Hello, I thought I'd post here again to report back on how the carnivore diet has been going for me the second time around.

This time found I had no pain in my back that felt like kidney pain - When I had this the first time around I think it may actually have been muscle pain. It occurred on days where I was very busy at work and sat down without moving for almost an entire day. I spoke to my rheumatologist about it and she said kidneys don't normally themselves hurt, aside from kidney stones - which I had no symptoms of.

After 3 1/2 months being very very strict with the diet, meaning I ate foods that were not meat only 1-2 times in total, I built up the courage to go to the gym and try exercising again. Normally this would cause me to have a horrible flare-up 100% of the time. However, again, I had absolutely no reaction or inflammation as a result of the exercise, and my body was behaving as if the disease were in complete remission.

Normally I am only able to do the lightest of exercise without having a flare, even walking on flat ground all day can cause me to have a flare-up. Any sport, vigorous exercise (even just upper body exercise, like pull-ups) that involves light impacts, running, jumping, lifting weights, causes me to have a flare. Being strict with the carnivore diet seems to completely stop the mechanism of inflammation for me, and I'm able to exercise freely. On the diet I am able to do heavy squats and deadlifts in the gym, something that would be completely unimaginable for me normally.

I did a total of 4 gym sessions over the course of a month with no pain or flare-ups as a result. As with the first time doing the diet, it felt like a miracle.

After 4 weeks of exercising I introduced eggs into the diet, having 5-6 of them for breakfast each morning, this meant I had to eat less ground beef, which was great. Unfortunately within a week I started to get pain and inflammation coming back in my SI joints. I stopped exercising at this point, out of a fear of having a major flare up. All my worst flare-ups (the ones that have left me housebound) have been when I did exercise whilst already suffering from some noticeable pain / inflammation.

Adding eggs into the diet was an experiment to add some other foods that were high in fat / calories. I had hoped to also add nuts, avocados and leafy greens while keeping the protective effects of the diet. Unfortunately even adding eggs seemed to cause a return of the inflammation, and it seems like I need to be almost totally strict with the diet for it to work; it's all or nothing. This is really disappointing as the diet is very difficult to maintain long term. It is expensive, very monotonous, may result in other health concerns, and I lost a lot of weight because it's so hard to eat enough calories while only eating meat, even fatty meat.

For now I have given up on the diet and returned to eating normally (but gluten free, as I'm a celiac). I know that the diet works for me and is an extreme option I can take if needed. However it feels very difficult to maintain on a permanent basis, and seems to take a few months of being very strict before it starts to work, so it's not something I can use to get out of a series of bad flare-ups that won't seem to go away.

For now I am going to explore other possibilities, and will perhaps have to give up the dream of returning to being physically active and exercising a lot as I did before my AS got bad in my early twenties. Feel free to ask any questions! Peace.