On Day 9 of the 30-day, 20-burgers-a-day experiment, Dr. Mike's own journal describes carnivore diet sleep problems: his Fitbit logged him falling asleep at 12:15 even though he was in bed before 10. He also logged stomach pain, head discomfort and cold sweats running close to around the clock, and wrote plainly that eating had become a task rather than something he looked forward to.
What did Dr. Mike write on Day 9?
This is Day 9 of the 30-day series I’m telling day by day on this blog — days 1 through 29 come from the book and the journal, and Day 30 is reserved for the film itself. On Day 9, Dr. Mike’s journal entry is short and blunt: his Fitbit says he fell asleep at 12:15 even though he was in bed before 10, he describes stomach pain, head discomfort and cold sweats running close to around the clock, and he writes that eating is becoming a task (the book).
That last line is the one that stuck with me when I first read it. Nine days in, he isn’t fighting cravings or missing variety. He’s describing the act of chewing and swallowing twenty burger patties a day as work.
Does an all-meat fast-food diet cause carnivore diet sleep problems?
The film shows a pattern building well before Day 9. On Day 4 his Fitbit logged just over 6 hours of sleep that he called decent quality but said still felt like less than normal (the film). By Day 6 he’d slept through his morning workout for the third time in six days, something he says typically happens less than once a month (the book). Day 9’s 12:15 sleep onset fits that same trend — later starts and shorter, more disrupted nights than his baseline weeks before the burgers.
The film suggests this isn’t one bad night. It’s a slow accumulation: volume, monotony and gut discomfort compounding across the week, showing up as worse sleep before any bloodwork could confirm anything was wrong. In my experience, the body tells you something is off long before a lab panel does — you just have to be tracking it daily to notice the pattern instead of one rough night.
Nine days in, eating twenty burgers a day had stopped being a routine and become a task.
What does the evidence say about heavy meals, protein load and sleep?
Some of this is consistent with what’s been reported around low-carbohydrate diet induction generally. A qualitative review of online forum posts describing so-called ‘keto flu’ found that symptoms — headache, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, brain fog and GI upset — cluster in the first week and are mostly mild to moderate, resolving within weeks (Bostock et al., 2020). That study is self-reported forum data with no denominator, so it can’t say what causes what, only what people describe.
On the tracking side, it’s worth knowing the limits of the device doing the measuring. A meta-analysis of Fitbit wristband models found they detect sleep with high sensitivity but low specificity compared to polysomnography, meaning they’re useful for rough trends but not a substitute for a sleep lab (Haghayegh et al., 2019). Dr. Mike’s 12:15 figure is a consumer wearable’s estimate, not a clinical reading — I still find it a useful daily signal, even with that caveat.
How does Day 9 compare to the rest of the first week?
By this point in the series, the symptom list was already stacking up. Day 5’s headache lasted about 15 minutes after 90 oz of water and a 12-burger lunch, which he noted ruled out simple dehydration (the book). The film shows his first headache appearing around day 6-7, something he says happens maybe once every year or two normally (the film). Discomfort after meals had also been mildly increasing every day by Day 5, running anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours after eating (the film).
If you followed the meat sweats post on Day 6, you already know he tried eating all 20 patties in one sitting that day specifically to test for the symptom — and didn’t get sweats, but did get hours of facial heat. Day 9’s stomach pain and cold sweats read like a continuation of that same experiment: the body reacting to volume and monotony, not to any single meal.
Is eating becoming a task a warning sign?
In my experience, when eating stops being something a person wants to do and becomes something they have to grind through, that’s worth paying attention to regardless of what diet is involved. The film suggests this shift — from novelty to chore — is one of the clearer non-numeric markers of how the body is handling a restrictive protocol, well before any blood draw would show it.
Individual results vary, and nothing here is medical advice; Dr. Mike’s numbers are his own tracked data from one 30-day run, not a clinical trial. If you want the fuller context on what was actually tracked and why, the Day 1 post lays out the protocol from the start.
What happens next in the 30-day series?
The symptoms kept building through the following weeks — headaches lasting hours, dizziness on standing, more disrupted sleep — and I’ll keep telling those days here as the series continues. What the Day 30 bloodwork actually showed isn’t something I’m going to give away in a blog post; that’s the reason the film exists.
Frequently asked questions
What did Dr. Mike's Fitbit show on Day 9?
It logged him falling asleep at 12:15 even though he was in bed before 10, part of a journal entry that also describes stomach pain, head discomfort and cold sweats through the day.
Is this the same as keto flu?
It overlaps with symptoms reported in online forum surveys of low-carb diet induction — headache, nausea, dizziness and GI upset in the first week — though that data is self-reported and can't prove cause.
Are Fitbit sleep numbers accurate?
Research on Fitbit wristbands found they detect sleep with high sensitivity but low specificity versus a sleep lab, so treat the readings as a rough trend rather than a precise measurement.
Did Dr. Mike have symptoms before Day 9?
Yes — the film and book describe a headache around day 5-7, orthostatic dizziness by day 6, and missed morning workouts from disrupted sleep earlier in the week.
Where can I see what the bloodwork eventually showed?
That's saved for the film itself, which follows Dr. Mike through all 30 days with lab draws before, during and after.
The Bottom Line
Day 9 is a data point, not a verdict: one man’s tracked sleep, stomach pain and a note that eating had become a chore, nine days into a 20-burger-a-day protocol. It fits the broader pattern building across the first week, but individual results vary and this is not medical advice.
You can watch how the full 30 days plays out in The Keto Project, or read the day-by-day journal in 600 Burgers in 30 Days.
Sources
- Bostock et al., 2020 – Consumer Reports of Keto Flu
- Haghayegh et al., 2019 – Accuracy of Wristband Fitbit Models in Assessing Sleep
This article is for information only and is not medical advice. Individual results vary. Speak to a qualified clinician before changing how you eat.
The whole experiment is in the film. 600 burgers, 30 days, every blood test — and the ending we never post.
Watch The Keto Project on Amazon