Accelerating Goals April: Carnivore Chat 2025

#21

Focus on soft keto food (mostly carnivore but I wasn’t that super choosy today) after dentist appointments… They are normally okay but these last two, ouch, chewing isn’t my friend now.
I barely had fried pork but the tender rabbit (well some more cooking would have been even better but it was fine just a bit too attached to the bone) worked. I could eat eggs too especially in liquid form… And I had whipped cream and sour cream. And soft cheese (very tasty Brie) with soft sponge cakes (they are always soft, maybe a tad crispy when freshly made but these are 1 day old, almost fried clouds just tastier). And pudding with cream, that wasn’t fully carnivore but close enough for me. I didn’t enjoy it enough, sadly but it was useful. Maybe I should make ice cream, that’s easily carnivore… I have planned my beloved fluffy jelly dessert but that takes more effort and time, my pudding is simpler and quicker. It’s a bit sad. I had cream, I didn’t need other dessert but I needed more soft food after I ate up the mentioned ones, preferably without drinking too many eggs in the process… But we get more eggs soon. VERY useful when one doesn’t want to chew!

So today was okay but I am looking to a meal where I have zero annoyance from my teeth and gum.

Bought 2 slabs of green ham today so that will be the next one. Even if I have fried trimmed pork shoulder, it’s a bit too fatty when I jump my whipped cream and use butter and whatnot… Need to balance the fattiness out!

(Bean) #22

Late meeting today, so eating kind of in between things. Chicken sage sausage, leftover beef roast, Pecorino Romano cheese, my chicken waffles with goat milk BUTTER.

I’m so excited to have butter, lol. I really like it. I’m not sure I’m going to want to try to reintro regular cow dairy. (I might not be able to, though). I also had an eyes swelling shut reaction to either the flax or soy oil in hubby’s margarine. Won’t do that again. Happy for the goat butter. So much easier to hit macros.

I think eggs are probably a no. I had a small, but painful, flare today.

#23

I have practically stopped eating any chicken this year.

It’s mostly protein, stress meat with lots of linoleic acid. My body fat loss trend says I’m doing something right.

(Bean) #24

I have found the quality of the chicken matters a lot for me. I pretty much just eat leg quarter seconds from a local small flock, air chilling producer. I have trouble with citric acid, and the air chilling seems to bother me less. That, and I rotate meats as much as I can.

(Bean) #25

My lamb is done so I’m off to the butcher shop this after work today. I’ll probably pick up some goat, veal, and turkey while I’m there. Goat has gotten weirdly expensive. My beef farmer texted me yesterday to schedule for this year, too. May be time for the second freezer. :slight_smile:

I haven’t reintro’d pork yet. Maybe next week.

#26

Oh you have butchers and local farmers! Great!

My meat is all supermarket stuff. Nothing else is available within 100 kilometers. It’s funny, I’m living in very rural area, in the woods, our “city” has 6500 inhabitants.

I have to drive 100 kms to a big city to finds butchers and farmers selling their products. All we have here is three supermarkets.Of course we have farms but they don’t sell locally. Locals would not but it because supermarket bulk meat is cheaper… There is a flaw in the system.

(Bean) #27

I am ~very~ lucky. I’m still driving 45 minutes to this particular butcher, but it’s in a tourist friendly Amish community within driving distance to Chicago. Lots of German, Polish, and Ukrainian customers. They think I’m weird because I’m normal “English” (Amish word for Americans) and order like an immigrant.

My beef farmer rode to grade school with me on the bus. Just kind of a fluke that I reconnected with her as an adult.

#28

I have the city and bigger towns for the big supermarket chains, the farms are in rural area, close to me. They just barely ever sell fresh meat. The beef is the same price as in the supermarket but it means I can’t afford it, oh well.

Easter is coming and there is lamb available. Well we won’t pay half of our monthly income for the smallest amount so that’s about it… Alvaro says there is some epidemic keeping Italians buying our lambs as usual so maybe there may be more available lambs soon… Or not but maybe.
It would be nice to eat mutton again, it was so very long ago I even saw any. I ate mutton only a few times in my life but I would like to do again…

–

Nice sunny day! I have experimented with marinated (just a few hours, lard and my fav spice mix) trimmed green ham :smiley: Super lean meat but there was the extra fat and anyway, it was tender and whatnot :smiley: It was pretty good but chewing is still challenging to me.
And I made the fluffy dessert with gelatin I sometimes eat. Meh but it was soft and gave me food. Maybe I will enjoy the other half tomorrow. Had some other eggs (as the dessert is mostly eggs. with some cream and gelatin) and more butter than usual. Yum.
I only had one proper meal, dinner and some bites before and after. (I was a bit hungry before and couldn’t resist the temptation of some cream cheese after…) Good.
(Still not full carnivore but I did well enough for a day when meat chewing isn’t something I want to do for long. But it was some lovely meat. I make more tomorrow!)

(Bean) #29

I hope your teeth feel better soon!

I don’t think this is as common in the rest of the world, but in the United States, at least in rural areas, we have the option of buying “freezer beef” (or lamb or pork) instead of fresh. It requires a large freezer, of course, and the cost is high up front. So when I drove 45 minutes today to pick up lamb, I had bought the whole lamb cut and frozen. In June, I’m scheduled for half a beef.

Since typically this arrangement is by how much it weighs before butchering, it is a good deal for someone like me who wants the bones, liver, tongue, heart, kidney and fat. Sometimes the butcher throws in those things that other buyers didn’t pick up with their meat, too. That brings my cost per pound down substantially. It also requires a little freezer management so everything is eaten kind of evenly.

I am very, very, lucky to have this option (and space for a freezer, and budget to buy meat up front). I’m not sure if I would have ever regained my health otherwise.

(Bean) #30

I think I bumped my ribs pretty hard when I slid out of the back of a high truck when I was helping my kids move last weekend. It’s pretty tender, so no weights for me today. Even my Garmin watch told me to take the day off from working out, lol. So I did.

When I went to pick up my lamb today, they had some A2 cream-top milk. Since I’m doing well with goat dairy, I’m going to try it.

(Bean) #31

Ouch. Lamb is kind of a luxury meat here, too, but nothing like that.

#32

Clothes fit is an excellent measure.

#33

Yesterday I had a buy up at the local country town growers market. Today I plan to make a stew to carry over a few nights of a predicted rainy weekend. Currently it is sunshine and blue skies.

IMG_8083

The base of the stew will be osso bucco, I like bone in my stews, diced lamb (they are like lice on the landscape here and cheaper meat price than beef), coeliac sausages which means all meat, and beef heart. Ideally it would be cooked on the wood fire stove in a cast iron covered pot, but we are still in warm weather.

I also bought some locally wild caught fish (the most expensive protein on the list). I might have to re-start fishing for myself. And a kilo of local farm raised, pastured, chicken wings.

Yesterday I was feeling good. 2MAD plan being stuck to with 4 eggs in the morning and red meat meal at sunset.So I went into our woodland with the chainsaw to cut up a fallen tree into some winter firewood. That effort, while I’m supposed to be resting, set off my heart problem. Back to square one on that health snakes and ladders game board. This healthy way of eating is dangerous! When combined with delusion, it makes you feel great to the point one forgets their physical capacities while in healing mode.

#34

It may be the same, we just have an insanely low basic income even for Hungarians… Most of it must go to food, no matter how cheap items we buy.
The lamb I mentioned costs less than the fancy steak beef but not by much.
When I last bought mutton, it was WAY cheaper and one need to buy half a lamb now! I can’t imagine there isn’t a better option somewhere.

And my teeth will be fine, it’s just the first day that may be tough. I still have those lil snubs and gap where the bridge will do so it’s not like I can chew at the right but it’s much better today. I will eat lots of pork today! It will be soft enough I hope :slight_smile:

@FrankoBear: Great photos :smiley: Those skies :smiley:

(Bean) #35

Twelve days into April.
Just a couple of weeks left in the semester, so I feel like I’m grading nonstop.

I’m approaching the day when I should challenge for citric acid, but I think I will push that back to the end of the month. I’ve been tinkering with sheep/ goat dairy and soon ghee, and I don’t want muddy things.

I don’t think cheese is really going to be a regular thing for me. I do fine with EU geographic designation sheep/ goat cheese so far, but that’s an expensive option. I haven’t tried EU cow’s milk cheese yet. I have some Gruyere, though, but I’m saving that for our family spring party next weekend.

All chevre seems to have citric acid, and anyone I know who milks goats, shows them, and there’s a rule with 4H that they can’t sell the milk. So no option to make my own. The A2 cow’s milk made me sinus-y and kind of meh feeling, but regular milk is pretty high carb for me, anyhow.

The commercial goat butter is good, but not widely available and very expensive. I like the goat kefir, but maybe a little too well. I could over do that easily.

I will challenge ghee. My goal through all of this is to expand my fat options, and that would go a long way to doing that. Much more widely available, and I don’t have to make it from scratch.

I tried to make a baguette made from my chicken dough yesterday. It was more of a loaf, lol. I think I need to tinker with that a bit more.

Cooking day today. Beef stock/ glace, tallow, chicken waffles, chicken stock, shredded chicken, and schmaltz. Off to get my beef bones in the oven.

(Bean) #36

I now have tallow. And beef isolate protein powder. I wonder if I could make pemmican? Hmmm. Travel food, anyone?

#37

The cheap smoked pork shoulder with an acceptable ingredients list is better than I have imagined :slight_smile: But we have a way more expensive (cooked, not dry) smoked ham for Easter too, I am looking forward to try that. It looks good, with a thick fat layer, that’s useful as Alvaro can choose how much fat to eat and I just eat the rest.

I plan to push lunch skipping this week but today I got hungry before noon so had some fried pork shoulder and the smoked one. And a slice of cheese, it was on sale and I usually like
Edam cheese but this is pretty tasteless. Oh well, it’s still protein.

We have summer weather now, I can’t even stand a short sleeved shirt outside while doing garden work. We are in the middle of plum and cherry blooming season, spring flowers (daffodils season nears the end but we still have many, tulips have just started) and everything so the garden is full with flowers. Very pretty :slight_smile:

(Bean) #38

So my “bumped rib” might actually be a cracked rib. It’s turning black and blue and has a small bump/ contusion of some sort. I have an appointment to see my GP at the end of the week, but there’s not anything for a cracked rib, especially since I can’t take NSAIDS.

I am definitely off of my training plan and very annoyed. Since it’s the end of the semester, I’m busy and I guess extra time in my schedule is welcome. I do wish I could sleep though!

Yesterday was the first sunny and nice day. Seemed like everyone on campus lost their minds, lol.

I tried making a small portion of “pemmican” from my homemade tallow and beef protein isolate. As a proof of concept kind of test, it worked. I hesitate to call it pemmican because it’s more bakery-like? If it is shelf and temperature stable like true pemmican, it would add a very handy and portable travel food to my options.

Out of curiosity I ran the recipe through Nutritionix, and would need about 8 ounces a day to meet my base macro and calorie needs. I would hesitate to do so for an extended time with something so refined as an isolate powder. However, it could take a lot of guess work out of eating on the road to have it in my bag since things like salami don’t generally work for me.

Grass fed ghee might be an okay addition. Or at least the brand I tried hasn’t caused a problem so far. Cautiously optimistic.

#39

Protein isolate powder has popped up in some study I am doing today on hunger signals.

The podcast episode is from 2018.

I was looking into semaglutide and its effects on cravings and hunger signals. I have had some unrequited cravings after my carnivore dinner (evening meals). I also have seen, in another story, a mainstream specialist cardiologist this week who was disappointing this visit. He recommended semaglutide as a heart treatment without explaining the mechanisms but there may have been a paper produced in late 2024.

Back to protein isolates. Many for body building are whey protein isolates. The Hungarian researcher, Gabor Erdosi, noted that there is a higher blood glucose and circulating insulin response to (industrially) processed/ hydrolized proteins. So a test with wearing a Constant Glucose Monitor (CGM) might be advisable when ingesting it. The response is notable but minor/slight in comparison to processed carbohydrates, and more than eating whole food protein as the baseline.

I’ll leave that for now. I’m staying on plan 2MAD, eggs at lunch and ruminant red meat at or before sunset. People have noticed a change in my body shape and clothes fitting looser.

(Bean) #40

Interesting. I have the isolate for pre/post workout recovery. I use 1/4 of a portion along with creatine and baking soda for electrolytes. I have seen less soreness and quicker work out recovery from that.

I wonder if being “encased” in tallow would make the isolate pemmican less reactive? I don’t have access to a CGM, but I have a gluc meter, so I could set it up so I ate some and then checked every 30 minutes or so? It will need to wait a few days since I’m tapering steroids to manage my latest flare.

Other updates. Saw my NP yesterday, and after poking around my ribs, found my crack. Since it seems to be doing what it’s supposed to, we decided not to bother with an x-ray. I haven’t had much sleep (laying down is the worst), so I bought a foam pillow wedge thingy. It helped a little last night.

I tried to reintro eggs earlier this week. Definitely an RA trigger. Won’t try that again. That one is not a “no food”… I think it’s a “never food”.

I’m getting grumpy without my workouts. I’m going to try a lighter run today. I don’t want to lose my conditioning. I guess I have another 2 weeks at least before I can put strength training back. :frowning: