With this happy memory in mind, I leapt at the chance when the Gateway asked for a volunteer to go on a meat diet. Every day could be steak day!

The carnivore diet is a simple one: every meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—has to have meat as a significant component. I blindly accepted the challenge, thinking that it would be the merest of doddles.

I was wrong.

The first few days started well. I had spaghetti bolognese for breakfast one day and a bacon sandwich the next. Dinner the first night was a steak (of course) and pork chops were had on the day after. Lunches were provided by the meatier options of the Subway menu.

The carnivore is well catered to on campus. There’s always a meat-based option—from a meaty sandwich to a good-old healthy burger or burrito from one of the fast food joints in HUB and SUB.

But while availability wasn’t a problem, the price was. My food expenditures doubled. I winced as the cashier tolled up a bill of over three figures for my weekly shop. The mound of meat on the conveyor belt wasn’t just a nutritional hindrance—it was a financial one too. Meat isn’t cheap, and if you’re living off it for two weeks, your wallet takes a beating.

By the middle of the first week, the novelty began to wear off. At breakfast, my body was screaming for food that would get energy into it quickly. It wanted fruit or cereal; instead it got more chicken. I wanted to recreate the steak for breakfast experience, but my body wouldn’t let me. Reliving it would have just polluted my happy memories.

Seven days in, I compromised and switched to two meals a day: brunch and afternoon tea. I hoped that this way, my body wouldn’t be so overloaded with protein and thus I would be able to take a crap without 20 minutes of vein-bursting effort. It worked—almost. I didn’t feel so wretched and sluggish, but I still desperately wanted something light and energy filled in the morning.

Starting the day with meat (every single morning) is like trying to set off on a bike in its highest gear. By the afternoon, your body is flying along quite nicely, but it’s very hard to get going.

Since finishing the diet I have (unsurprisingly) started eating a lot less meat. I can barely look at a steak—once the bringer of so much joy in my life—without being reminded of the leaden feeling a meat diet constantly entails. My meat mojo is gone. It seems that you really can have too much of a good thing.

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1. Beating the booze: how to cure your hangover
2. How did I end up here?
3. Back to life, back to reality

But getting there is such an effort.

The mission to get there is even more off-putting when all that awaits you is something you desperately cannot be bothered to do and a feeling of inadequacy and judgement.

The trek to the gym can involve a lot of running into “friends”. People you shared that drunken chat with the night before. For me this usually revolves around food. They have food, I am drunk, and I want that food. I start a conversation and soon I am eating their food. I do not think of the implications this may have for future life.

That one person will be on your bus and there will be the inescapable awkward eye contact. I know I know them, they know I know them, and we know we know each other. Some sort of polite chat must follow, but that ridiculous confidence boost of alcohol has disappeared and the food is not there. What are my incentives for talking to this person?

Small talk with someone you don’t have much to say to is dire. Both of you know you’d rather not be talking but the silence that follows your limited conversation is almost painful, so pointless questions seem to be the only way out.

Sometimes I’m in luck: no one is around. I keep my head down until I reach the gym and I’m there. However, the chances of bumping into someone you don’t want to see are greatly increased by the fact that you will inevitably look like shit on your way to the gym. When I look like shit, it’s certain that I will see someone I fancy. In these cases I never have anything to say because their sheer beauty dries up any ideas for conversation in my head.

The mission to get there is even more off-putting when all that awaits you is something you desperately cannot be bothered to do and a feeling of inadequacy and judgement. The gym holds some of the more beautiful creatures that exist on this planet. The sort of people put on earth to make you feel bad. People hired by the gym for no real reason, just for a laugh.

Going there with a friend always seems safer. For example, if you become more red and sweaty than is socially acceptable, you can turn to your friend and say very loudly: “Oh my god I am so red and sweaty, it’s disgusting, but I am never usually like this”. And your friend can reply: “No, you’re usually very beautiful”. We see how this is better, yes?

After the gym, there is always that shared feeling of achievement and the talk of the next meal. Post gym mentality is the same the world over: ‘I came into contact with a piece of equipment at the gym, I deserve three courses tonight’. It’s simple logic.

It’s been two hours, and I’m definitely not at the gym. Although I appear to be fundamentally against it, I do understand the gym’s existence and appreciate it from afar quite regularly. I have even managed to complete the treacherous journey there in the past. But it’s just not my time today.

Related posts:

1. Beating the booze: how to cure your hangover
2. The carnivore diet: Two weeks of meat