Primal Bod Diet vs. The Carnivore Diet: A Comprehensive Comparison for Optimal Health

Primal Bod Diet vs. The Carnivore Diet: A Comparison for Optimal Health

Is the Primal Bod diet carnivore?

I get this question a lot. Let’s dive into it. 

When it comes to transforming your body and optimising health, two popular approaches have gained significant attention during the last year: the Primal Bod Program and the Carnivore Diet. In this comparison, I’ll explore the key differences, benefits, and potential drawbacks of each approach to help you make an informed decision about your dietary journey.

What is the Primal Bod Program?

The Primal Bod diet doesn’t stand on its own, it is cleverly embedded into an entire framework that Candi, the founder of Primal Bod, calls the Primal Bod System.

The Primal Bod Program builds its foundation on the knowledge of our ancestral DNA and our ancestral eating patterns while incorporating modern nutritional science. This approach focuses not only on whole foods, but also the following:

  • High-quality animal proteins and healthy fats

  • Optimal portions and timing of food

  • Certain vegetables and limited fruits

  • Alignment with circadian rhythms

  • Regular shorter fasting windows for hormonal health

  • Weekly longer fasts for metabolic flexibility and autophagy

The Primal Bod Program is more than simply a diet, it is a lifestyle. It aligns our lifestyle with the biology of our bodies. 

“Your body is primal, your lifestyle is not”

Understanding the Carnivore Diet

The Carnivore Diet represents a more extreme approach, consisting exclusively of animal products. The following foods can be consumed on a Carnivore diet:

  • Various cuts of meat

  • Organ meats

  • Fish & Seafood

  • Eggs

  • Dairy products (optional)

  • Animal fats

  • Zero plant foods (many people on the carnivore diet do drink coffee)

This diet has shown benefits ranging from autoimmune disease management to mental clarity and simplified meal planning. The Carnivore approach only gives you advice on what to eat but not on how much and at what times. It is simply a diet approach that is not necessarily embedded in an entire lifestyle. 

Key Differences Between The Primal Bod And Carnivore Diet

Nutritional Flexibility

The Primal Bod Program offers greater nutritional variety, including plant foods. The Carnivore Diet is more restrictive. Primal Bod has a strong emphasis on eating times. The meals are planned around times when the body is most insulin sensitive and in a way that hormonal health is best supported. 

In the Primal Bod Diet, the amount of protein you eat is tracked to make sure you hit your daily targets. In Primal Bod, you get a few recommendations for supplementation but it is advised to get all your nutrients from food and lifestyle. There is one supplement that is advised to take no matter what and that is iodine.  I, for example, living in a subtropical climate, don’t need to take Vitamin D as I am in the sun for several hours each day. Someone living in the northern hemisphere is advised to take Vitamin D in the winter.

The Carnivore Diet says that you do not need to supplement as the nutrients from the food are sufficient. Nevertheless, some carnivore doctors do recommend taking iodine as well. 

On the Carnivore diet, eating times are optional and also how many meals you eat in a day. Many carnivores eat just one meal a day, others eat throughout the day, often with their first meal in the early afternoon. In Primal Bod, eating times are not as flexible as they are aligned to the circadian rhythm of your body. Breakfast is definitely the most important meal of the day as this is the time when you are most insulin sensitive. In Primal Bod, the nature of your body is leveraged for optimal health and weight loss results.

Sustainability 

Primal Bod and the Carnivore Diet are both sustainable, though the Primal Bod Diet does offer a wider variety of foods. Both diets can feel challenging at times when you are in social settings where people follow the mainstream way of eating. It does take some getting used to having restricted food options in restaurants and at family gatherings. But the health benefits of both diets make the (temporary) struggle worth it.

Many women are switching from the Carnivore Diet to Primal Bod because they don’t see the weight loss results they desire. Many women on the Carnivore diet say that they’ve hit a plateau and cannot lose further. 

Most people find the Primal Bod Program easier to maintain because it aligns your eating habits with your biology. In Primal Bod, you eat at times of the day that are optimal for fueling your body and in order to balance your endocrine system. This is especially important for women when they hit Perimenopause.

 Primal Bod will give you a framework so you’ll be able to sustain your desired weight and it is geared towards supporting hormonal health. This ensures you’ll feel amazing and don’t need to suffer through menopause and perimenopause.

Lifestyle Recommendations

Where the Carnivore Diet solely focuses on the food you are allowed to eat, Primal Bod gives you an entire framework to live by. You will know exactly how to structure your day and have a lot of tools at your disposal to support weight loss and sustained health that go beyond dietary recommendations. 

Primal Bod teaches you the optimal way to exercise for weight loss and muscle gain. The program focuses on hormonal balance and is geared towards helping women thrive through menopause and beyond. When your hormones are working properly and your endocrine system is balanced, you won’t need medical assistance in perimenopause. 

The Carnivore Diet also helps balance your hormones as it is normally high in healthy fats which is needed to produce all our sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone but also crotisol. This is something many people don’t know, I surely wasn’t aware of the fact that all sex hormones are made from cholesterol. If you want to maintain healthy levels of estrogen during perimenopause and menopause, it is essential that you eat good quality animal fat as that provides the foundation for the synthesis of many hormones, especially estrogen.

Health Considerations and Benefits of the Primal Bod and Carnivore Diet

Chronic Conditions and Perimenopause Symptoms

Both approaches reduce inflammation and improve chronic health conditions and reverse perimenopause symptoms. People on both diets have reported the following benefits:

  • Improved sleep

  • All kinds of pains disappear

  • Improved digestion 

  • Improved gut health

  • Stabilisation of blood sugar

  • Type 2 Diabetes reversal

  • Mental clarity

  • Lowered blood pressure

  • Improved hair and skin quality

  • Improved immune function

  • Improved energy levels

And the list goes on…I was able to reverse all my perimenopause symptoms within 2 weeks. My energy was through the roof, my eye sight improved, better sleep, feeling energetic when waking up, no aches or pains when waking up, no stiffness. When working out I was starting to have wrist pain, that went away completely. My digestions normalised and I am sure I am forgetting some symptoms. My body got leaner and was building muscle more easily.

Making Your Choice between the Primal Bod and Carnivore Diet

When coming from a more traditional diet or a plant-based diet, Primal Bod will ease you into the transition. Going straight to the Carnivore Diet can induce extreme detoxification processes that can be very hard on the body and may make you feel worse in the beginning. This may cause you to think that it’s the Carnivore Diet that doesn’t feel right when it’s really just your body detoxing from all the plant toxin build up. 

Primal Bod teaches you an entire lifestyle. It’s a framework you can apply for life and it will support you with maintaining your ideal weight while also supporting you with staying healthy by learning about the biology of your body and how you can leverage that. 

I feel, we women, do need some extra support with balancing our endocrine system in order to stay medication free through menopause. The daily structure you learn in Primal Bod will make sure you thrive through menopause and beyond and not make you feel like you are deteriorating. 

I am 100% confident that I have all the knowledge I need to support my body from now until old age without having to rely on medical support, which always brings new side effects with it. 

I would say that Primal Bod is the Carnivore Diet with a lot of extra benefits. Doing Primal Bod will enhance your Carnivore results even further.

Conclusion

While both the Primal Bod and the Carnivore Diet offer incredible health benefits, I would say that the Primal Bod Diet will be even more beneficial to you because it not only provides information on what exactly to eat, but also on HOW MUCH to eat and WHEN to eat. 

This makes all the difference, especially for us women. Once we eat in accordance with our hormonal needs, we feel balanced and in harmony. I truly feel at peace now following the Primal Bod Diet. Hormonal health is at the core of Primal Bod. Your hormones determine how you feel. 

Overcoming Your Weight Loss Plateau With Primal Bod

I have met many women in the Primal Bod community who have been carnivores before and they say that they feel so much better after joining Primal Bod. Primal Bod teaches you why you do certain things. For example, you don’t eat after a certain time in the day in order for your sleep hormone melatonin to come out. This ensures you’ll have a good night's sleep. 

If you want to lose weight in a structured way, I would recommend Primal Bod as its 12-week program gives you a step-by-step process to achieve your weight loss goals. You will also have personal support along the way with live coachings 3 times a week plus a super interactive FB group. 

If you are not ready to invest in the Primal Bod Program right away, the Carnivore Diet is an excellent choice for your health and weight loss (at least in the beginning, many women do hit a plateau at one point). 

Primal Bod Ensures a Smoother Transition to an Animal-Based Diet

Make sure to ease yourself into The Carnivore Diet and reduce plant foods slowly to not suffer from extreme detoxification which can be quite hard on the body. 

If you want to go all in and have the support you need at your fingertips, then I can highly recommend the Primal Bod Program. It will teach you the Primal Bod Diet and SO MUCH MORE so you can finally live in a body that looks and feels amazing from now until old age. 

To make your decision a little easier, please use my code NINAPRIMALBOD to save $100.

You can also watch the masterclass to learn more about the Primal Bod Program and why it is working so well.

Nina Stegelmann