Jenny McCarthy is a force to be reckoned with. She’s an actress, a model, an author, and an activist who has gone from hosting her own talk show, “The Jenny McCarthy Show,” to being a judge on Fox’s reality guessing game show, “The Masked Singer.” But, behind the scenes, she has dealt with some pretty serious health struggles that have forced her to re-examine her diet in order to ease her symptoms.

In a March 2025 episode of the “Heal Squad” podcast, McCarthy told host Maria Menounos that she “literally almost died” after following a vegan diet. “I became so ill from being a vegan,” she said at the time. “I tried vegan, and I almost died. I literally almost died.”

McCarthy went on to reveal that she suffers from Celiac disease, which means she has to be careful about what she eats. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder where gluten, a protein in wheat, barley, and rye, triggers the immune system to attack the small intestine, preventing the body from absorbing nutrients.

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Her diagnosis led her to discover that she didn’t just have a problem with gluten, but dairy as well. It led her to rethink her diet, which led to her eliminating carbohydrates from her diet.

“I didn’t know I had a gluten and dairy problem. I thought everyone got sick when they ate,” McCarthy said, according to PEOPLE magazine. “I can’t have carbs, and everything is a carb.”

Unfortunately, her food allergies didn’t stop there. “I’m also, like,  allergic to soy and everything — I was literally dying,” she continued. “I was exhausted and fatigued. I was a mess.”

From there, McCarthy went on what she called “my last resort diet.” The diet, commonly referred to as the carnivore diet, is an extremely restrictive diet that involves eating only animal products like meat, fish, seafood, eggs, and some dairy products like butter.

After starting the diet, McCarthy said that she felt “felt very low vibrational, heavy. I was more eating salmon and doing light things like that, but I might as well give it a try.”

Even though she said it was a “last resort,” she did admit that it was working for her. “It has been f-cking incredible for me,” she said. “Again, I stress things as for me.”

Although she has seen a “huge energy” boost since going carnivore, she admitted that she doesn’t plan to stay on the restrictive diet for long. However, it has also helped her in the bathroom.

“I literally go every day without a laxative. I was living on seven to ten aloe pills a day, just to go every four days,” she divulged. A few months later, in May 2025, she discussed her bathroom habits in a separate PEOPLE magazine interview.

“And I’m sorry if this is too TMI, but I was a complicated person who only went to the bathroom once every 14 days,” she said, admitting that her constipation got so bad that her functional medicine doctor told her she might need a colostomy bag.

McCarthy admitted that she was initially “against” the idea of a meat-only diet. “I was so against it, but my doctor was like, you’ve tried everything but this, so you’re going carnivore,” she explained. “I’ve got to tell you, it saved my gut. I go to the bathroom every single day now — and it made me feel like I was 25 again.”

In addition to including avocado in her diet for “fiber,” she also revealed the “gross” food that she’s come to love. “I mostly had grass-fed beef, sometimes grass-fed kidneys and liver mixed together, which sounds gross, but you can’t tell,” she said before further elaborating on her symptoms.

“I have so much kind of sh-t wrong with me,” she confessed. “I’m like, I have Hashimoto’s, Candida, leaky gut, celiac disease, and a histamine intolerance.”

Although going carnivore has allowed her to manage her symptoms, she admitted, “You can’t half-ass” the diet. She went on to say, “But if I showed you a picture of my face from even a year ago, it’s so different. I didn’t realize how swollen I was all the time.”