The carnivore diet, characterized by its exclusive consumption of animal products, has gained popularity for its potential weight loss benefits. However, its flexibility extends beyond weight management, making it a viable option for those seeking to gain weight and build muscle. This comprehensive guide explores how to effectively bulk on a carnivore diet, providing insights into the principles, benefits, and practical strategies for achieving your muscle-building goals.
Understanding the Carnivore Diet
The carnivore diet is an exclusionary diet that eliminates all plant-based foods and processed items, focusing solely on animal products. The principles are simple: you eat just animal-based foods and eliminate everything else. This includes meat, fish, eggs, and animal fats like butter, ghee, and lard.
Why Choose the Carnivore Diet?
There are several compelling reasons to consider the carnivore diet, including:
- Streamlined Digestion: By eliminating potential irritants and anti-nutrients found in plant-based foods, the carnivore diet can support healthy digestion.
- Healthy Inflammatory Response: The diet's low to zero-carb nature can help reduce inflammation, which is often associated with high-carb diets.
- Optimized Nutrient Absorption: Animal-based foods are nutrient-dense, providing essential vitamins and minerals that support overall health.
On the carnivore diet, you’ll get most of your energy from fat, while protein supports muscle maintenance and repair.
Can You Gain Weight on a Carnivore Diet?
Absolutely! The carnivore diet is incredibly flexible in that you can tailor the regimen to align with just about any goals. While many people are drawn towards the carnivore diet for weight loss, it’s also possible to gain weight on the carnivore diet. What makes it a great diet for packing on pounds, though, is you’ll find most of the carnivore diet weight gain is muscle given all the protein you’re consuming. The diet’s high-fat content and nutrient-dense foods can make it easier to create a caloric surplus for those aiming to gain weight.
Read also: Maximize Muscle Growth on Vegan
While you can get in a caloric surplus on any diet - from keto vs carnivore to paleo vs carnivore or mediterranean diet vs carnivore diet - it’s especially easy on carnivore. This is because you will eat mostly fat, which contributes a whopping 9 calories per gram. However, the diet also stabilizes blood sugar levels and eliminates cravings so you don’t find yourself overeating as frequently.
The Basics of Gaining Weight on Carnivore
Gaining weight on carnivore diet is as simple as eating more. The more calories you consume (especially calories from fat), the greater your caloric surplus will be, and thus, the more weight you’ll gain.
Structuring Your Carnivore Diet for Weight Gain
The specific carnivore diet meal plan for beginners you follow influences how many calories you consume on a daily basis. Here are some key strategies for structuring your carnivore diet to support weight gain:
Prioritize Fatty Cuts of Meat
These cuts deliver more calories per ounce than other cuts while still offering some of the most essential nutrients. Meat is the biggest piece of the puzzle, but it’s just one aspect of carnivore diet recipes.
Incorporate Organ Meats
These are calorie-dense and packed with vitamins and minerals that muscle meats (the meat you’re likely most familiar with) don’t offer. Adding these to your meals not only enhances nutritional value but also keeps your diet interesting with more variety.
Read also: Bulking Diet for Women
Supplement with Animal Fats
You can even supplement your meals with animal fats like butter, ghee, or tallow to increase your calorie intake.
Increase Portion Sizes
It sounds simple, but if you want to get bigger, you need to eat bigger! If you typically eat a 12 ounce steak for dinner, bump it up to a 14-16 ounce steak. If your typical breakfast calls for 2-3 eggs, make it 4-5 eggs. Cook with more generous servings of butter.
Strategic Snacking
This is why having the best low carb snacks on hand is so important. You can get a few hundred calories in just a few bites between each meal to move the needle in the right direction. You can learn more about how to bulk on carnivore diet below, including tips on finding your caloric needs and raising them to beef up quickly.
Optimizing Exercise for Carnivore Diet Weight Gain
Everyone should be exercising on a regular basis, whether on carnivore diet or anything else for that matter. However, it gets tricky when trying to gain weight on carnivore diet. That doesn’t mean you should neglect exercising just for the sake of carnivore diet weight gain, though. We suggest sticking with resistance training, as it won’t burn as many calories. We believe that combining heavy lifting with a high-fat carnivore diet is a match made in heaven.
The Importance of Resistance Training
Resistance training, such as weightlifting, is crucial for building muscle mass. It stimulates muscle protein synthesis, the process by which your body repairs and builds muscle tissue.
Read also: Bulking Diet Plan for Vegetarians
Balancing Exercise and Calorie Intake
While exercise is essential, it's important to balance your activity level with your calorie intake. If you're burning too many calories through exercise, it can be difficult to maintain a caloric surplus.
Sample Carnivore Diet Meal Plan for Weight Gain
Here's a sample carnivore diet meal plan designed to help you gain weight:
- Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with bacon, cooked in butter or ghee.
- Lunch: A generous portion of steak or burger patties, cooked in tallow.
- Dinner: Salmon or trout, cooked in butter, with a side of organ meats.
- Snacks: Beef jerky, cheese sticks, or hard-boiled eggs.
Foods to Include and Exclude on a Carnivore Diet
Foods Allowed:
- Beef
- Chicken and pork
- Lamb
- Seafood
- Organ meats
- Cheese (in limited amounts)
- Eggs (in limited amounts)
- Heavy cream (in limited amounts)
- Milk (in limited amounts)
- Yogurt (in limited amounts)
- Bacon (in limited amounts)
- Sausage (in limited amounts)
- Cured meats (in limited amounts)
Foods to Avoid:
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Grains
- Legumes
- Nuts
- Seeds
Addressing Potential Concerns
Cholesterol and Saturated Fat
There is no denying that meat has a high saturated fat and cholesterol content. This causes the liver to create more cholesterol than the body requires for normal function. However, recent research has been challenging long-held assumptions. In a 2017 meta-study that included 68,000 patients, academics and cardiologists from 17 nations examined 19 heart disease studies. They discovered no connection between high LDL cholesterol and heart disease; evidence suggests people with higher cholesterol levels lived longer.
Mercury Intake
There are some concerns about an unhealthy mercury intake resulting from eating a lot of fish on the carnivore diet. A healthy diet should include fish, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, high-quality protein, and other necessary nutrients. However, traces of mercury are present in practically every fish and shellfish. In general, eating fish does not provide a significant health risk for mercury poisoning. Avoid eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish whenever possible.
Processed Meats
Processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages, and hot dogs usually have added nitrates. They serve as preservatives, helping in the reduction of dangerous bacterial growth. However, there is some proof that nitrites can harm cells and change into cancer-causing chemicals. The simplest way to avoid this issue is to reduce your intake of foods like smoked bacon, sausages, cold cuts, salami, jerky, and hams.
Supplementation
A carnivore diet that includes dairy and eggs covers your nutritional needs well. However, you can plug a few potential gaps with supplementation. Magnesium, which is primarily sourced from vegetables, nuts, and legumes, is critical for many bodily functions. Vitamin C is well known for its immunity-boosting properties. Because it is mainly found in citrus fruits, you will struggle to get enough of it on the carnivore diet. Taking a daily multivitamin is a smart insurance policy that will ensure that you’re getting adequate amounts of vitamins A, D, E, and K, all of which may be low when you’re only eating meat.
Electrolytes
Yes, you should try to get extra electrolytes when on the carnivore diet. Electrolyte levels can run low on a low-carb diet like the carnivore diet. Low carbohydrate diets result in significantly less insulin release. Water leaves the body when insulin levels are low. You’ll lose electrolytes like magnesium, potassium, sodium, and water.
Organ Meats
No, eating organ meats is not mandatory on the carnivore diet. They are, however, encouraged due to their nutrient density and health benefits. Micronutrients are abundant in organ meats. They are especially plentiful in B vitamins, which promote energy. Organ meats also contain a lot of protein. Leucine, the most vital of the three branch-chain amino acids, is highly abundant in them. Leucine promotes protein synthesis, which is where muscle growth begins.
Practical Tips for Bulking on a Carnivore Diet
- Prioritize Protein: Aim for approximately 0.7-1 gram of protein for every pound of your body weight.
- Consume Fatty Meats: Include fatty cuts of meat like ribeye steak, pork belly, chicken wings, and rack of lamb to increase your calorie intake.
- Eat Frequently: Try 3-4 smaller meals instead of giant feasts, spaced out every 3-4 hours to avoid bloating and make it easier to digest.
- Snack Smart: Have calorie-dense snacks like beef jerky, pork rinds, boiled eggs, and cheese readily available.
- Track Your Progress: Monitor your weight and energy levels to adjust your calorie intake as needed.
The Carnivore Diet vs. Other Diets
Carnivore vs. Keto
The keto diet is not the same as the carnivore diet. You will still be quite stringent about cutting carbs on a carnivore diet while trying to lose weight. Your energy requirements on a carnivorous diet will be satisfied by fat. Your intake of carbohydrates will result in a favorable insulin response that will encourage protein synthesis. Eat a different amount of carbohydrates before and after working out. Consuming some carbohydrates before working out will also increase the intensity of your workouts. It will require some work to add extra carbohydrates to the carnivorous diet. Goat yogurt and honey are two carbohydrates that are suitable for carnivorous diets.
Carnivore vs. Paleo
Paleo also allows plant foods that are not included in the carnivore diet. So although they all focus on animal foods, the carnivore diet does so more exclusively.