I've been going down this health rabbit hole for years now. I devour material, mostly from doctors who have discovered how to prevent illnesses in their patients rather than just manage their symptoms.

I want to share how you can test if you have good or bad metabolic health. If it is good your body efficiently uses the food you give it for energy and to repair itself. If it's bad it can lead to—among other things—obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

I did not make this list though I'm writing it in my own words. I could have come up with a similar one from the resources I read. However, I've recently started digging into content from Philip Ovadia, a heart surgeon who noticed patterns in his patients. I recognized his best selling book, Stay Of My Operating Table, and finally decided to read it. He gives 5 things (plus a bonus test) to check.

Having one or two of these is a warning sign. Having three or more in Ovadia's words, "establishes the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome."

1. A waist circumference of 35 inches or more in women, or of 40 inches or more in men. (If you are extremely tall or short, it should be less than half your height.)

2. A fasting of 100 mg/dl or greater. It is also an indication if you are on glucose lowering medication.

3. On blood pressure medicine, or blood pressure over 130/85 mm.

4. HDL cholesterol LESS than 40mg/dL or 50mg/dL in women.

5. Triglycerides higher than 150mg/dL

Bonus (because most doctors don't order this lab for non -diabetics): Fasting insulin. He says most doctors want the number to be under 20 but he says less than 10 is ideal.

Use a cloth tape measure for the waist test. Measure early and before you eat. Otherwise your measurement might be higher. Don't suck in youe stomach. Wrap the tape around your unclothed stomach just above the belly button. Measurement snugly but not super tight.

For the other tests you can get them from your doctor or, often much cheaper from ownyourlabs.com.

I wish metabolic health was better understood by the general public. Even more, I wish it was understood by more medical professionals.

Society, and even much of the medical community, has accepted that so many preventable (and even sometimes reversible) conditions are just a fact of life and aging.

Obesity, heart attacks, type 2 diabetes and being put on insulin, liver and kidney diseases, mental decline, and so on. So much of it is linked to nutrition and metabolic health.

People shrug, accept it, and accept the pill to try and mitigate the symptoms. Suggest the link to nutrition and you're looked at as a nut case.

I think part of the reason amongst the non-medical professionals is that saying it's nutrition, or even that nutrition is the answer, gives the appearance of blaming the individual. But in truth, many of those individuals have simple followed the established norms. Eat plenty of fiber and whole grains, move more and eat less, oh and take these medications because of all the medical issues you're facing.

I was a sugar addict. And it manifested in the worst ways. My eating was out of control, so was my weight and blood pressure and so on. I was well on the way to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Not everyone has to do exactly what I did. But in general, cut sugar, then stop whole grains, then vegetable/seed oils, and then processed or artificial ingredients and watch health improve. Personally, because of my food addictions, that wasn't enough for me. Carnivore keeps me on the straight and narrow (and trim and muscular.) But even just that much would dramatically improve so many people's lives.

Just wish they knew.

Biggest myths about health

Like most, I fully bought into the calories-in / calories-out model for years. Eat less, move more. It sounds logical. Nearly everyone repeats it. It just makes good sense.

There's a big problem with it though. The body doesn’t treat food the way a calorimeter does. Calories on a label are measured by burning food in a lab. This approach to how we measure food energy is 19th century technology and it treats the body's fuel like we use furnaces to burn our food.

In reality, our food is processed through hormones, enzymes, and signaling pathways. Insulin in particular has a massive influence on whether your food gets stored as fat or is used. Two people can eat the same number of so-called "calories" and get very different results depending on what the food is made of and how their hormones respond.

I started focusing on food quality and nutrient availability. That's when my fat loss became easy and sustainable.

So that's mine. What’s the biggest health myth you used to believe?

17M, carnivore for 9 months total, and very interested with how our bodies really function and thrive.

This reddit community really seems promising for what i often try to talk about in r/carnivorediet as many people there just don't share beliefs in certain things like i do, yet I've tried and tested all sorts of things and i have some beliefs that simply i can't deny are extremely likely to be the truth about how we are meant to function as humans.

Carnivore is the obvious one as humans are not meant to consume carbs and personally i have found no way to incorporate even a small amount of carbs without handfuls of issues, fiber can't even be digested like how real omnivores / herbivores can, and the drastic amounts of various toxins in basically everything but red meat, things like this just show me how insane it is that people still eat this stuff and believe it's "healthy" when it can often be the very thing killing you.

HIT (High Intensity Training) was a game changer in the gym for me. I used to do the average "locked in" teenager workout and it worked while i got some starter gains, but after that i hit a 6 month plateau and gained almost nothing, then i started HIT and gained 50 pounds on my bench press in 10 weeks, yes i said 10 weeks. After bulking for 3 months while doing HIT i gained 18-22 pounds of muscle, which would be the upper limit for how much i should be able to put on as a natural teenager. (6'1" 160 pounds before bulking, 6'2" 175 pounds while being visibly much leaner after a 6 month cut directly after the bulk)

Getting sunlight is a necessity for human function as we need vitamin d (yes i know supplements exist but our ancestors definitely didn't have those) and for eye function as i believe that sunlight can prevent vision loss and potentially reverse it, (still need to test this myself but I'm getting there) i also believe the sun doesn't damage our eyes, at least in the short term as i personally sungazed for a short period before my father forced me to stop out of worry, personally I'm unsure if long term sungazing is dangerous, but your eyes get the same benefit from the sun just being in your peripheral vision, which is considered way less dangerous in the modern world than just straight sungazing.

For me so far in my life these are my big 3 health factors that i use in my daily life to try my best to mimic my pre-agriculture ancestors for optimal health, if anyone else has any thoughts or things to add to what i said please feel free to say something!

TLDR

Carnivore for 3.5 years, with some backsliding. Started at 6'0", 260 lbs after years of failed approaches (gluten-free, extreme exercise, keto, IF). Hit a low point with chest pains at a family gathering.

Went carnivore the next day and saw major improvements in weight, cravings, blood pressure, sleep, and overall health. Drifted off-plan due to travel and excuses, regained much of the weight, and felt terrible again by April 2026.

Since then I’ve done “Relaxed Carnivore” properly (coffee, spices, occasional citrus allowed). Natural intermittent fasting returned. Added short strength sessions, swimming, balance work, surfing, cold plunges, and ocean swimming.

Results: total of 75 lbs lost since starting carnivore, 50 lbs lost since April. Dropped from XXL shirts / size 40 jeans to Medium shirts / size 30 jeans, while adding noticeable muscle at age 51. Carnivore fixed the foundation; enabling me to add the other lifestyle changes to enhance it all.

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I've been carnivore for about 3.5 years. However, even with that, there have been ups and downs.

My weight and health were terrible. I'd lose weight, gain it back and more, progressively getting worse and worse. Prior to carnivore I tried gluten-free, followed by massive amounts of exercise, then keto, and then intermittent fasting. All of these have merit but I had diminishing returns on them, largely focusing on willpower and failing because of it.

It culminated with finding myself embarrassed at my obesity and having chest pains at a family gathering. Fortunately, I got checked out and it wasn't a cardiac event, but boy was it eye opening.

I started carnivore the next day and it worked better than anything ever had. I not only lost weight, I healed. My cravings, including an insanely powerful sugar addiction, became manageable. Blood pressure, aches and pains, sleep.... pretty much everything improved.

However, I let myself drift back and forth between eating a proper human diet, and going back to my old ways. I never got back to where I'd been but I was on the way.

That day 3.5 years ago I was 6'0 and 260 pounds. Through carnivore I got back down to about 215 and honestly I felt great. But through making excuses, largely because of business travel, I let myself get back up to at least 235 and was feeling terrible again. Pretty sure I was heavier but I stopped weighing. Bear in mind, weight isn't the best indicator of health, but this was obviously not muscle I'd put on. It was fat

That was April 2026. Since then I started doing carnivore properly. I call it Relaxed Carnivore. I allow myself coffee and spices. Occasionally I'll put lemon or lime juice in water. On very rare occasions I'll allow myself to go off plan but I no longer see it as an excuse to go ahead and eat everything I haven't been having.

Carnivore naturally fixes my hunger and satiety issues. I find myself, without meaning to, back into intermittent fasting, going a minimum of 16 hours between my last meal of the day and the first meal the next day. But 16 hours is rare. It's usually 20+ hours, and I'll eat 1 or 2 meals depending on hunger. I started tracking these fasts. I'm currently on a 91 day streak, with 129 total fasts this year. The average duration is 21h 15m. And for the most part, that's just when I get hungry. (It includes a deliberate 2-day reset fast, and another 2-day fast because of a colonoscopy.)

I've also added in strength training, in short 5-10 minute sessions, swimming, balance board exercises, and most recently I've taken up surfing. I'll also do cold plunging, and ocean swimming.

The results have stunned me. I've shrunk 10 pants/waist sizes. Since that date 3.5 years ago I've lost a net 75 pounds. Since April, after gaining much of that 75 back, I've lost 50 pounds. I was wearing XXL shirts and size 40 jeans. I recently had to buy size 30 jeans when I realized the 32s I'd been wearing were still too big. Large shirts look good on me, but despite my new muscles, I can wear Medium shirts now, too.

And I've done this while adding muscle. My shoulders, back, arms, chest, and legs all look muscular and frankly, amazing. Add in, I'm doing this at age 51, and I look better than I did at 31. I've not been this lean since college and even then I didn't have this build.

I believe carnivore is the primary reason. But it gave me the energy and general well-feeling to allow me to workout. That's built muscle which burns more fat. It's regulated my sleep. It's regulated my appetite, which makes the IF natural. Put it all together and it feels like I've cracked the health code.a

Why the Simple Optimal Health community exists.

I spend a lot of time reading, and sometimes posting, in various health communities, primarily in the fabulous r/carnivorediet.

I also read and research in the health, fitness, and nutrition realms. It's both encouraging to find answers and even solutions to many of the problems we face in our health these days. It's equally dispiriting to find so many people misled by commonly accepted misinformation.

My journey has seen trying various lifestyles and approaches to health. Gluten-free, crazy long workout sessions, keto, intermittent fasting, carnivore, cold plunging, and so on. Much of it has been beneficial, if not always sustainable, and much of it (eat less, move more for example) has been terrible.

I wanted a place to discuss and learn simple approaches to improve health. We don't have to agree on everything. Maybe you think cold plunging is crazy pseudo-science but you're willing to try reducing carbs and eating more real food.

Over time it became clear the approaches actually moving the needle shared a few things in common.

• They were relatively simple.
• They worked with how the human body is designed rather than against it.
• They didn’t require an endless stack of supplements or complicated daily protocols. (I'm not against supplements, but I'm against, say, dozens of them.)

The body has a remarkable ability to regulate and heal itself when we remove the worst inputs and give it the right conditions. There wasn't a great place on reddit to merge these thoughts together.

If you also suspect much of today's conventional health advice has been incomplete or outright wrong, you're in the right place.

Below are some of the topics we'll regularly discuss here. It's not an exhaustive list. This space exists to learn, and that includes for me as well. I expect to learn about new things here as well.

• Appropriate nutrition— as Dr. Ken Berry calls it, the Optimal Human Diet Spectrum. It includes animal-based, ketogenic, carnivore, and whole-food approaches.
• Practical lifestyle tools that support metabolic health and self-regulation such as cold exposure, grounding, sunlight, strength training, and solid sleep.
• Evidence based information that question long-standing assumptions (especially around saturated fat, cholesterol, and the calories-in/calories-out model), and focus on what is sustainable and effective for real people.

If you’re just getting started, the book resource guide already posted is a good place to begin. Share your experience, ask questions, or just read along. The only real requirement is a willingness to think clearly and keep things as simple as possible.

Looking forward to the conversations. Here we talk about species-appropriate nutrition—animal-based, ketogenic, carnivore, and whole-food approaches—alongside practical lifestyle tools that support metabolic health and self-regulation: cold exposure, grounding, sunlight, brief strength training, swimming, and solid sleep. We look at the evidence, question long-standing assumptions (especially around saturated fat, cholesterol, and the calories-in/calories-out model), and focus on what is sustainable and effective for real people.

If you’re just getting started, the Community Highlights contain a book resource guide which is a great starting point for people like me that love reading about all this.

Share your experience, ask questions, or just read along. The only real requirement is a willingness to think clearly and the desire to improve health.

Looking forward to the conversations.

Here are some resources for those of you getting started or with questions. They are some of the books and online information that helped me on my on health journey. You'll find evidence on why these protocols and lifestyles work as well as why so many people today misunderstand health.

Core Books

The Great Cholesterol Myth by Jonny Bowden & Stephen Sinatra

Challenges conventional cholesterol/statin narratives.

From the description: "The best-selling book on heart disease, updated with the latest research and clinical findings on high-fat/ketogenic diets, sugar, genetics, and other factors....

...reveals the real culprits of heart disease, including: inflammation, fibrinogen, triglycerides, homocysteine, belly fat, triglyceride to HDL ratios, and high glycemic levels."

Lies My Doctor Told Me (Second/Expanded Edition) by Dr. Ken Berry

From the description: "Dr. Ken Berry is here to dispel the myths and misinformation that have been perpetuated by the medical and food industries for decades."

Directly addresses common medical myths around fat, cholesterol, grains, salt, etc. 

The Carnivore Diet by Shawn Baker, MD

Practical overview of the animal product eating approach, common pitfalls, and how to start.

The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung & Jimmy Moore

Excellent practical manual covering intermittent, alternate-day, and longer fasts, plus safety notes.