The Lion Diet: Does It Really Work?

Over the years, you may have heard of some pretty extreme diets. Cabbage soup diet or grapefruit diet, anyone? Now, a meat-only diet called the lion diet has become the new TikTok trend, according to the New York Post. As the outlet reported, one user, @roryskitchen, detailed his 30 days following the lion diet. His before-and-after video garnered 2.3 million views and counting alone. (He called it a carnivore diet in the video, but explains that he ate only meat, salt, and water, which is akin to the lion diet.)

Plus, according to MetroUK, there’s been a rise in female “meatfluencers” on social media who share their love for meat while forgoing plants.

But can this diet actually be healthy? We asked experts for their take on one of the newest “it” diets.

The lion diet is billed as a “healing elimination diet,” according to the website. Its purported purpose is to heal a leaky gut caused by eating a standard American diet, consuming medications, or having an unbalanced gut microbiome. The target audience for the diet are people who have autoimmune disease.

On the diet, you will eat only ruminant meat, salt, and water, per the website's Get Started page. Ruminant meat consists of meat from animals that have a rumen, which is a chamber of their stomach that ferments the grass they eat, as the website's FAQ notes. This means you can eat meat from cows, bison, deer, moose, sheep, and goat.

The creator of the diet says you have to be extremely restrictive to remove any food that may cause inflammation. In later stages of the elimination diet, you will slowly re-add other foods, per the diet website’s Get Started page.

Who Is Mikhaila Peterson? And What Is Her Role in the Popularity of the Lion Diet?

Mikhaila Peterson is the creator of the lion diet. On the My Experience page on the website, she details the health struggles she encountered since she was a young girl, including juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, and severe depression. After years of restricting inflammatory foods from her diet, she eventually settled on eating only meat, which became the lion diet, something she says healed her autoimmune diseases.

For three months, you will eat only ruminant meat, salt, and water, according to the website's Get Started page. During the reintroduction phase, per the website's FAQ, you will open up your diet a bit. At that point, you can eat salmon, mackerel, tuna, and honey; followed by peeled and cooked-in-broth apples, pears, carrots, parsnips, beets, and turnips, as well as coconut, duck, and pasture-raised chicken.

It’s also possible to start a lion diet by slowly easing in from a high-carb diet by removing grains, dairy, soy, and legumes over a two-month span, and then moving to a lion diet if still needed.

“No dietitian or health professional would ever use the lion diet as an elimination diet,” says Tuscaloosa, Alabama–based Carolyn Williams, PhD, RD, owner of Meals That Heal and host of the Happy Eating Podcast. While elimination diets are used to identify food triggers, they “generally don’t require cutting out everything but meat,” she says. “This goes way beyond what’s needed.”

What concerns Williams is that gut health is dependent on consuming both prebiotic- and probiotic-rich foods. (Probiotics are found in fermented foods, while prebiotics, which act as food for probiotics, are found in foods like oats, bananas, blueberries, asparagus, onions, flax seeds, among others, according to UMass Chan Medical School.) “I don’t see how the gut can heal or improve without those things. Eliminating irritants is needed, but so is rebuilding the gut,” she says.

Ultimately, keep in mind that this is extreme. “Anything that seems extreme probably isn’t healthy. We want an answer when it comes to diet, but needs differ so much between individuals,” adds Williams.

There is no shortage of side effects on the lion diet. According to the Get Started page, you can expect the following:

• Flu-like symptoms for up to two weeks
• Loose stools
• Mental fog
• Muscle cramps
• Fatigue

No. The lion diet eliminates fruits and vegetables, which provide antioxidants, fiber, and phytonutrients, and relies only on meat for an extended period of time, which can lead to vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, says Amy Burkhart, MD, RD, a physician who specializes in gut health in Napa, California. Because the diet targets those with autoimmune conditions, who may already be at risk for nutrient deficiencies, this diet could make those worse, she says.

The biggest red flag is that someone with no medical training created the lion diet, says Dr. Burkhart. The diet is based on her anecdotal experience and does not take into account the diverse health needs of people. This can be dangerous in general, but especially for those taking medication, children, and people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. “The risks far outweigh the potential benefits.”

You will exceed the saturated fat recommendations set forth by the American Heart Association (AHA) on this diet. The organization recommends limiting your diet to 5 to 6 percent of calories from saturated fat, as excess can increase your risk for heart disease. It’s important to keep in mind that we don’t have the research that suggests what happens if you eat excess saturated fat on an all-meat diet. “All we know are the effects of eating above the recommended range,” says Williams.

Compared with meat, plant-based foods contain more potassium, and because potassium plays a key role in blood pressure regulation, Williams also sees blood pressure being a potential issue.

The lion diet has few — or a lot of — food rules, depending on how you look at it. The list of what you’ll eat is minuscule.

What to Eat

You will eat only meat from ruminant animals, as well as salt and water. Here is a complete list of foods on the lion diet.

• Beef
• Bison
• Venison (deer and moose)
• Mutton or lamb
• Goat
• Salt
• Water

What to Avoid

On the other hand, the list of what foods to avoid is rather long, and can be summed up as “all other foods.” Here’s an overview of what you won’t be eating:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Dairy
• Beans and legumes
• Whole grains
• Chicken
• Fish and seafood
• Highly processed foods (crackers, snack mix, frozen dinners)
• Desserts
• Sugar-sweetened beverages
• Diet drinks
• Spices, including pepper

In general, you will estimate how much meat and calories you need per day, according to the FAQ. For example, Mikhaila says she’s 5 feet 6 inches tall and eats 1.5 pounds (lbs) of meat per day. She adds that a 6-foot-tall man should eat 2.5 lbs of meat per day, though you’d adjust based on your hunger level. At the outset, if eating a lot of fattier cuts of meat is unpleasant, she recommends eating lean cuts of meat.

In the FAQ, Mikhaila says she ate two ribeye steaks per day for the first months of the diet and now eats mostly lamb, though you do not have to do the same. Your choices are based on what makes you feel the best. Purchase the highest quality meat you can afford, though she says that beef patties (make sure there’s no pepper) from fast food restaurants are just fine.

Below is a sampling of what types of meats you might eat on the lion diet on a day-to-day basis, though the specific type of meat, number of meals or snacks, what time you eat, and how much is up to you (that is, the diet doesn’t detail portion size recommendations). The most important thing is that you’re eating only the allowed meats. Again, though, experts do not recommend following this eating plan.

Day 1

Breakfast One ribeye steak, air-fried

Dinner One ribeye steak, air-fried

Day 2

Breakfast One ribeye steak, air-fried

Dinner One ribeye steak, air-fried

Day 3

Breakfast One ribeye steak fried in tallow (rendered beef fat)

Dinner One ribeye steak, air-fried

Day 4

Breakfast Hamburger patties

Dinner Hamburger patties

Day 5

Breakfast Lamb and beef sausage

Snack Homemade plain beef jerky

Dinner One ribeye steak

Day 6

Breakfast One ribeye steak

Dinner Hamburger patties

Day 7

Breakfast Lamb

Snack Beef jerky

Dinner One ribeye steak

The lion diet is one of a kind. However, it is similar to the carnivore diet because it is an extreme elimination diet that calls for eating a meat-heavy diet and poses the risk for nutrient deficiencies.

On the carnivore diet, though, you will be eating any animal food, including meat, seafood, dairy, and eggs. In that regard, the carnivore diet provides more food options.

Ultimately, the purposes of these diets are different. While the lion diet claims to heal the gut and treat autoimmune issues, the carnivore diet’s aim is to promote weight loss and blood sugar regulation, according to Cleveland Clinic.

It’s worth mentioning that, like the lion diet, health experts don’t recommend the carnivore diet. Its health risks include strain on the heart due to excess saturated fat, nutrient deficiencies because it excludes key food groups and is inherently imbalanced, and stress on the kidneys due to the high intake of protein involved.

“I would not recommend this diet to anyone,” says Burkhart. “While there may be anecdotal evidence of some people improving, any scientific proof is absent, and it carries risk. If you’re looking to improve your health, focus on a plant-forward, whole-foods diet; if you think you could benefit from an elimination-type diet, talk to your healthcare practitioner and seek out a specialist, such as a registered dietitian who works with clients on elimination diets.

“While we may not have all the answers as to how diet affects health, particularly autoimmunity, I don’t think the answer lies in the feeds of TikTok from a person with no medical training,” Burkhart says.