I Ate 120 Raw Eggs in 4 Days. Here's What It Taught Me About Gut Health, Serotonin, and Loneliness

A year and a half ago, I ate nothing but raw eggs for 100 hours straight. 120 eggs across 4 days. No seasoning, no sides, no other food — just raw eggs. By day 2 I was sitting in the shower depressed, and by day 4 my body was showing early signs of breaking down. But the hardest part of this challenge had nothing to do with food.

Let me explain.

Why I Did It (And Why That Made It Worse)

At the time I was in school for something I disliked, trying to break into YouTube as an entertainer. I'd put all my eggs into one basket — literally and figuratively. But here's what made the whole thing dangerous beyond just the diet: I had just moved out for the first time, I was living alone, and I had no real friends or family around me.

My brain had attached this challenge to my only real shot at a career I cared about. So failing at it felt like failing at life. Keep that isolation in mind, because it ended up being the most important variable in this whole experiment.

What Raw Eggs Actually Cut You Off From

When you go raw-egg-only, you lose access to four things your body can't do without for long:

• Fiber — Without it, your gut bacteria starts dying off, which directly taints your mood (more on this later).

• Vitamin C — Your body can't produce it. After just days without it, tissues start breaking down.

• Biotin — This one's ironic. Biotin is found in eggs, but raw eggs contain a protein called avidin that binds to the biotin and flushes it out. So eating raw eggs literally steals biotin from your body — the very nutrient that supports your hair, skin, and nails.

• Carbohydrates — Without them, your body is forced to switch fuel sources, a process that takes days and feels terrible the entire time.

The Protein Myth

Here's something that directly contradicts a popular belief in fitness: raw eggs are not better for building muscle.

A 1998 study compared the true ileal digestibility of cooked vs. raw eggs — essentially the percentage of protein your body actually absorbs. Cooked egg protein clocked in at about 91% absorbed. Raw egg protein? Barely squeaked past 50%. So you're choking down something miserable for roughly half the benefit.

What It Did to My Gut (And Then My Brain)

By the end of day 1, my stomach was swollen and my immune system was upset — a bit of an egg-sagguration, but not by much. Eggs cause severe bloating in many people, and in some cases outright inflammation. I'd just given my body 30 raw eggs with zero support. No probiotics, no good bacteria, not even fiber. And this problem only got worse.

Here's where the science gets really interesting. A diet this high in animal protein with zero fiber tanks your microbiome diversity. And your microbiome directly controls your serotonin — the hormone responsible for mood, sleep, and social behavior. Over 90% of your body's serotonin is produced not in your brain, but in your gut. So if your gut isn't happy, neither are you.

By day 2, my gut was actively sending signals to my brain to make me less happy. Pair that reduced serotonin with someone who was already completely isolated — no friends, no family, no distractions — and you get frustration, loneliness, and depression. After only two days.

That night, I was sitting in the shower, genuinely depressed. I was hyper-focused on the thought of food, only 25% done with nothing but raw eggs ahead of me, and my mind kept circling back to the idea that failing this challenge meant failing at the only career path I cared about. There was no one around to pull me out of that spiral.

The One Thing That Actually Helped

Night two was looking to be worse than the first. Then I got a text from a friend I hadn't spoken to in months:

"Just happy Tuesday. Enjoy your day."

That's when I realized this challenge had no right — absolutely no right — to get me down. A few bad moments in one day does not mean you must have a bad day.

What struck me was this: one text message did what 60 raw eggs couldn't. It gave me energy. The psychological relief of having support, even briefly, overrode the physical exhaustion in a way that biology alone couldn't explain. Day 3 was noticeably easier — partly because of that message, partly because I called my mom for most of the day.

But the body follows the laws of biology, not friendship.

Day 4: Biology Catches Up

On the final day, I started noticing symptoms I couldn't ignore. My skin felt more wrinkled. Small bubbles formed below my bottom lip. My throat felt like strep. It's possible this was an early sign of scurvy from vitamin C deficiency — though studies suggest those symptoms typically appear after weeks or months, not days. So it may have been something else entirely.

Either way, my body was screaming at me to stop. I finished the challenge anyway, and the moment I hit 100 hours I had some of the best chicken of my life. Really, really good chicken.

What I Actually Learned

The hardest part of this challenge wasn't the taste, the texture, or how I felt physically. It was being alone through it.

When you strip someone of their normal routine, food, and human contact, you see what's really holding them together. For me, it was the three F's: Friends, Family, and Fiber.

A tanked gut microbiome wrecked my serotonin. Zero carbs drained every ounce of energy. But the isolation is what nearly broke me — and a single text message is what pulled me back.

So if there's one takeaway: don't wait until you need something or someone to appreciate them. And please, for the love of everything, hit your fiber intake. I'm begging you.

Has anyone else experimented with extreme or restrictive diets and noticed the mental effects hitting way harder than the physical ones? Curious if the gut-mood connection showed up for you too.

Watch the full video here