry like this could have been fixed nine years ago this is optional we could have been done with this so yeah i understand why you get so angry oh man yeah anger is not the word for it yeah sorry it's way beyond that yeah and you and i are two of the luckiest because we did find this fairly young not a yes wish but i'm meeting people now in groups and at meetups where they're in their 70s and they are just now hearing this and i'll get people who say i was treated for diabetes type 2 for 30 40 years and now they feel like a million bucks and they're off all meds like somebody could have saved you decades ago and you're right people like salisbury and then you've got all of the journals of um stefonson yes yes it's been out there [00:27:33] Charlene Anderson: people knew yeah yeah i know uh but okay here's here is the truth truth is stronger than anything truth is light light wins in the end i'm sorry truth wins in the end but it takes a long time a long time it will win i don't know when it's gonna win yeah holy but it's gonna win yeah well you [00:28:03] Kelly Hogan: just have to wait it out i guess yeah here we are we're still waiting well i bet you feel a big difference now so maybe let's let me step back and ask you this so you can explain to everybody if you've been doing this carnivore thing experimenting at least in the beginning and then this total carnivore for 25 plus years why haven't people heard more from you during that time i yeah i know this but please tell [00:28:33] Charlene Anderson: them yeah okay well um esme who was a lady in zirian unhealth decided to do an interview and she wanted to ask all the members which i don't know what do you think around 30 40 how many members [00:28:46] Kelly Hogan: back then i don't even remember i think there were probably over 100 but probably okay 40 of us well [00:28:52] Charlene Anderson: think that's about how many of us were really active for 30 to 40. yeah okay yeah um so we thought okay yeah that'd be interesting why not you know it's just for a small little group and so she asked you and she asked um charles washington dana spencer shoot ellenmore her and you know all these people all of them she asked all these questions and the interviews came out but because ours was a family of four with two kids and we'd been doing it for a long time you know what people were not ready for that so it went viral it went viral so we got calls from daily mail it went everywhere in not good ways you know reality tv shows are calling us without what the heck we'd already been through hell we'd already been through it with all the stuff that we had to deal with getting well and figuring out everything out we didn't want this now it's like you know what let's let other people do it we we promised the boys when they especially when we heard child protective services was threatened on us and then local people are threatening us out of town people are threatening us but you know what we got to protect ourselves we've got to go silent we're not going to go out there and say anything we promised the boys we wouldn't not until they're older if we ever did it so that was our promise to charlie and george years went by and we kept watching and we were so happy kelly to watch you to watch all these people ellen bro hearn stan dana spencer shoot charles washington do a small degree we wanted the word to get out trust me i i wanted our friends and family members to start hearing about this stuff doctors to start hearing about this stuff people's lives to change because of this but it wasn't going to be us we had to let you get you guys go for it and you guys did you guys did you guys took a blow torch we may have started the smallest little spark you guys took a blow torch to it yeah so now then my boys are 19 and 21 and i just feel like it's time i it's just time so going to meet stock was absolutely amazing meeting you in real life but i just couldn't believe it kelly and i mean everybody i just it's it was so surreal and it felt so right it really did it felt like you know what joe and i would have fallen on our knees probably rolled around and cried on the floor too while we're at it if we would have seen that meat stock with all those people and that's just a small representation of yep people who are curious about it or do it yeah we i mean we literally felt like we were out in the middle of the ocean who in the world would believe that you don't need a carbohydrate everybody's told especially vegetables that they're good yes i mean we had no idea that zurian and health was out there or that it was going to be formed or anything we really thought [00:31:55] Kelly Hogan: we were we were it yeah coming back into the space now versus when you and i were doing the esme the little it was a written interview you and i were featured in an article together that's right hip taquito right hip taquito and these were not good times not no i was excited to be in an article with you i was excited to be i did the daily mail thing it was i disappeared for a couple of years too it was awful yes awful it wasn't time people were not ready for it no no i had i had someone also say that they were going to report me to child services because i wouldn't let the kids have candy i was like okay the kids are good the kids are fine but it's scary it was scary then so i got quiet except in the facebook groups like i knew i was okay in the carnivore facebook page yeah coming back now [00:32:52] Charlene Anderson: is it feeling a little different oh yes i mean i know that there's still haters and what i hate about humans humankind is that when they don't understand something they they act with anger i just i i don't understand that to me it feels like what are they eating because if you're nutritionally sound you wouldn't act that way yeah humans are not meant to be like that we are not meant to be at each other hatred gossipy putting people down that is not what we should be as a human race you should be a good person just by nature if you're well nourished that's what i feel well it certainly feels a lot [00:33:35] Kelly Hogan: easier to be kind and respectful when your brain is not on fire from inflammation when you're not struggling with your own health and gut health when you're like a healthy person i'm with you i don't care what somebody's eating i'm not going to be angry or lash out no i think that they're they're [00:33:55] Charlene Anderson: irritated yeah and i get that i was irritated i was so irritated i pulled all my eyelashes and eyebrows out i was i was so irritated with you know allergies and rashes and that's my body being irritated why wouldn't my brain be irritated why would my personality be irritated yeah there's such a calm when you get it right yeah there's a calm but there's also an energy like you have so much energy to express and to create and to enjoy and to live yeah yeah they call it that they used to call it the zero carb zen [00:34:35] Kelly Hogan: i like that phrase a lot yeah but you're right it's not a a sleepy zen you've got energy and we can get fired up and passionate yes but we're usually pretty pretty cool about it yeah yeah we like to think so i do like to think so all right so i'm taking a look at things i wanted to kind of rapid fire touch on we covered pregnancy birth and nursing so i get asked that a lot what do i do if i become pregnant your story plus one thing that charles washington said to me then well he asked me when i was first pregnant and debating about my doctor says i shouldn't do this i was so young and panicky you know like so i heard your story and then charles said well kelly what are you going to be giving birth to i said well it's too soon i don't know boy or girl and he's like no no no what are you going to birth i said i like a human he said right that's good and you are a human he said what makes you think that this little tiny growing human needs something completely different than what you healed with if it was so good for you why not give that to your baby too i was like okay so those two things combined and it took a it takes courage to stand up to your doctor i really feel for people who have to do that on a daily basis about their cholesterol and everything it feels intimidating okay i wanted to ask you you said that supplements caused the reaction for you yeah are you on any supplements at this point no okay occasionally i'll [00:36:12] Charlene Anderson: try something like um like if something's talked about a lot iodine iodine perugals um i didn't have a a horrible reaction to that but i didn't notice anything good and i just i don't know i just don't like to take supplements it doesn't ever feel right but sometimes i'll have a horrible reaction like well the worst is the paralyzation but you have the worst i still will get that if something's real bad it's like okay okay i'm listening you know yeah but you know rashes eczema um acne that's another reaction i can get fatigue brain fog um you know i don't have that with ribeye yeah but i i can have that with supplements so i'd rather not do supplements some people need supplements or they use the supplements as like a gateway where they're getting well and because they've been so undernourished and their system is sluggish or they're recovering from surgeries or lack of organs or something you know what i mean some i i'm not against them i'm not against them for me i don't use them and it's great if you don't have to use them but if you need to use them that's another thing though you have to experiment with yes you know yeah electrolytes i sent you the picture and i made a i made a video oh wow i tried electrolytes on my way back from the montana meetup yes and i don't i don't want this to be an anti-add ad but just the electrolytes just unflavored unsweetened you know and what a whole bunch of water oh wow i swelled up so bad but i kind of knew that could happen because salt doesn't really work for me either you know i'm not a salt and adding salt type person so this would have been the salt and the potassium and whatever else is in there oh man yeah no i i didn't have any creases in my eyelids my legs felt like they're in casts i gained like nine pounds i mean it was it was so bad it's like okay i'm listening i'm not gonna do that again i could not stop drinking water i probably drank like i don't know two gallons of wow and i'm on the plane ride home and no i'm not having to go to the bathroom because my body's just retaining yeah electrolytes don't work they don't work well for [00:38:43] Kelly Hogan: me either the only brand i can take without having an actual reaction now i haven't tried a lot of brands to be fair but salter s-a-l-p-r does it doesn't give me leg cramps and a lot of them will be like instant cramp so i don't even take i don't even take their brand regularly because i don't need them but i i had agreed because the guy who makes them was like they are the cleanest and to his credit they are did not react so yeah that's that's good um you don't even salt your rib eyes on a daily [00:39:20] Charlene Anderson: i've tried yeah and um man sea salt was almost like sugar to me and i think and in the paralyzation type stuff that i talk about that happens when i have sea salt um i think there could be a little bit of marine like bacteria some aspect it feels it feels like i'm triggering a bacterial reaction in myself with sea salt the redmonds which is a land salt is the the best that i found i i know there are other land salts i have not experimented with every single one of them but i don't look or feel as good when i have salt so i'd rather not have it plus i like the i love the taste of rib eyes every rib eye tastes a little different to me and i like to taste the difference you know i don't know i just i don't use it again some people have to have salt in order to digest or whatever fine i'm not against that [00:40:14] Kelly Hogan: for me i just don't prefer not to have it you know my first several months after finding zeroing it on health i didn't use salt at all because hardly anyone did back then because again we weren't doing lion diet that's not hadn't been mentioned before we were just doing carnivore and salt wasn't from an animal so yeah is it yeah right do you ever add organ meats i've tried we've tried them we've tried [00:40:43] Charlene Anderson: everything okay um oh my favorite was brain but again it's like i loved it probably because it's fat heavy you know yeah yeah um some of the organs are i love organ meat but i just don't feel as good with them me neither slide just like carbs i mean i love cooking and i love eating carbs but i don't know well i mean i have a choice every day i have a choice if i want to feel the way i feel now or if i want to start feeling bad again because i'm telling you i don't know if i cured anything i don't know right i know that i can control how i feel based on a diet that i choose every day yes that's just the way [00:41:26] Kelly Hogan: that's brass tacks you know y'all listening to that that's really important that's really important every day we wake up to choice exactly what we're gonna eat based on knowing exactly how we're gonna feel no yeah okay what about sardines you played around with sardines yes i did actually oh um yes even [00:41:49] Charlene Anderson: when we went all red meat diet we realized that was it there were times we'd come off and try things definitely okay with charlie that's my first i'd been pregnant in 2004 and gave birth to him january 2005. so the summer of 2004 i didn't know this whole thing about a sardine fast was coming out later but i did a sardine fast with egg yolks and it didn't last long because i had this aversion to red meat for a little while okay and i don't i'm not happy that i had that aversion to me that there's we hadn't figured enough out yet and i think that i wasn't i mean i was healthy much much more healthy than i'd ever been but not to the degree i should have been and i think that's why that aversion happened because aversion shouldn't i don't believe happened i could be wrong i'm not a scientist or a doctor but um so i did sardines and egg yolks like uh soft cooked egg yolks um for a while maybe a couple weeks it didn't last long also um the last time i ever saw a doctor for anything i had my blood tested at that point and i was a little bit anemic i can't imagine meat going on sardines and egg yolks just for a short period of time caused it and it's hard for me to remember exactly what i ate around that time i know that i did have still some uh like local farmers chicken a little bit of that you know i would have had a little bit of non-red meat okay and i i did notice a little bit of tiredness so when it showed up a slight slight anemic it's like yeah that that kind of makes sense okay so she started me this would be my the alternative doctor that the md that um diagnosed me with lyme disease she really liked me i liked her i worked for her at her office you know years later and so it was cool but um so i trusted her and um that that was the last time i had any kind of blood test um but then yeah when i when she started me on like a more of a natural iron supplement it didn't i didn't feel well with it my eczema broke out i mean like i had cracks all over my hands there's that so i said you know i gotta stop this and then at that point the version was gone i went back to red meat and then i did not retest but i felt better i don't know i just always went with my gut instinct yeah that's what joe and i've [00:44:31] Kelly Hogan: done all these years so on a daily basis you said you you only eat ribeyes now unsalted medium to medium well you can use your halo grill with the flat yes are you a two meal a day girl yeah [00:44:45] Charlene Anderson: yeah you know um for a long time i was one meal a day we all were uh but it never felt 100 right for me i often felt a little more cortisol than i wanted um and we always were open to something different um but and i can't remember the year that i switched to two meals a day and then we all ate two meals a day for a while but joe okay now i twice a day same with the boys around 8 30 in the morning and then around 3 34. and then joe eats by himself at night around 8 8 30. so uh and so he he likes one meal a day i like two meals a day yeah if i'm hungry at the end of the day then i i'll have joe make a little bit more steak at night and then eat a few bites of that so it's not dogmatic it's not strict but it's it's always always always following our instinct we're far enough into this we can do that if you have if you ask a drug a druggie to follow their instinct they're going to want more drugs yes so you cannot always do that you have to start with some kind of a plan and so when you start the plan and you build that base nutrition then you can start believing in yourself more which is what we're always meant to do it just gets better with time i think so yeah you you become more trustworthy as you become less addicted uh yeah yeah i get rid of those addictions and man they do not want to be [00:46:29] Kelly Hogan: gotten rid of you know they don't go quietly into the dark right uh okay i've never heard you talk a lot about weight or such because that's not why you got into this at all right do you notice that your weight or size changes based on how much you eat do you have to do anything to stay the size that you are now or that's never been anything you've had to tweak with well i know when i ate carbs i really [00:46:58] Charlene Anderson: had to be careful with how much i ate and i could lose weight if i starved myself to like 1500 calories or something like that i'm five eight um so i i knew i could do that but oh man it was not easy every single day i mean every single hour of every single day that was hard um if i ate just the way i wanted i was probably 40 pounds heavier than i should be um and even with carnivore if i wasn't eating what i feel is right for me i could easily be 40 50 pounds more easily if i ate ground meat if i ate cheese if i ate if i drank heavy cream or used heavy cream if i had coffee if i had you know what i mean like yeah if i was just simply i'm going to be carnivore period just that yeah i would be healthier than i would have been with carbs right but i definitely i would still have inflammation i'd still have weight i'd still have edema um i would have inflammatory type symptoms i know this because i had them you know that's why we had to keep narrowing it down and narrowing it down and no it's not fun sometimes although i gotta say when joe and i would find something that would not work we would almost throw a party because in some ways it felt so freeing it's like okay if it isn't about poultry like at all or foul foul is foul sorry um it's like it's more freeing and and i i felt like less addiction and whether it's histamine whether it's bacteria whether it's yeast i don't know mold i don't know it's just whatever for whatever reason that food doesn't go well for me and i'm now free i'm free from what that whatever that food did to me and so wrong foods would put weight on me yeah not horrible i was never obese or anything like that i was overweight yes definitely but i was never obese but i knew what i ate made the most difference so with ribeye i eat around a pound and a half to two pounds raw if you weigh it raw yeah visually it's like one part white to three parts red that's around 80 fat 20 protein calories because everybody asks me yes i had to figure it out because everybody asks me and um and then the the calorie not the calories count but the calorie range is around 1800 and 2400 okay so and i'm 58 and and i'm around 123 25 121 you know they'll kind of raise a little bit uh so that's what i am [00:49:49] Kelly Hogan: very helpful and transparent of you to share all of that and i appreciate you yeah i was wondering should i ask how much she eats i don't always love answering that because first of all everybody's going to need a different amount oh yes or different sizes different ages different activity levels but it's still maybe reassuring for someone to hear or at least really helpful to hear what you're what you're doing you're eating beef on a plate and this is something that i have started i want to start a campaign in the carnivore community called beef on a plate because you just said you can take electrolytes they weren't even flavored and you can put on nine pounds if i were to eat even everything just carnivore that i want to every day i could also sit easily at least 20 pounds heavier if i was just eating all the cheese and in fun carnivore concoctions these days it's it's like where's the meat on a plate where's the beef where's the beef charlene yes and i'm like you i find that i feel my best look my best when they're you and i are not chugging protein powders concoctions making all and i know that the recipes are really helpful sometimes to help convert we are not anti-carnival recipes enjoy yes you can get away wow we would wouldn't we if we could totally get away with looking and feeling exactly the same while having carnivore lasagna and pizza every night i'd be doing it if i could [00:51:25] Charlene Anderson: muster the motivation to cook it yeah right i get it but here's something here's something interesting if i eat too much meat even if it's fatty meat i can have an insulin response i can feel more hungry yes like i can't just eat and eat and eat and eat ribeye i i've gotten used to how much i need and then when i up my activity levels or bring in a new activity like skating and stuff like that that it's like yeah i'm gonna need to eat a little bit more especially i'm saying those lean meat oh oh man i could eat lean meat up the wazoo i i could keep eating that me too and never stop and it would not satisfy me so that is not my answer same so even if i have fatty meat yes i really i i really know that there's a limit of what i need and yes it can vary absolutely and i go by that i will listen to my body with how much i need to eat most of the time it's on the upper side of that pound and a half to two pounds um but because i am pretty active but um i can't just eat and eat and eat and eat i think that there's an insulin response when you get a lot of protein now some people they use protein to handle cravings like if they get hungry they eat some protein red meat they eat some red meat and then there it called it's it's squelched you know it's i don't know if that's the right word um it's satisfied yes so it could be a nutritional thing for them i don't know but for me i'm just saying i can't just eat and eat and eat but if i eat right around what i need i'm satisfied i'm nourished and i've got enough fat [00:53:20] Kelly Hogan: and i'm good to go i am the same if i just say you know what we're at uh like we went to this really high-end all-you-can-eat restaurant when our family went to las vegas and you know you want to get your money's worth right i don't just eat a lot of meat normally i have like you i know what i need yeah almost like feeding a puppy or dog right yeah i know what i need twice a day i eat three times a day actually but i know what i need at those three meals that night i ate probably three times what i would normally eat and what's weird is probably an hour and a half to two hours after that i felt like i was starving way more than usual i'm like you there is i know that there are a lot of under eaters out there but that's never been my issue but if i allow myself also to over over overeat it's not just an issue of i don't look as good you know i can put on weight too like anybody else it's also an issue of i don't feel as good or as satisfied and i don't know if i've heard anybody else say that so yeah it's us if anyone watching has experienced this phenomenon as a carnivore please post it below i'd love to hear from some of you okay no sweeteners at all right all right i mean [00:54:49] Charlene Anderson: yeah those set me off more than sugar those were i mean sweeteners are what i was raised on because my mom was she knew that sugar wasn't good okay and like saccharine and things like that was were coming out yeah i was born in 1973 so i had a lot of sugar free things i could never get enough of it and that was the hardest thing for me to give up man was that hard oh wow those those set me off like sugar [00:55:23] Kelly Hogan: never would i mean whoa it took me five years of what was i call now my five years of almost carnivore so i was meat and sugar-free products oh god see what i was the hardest hardest five years of life i mean it was like oh i'm nourishing myself so some things are getting better i was yeah weight and i came off of my acne meds things were getting better but i had no peace no calm like my brain was constantly like how do i get more of that yeah yeah yeah i know but it's possible that some people are not us [00:56:05] Charlene Anderson: yeah you have to do you and i hate that saying yeah you do you but it's true yeah all right baby i've [00:56:16] Kelly Hogan: waited years for this and uh you do you did not disappoint i am so pleased you're just getting started kelly i will you know i feel like we could do a whole series no yes i have so many things i thought okay i'll ask as much as i can in about an hour i've taken down so many notes i have literally dreamt about having this talk for so many years and it's just it's an honor and i appreciate you doing it everybody who's watching you hear that the woman has been through through it she's been through it health wise but also from being public in this space in the past so maybe let her know that we're awfully glad that she came out again and and that she should keep it up because people need you i needed you yeah [00:57:08] Charlene Anderson: well we got each other you know it's it's great it's perfect it's good yeah you helped me and i'm [00:57:14] Kelly Hogan: glad now that you're able to do that for others as well thank you charlene and you and i when we found a group of people it it made the whole thing so much easier so if any of you are looking for a group of people we'll put our contact information below it helps to have someone else to go through this with [00:57:33] Charlene Anderson: there's no reason not to there's no reason it's there use it use us we are so excited to be helpful [00:57:40] Kelly Hogan: so yeah don't sit back and go gosh no one i know eats this way well then get to know us because there are tons of us out here who are thriving this way all right thank you charlene all right thank you for everybody else see you back next saturday bye bye [00:58:09] Speaker ?: you