Carnivore: how much meat per day – and how much fat

There is no fixed amount of meat per day on carnivore; most people end up roughly at whatever fills them up, plus enough fat. More important than the gram count is that you eat enough protein and fat and do not leave the table hungry.

Why there is no fixed gram count

No study sets how much meat someone on carnivore should eat per day. The largest dataset on people eating this way comes from an online survey of 2029 adults (Lennerz et al., 2021). In it, 85 percent ate red meat daily or more often. The survey doesn't derive an amount from that, and everything in it is self-reported.

How much you need depends on body size, activity, age, and how fatty the meat is. A fatty piece of pork neck keeps you full in a different way than the same weight of lean chicken breast.

Protein: reference values exist

There are official values for protein, but they're meant for the general population, not for carnivore. The German Nutrition Society (DGE) gives 0.8 g of protein per kg body weight per day for adults aged 19 to under 65. From 65, it gives an estimated value of 1.0 g per kg. If you're overweight, the DGE uses normal weight for the calculation, not your actual weight.

EFSA puts the figure for adults at 0.83 g per kg. It didn't set an upper limit, and it considers intakes up to twice that value safe for healthy adults.

These values are floors for adequate intake, not targets. If you eat until you're full on carnivore, you'll usually end up above them, because meat and eggs are the main protein source.

Fat: the actual energy source

On carnivore, there are hardly any carbohydrates on your plate, so your energy comes mainly from fat and protein. In the well-known Bellevue study, two men ate only meat for a year and picked the mix of lean and fat themselves. According to the authors, both got most of their calories from fat (McClellan and Du Bois, 1930).

In practice, that means mince with visible fat, steaks with the fat cap, eggs, butter or tallow. If you only eat lean meat, you get plenty of protein but little energy, and you're hungry again soon. No study gives a daily gram figure for fat on carnivore, so you won't find one here either.

What to go by day to day

• You eat until you're full and aren't constantly hungry before the next meal.
• There's visible fat on the plate, not just lean meat.
• You roughly check that protein does not fall below the reference values.
• For the first weeks, you jot down energy, sleep, and digestion.

If you're hungry all the time, too little fat is a more likely culprit than too little meat.

With kidney disease, gout, pregnancy, or breastfeeding, clarify protein intake with a doctor first. This page does not replace advice.

Further reading

• Carnivore meal plan: what a day looks like
• Fat is your friend: why the right fat matters
• What you can eat on carnivore
• Daily examples: strict vs. animal-based
• Shopping carnivore on a budget