Dante Ferrigno, creator of the Ferrigno Freedom YT Channel, Lion Diet success story and personal carnivore coach.

                             ---------- Originally Aired on the Good Foods Podcast ----------

At the time of this recording, Dante was 51 years old.  When he turned 48 years old in November of 2020, he was in a bad place physically, mentally, and spiritually.  

At 6’1” tall and 285 lbs. He was overweight and had high blood pressure for which he was taking lisinopril, hydrochlorothiazide, and one other medication.  He was also on prescription strength Omeprazole for GERD symptoms, testosterone cypionate for low-T, Levocetirizine for severe allergies, and taking a vast number of supplements for better health.  

Dante had been trying to eat better by avoiding bread and junk foods as much as he could, but he was falling way short in retrospect. The main issue was with his gut area.  

Dante would wake up every morning in a type of pain that he can only describe as piercing pain, and then there was this feeling like it was sucking the life out of him, much like a blackhole captures light.  He also suffered from chronic insomnia, chronic constipation, and a few other aches and pains linked to inflammation.  

But just before his birthday he started following Jordan Peterson and his story about his all-meat diet.  Dante credits Peterson’s encouragement in helping him get back on his feet mentally.  Now he’s 100 pounds lighter and taking ZERO medications. I’m sure you’ll enjoy his amazing story.

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The Good Foods podcast was created and hosted by Shardan Sandoval in March of 2023 and was active until September of 2024. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. I'm Dante Ferigno, creator of Farigno Freedom YouTube channel.
It's a lion die at sixteth story and I'm a
personal coach, and this is the Good Foods Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
All of us are on a journey towards better health,
and we're grateful that you've allowed us to join you
on your quest in this episode.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
And it's hard to even imagine that there was a
time that I carried a one hundred more pounds around
with me everywhere I went than I do right now.
You ever picked up one of those forty five pound
waights Jim the big round plate and thought if I
had to carry this everywhere I went, I wouldn't be
able to do it.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
This is the Good Foods Podcast and now here's your
host show, Dan.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Dante, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
It's great to be joining you. How did you find
out about this lifestyle and did your faith come into
play in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Well, I think it was my faith that led me
here in a way because back in twenty twenty, where
a lot of us were, you know, struggling with things
that were going on mentally and physically in the world.
And then also my health was suffering, and I think
it was a mixture of things. It was not just food,
it was also you know, stress and external factors like that.

(01:18):
But I was definitely in a die place mentally for
a while there, and I started watching this guy I
had heard of. I kept hearing his name for probably
a few months. His name was Jordan Peterson, and I
finally said, all right, I want to check out this guy,
Jordan Peterson. What's he saying? Who is he? What sly
is that I keep hearing his name? And I saw
like basically classroom style discussion from a professor of psychology

(01:44):
or I don't know what his actual title is. He's
not a psychiatrist, he's a psychologist. And I was liking
what he was saying. It made a lot of sense.
It was going to some deeper understanding of things, and
I found his information to be helpful for me in
general just getting myself together. So I had gained a
lot of respect for him over a few months there

(02:04):
that I had started. I don't know when it actually
started that I began watching Jordan Peterson's videos. I want
to say it was near the end of twenty twenty
when I had done that. But it could have been earlier.
But I do know that it was right at the
end of December or the beginning of January or twenty
one that I saw him on the Joe Robin podcast
and Joe Robin was talking to him about the same

(02:27):
type of things that I was seeing and talk about.
You know, he was going into his viewpoint on things,
and out of the blue, he says, so are you
still doing that all meat dieting? That all beast diet?
And I thought, having had experience with the Atkins diet,
and how crazy that was for me interacting with people
with him seeing me eat so much meat all the time.
But of course I was eating some salads and some

(02:48):
things that were on ACA diet that wouldn't be considered
all carnivore style diet like I've come to know it
as now. I thought, that's even crazier than something that
I did before that worked for me, did it help?
But I thought, how can you do that? How can
you only eat meat? I was still under the illusion
the reason why you could eat a lot of meat
and not gaining weight or lose a lot of weight

(03:11):
was because it didn't have anything really in it for
you to use for that purpose, So it was like
eating without eating was kind of my thought of it.
I didn't realize that most of the nutrients that are
in the food that we eat, if you were to
break them down between like the vegetables on your plate
and the meat on your plate, most of it's in
the meat. So that was a misconception that eventually got

(03:34):
blown out of the water. But that was my first thought,
was how are you going to have the nutrients you eat?
Because that's what we had been taught. And then also
I knew from experience that if I wasn't pounding vitamins heavily,
that I'd ran out of energy. Like one time when
I was on the Atkins diet, I had gone four
days without taking the multivitamins that I was taking. I

(03:56):
was usually taking two Men's one of days and several
other vitamins, and I skipped four days, and on that
fourth day, I felt like I was gonna die. I mean,
I just had hero energy. I felt like I wanted
to pull the pouch over the top of me and
just stay in the house forever. And when I started
doing vitamins again, everything kind of looked back to normal,
and I kept eating that way, and then you know,
I lost weight. Everything was good, but I just fegared out,

(04:18):
I must be nothing in meat to give me any power. Well,
I started looking closer at what he was talking about
after you described what he'd been through and what his
daughter had been through, and then I heard her talking
about things like well, when I heard her mention that
the key was getting electrolytes when you're eating a lot
of meat, because you blow through a lot of electrolytes

(04:38):
very quickly on an all meat diet. And I still
don't necessarily understand why that's the case, but apparently there's
so much sodium in the feed we eat all the
time that we're getting electrolytes that we didn't know we
were getting. But knowing that sodium would make the big difference,
I said, well, now that I've got some information, and
I'm going to go on this way of eating because
I need to get some of the healing that he

(04:59):
was taking. He was talking about healing for issues that
doctors had no answers for, and that was the problem
I had. Now I didn't have the exact same problems Tim,
but I had to say general problem that I was
going in my doctor and saying, Doc, I got this problem.
It's hurting. Doc. I'm here now because the ambulance brought
me to your emergency room and it's hurting. I need
you to fix it. You know, whether it was in

(05:20):
the emergency room or at the doctor's office, I often
got the same, you know, questioning look of there's nothing
wrong with you, there's nothing we can find wrong. They
would stop, They would do the colonoscopy, the endoscopy, they
did all the different things that over the period of
a couple of years while I was having these gut problems,
and they kept finding nothing and it was frustrating. So

(05:40):
when I heard that this had healed so many different
things that Mikayla Peterson Jordan Peterson had gone through, I thought,
with the shot, either it is there, I'm not going
to live another year, so I will give it a shot.
I'd look back on that video. I don't know that
I remember it as well as I've seen it over
over now. The very first video that I posted on YouTube,

(06:01):
called the one hundred and twenty five Days Onlie and Diet.
On that day, one portion where I was recording and
I had said I was just going to do this
for six week where I look at my own face.
I know what I was thinking behind those tired eyes, saying,
I don't know if it's gonna work. I really don't.
I don't have a clue if this is going to
work or if it's going to make a difference. But
within a couple of days, I started to feel like

(06:22):
the person. It was an amazing and how such a
short period of time I started to feel better. I
started to have energy, started to feel normal again, like
I was waiting up. And I don't remember how soon
it physically changed everything, but within two days I could
say I felt better. I knew I felt better. Within
two months, I finally started to do the little exercise,

(06:45):
and I was just to say I never had the time,
or the energy or any motivation to really want to exercise.
But by the time two months had come around, I
realized that I had enough energy that if I didn't
do something with it, it was making me feel anxious.
So I started getting then a few push ups here
and there, and before long I was doing a little more,
a little more. And I've always been sporadic with exercise,

(07:08):
so a lot of times people want to say, oh, well,
you started exercising, and that's why you lost all the weight.
I was barely doing anything. I wasn't doing anything at
all those first two months, But then the next couple
of months, it was just a little here and a
little there, and sometimes I would do it a lot
at once, and then it would die for a week
or two. So, I mean, it definitely wasn't all exercise related.

(07:29):
It wasn't like I went through a rocky exercise montage
and that I was in perfect shape. It all came
from stop eating the garbage that I was eating.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
So there's carnivore and then there's I've heard the lion diet,
which I believe you do. What's the difference between the two. Yeah, well,
you know, all these things just have labels for whatever
reason so people can understand what we're talking about. Initially,
the only reason why you would put a separate label
on lion diet and carnivore diet is that a carnivore
diet basically needs what it sounds like, you eat anything

(08:01):
that's another animal you need, you need the meat.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Well, lion diet limits the type of meat you can
eat down to ruin animals because animals that are ruin it.
They have multiple chamber of stomachs, and they are themselves vegetarians,
so they only eat grass and vegetation. Well, those stomachs
are designed to remove all of those toxins that are
in the vegetation that our bodies to be removed. That

(08:25):
other monogastric animals can't remove that those toxins, so those
toxins wind up being in their meat, whereas with the
cows you don't get those toxins. What had led to
the healing that MICHAELEB Peterson had experienced was getting on
the ruminant animals. That's where I was looking for. A
lot of people come to the carbod diet primarily some

(08:46):
weight loss. That's the initial thought is I got to
lose the word. That's a lot of us struggle and
more people these days than ever before because the food
system is really put up between food pharma and the
government that we've got one heck of a Peroni storm
going on for us to be out of shape. So yes,
a lot of people want to get in shape. That's
their initial thought. So I let them know that line

(09:07):
had diet isn't necessarily the best way to lose all
the weight any carnivore diet I think can do that.
But I think if you're trying to steal some other
issues that you might want to go deeper than what
a carnival diet does, because carnivore eliminates even more possible
tox and problems for your body, especially problems that might
build up from years of eating processed foods or overdoing

(09:30):
things and vegetables Like I find out that a lot
of people. I never was a juicer that like the
juice things. Occasionally I wouldn't mind getting smoothie at the
store or something like that, but that was a rare thing.
I wasn't much of one producing. But I know some
people who like every day they got the juice of
a vegetable drink in some kind, And when they loosen

(09:50):
off all the stuff that's in those vegetables, you wind
up getting a lot of electings, and you got to
want up getting a lot of oxalates that get into
your system that wouldn't normally have gotten in there the
way they did because they won't juice before that, you know,
I mean enhances it BLUs. It increases the quantity of
the stuff that you're putting into your body, and it's
not bid for you. The carbohydrates themselves, which we've been

(10:12):
taught all of our lives. Your body needs to run
on carbohydrates. That's just an alternative fuel source, actually, but
we use it as our primary source because it's easy
and it's cheap, and it makes people money when they
sell it. Carbohydrates are something that your body creates. When
you do somem you increase the quantity of them, and

(10:33):
it causes your insulin this bike and causes your blood
sugar rise, causes you to have other systemic problems. So
the weight loss itself can cure a lot of the problems.
But when you've got some of the problems like I had,
or like Sea had, that seed to be autoimmunion in nature,
then getting to the lion dian is the important part
of the overall outcome of the diet is getting healing,

(10:55):
not just losing weight. But losing weight's going to come
whether you do a standard carnival work neat diet or
if you're gluing a diet like mine that limits to
you know, buffalo, bison, el deer, cows, all the ruminant animals.
So I don't have work and chicken in my diet.
I have some of those things back in a little
bit over time, but for the most part, that found

(11:16):
that I do better when I don't.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
So let's talk about that. What is specifically in your
diet and what is definitely out.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Specifically, what's in my diet most of the time is beef.
I eat a lot of beef. Lamb was a little
bit more affordable when I first started eating this way
in twenty twenty one, but it went up and then
it hasn't come back down sinence, So I've kind of
stuck with beef only because lamb is good to me,
but it's not as good as beef. But I think
there are some benefits to lamb that I'd like to

(11:43):
investigate it more for. But primarily beef is what I'd eat,
and I seized in it with salt, and I drink water.
I drink a lot of Clubs soda and that's it.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
So when you were in did you ever stray from
the diet at any time? And how did your body
react to that when you did stray.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
If you did stray, well, there were times when I
strayed because it was of impulse or you know, thinking
that I can treat myself to something. And there were
also times where I strayed because I was testing to
see how certain things would do. Now. Early on, any
source of fiber would cause me digestive discomfort, so anything
green was causing the issues. Even seasonings that would be

(12:26):
like if I ordered a Hamburger patty and I was
out if they seasoned it with salt and pepper, the
pepper alone could be enough to cause me to have
discomfort then, or even get a flare out of diarrhea
or something like that where my body's saying, hey, something's
not right in here. And there were also things where
I started to notice the taste of food was not
what it used to be. I remember specifically, and I

(12:48):
recorded this in the first video where I'd try to
pop part again for the first time in a long time.
It was one of those impulse things kids had. It
was there. It was something I used to eat all
the time, and sometimes you just do it before you'd
even thought about it, you've already done it. I did
into this thing, and I remember thinking all I taste
is like white powdery flour and cardboard, which was strange

(13:10):
because I loved lop charts. So something in my brain
was telling me that they were delicious when they really weren't.
It's like my mouth was nun with sugar and all
the things that are in our regular diet, so that
when I had something that was actually considered a splurge
or something that we would definitely consider junk food, I
knew immediately that it jumped. It wasn't like before where

(13:32):
I would eat that and be like, oh, this is
sweet and delicious. I could eat these all day, but
I won't because I know they're horrible for me. It
was more like, this is horrible for me, and I
know it terrible. It was amazing to me how our
perception of food could be changed by getting certain things
out of our system, like getting all that sugar and
things out of there, and things that I used to hate,

(13:56):
like liver. Liver was on one of my top three
things in the world that I hated. Ever last night,
all the spur of the moment, cooked up a couple
of pieces of liver because I want it, so, you know,
And that to me blows my mind because it was
literally needles, cockroaches, liver, three things in my life. I
don't want to have anything to do with and that
liver is back in the in the mix with the

(14:18):
best of them. So those were amazing. Drinking was another experience.
I found that I used to drink a pretty good bit.
I mean I could go through a one seven five
of bourbon in a week on a regular basis at
one point, and that was an unusual And that was
along with a few gears along the way. When I
say a few, I mean probably three or four night
or more. That was the minimum, three or four, and

(14:39):
I would think that I wasn't doing that much. But
then once I quit all of that, I didn't probably
initial cutout drinking. After the first two months, I had
done it completely, and then I started to bring a
little bit back in because I've found, oh, I can
have one or two and I feel fine. But as
with a lot of things, portion control was using my problem.
When I had one after about a year of eating right,

(15:02):
I had five beers at a football game. I felt
so sick after having that, and it wasn't enough to
where I felt like that would have been enough to
knock me out or do anything like that. It just
I didn't enjoy it at all. I just felt sick.
So it's like once you get all these poisons out
of your body, and your body's no longer numb to
the effects of all the different things that are in

(15:24):
our food that shouldn't be at our food. I mean,
when you read a list of ingredients on a packet
of bread, or on a package of pop cards, or
on a package of anything, most of the stuff on
there you can't even pronounce it. You have no idea
what it is. It didn't come from nature, you know,
So why are we putting this in our body? Oh? Well,
this small amount, it's not that big a deal. Yes,

(15:44):
but it's not this small amount. It's this small amount.
And then it's another box, and another box, and another
food and another ingredient. And by the time I finished
building just a dinner for myself, I've got ten different
things that are not food eating my food. Well, once
you get all of those things out, if you put
a little bit of poison back in, I notice it more.

(16:05):
It's because my engine is clean now, it's running on
clean air. So when I put something back in that
it's not sports to be there. It it affects me more.
I've had people try to argue that's the problem with
this way of eating is now you can't eat things
you used to could eat. I don't see it that way.
I see it is get the poison out, the poisons
more obvious later on when I can run into it again.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
So do you think with the alcohol that you were
drinking and you were changing the diet, do you think
there was less desire because of the diet to the alcohol.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yes, absolutely, there was less desire for not only alcohol,
but other things in my life. I was so careful
about what I was putting in my mouth. I started
to become more careful about what I put into my
mind and what I put into my eye. I'd had
a struggle with borography in my life in the past,
but this was like the death nail for that. I

(16:53):
finally was able to just say, you know what, I
don't need that stuff. I don't need that poison in
my brain. I don't need those visuals in my eyes.
I mean, I'm a married man, I'm trying to live
a decent life here. I can leave that behind her.
I can lead the alcohol behind. I can leave thoughts
set behind that I don't need to be dealing with anymore.
I mean, time to grow up. It was kind of
amazing how changing what I eat forced me to mean

(17:16):
more discipline in a lot of other areas of my life.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
So before you started down this path, you know, when
you were seeing the doctors and there you were on medications,
or where you having any specific health issues. What is
your life and your health like now?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Well, before I had high blood pressure, I'd been on
high blood pressure medicine since my late twenty so I'm
fifty one right now, by the way, and I started
this when I was forty eight, so by this time
I was at least twenty years in on blood pressure medicine.
I had been taking a memper Zol prescription strength for
a few months by this point, because I was one
of the last things they prescribed to try to figure

(17:52):
out what was going on with my gut process. Even
though that seems to be about the stomach. I really
feel like the doctors were just throwing everything on the
wall I could to see who was sick, and nothing
was sticking. But I was on on my resoult I
was on three different blood pressure medicines, not just a
les center pro. I was also on hydrochloriciased eyed and
some other thing he was giving me supposed to help
one of the other medicines work better or something like that.

(18:15):
And I was taking tons of supplements. I had listened
to a nutritionists that was going to help me get
my intestinal problem fixed, and I had taken it was
like a supercoved green knick thing where you take it,
you put a green powder in and mix it with
some water and you drink that and was supposed to help.
And that all that did was turn my stuff green

(18:35):
email I would go to the bathroom. He didn't seem
to actually fix anything, but I thought, hey, it's a
sign of something. Maybe something's happening. But just spent a
lot of money on that junk and nothing ever came
from it. I started on disascerone therapy back in eighteen.
I think it was for a rectile dysfunction and mood.
There was a combination of two things there. My doctor

(18:57):
thought I would help with the mood as well, and
I had been on that for three years. When I
started eating this way, it was just one of those
things that I had grow to accept that what I
was going to have to live with my testosterone being
low and I was going to have to deal with
injections for the rest of my life since then. Really
within the first thirty days, I stopped taking my blood
pressure medicine altogether because when I would take it, it

(19:18):
would make me feel faint. If I took it, I'd
wind up going back to sleep rather than gett to work.
So I stopped picking my medicine. And then a month
later I saw my doctor for the first time since
I started, and he took me off of the medicine, said
that you don't need it anymore. He said, I didn't
need the almepersol anymore because I wasn't having a digestion issues.
There were a few other medicine dollars taking I can't
even think where they are right now. It's like I

(19:39):
want to lead that part of my past behind, but
the only thing he'd left me on. Initially, he suggested
that I not quit the testosterone because I thought I
had been wanting to get off everything. I didn't want
to go see a doctor from something, and I thought
maybe I could get off the testoscerone. He said, no,
your numbers will probably be lower than where way they
were when we checked them back twenty eighteen, that we

(20:01):
got your started on because you've been using this now
for thirty years your body snack used to produce just toosterone.
So I said, okay, well I'll live with that. I'm
just doing it for the minimal amount, the regular amount,
to feel like a normal man. So I kept on going,
but it still bothered me. It felt like one. I
didn't want to have a drug in my life, so
if I could help it, whatever it was, whatever synthetic

(20:23):
or natural, I didn't want to feel like I had
to go to a doctor to getting something I would
finally felt healthy. So I was ready to put all
that behind, but I kept sticking with it, and I
kept fighting with him on it too. I would ask
him about reducing the amount, you know, and then seeing
if I should if I could check it again, but
he was resistant to giving me any advice about reducing

(20:45):
it or anything like that. So eventually, when I moved
to Florida and I didn't have him as a doctor anymore,
and I didn't have a doctor here, I think my
prescription ran out and I wound up going cold Turkey
by accident. And I got my blood work done a
few months later, and surprisingly my tesosterone was at the
same level, actually slightly higher, but only in like by

(21:08):
ten points. Then it was when I started testoscerone. My doctor,
then the new doctor I had, was surprised, based on
the fact that I'd been on testoscerone for four years,
that it was even the same. And then six or
eight months later, I got my bootwork kicked again and
my testoscerone was fifty percent higher than it had been
back in twenty eighteen, and I thought, Wow, I guess

(21:31):
this really does make a big difference if it's able
to help bring the testosterone back. So no blood preasher medicine,
wasn't having been on testosterone treatment for several years, really
not taking any medicine. I remember the day I left
that doctor. I just mentioned I left her office. It
was the first time I had went to see her.
I'd gone to the other doctors in the past. Obviously,
I was used to the format of you go in,

(21:54):
you see the doctor, you get to the prescriptions, you
make your next appointment, you leave, you come back on
an extin. That was something that you fall into when
you get to be a certain age, right, That's not
something you used to when you're a kid, because you're
not on prescription medicines all the time. Well, I left
their office, and I didn't have any testosterone because I'd
already gotten rid of everything else. It was amazing to
me that I didn't have to make an appointment to

(22:16):
come back. I felt free from the medical system for
the first time. I thought, Wow, they don't already have
their hook any for the next one. So those were
some pretty relieving things, you know, the blood pressure, the
hormone improvement, fantastic, those are all great. Blood work numbers
are great, Celesterol numbers are They're even unusual for within

(22:37):
the carnivore community. How good my numbers are when it
comes to what doctors are looking for. So everything has
been great on that front. Health is a new thing
for me.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Now what trick hacks or insights have you gained on
your own or learned from others that has made this
journey easier, safer, and more successful.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Dante, The biggest trigger hack for me was finding the
air fryinger is good for me making steaks. You know,
most people think of it as the place to make
French fries or something like that, and I felt the
same way. Somebody had given us an air fryer for Christmas,
I think that year before, and it had just been
sitting in the corner of that room until one day
that I just said, I'll give you a try and
see how it works out. And the steak came out

(23:17):
so juicy and delicious. I thought, well, this is easy.
I could do this, and if it wasn't for the
air fryer, because of all the cleanup that goes involved
in making steaks, especially in hamburger patties, that it would
be a lot harder, especially since I'm not I don't
like making food. That's not what I want to do,
so it's even more amazing that I can't do this
because I prepare all my own meals. But the air

(23:40):
fryer was a huge hack for that that made it
possible for me.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
That leads me to my next question. Is everyone in
your family on the same page with this or is
it just you? It's just me as far as.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Being on the same page now, my wife supported anything
I was going to do that was going to help
me because she knows where I was mentally and physically
when we started this, so she was always very She
was as nervous, probably as nervous and valible. The first
time I got blood work done because I thought, oh
my godly doctors in the seat of my blood work,
and my cholesterol is gonna be up, and who knows
what he's students, and then they're gonna make me feel

(24:11):
bad and I'm not gonna have any leg to stand
on except that somebody on YouTube said it was a
good idea, you know, So she probably was in that
same nervous attitude for a while, but now that she's
seen it, she's a believer. He just hasn't pulled the
trigger on doing it for herself. Because so many people
to make this draft pick of a change, there has

(24:32):
to be in need. It has to be like life
or death. For you to decide you're gonna stop taking
a drug that you're addicted to and is legal and
everybody has it, and everybody's going to offer it to
you everywhere you go. It's really hard to do that.
And sugar is exact for that. Sugar turns out to
be that drug that when they try to get rats

(24:54):
to quit taking it, they would die before they would
stop eating shoogar. But they can get him the quick
taking cocaine. You know, that's how strongable drug it is.
So it's hard to get people to say I'm gonna
make the step that gets all of sugar out of
my life, and did go even further and say not
only sugar, but all carbohydrates in general, all seed oils,

(25:18):
and just eat meat. It's a big ask for a
lot of people so and especially kids, because they're inundated
in sugarter world with Halloween and Easter and how we
celebrate every everything involves candy and kids, we set them
up for failure real early. But it's so hard to
fight those societal norms because you still got to have

(25:38):
a family in a household, you still got to have
normal life going on. And if you're always the one
who's in the house that's going around being the food noxie,
there's not a whole lot of love and sun going
on in the house. Be very difficult to put it
that way. But I have been able to at least
get them to cut out more junk suits on their
lives than the east. To eat soda is there a
thing of the past for the most part. Occasionally I'll

(26:00):
see them come like one of the kids will have
a coat. But my wife's used to be like, oh,
I'm just going to get a ginger al I think
garbage in the ginger ale that's in the Coca cola.
Just because it's a different label doesn't mean it's different
ingredients lip at the back. They just mixed them up
a little bit. But she quit that, and now is
he actually finds clubs so go to be refreshing. She
used to think how great that. I used to say

(26:20):
that to my father when I was kidd How do
you drink that? Now? I love it? So yeah, it's
goood seeing them get a few of these things out
of their lives. But I also know that they have
a tendency to do things when I'm not around, Like
they'll gorge themselves on things that they shouldn't when I'm
not there. Because I think this is just human nature.
I don't think it's like anything personalist. I've been trying

(26:41):
to do something with me. I think we do it
to ourselves sometimes, Like when I'm dieting, if I decide
I'm gonna cheap, I'll go all out. But I don't
want anybody to see me cheating. I'm like, what do
they care? I'm the one who's paying attention to this.
Why do we even care if they see me cheating?
But I think it is human nature. To just want
to get us the way and have that soule and Gendy.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
How has your body changed, Dante because of this transformation,
both in body shape and in strength. Were you always
in good physical shape up until you know when you
add to all the medications.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I was always strong, but I was always handy too.
I was always I always had a wide body. I'm
not all those guys that keeps the gut out in front.
I tend to have big love handles, a wider front body.
I still trouble with my love handles. Eap you now,
But I'm not three hundred pounds. I'm two hundred pounds
right now. That's one hundred pounds less than I was

(27:33):
at my irons, And it's hard to even imagine that
there was a time that I carried or one hundred
more pounds around with me everywhere I went than I
do right now. Have you ever picked up one of
those forty five pounds weights yet, the big round plate. Yes,
I thought if I had to carry this everywhere I went,
I wouldn't be able to do it. That's always forty
five pounds. This was one hundred pounds that was carrying around,

(27:56):
So it's hard to really put a finger on how
big of a difference that it's how big of a
tage it is getting out of bed in the morning,
putting on your clothes, putting on your shoes. I dreaded
putting on my shoes. I wouldn't get shoes with laces
back then because I didn't want to have to deal
with trying to lay something up with my gut in
the way or something like that, and bending over when

(28:16):
I would try to get down on my knees or
you know, get into a crouch position. Once my lips
went below my knee or even to the level of
my knee, that's it. I'm not coming back up without help.
But now I can do squats all the way to
that low position and stand up on my own that
I couldn't do before. It's like having the body that
I have when I was a teenager again. It does

(28:38):
have a few miles on it, though.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Have you experienced any negative effects because of this giant
I see negative effects because of the diet.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
The only negative effects I've experienced that I wouldn't have
experienced eating any other way is the concern of many
people in my life. I think that I'm doing something
that's bad for me. They're overly concerned. They can be
annoying to an appointment. It's like, I'm doing something that
makes you feel the best I've ever felt, and you

(29:09):
think it's a negative thing. I don't know that they
actually think it's a negative thing. I think there's a
mixture of things going on in our psyches on this.
I think one is there's a natural tendency for people
to love company when they have misery, and most people
have some kind of misery. Everybody really has something that
is miserable in their life that can be difficult just

(29:32):
to love us deal with them better. I've always been
one that doesn't deal with them very well, but it's
been a lot easier since eating this way to deal
with those things, deal with those difficulties from other people.
We were talking about people and where it comes from
that they do that. Part of it is that they
want to bring you down, They want to keep you
at their level because they don't want to have to
do anything to change. But then there's the other side

(29:53):
of it is that they have been propagandized for so
long with the food pyramid, that you got to have
all these cereals and grannies, and that you only want
to have a little bit of meat, and that sugar
is pretty much benign for you. You know, these are the
things that we've been taught by the health care system,
by our government, by the food companies, essentially because they're

(30:15):
the one who sponsor all these studies that are being done.
So if everybody's being told that this is an unhealthy
way to live, it's hard for them not to argue
with Because the doctor told them that he should need
red meat. Their mother told them he should need red meat,
So how are they not going to argue that? And
then when they see losing weight, they think, oh my god,
he's got tense or he's dying. You know, he's killing

(30:35):
himself with his diet, Like, well, you've never seeding me
without fat on my body. Don't feel like I look
bad because I finally have the body I wanted to have.
That's the hard part. We're dealing with other people, mostly
because they don't understand, and it can go on for years,
and it can be difficult socially. You go to parties,
you go to get togethers, and especially when so much

(30:55):
apart get together all be eating and drinking.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
You know, well, if you see your four and after pictures,
it's such a dramatic change that should be like a
postcard to them, like this is working. It's working for me.
And I see where you're saying that they want to
they don't want to change. Maybe you're that reminder that, hey,
you do the work and it works.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, it could be. I don't know exactly why the
visual isn't enough, but I guess there's anecdotal reason that
they can throw in. Here's something I could think off
the top of my head. Didn't tell her you let
pen lost a whole bunch of weight, and I thought,
I wonder if he did a carnival diet. Well, I
found that he did a potato diet, which is like
the opposite of a carnival diet. I mean, he ate

(31:35):
only potatoes, and I thought, so eating only starch coll
did you'd lose weight? That's interesting. So that could be
a reason that would get somebody to think, well, there's
something else that's happening, but you're still doing damage to
yourself somehow. You know, they always think of something that
you're not seeing yet. It doesn't matter how many years
I've been doing it. Somebody will say, then five years.

(31:56):
Wait taking if I get to ten years, they'll say,
wait twenty years. I'll see, look, you know what, I'm
gonna dead eventually. And then you're gonna say, ah, yel right,
but we're all going to be dead eventually. You can't
win this argument by attriction. I feel better now at
fifty one that I did at forty eight, and I've
been eating this way for three and a half years.
It's this that's made the change.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
What's one of the biggest surprises that you've experienced, either
personally or through some of the people that have reached
out to you so far.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
I think the biggest surprise is how many people picked
up on it on YouTube. When I made that first video,
I wasn't making it thinking this is going to be
the one I'm going to get started, and this is
going to start me a YouTube channel. I was actually
making YouTube videos for a small group of friends that
I've gotten a note playing golf Clash. I probably had
a couple hundred subscribers, and I knew a lot of

(32:42):
these guys were like me, sitting around playing video games
gain more weight than they should, and I knew I
was going to lose weight from my experience on that
can diet. So I thought, well, I'll document this progress
and they'll show them, you know, maybe you can lose
a little few pounds and still do the things you love,
you know. So I put that video together over a
four month period, and when I put it out there,
I figured, you know, be coolest if you have them.

(33:03):
Watched it next day it had over one hundred thousand views.
On what those numbers didn't even translate to me. I've
never would have thought of having a video, and if
it had a thousand views, that would have been related.
So to have one hundred thousands as close to viral
as I've ever experienced. So seeing that was a surprise.
And finding out that there was an entire community of

(33:24):
people out there who are finding out about carnivore way
of eating, and that community, turns out, is just as
important as finding the way of eating in my opinion,
because of the societal influence that comes in on all this,
Because if you're constantly being told you're doing the wrong thing,
eventually you're gonna believe it, even if you're seeing the

(33:46):
results yourself. You talked about how the hearts of imbacy
the results sometimes I can convince myself that I'm not
doing the right thing even though I'm looking at the results.
I think that's just a part of human nature and
doubt and fear and worry and all those things, not
to mention have of a personality trait that's hied in neuroticism.
So I did to be self abasing anyway. Having that

(34:06):
community of people to not only want to know what
you did, it that inspires me that they saw that
I did something and they're like, okay, teach me, I
want that with you out. It's exciting to be able
to share something with somebody who desperately wants you have
and it's something you can give them a free d
you know, it's fantastic. So that's wonderful. But also being

(34:28):
the way, like sometimes I'll notice some people that comment
on the video or on rabio on one of our
Facebook pages, they'll say something that indicates to us that
they feel alone in this battle and that they just
want to know that they're not alone. And to see
so many people come together to lit that person up
and let them know that they're not alone, that they're

(34:49):
in this fight with them, and that we're going to
be able to get through this that we're going to
survive living another day. As Forer addicts, living in an
addict house of sugar. It's good to see people working
together for that. So that has been truly amazing to
me to see all the good that has come to this.
The other side of it is the amazing thing is
that I don't get to see as much in person.

(35:12):
I see it a lot in words on a screen.
But when I do get to bump into somebody in person,
and it's happening more and more lately as my channel
has gotten bigger, where I actually get noticed in puple.
It those real moments where somebody will look at me
the way I used to look at maybe a celebrity.
When I met a celebrity, and to know that that
celebrity came from helping them finding a healthy lifestyle, something

(35:35):
good to them, you know. Knowing that that's what brought
that attention grabs me so much that I don't mind
sending time talking to that person. You know, like celebrities
a lot of times they don't have time for people.
I think that's because they feel like they didn't learn
what they've gotten. They've gotten so rich off of making
a movie that's people that don't even know. But I'm
not getting rich from it, but getting recognized somewhere to

(35:58):
me is exciting because I have a connection with this
person already. That was time of amazing to me how
they can have such an effect on me. I need
more of that. I need more of that personal interaction.
That's why I'm glad I'm getting to go to it.
I think you mentioned something about me going to Austin
when we first got on the call together. I'm excited
about going to Austin this year. I'm just not excited

(36:19):
about the flying part. That's for to get together a
ketocon for anybody who didn't hear that part.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
If I had told you at the beginning that you
would be invited to conferences, that you would start a
carnivore consulting business and be a spokesperson for products because
of this shift, what do you think you would have
said to me back when I first started, Back when
you first started, I said, listen, brother, these things are
going to happen in your life. Or would you have said.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
I probably would have ignored you. I would have just
done would have been one year and out the other.
I thought, look, I'd just be happy if it works
at all. That's where I was back then. I know
there's no way I could have planned this trajectory. I
love it though. I love it because of helping other
people find what I found, and how much happier that
has made me, and how much that's made meat seal.

(37:01):
If I'm adding that to others people's lives, and finally,
I'm doing something value as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
But what do you tell someone that maybe has gone
on this diet and let's say they've been on it
for six months and they've done the opposite of what
you experienced. They've put on instead of lost weight, their
sleep hasn't changed, or their health hasn't improved much.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
There's a few things with that. Now, six months would
be a little long. I think they have had no
effect of anything good. I can imagine anybody going that
long without seeing any effects. Now. I've had people say
they've gone up to three months and out lost any
weight before, And there's so many different body styles out
there that that could be an effect of genetics alone.

(37:43):
If they're having difficulties losing weight, it's going to depend
on what they tell me. Most of the time, people
are doing things they shouldn't be doing, and there mas
justifications to themselves about it, and then eventually they'll admit
it to somebody else, especially in a one on one
And that's why I wanted to be able to get
these one on one options. A lot of times people
will comment to me that they're not having any results

(38:06):
from this after a couple of weeks or a couple
of months, and there's too many personal questions that would
need to dig into to really get to the root
of what they're doing. Because so many times people will say, yes,
I'm only eating meat. Yeah, well I do tasionally get
into the piantburger late at night or just before bed,
I'll have a piece of bread. You're knotting yourself out
a symtosis. You're not letting your body get into the

(38:27):
mode that it needs to be in to burn a weight,
you know, but it can't really do that in the
back and forth of text format and like online form
like Facebook, or in a comment section on a video.
So it's basically iFly work through their individual issues and
challenge most of the time comes down to something emotional
going on. There's also you know, stress itself can cause

(38:48):
you wait. So even if you're eating the right of things,
if you're overly stressed, your cortosol is fighting your ability
to start burning that fat.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
So the Dante of all the influencers out there doing Carnivore,
who has been the most exciting to talk to him?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Why that's tough. I've met a few of them. I
think the most exciting to talk to is probably Carry
from Homestead. How I'm a little part of the Carried too,
because he claims that it was my video that got
him launched on his Carnivor way of eating, and then
East kind of gone ganging busters on this thing on
his channel and he's making documentary that he's trying to

(39:22):
get like on Netflix and stuff like that for the
Carnivore channel. He's got such a vitality for it and
as death for it, and that it kind of gives
me that new feeling again like it did at the
beginning when I first felt this. It's kind of like
a relationship when you first fall in love with your wife.
Everything is just wonderful. You're in that hunting phase. I
felt that way at the beginning, and it's kind of like, okay,

(39:42):
now that I've been married for a few years. I'm
still very happy with my white. This will feel quite
the same way it didn't we first got married, but
it's different. It's growing. I'm growing to accept some things
that I didn't know I had to accept, you know.
But his excitement brings back that beginning feeling, Oh my gosh,
this is the first time I've ever felt this good.
It's right back there and that long again. So that's

(40:05):
why it's exciting. I like people that have a zest
for life like that, and I enjoyed Ena also over
at five Minute Body. She's a real personality too. The
first time I met at her was at Key Too
Kon last year in Austin. Her personality is fantastic. She
just really kind of pepped me up some too, you know.
Starring Baker's Beited, Doctor ken Berry's Break. They're both fantastic.

(40:26):
They don't have that Zennis de Qui, I guess that
the other two I just mentioned to have, but they're
the carnivore doctors, so they come in with Gravis Toss
that we don't have. We have to have those extra
little bits of who knows what if?

Speaker 3 (40:39):
And finally Dante, who have you yet to interview on
your YouTube channel. Who would you want to interview and
what would be that one question that you would love
to ask them?

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Oh, if I hadn't the opportunity to interview anybody, might
be would be a toss up between Jordan and Michamlia Peterson.
Jordan Peterson's probably had the biggest influence over me in
my life, and being a carnivor and being able to
talk to him directly about it would be pretty tough
to be.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
I think it would have to be Jordan Pearson. Dante Ferigno,
thank you so much for your time. I know that
you are a very tight schedule these days, and I
appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I hope
it helps somebody out there. You can always check out
my channel. It's the rignal freedom that you want to
know more on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
The Good Foods podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The claims, comments, opinions,
or information heard should never be used in place of
your medical provider's advice or your doctor's direction. Thank you
for listening, Follow us on social media and wherever you
get your podcasts. Good Health through good food, good foods,
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