Anorexia, Raw Meat & Rebuilding From 121 Pounds | Frank Bohne | EP60 The Josh Button Podcast
Anorexia, Raw Meat
& Rebuilding From 121 Pounds
Rebuilding From 121 Pounds
Six Years Raw. One Hell of a Road to Get There.
Frank Bohne is 6'1". At his lowest he weighed 121 pounds. He got there through veganism, caloric restriction, and compulsive exercise — a combination he now understands was killing him. His mom got him into Johns Hopkins eating disorder unit in the summer of 2016. He nearly died before that happened. Two years later he relapsed back to the same weight. And then something changed.
Today Frank works on a chicken and turkey farm in Richmond, Vermont, butchers his own sheep and goats, hauls roadkill deer home on a bike trailer, eats predominantly raw meat, and has no car. He's been carnivore since 2018, predominantly raw since 2022, and considers raw fat and oysters to be the most important parts of his diet. He is not a doctor or a nutritionist. He is a man who almost died twice from a vegan diet and rebuilt himself with the foods his body was screaming for.
This conversation covers the full timeline — from veganism to near-death to Johns Hopkins to relapse to carnivore to raw — as well as the gut-brain connection that conventional eating disorder treatment ignores, why the bike has been as medicinal as the food, what roadkill deer tastes like, and his advice for anyone thinking about trying raw meat for the first time.
I think your body knows you're living in denial when you're in that prolonged veganism state. But your mind keeps fooling you. We have all this pressure in our environment saying keep doing it. And then you'll have salmon or eggs or something and you're in tears — because it's like, my God, what have I done to myself?
— Frank BohneWhat We Cover
What This Episode Covers
What to Walk Away With
- Veganism nearly killed him — twice. Frank went vegan at 19 after picking up a magazine in a welding booth. By 2016 he was at Johns Hopkins at 121 pounds on a 6'1" frame. He got out, went back to mostly plant-based eating, and by 2018 was back at 121 pounds. The institution treated the symptom — low weight — by force-feeding carbohydrates and removing all movement. It never addressed the gut. The woman in the same ward had been cycling through the same program every four years for decades. She was following their instructions perfectly and kept failing because the protocol was never going to fix what was actually broken.
- You cannot fix anorexia if you don't fix the gut first. Frank's clearest lesson from Hopkins is also the one the institution was structurally incapable of applying. The gut-brain connection is not a fringe idea. If the gut is wrecked — and a vegan diet combined with 4,500 calories of Ensures, desserts and carbohydrate-dense processed food will wreck a gut — the mental component cannot stabilise. Treating the behaviour without treating the microbiome is trying to patch a hole in a sinking boat from the outside while the water keeps coming in.
- Carnivore worked immediately and completely. After the antibiotic destruction of his gut following the Lyme diagnosis, Frank found the Sean Baker episode on Joe Rogan in 2018, called it stupid, tried it anyway, and felt the change instantly. He describes it as going from struggling to put on weight no matter what he tried, to immediate and sustained progress. He has not gone back. Six years of data on his own body say what the science cannot.
- Raw felt better than cooked — and his palate confirmed it over time. By late 2021 Frank was deep into bone broths and slow-cooked meats following Weston A. Price protocols. By early 2022 he noticed he felt sluggish with cooked meat and kept gravitating toward raw. By the time he tested cooked meat again, it didn't register the same way. The desire had simply shifted. He does not claim to know the full biochemistry of why raw is superior to cooked for him — he just knows it is, and his body tells him clearly every time.
- Fat is the macronutrient most carnivores are chronically under-eating. Frank makes this point clearly: American meat is over-trimmed, animals are slaughtered young and lean, and people are still carrying the cultural fear of fat that makes them default to muscle meat. His experience is that he is still surprised by how much raw fat he can eat and how good it makes him feel. Oysters, brains, bone marrow, and raw fat from ruminants are what he actively craves and prioritises. Protein, he says, is easy. Fat is what you have to fight for.
- The bike has been as medicinal as the food. Frank has not owned a car in close to a decade. He bikes everywhere — year round, in all weather — with a Burley trailer that he uses to haul everything from his gear to roadkill deer. He credits the practice with rewiring the way he thinks and approaches obstacles. Forming your own route. Going when others stop. Being in the elements every day without the option to opt out. It's physical therapy, moving meditation, and mental conditioning rolled into one practice that costs essentially nothing.
- Start raw with eggs and fish, not with organ meats or blood. Frank's entry-point advice is simple: raw egg yolks, small amounts of raw fish, raw ground beef, raw cheese. Let your body adapt the texture and digestion before trying anything more intense. Don't start with goat blood (which made even Frank throw up). The goal is building a relationship with these foods, not proving something on day one. The palate genuinely shifts over time — what seemed like a barrier becomes effortless.
- Nutrition is an art, not a science — and the stress of treating it like a science makes everything worse. Frank's final message is one of the most important things in this episode. Nutrition science is biased, funded, and contradictory. You can find peer-reviewed research to support any position. The people who stress most about meal timing, macros, fasting windows, and ratios are often the ones making the least progress. View your body as a sculpture in progress. Choose the right tools for where you are right now. Let go of the black-and-white thinking. Trust what your body is telling you.
From Welding Booth to Raw Farm
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2011Age 11. Gets into nutrition independently — watching adults around him suffer and drawing his own conclusions about food. Paleo and CrossFit through high school.
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2014Post-high school. Loses structure and direction after graduating. Picks up a copy of Thrive by Brendan Brazier in a bookstore during a welding class lunch break. Goes vegan the same day. Health declines immediately.
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2016121 pounds at 6'1". Admitted to the Johns Hopkins eating disorder unit. 10 weeks. Force feeding. 4,500 calories per day of carbohydrate-dense hospital food and Ensures. Zero movement allowed. 40 pounds gained. Discharged.
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2016–2018Returns to mostly plant-based eating post-Hopkins. Incorporates eggs and cheese. Follows whole food plant-based approach. Gut remains unaddressed. Weight crashes again.
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Early 2018Back to 121 pounds. Naturopathic doctor in Georgetown, Maryland diagnoses Lyme disease. Prescribes 10 weeks of daily IV antibiotics. Destroys whatever gut integrity remained.
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Mid 2018Sean Baker on Joe Rogan. Frank calls it stupid. Tries strict carnivore anyway. Works immediately. Stays carnivore from this point forward.
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Early 2019Discovers Aajonus Vonderplanitz and the raw primal diet. Also encounters Derek Nance — a raw primal practitioner in Kentucky who slaughters and butchers his own sheep, nose to tail. Frank begins incorporating raw meat alongside cooked.
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2020Interns at White Oak Pastures in Georgia for three months. Learns farming hands-on. Eats pig placenta. Begins butchering goats and sheep. Carnivore scene at its peak — Paul Saladino sponsoring the farm.
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Late 2021Deep in bone broths and Weston A. Price / GAPS protocols. Begins to feel sluggish and slow. Raw meat pulls harder.
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Early 2022Predominantly raw from this point. Cooked meat no longer registers the same. Raw fat, oysters, organs, blood, and muscle meat — all raw — become the baseline. Now in fifth season at Maple Wind Farm, Richmond, Vermont.
The Full Conversation
Hopkins Treated the Weight — Not the Person
Frank's time at Johns Hopkins was structured, controlled, and genuinely well-intentioned. He doesn't call the staff evil. He simply says they were doing Western medicine — which means treating the presenting symptom (low weight) rather than the underlying cause (a destroyed gut). The protocol: specific food groups in specific proportions, certain meal times, no movement whatsoever, and a target of 4,500 calories a day for Frank specifically because he struggled to absorb anything from the carbohydrate-heavy diet they prescribed.
The result was 40 pounds gained over 10 weeks. Then he was discharged, returned to mostly plant-based eating, and two years later was back at 121 pounds. The institution classified this as relapse. Frank's read is different: if you don't fix the gut, you don't fix the person. The woman who had been cycling through the same program every four years for decades wasn't failing because she lacked willpower. She was following their instructions perfectly into a loop that was structurally designed never to resolve.
The Starvation High — What Frank Was Actually Chasing
Frank is honest about the psychology of his anorexia in a way that most accounts aren't. He didn't have significant body dysmorphia. He loved the high of starvation. The adrenaline. The cortisol. The feeling of his heart beating slower every day. It was a drug — fight-or-flight kept artificially elevated, producing a state of sharpened focus and strange aliveness that he became addicted to. He describes being willing to bike himself to death in pursuit of it. His mother noticed before he did and got him admitted.
He calls it athletorexia — the clinical term for a pattern where excessive exercise combines with caloric restriction. He was training his body while starving it, chasing the peak of that state rather than the aesthetic, and the result was a man with the frame of a 6'1" person compressed into 121 pounds of tissue.
Carnivore to Raw — What the Body Was Asking For
The transition from cooked to raw was not ideological. It was physical. Frank had been doing serious gut healing work through 2021 — bone broths, stocks, slow-cooked meats, Weston A. Price and GAPS protocols. He's not dismissive of this period; he thinks broths and stocks have their place. But by the end of 2021 he felt consistently sluggish. Raw meat kept pulling at him. By early 2022 he simply shifted the ratio until raw became the default.
He tests cooked meat occasionally and finds it doesn't produce the same response. The desire for it has gone. He attributes this to his body knowing something his intellect hasn't fully mapped yet. The energy, strength, sleep, and digestion he experiences on raw all outperform cooked for him personally. He holds this as a personal data point, not a universal prescription.
The Bike as Therapy — More Than Transportation
Frank has not owned a car in close to a decade. He taught himself to ride at 9 years old when his parents were separating and he wanted nothing to do with anyone. He returned to it at 18 and hasn't stopped. He bikes to work, to butcher animals, to haul roadkill deer, through Vermont winters and Maryland summers. He does it not despite the difficulty but because of it.
His framing of why it works is almost philosophical: everyone else on the road is obeying the rules, yielding, going with traffic. On a bike you form your own route. You're in the elements. You're not going to feel good every day but you figure out how to get to where you need to go. That mindset becomes your mindset. The reluctance — not anarchy but reluctance — the refusal to just go along with the dominant system — goes into how he approaches everything else. He credits it alongside the food as the reason he has the results he has.
Everyone else around you is driving. They're in their own lane. They're obeying the rules. Stopping. Yielding. On the bike you're saying no to everything. You're forming your own route every single day. You're in the elements every single day. You're not going to feel good every single day, but you figure out how to get to that destination. And that just goes into your life.
Roadkill, Butchery & the Burley Trailer
Frank finds roadkill deer, assesses them, and brings them home on a Burley bike trailer — rated to 100 pounds, which he has pushed to 140. He has a pulley system rigged at his home gym for hanging and processing carcasses. His assessment process for roadkill: look at the bruising pattern, avoid the bruised area, assess smell (blood pooled in the body changes flavour and spoils faster when not bled out properly), take the backstrap as a minimum — it's almost always clean. Log the find with the state game warden app, which is both legal requirement and responsible practice for wildlife management.
He has butchered chickens, turkeys, goats, sheep, and goat and sheep heads. He works on a chicken and turkey farm in Vermont where slaughter is part of the job. He also interned at White Oak Pastures in Georgia in early 2020 — three months at peak carnivore culture, when Paul Saladino was sponsoring the farm. That's where he ate pig placenta — slow cooked, not raw, that time.
What He Actually Eats and What He Craves
Frank's diet is predominantly raw ruminant meat and fat. If he had to identify the foods he craves above all others, they are oysters, brains, and bone marrow — mineral-dense, fat-rich, intensely nourishing. He also drinks blood when he has it, though goat blood is the one thing that has made him ill. Sheep blood is his preferred source.
The only plant foods he includes are fermented vegetables — sauerkraut, kimchi, fermented pickles — occasionally, when he feels he needs minerals or sodium and doesn't have oysters or blood available. That's it. Everything else is animal.
Meat in America is over-trimmed. Animals are slaughtered young. The fat is removed as a feature. People go carnivore and eat protein, protein, protein — and then wonder why they're still not thriving. Fat is the macronutrient carnivore gets wrong most often. Oysters, brains, bone marrow, raw animal fat — these are what you're actually fighting for. Protein takes care of itself. Fight for the fat.
How to Start Raw Meat — Frank's Actual Advice
People ask him constantly. His answer: start slow, start with the mildest options, and stop worrying about bacteria and parasites. Raw egg yolks are the entry point — almost no barrier, extremely bioavailable, and most people's first experience of how differently raw food feels compared to cooked. Then raw fish — sashimi, ceviche, whatever form makes sense. Then small amounts of raw ground beef. Raw cheese. Let your digestion adapt. Let your palate adapt. Don't start with organs or blood on day one.
His biggest concern when he started was not food poisoning — it was de-evolution. Genuinely. He had absorbed the idea that cooking made us human and was afraid raw meat might somehow reverse his neurology. He reports being slightly more intelligent than before. His brain did not shrink.
Mentioned in This Episode
- Frank Bohne — Instagram @instafrank95
- Derek Nance — Raw Primal Practitioner & Butcher, Kentucky (15+ years) Search: Derek Nance raw primal
- Aajonus Vonderplanitz — Raw Primal Diet (Primal Diet) Foundational text: We Want to Live
- White Oak Pastures — Regenerative Farm, Bluffton, Georgia whiteoakpastures.com
- Sean Baker MD — Carnivore Athlete, World Record Holder carnivoremd.com
- Dr. Sean O'Mara — Visceral Fat, Carnivore & Performance Search: Dr. Sean O'Mara carnivore
- Joel Salatin — Polyface Farm, Swoope, Virginia polyfacefarms.com
- Burley Bike Trailers — Recommended by Frank for hauling livestock and equipment burley.com
Raw carnivore since 2022. Carnivore since 2018. Vegan recovery survivor. Anorexia survivor — 121 pounds twice at 6'1". Former intern at White Oak Pastures, Georgia. Currently in his fifth season at Maple Wind Farm, Richmond, Vermont, processing chickens and turkeys. Butchers his own sheep and goats. Hauls roadkill deer on a Burley bike trailer. Has not owned a car in close to a decade. From Southern Maryland. Tentatively planning oyster farming on the Chesapeake Bay. Studying to race on a raw carnivore diet to show the biking community what fat and protein can do.
Hard to Kill. Built on Real Food.
If Frank's story resonated — the ancestral nutrition, nose to tail, eating what your body actually needs — the free Ancestral Nutrition Guide from Stop Killing the Plants is where to start.
Get the Free Guide Or comment ANCESTRAL on any @stopkillingtheplants post — we'll DM it instantly.Disclaimer — This episode documents one individual's personal experience with diet and health recovery. Nothing discussed constitutes medical advice. Raw meat consumption carries real risks — consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any significant dietary change. The views expressed are those of the guest and host only.
