In this episode of the Heal Nourish Grow podcast, Cheryl interviews Kerry Mann, who shares his transformative journey of losing 100 pounds and overcoming severe health issues through dietary changes.

Kerry discusses his struggles with depression, anxiety, and various health conditions, and how he discovered the ketogenic and later the carnivore diet, which significantly improved his mental and physical health.

Kerry also shares his documentary that aims to highlight the healing power of a proper human diet and the stories of others who have experienced similar transformations.

Find Kerry at https://healinghumanity.movie/ and @homesteadhow on social media and YouTube.

Takeaways

• Kerry lost 100 pounds and overcame depression and anxiety.


• The ketogenic diet and later carnivore, was life-changing for Kerry.


• Kerry is passionate about sharing his story through a documentary.


• He emphasizes the importance of diet in mental health.


• Kerry’s documentary features real stories of transformation and benefits of the “proper human diet.”

Watch on YouTube

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Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:00 .952)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Carrie Mann and he has a really amazing story that includes a hundred pounds of weight loss and he is now working on a documentary and I just think he has a really interesting background so I was really excited to share his story with you. So welcome Carrie and if we could get started by you just sharing. First of all, don’t think I said in that like how you ended up.

losing the weight and it’s kind of a thing that is very popular right now. I think that a lot of people have heard about. So when it gets to that point, I would love to have you share how you found that and why that ended up working for you. So welcome, Carrie.

Kerry (00:42 .586)
Thank you so much Cheryl, I appreciate it. Yeah, I’m down 100 pounds since my heaviest, overcame all sorts of health issues. For me, I actually, found the ketogenic diet maybe 10 or 15 years ago and it was kind of life changing for me back then. It was the only thing that had really worked for me. I had depression, I had anxiety, I was diagnosed with IBS.

I sleep apnea. I went in for a sleep study and I had to get a CPAP machine. My stomach was just always hurting. No matter what I would eat, I tried many different types of diets, low FODMAP, plant-based diet, and my stomach was always bothering me. I ended up having a couple of kidney stones a few years ago. had my gallbladder was kind of borderline and the doctor was like, you could take it out or you could leave it. And I said, I have so many stomach issues. Let’s take the gallbladder out.

And then like two years after that, I lost my appendix. It burst on the operating room table. Could have killed me. Like, thankfully I went in for the hospital. I was actually thinking I was having another kidney stone, but I went in just before they were going to do surgery on the appendix, it burst. And just had a whole bunch of health issues. I had arthritis in my foot. They said it was gout and it hurt so bad I could barely walk on it.

And then amongst all that my weight just kept going up the biggest issue for me was mental health depression and anxiety for 10 or 15 years. I tried every antidepressant anti-anxiety medicine and Just never got better for me the medication Sort of made me feel like a zombie I kind of felt numb to it But I I just didn’t feel like myself and the really deep dark depression kind of never went away

But when I found keto, which was 10 or 15 years ago, I was watching a documentary on Netflix and I learned about keto for the first time and I tried it. It was the only thing that ever touched my depression. I noticed like, I feel a little better. I feel different. It was a whoa moment. I’m like, I feel different than I have with any of this other medication. And I started losing some weight and I probably lost more weight on a

Kerry (02:54 .106)
decent ketogenic diet than I have doing any other sort of dieting my entire life and I’ve literally tried every diet. I just couldn’t maintain it with keto. I remember at one point I lost about 60 pounds and my wife did too and I started exercising and we’re feeling so good. We have a picture of my wife and myself and I remember saying, I will never gain this weight back. Like I’ve figured it out now. And I think it was like three or four months later I gained all the weight back and then some.

I would do keto and then I would try to go back to eating in moderation which for me is like moderating an addiction to carbohydrates and I could never do it and I would end up gaining the weight back but long story short I found carnivore diet which is sounds crazy I know it sounded crazy to me it sounds crazy to a lot of people really what it is is just a very strict ketogenic diet I heard about it from a YouTube video from this guy he said I’m gonna do this carnivore diet for 90 days

and my wife and I were watching him on YouTube and I’m like that’s crazy like you can’t eat only meat you’re gonna have a heart attack you’re gonna clog your arteries

But on the flip side, the guy’s story, he was overweight. He had depression. He had IBS. He had all of the issues that I had. And I knew when he was talking about it, I knew the science of a ketogenic diet. I’m like, that will work. That’s just a strict ketogenic diet, but there’s no way you could just eat meat and sustain it. long story short, I noticed that the video was two years old on YouTube. And so I was watching with my wife. said kind of cynically, I’m like, there’s no way this guy is still eating meat. Like let’s fast forward. Let’s go watch his most

most recent video and I did that you couldn’t even recognize him he lost all of his weight he had a big smile on his face he was talking like his IBS was gone his mood had improved his depression had gone away and that was really what opened my eyes I still in my brain I’m like this guy’s an outlier he’s crazy that’s not gonna work for everyone and then I did a ton of research I found Dr. Ken Berry on YouTube

Kerry (04:56 .928)
Talking about carnivore diet. I probably watched a thousand of his videos and Then I found dr. Philip Ovedia who’s a heart surgeon that’s been eating carnivore for about ten years He’s performed like 4,000 heart surgeries. I’m like, wow a heart surgeons doing carnivore and then I found Dr. Anthony Chaffee who’s a neurosurgeon. He’s literally done brain surgery on people I heard Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan and he had done the lion diet, which is a stricter version of carnivore

and he said he was off all of his antidepressant medication and he stopped snoring the first week and I was snoring and I was on antidepressant medications and I’m like all of these really smart people I’m like I shouldn’t do carnivore because these smart people are doing it but it is worth further investigation it would be foolish of me to just be like that’s just crazy I can’t do it when all these other people are doing it and

one other thing I forgot to mention. The biggest issue besides my depression was about seven years ago. I was at home and I got really dizzy. I stood up and my face was numb. My fingers were tingling. I was confused. My wife was asking me what was going on. I couldn’t tell her what was happening. She called 911.

and I spent the next five days in the stroke unit. had a TIA mini stroke in my late 30s and they did all these tests on me. Thankfully, I had a couple of symptoms that lasted a while like vertigo and numbness and I went to physical therapy for that, but it wasn’t like a full blown stroke. So I didn’t have anything like permanent paralysis, but they did all these tests. They’re like, you’re 37. Like, why do you have all of these health issues? What’s wrong with you? And they tested my heart and they said you have

congestive heart failure. Your ejection fraction is 44. Your heart, what that means is for those that don’t know, your heart doesn’t keep up with the needs of your body. It’s not pumping enough blood. That’s why you’re getting fatigued and tired. They said it’s probably a downstream effect of my sleep apnea. That puts a lot of pressure on the heart. It probably didn’t help that I was a hundred pounds heavier than I should have been. That puts a lot of extra pressure on the heart too. So all of those things were what was happening.

Kerry (07:07 .576)
So when I saw Dr. Ovedia, a heart surgeon, that was one of my biggest concerns. like, I can’t, I can’t eat meat. Even after seeing Dr. Barry and some of these other ones, that’s going to clog my arteries. That’s going to give me a heart attack. And then I heard Dr. Philip Ovedia talking about it. And I really started digging into some more research around.

the heart and cholesterol and a lot of stuff that I have learned we have been misled on that even like major institutions have reversed but sort of the mainstream narrative is you eat meat you clog your arteries There’s a lot of misconceptions there. So long story short or maybe a little too long. Sorry. I tend to rant a little I Decided I what else do I have to lose? I’m I’m so sick. I have all of these issues I said I’m gonna just do an elimination diet. I didn’t tell myself I’m gonna eat meat only I said I’m gonna

Cheryl McColgan (07:41 .988)
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