“The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.”

— Henry David Thoreau

I’ve previously said that the carnivore diet has been a more spiritual experience for me than anything.

I have noticed other improvements — physically and mentally — but largely, for me, it has been a process of undoing years of being conditioned to seek food for comfort in times of stress.

The current universal mind-share is stressful. COVID-19 has placed us all under an existential spell of anxiety and fear. And social media does not make things better — which is why, for the time being, I have been off social media (another topic for another day).

I’m not religious, but I would consider myself spiritual. I will leave you to discern what ‘spiritual’ means. If, however, I was to follow some way of living— a framework for the daily modalities of life. Stoicism would be it. I’ve been a practicing Stoic since reading Ryan Holiday’s, The Daily Stoic, a few years back.

The general premise of Stoicism is to separate matters that are in your control, and ones that are not. Getting angry at the taxi for cutting in front of you will accomplish about as much as teaching a pig how to sing (kudos De Mello) — it will only waste your time and irritate the pig.

A Stoic POV on Diet

When it comes to diet, taking a stoic point of view can be helpful.

Let’s use wine as an example. Marcus Aurelius, one of the great stoics of our time, liked to use this analogy: wine is literally just fermented grapes in a glass bottle with a label (plus a few highly toxic preservatives if we consider today’s wine).

Another example could be cereal.

Let me be the first to admit that as a chubby 8-year-old, I could devour entire boxes of cereal in a week. If you would like to see what I used to look like, click here. But, with my new found respect and understanding of food, when I think of cereal I can’t help but laugh. Cereal is just crushed pieces of moldy wheat with a fuck ton of sugar and a cardboard box to keep more mold from entering. The cardboard box is probably more nutrient-dense than what’s in the packet.

If you were to eat the plain wheat every day without all the sugar, you would die of dehydration. All the wheat fiber will clog your airways like a spoon of cinnamon. Either that or you would die of boredom.

On the other hand, let's analyze a piece of steak. It contains all the nutrients you need for survival. It tastes great. It might not give you the sugar rush you get from a bowl of cereal, but it will give you a long-lasting source of sustainable energy to get you through the day.

Addition by Subtraction

I love the following phrase (not sure who said it but I’m sure its universal):

It’s not what you eat, it’s what you don’t eat

Eating more vegetables on top of your already bad eating habit of daily 7:08 McMuffin drive-thru’s is not going to help. Vegetables It will not counter the negative effect of eating bad (in some case it may make it worse…head to the bottom of the page for “useful tools.”)

The carnivore diet, in its essence, is the most simplistic way of eating. It’s the Via Negativa — addition by subtraction — method of restoring ancestral health. It is a the ultimate Stoic approach to eating well. It removes unnecessary choices in the face of your goals.

This is not a post proliferating the benefits of a carnivore diet. I’m not here to tell you what to eat. Rather, I want you to take a Stoic approach to eating (and living of course). Maybe this will help you when you need to make dietary choices that you need to follow.

Whether you’re vegan, paleo, low-carb, keto, or an intermittent faster — I’m sure we can all agree that whole foods, with little or no additives, are generally a better option than packaged bullshit from corporations that are wrecking havoc on our topsoil (and bodies) in the name of profit.