An Australian woman with one foot in the grave, weighing a massive 770 pounds at her heaviest, has reclaimed her life by opting for an all-meat, high-fat diet and shedding a staggering 500 pounds.
Fifty-two-year-old Lindy Barker from Melbourne is a mother of two daughters aged 21 and 32. Ms. Barker works from home as a virtual assistant. Over the years she had tried everything and been on every diet possible but couldn’t sustain any of them. Today, she weighs 270 pounds and is still losing weight each week
“I couldn’t do anything. I was useless and felt like a burden on my family,” she told The Epoch Times. “It was getting to the point where I was going to be bedbound.”
‘An Awful Feeling’
Hailing from an Italian family, Ms. Barker said her kin were all overweight.Post World War II, when everything was scarce in Italy, Ms. Barker’s family moved to Australia, where food was abundant.
“They had missed out on a lot in their childhood, and they wanted to give us everything,“ she said. ”They didn’t want us to go without. Food was used as comfort.”
As a child, Ms. Barker was “very shy, very timid, and very withdrawn,” and thus, eating became her go-to.
In her 20s, weighing around 300 pounds, Ms. Barker tried different diets. When nothing worked, she underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery and after the operation, would struggle to keep food down.
“I was throwing up a lot of food,” she said, adding that because she struggled with eating solid food, she began living off ice cream and chocolate.
However, this didn’t address the core issues around her emotional eating.
When she was 30, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Days later, she discovered her daughter, then 12, had diabetes. For the next seven years, Ms. Barker cared for them both while working full-time, and her dependence on food as a source of relaxation and comfort grew.
“I just continued getting bigger and bigger,” she said, recalling how during Zoom meetings, she would always have her camera switched off as she was embarrassed about her weight.
Throughout the day, she hardly ate as her job kept her going.
“I felt important, I was good at what I did,” Ms. Barker said. “Everyone loved me. And I felt it gave me purpose.”
However, after dinner with her husband, she continually pondered her next snack until falling asleep.
“The next morning, you wake up, and you’re always wondering where the next meal was coming from,” she said. “That’s an awful feeling. It’s like being a prisoner in your home and head when you can’t think of anything but where the next meal is coming from.”
During the pandemic, Ms. Barker recalled weighing close to 800 pounds.
This further impacted her life as she could rarely leave the house.
“I couldn’t fit behind the wheelchair and even in our car [as I was] so big that [my husband] couldn’t change the gears in the car because I'd be in the way,” she said.
When planning to visit a restaurant, she would research which chairs they used.
‘It’s Transformed My Whole Life’
After feeling like a “failure” in 2022, Ms. Barker stumbled upon a few videos of a doctor talking about the benefits of a carnivore diet. Desperate, Ms. Barker was struck by the thought that if she chose this diet, she could save her life. At first, following the plan—which incorporated beef, lamb, pork, chicken, seafood, and some dairy—was a bit hard.Additionally, Ms. Barker also needed to remove all processed foods and seed oils from her diet, opting to cook only in butter, tallow, or ghee.
Likening the process of cutting out sugar and processed foods to quitting alcohol or smoking, Ms. Barker said she experienced a detox period and in the beginning, felt worse. However, when she got over the initial hump, the process got a lot easier.
“I was able to stay with it,“ she said. ”Within a couple of weeks, I was feeling better.”
One disabling effect of carrying those extra pounds was lymphedema; a condition that causes swelling due to the build-up of lymph fluid in the body. Soon after changing her diet, she said, she gained relief from the condition and experienced less achy joints and greater mobility.
Two years after the change, Ms. Barker says she’s loving her life. She has a car, goes out for walks and shopping, and is able to enjoy time out of the house with her husband and daughters.
“My girls have got their mom back,” she said, adding that they now go out to get their nails done together.
She has also been able to go out with her husband driving, shopping, and walking hand-in-hand.
“Now, I say hello to everybody with a smile on my face. I love life now. It’s transformed my whole life; it’s not just about losing weight, it’s about the healing I’ve done as a person. The weight loss is just the cherry on the top.”
Of course, the carnivore diet enthusiast has faced backlash from critics, who comment that she must be constipated or suffer from high cholesterol.
“There are a lot of common misconceptions,” she said, “but I’m not constipated at all, and I don’t have any issues. My inflammation markers are normal, and I recently had a heart scan because I’m looking into getting some skin removal surgery ... and my heart is strong.”
Another thing people say is that she’ll be at risk of scurvy due to vitamin C deficiency, or of suffering a heart attack.
“I’ve never heard of anyone getting scurvy on the carnivore diet, and, well, I was very close to having a heart attack at 800 pounds,” Ms. Barker said.
However, Ms. Barker does admit there is a lack of scientific evidence on the efficacy of the meat diet but points out that there are many testimonials from people who have turned their lives around this way.
For Ms. Barker, it’s a work in progress. Having been overweight her whole life, her body sustained a lot of structural damage, and she’s only recently been able to take up gentle exercise such as walking on a treadmill and using a rebounder.
“I’m happy to help people just try and motivate them and inspire them to give it a go and have their life back. Because we can do it,” she said. “I dug myself out of that hole.”
