An interesting observation regarding carnivore

(Brian) #1

I’ve been keto / very low carb for quite a few years varying a little in just how many carbs I take in on average. Came from a vegan / vegetarian background before going keto so it was kind of gradual in moving from being very plant heavy to being very meat heavy. I still don’t consider myself “carnivore” by definition but do sometimes have days when that is how I eat.

Had a higher carb meal at a friend’s house on Thursday afternoon. Not awful, but higher carb than I’d have liked. But something didn’t sit well with me. So Friday morning, I decided, “just coffee”. Afternoon came and I decided it was gonna be a burger. I do half-pound burgers, pretty much naked. (I did have a few homemade pickle slices, but no big sides of anything.) I ate two of them so one full pound of ground beef. I had made an extra, hadn’t decided whether I’d eat the extra one or not before hand but wanted it after eating the first so I did. And when I finished, I was full, not bloated and uncomfortable, but full, not wanting anything else.

That was just for context.

I’m a piano player and play in a band. Friday evening was a 3 hour gig. Something I do on gigs where I need to know I have the energy on stage, I’ll take along a cooler that I have on stage with me. I have 2 or 3 bottles of water and 2 bottles of Pepsi. The water is for keeping hydrated and I almost always drink all of that. The Pepsi is there if I feel like I’m running out of steam and I gotta have something to pick me up. If I don’t need it, I never open it.

At other gigs, I’ve usually drank both the water and the Pepsi. Interestingly, this past Friday for our gig, I only drank the water. And I was fine. Energy never wavered, all the way from setting up (I’m also pretty much the sound guy and the biggest of the speakers is about 140 pounds, yeah, it can be a workout. I played, then it all got taken back down again. I felt great. Even felt great the next morning, which is quite unusual as gigs like that are often quite exhausting.

Made me go “hmmm” for sure. I can’t explain it 100% but am suspecting that the breakfast of coffee only (bulletproof, basically just coffee with a little butter and cream whipped with the immersion blender) and an early afternoon lunch of a significant fat / protein meal must have really fed me well. Even by 9:00pm or so when we had taken down all of the equipment and packed it all in the van, I still wasn’t hungry nor did I have any desire to have that Pepsi. That would have been 7 hours or so after the burgers.

I’ve not paid a lot of attention to people when they remark about how good they feel on a carnivore diet but I think I may have had a tiny taste of it… and I kinda liked it. I think I need more of those days. :slight_smile:

(Bob) #2

A pound or more of beef can go a long way :wink:

This is one of my favorite aspects of the carnivore diet. Fatty meat and eggs are satiating. It’s easy to feel full for long periods of time with no desire to snack. I used to be a grazer, nibbling on things all day long. On the standard western diet this was very bad. Now I don’t feel the urge to eat out of sheer boredom anymore.

Keep it up, and enjoy more of those days :slight_smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #3

This sense of energy is coming in handy right now. It is a great effort to get around and not put weight on the broken ankle, even with the knee scooter. But this afternoon, I had plenty of energy to spare, so I decided to try getting the garbage and recycling that have accumulated into the outside bins. I was able to get my scooter and walker out onto the deck and between them got everything put into the proper bins. For an encore, I decided to go up the taller steps onto the deck and manage fairly well.

This is amazing progress for someone who’s been fully carnivore for only a month, month-and-a-half. I have never had any upper body strength–plenty in my legs, none in my arms. I guess I’m developing some, but the best thing is that I can now exert myself a hell of a lot more and not have to go rest for several hours to recover. Hallelujah!

(Alec) #4

Bob
You and me both… I was a world class snacker when I was a carb eater… the constant snack cravings would start about midday and would not stop until I went to bed. And when I ate carbs I would often satisfy those cravings… that’s why I was not far off 300lbs.

Carnivore… all gone. 2 meals a day, rock solid, zero snacking. Zero cravings. And now 180lbs.

And those bastards who write the nutritional guidelines tell us to eat loads of carbs and plants…. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr………… :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

(Geoffrey) #5

@Bellyman that is one reason why I love being carnivore so much. My energy and drive is so good. Even on days when I am just not up to par it’s easy to push through.

@Dismal_Bliss, exactly sir, I was amazed at how carnivore satisfied me throughout the day. I would have never thought that my diet would stop me from grazing at every opportunity but it has and I was a glutton who just couldn’t stop eating.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

Please don’t call yourself names. The hunger on a high-carb diet is an evolutionary mechanism to help us put on weight for the winter. A bear gaining weight to get through hibernation doesn’t want the berries he’s eating to fill him up; he needs to be able to pack on the pounds and keep eating. That’s why the insulin generated from all that sugar blocks the brain’s leptin receptors, so that the brain will still continue to believe we need to eat. So the weight we gain on a high-carb diet is to be expected, and is part of how our bodies are supposed to work. We are eating because we are storing energy, not using it, and the body is starved for energy.

That’s why keto works so well. By cutting out the carbs, we lower insulin so that it’s no longer blocking the brain from sensing leptin. The result is that we can sense when we have enough stored energy, and can stop eating. The addictive effects of carbohydrate in a carb addict can still interfere on keto, but I’m finding that they are minimal on carnivore. I’m so satisfied by my meat that I no longer want carbs, and the impulse to eat my nephew’s leftover spaghetti is easily resisted.

(Robin) #7

That was a work out! You’ve found your carni-groove!

(Geoffrey) #8

Thank you Paul, I had never heard it put this way. Understanding that, it gives me a better perspective of what I was doing.
I used the term because that is what those of us that do that are called.
Understanding the reasons behind it explains why or diet works so well. It also explains why come wintertime comes I used to get so ravenous.

(Brian) #9

I hadn’t realized you’d broken an ankle, Paul, sorry to hear that. I haven’t been around the forums a whole lot lately and I’m sure have missed lots of stuff. Sounds like you’re on the mend, though, and I am sure that your quality fat and protein intake will allow you to heal a whole lot faster and better than you would if eating a SAD full of carbs and sugar.

That’s how I got started with keto in the first place. Back in 2015, I broke a leg very badly (above the ankle, both bones, very nasty, they wouldn’t even show me the xrays despite my asking several times to see them). I have pictures of it after they put me back together and carry those plates and screws with me even now. I had a very hard time healing and it was very slow. But I was struggling with insulin resistance and wasn’t eating much quality protein at the time. I had been taught that I would be the most healthy if I ate a vegan diet. Nope. Teaching didn’t meet reality and I knew it. It was the beginning of a long journey. I don’t wanna break any more bones but I do think that if such happened I’d heal a lot quicker and better now.

Anyway, wishing you all the best in your recovery!

#10

I call it hunger-inducing when it’s about me but it does interfere with my inclination to eat when somewhat satiated too. Carnivore gives me perfect satiation, that’s pretty neat. I easily eat a lot more after getting merely satiated but when I am perfectly satiated (not full at all! I dislike that), I lose interest in food. I didn’t get that state eating lots of carbs though if I ate a really big meal, I didn’t want food for hours, sometimes for a day. Big meals are pretty effective to me.

It works well as long as one is fine with meat. If one can’t stomach any but is annoyingly hungry, that’s a problem but variety and practice may help. Surely not in the case of everyone, some just can’t eat a heavily meat based diet, at least not without problems, I imagine most people would eat meat in need instead of dying of starvation so the possibility is there but we want to enjoy eating, at least not feeling it forced.

Energy is another thing, I never got it but maybe I will one day. Until then I appreciate the chill (when I have enough satisfying food and proper appetite but that’s the normal case), the perfect satiation, the good enough satisfaction on average (some days it’s not so great but even I can handle that short term), the stop sign meat often gives me…
It is vastly different from my original, too carby keto, that’s sure. Adding meat definitely helped as it’s easy to eat and more satiating than eggs let alone my other items.

When I went keto, I ate just as much as before on low-carb (I did eat more on high-carb) but of course, it’s individual. My SO overeats on low-carb and not on high-carb if he focus. Fat doesn’t satiate him well, at least not immediately so his satiation feeling is off. Fat doesn’t satiate me well at all, it doesn’t matter how long I wait but carbs make me hungry so carnivore is still my best bet :smiley: It’s very easy to overeat though, it just takes as fatty food as I like. If we can call a single day overeating (I more than doubled my usual macros). I hope I couldn’t do it long term without effort.
But no wonder we still may have not very satiating items on carnivore. It’s normal, even certain meats aren’t substantial for many of us. But if we do some finetuning, our individual woe may get really neat, working better than anything before.

(Brian) #11

It’s interesting that you mention eggs.

Something I can’t explain well is that I’ve been noticing a difference between the eggs I get from our Amish neighbors and store-bought. I seldom have store-bought except when eating at someone else’s house. We eat a lot of eggs at our house, and I think little of it. Two to three dozen a week for me and my wife is pretty normal. I’ve just noticed I tend to have more “intestinal distress” when I have store-bought, something doesn’t agree as well. Don’t know why. But it’s something I’ve noticed.

I am kinda spoiled rotten. We get beef and pork from neighbors who raise them and a local butcher who processes the meat for us. We get eggs and raw milk (technically for the cats) from neighbors as well where we see the chickens out running and the cows grazing.

#12

We (my SO and I) used to eat 70 eggs per week, I ate about 50 myself for more than a decade.
It’s lower now as I finally learned to eat much meat without boredom and meat satiates me more and I need that.
I am quite choosy about my eggs (I can’t be that regarding meat due to financial reasons, I like my cheaper meat enough, thankfully), I don’t buy supermarket eggs either (the village greengrocery’s has better ones. we get some from an “egg lady” who keep hens and rabbits but there aren’t always enough eggs from there). It mostly affects the taste and I like the idea that the hens come from at least a slightly better place (potentially much better. there was a time when I saw the nice looking life of the hens but it’s over), my body is very sturdy.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

Dear God, no! You really don’t want to see what the fractures looked like. When I broke my arms, they didn’t show me my x-rays until I was out of the hospital and in rehab, and seeing all those plates and screws was bad enough. I learned that the surgeon had sawn my elbow off (yikes! :scream:) to do the repair, and then put it back on with a plate. The resident who showed me the x-rays and I had fun counting all the screws in the various repairs.

I’m glad you recovered from the broken leg, and that it got you started on a low-carb journey. The thing most people don’t know is that bone is not solid calcium, it is calcium in a protein matrix. So we need a lot of protein to heal bone. My sister got me started on carnivore to help heal the nerve damage from Lyme disease, and then, when I broke my ankle, she really encouraged me to ramp it up, because of the need for healing. We shall see how well it goes.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #14

The Amish eggs are probably a lot fresher. My uncle used to have an egg farm, and I was surprised to learn that the eggs sat in the basement for a week or two, before the Agway man picked them up, and who knows how long they were in transit to the market.

As a city kid, I learned to enjoy both supermarket eggs and farm-fresh eggs, but when I brought him to meet the family, my lover (now my ex) really disliked the taste of the fresh ones, whereas I remember when my cousins would come to visit when we were kids, and they didn’t like the taste of the eggs or the homogenised, pasteurised milk. (Couldn’t blame 'em; there really is nothing like the taste of milk straight from the cow).

#15

Freshness of eggs is something I don’t care about :slight_smile: When I had lots of eggs at home (200-250), I always ate about one month old eggs and they were perfect to me. It’s a tad dangerous in summer (I keep my eggs in my egg cupboard) though so I dropped the amount a bit. And now I barely have eggs for a week. They taste and work the same as far as I can tell (I know super fresh eggs can’t be peeled but I never eat super fresh eggs).

(Marianne) #16

Sounds like you are fat adapted.

(Brian) #17

Some people are way more sensitive to flavor nuances than others. While I don’t consider myself a “super taster”, some things do stand out to me. Fresh eggs are delicious to me, while store-bought tend to have a “wet feathers” kind of taste (hard to describe).

The lady we buy our beef from, widow, sweetest you could ever meet, lives about 2 miles up the road from us, is one of those people who tastes a steak and really TASTES it. She got one of her cows back from the butcher one time and had a steak from it and said she could taste that something was wrong. She pressed the butcher about it and they finally admitted that the cow had suffered a broken leg somewhere in the process before its being put down and thus there was a lot more adrenaline and those kinds of things running through it than was typical. She could taste that. I’m not that sensitive for beef but it is interesting when people share the things they are sensitive to.

Back to eggs… one thing I have discovered is that when I make hard boiled eggs or deviled eggs, I like them “just” done, which is ever so slightly underdone to many. But when they’re like that they are so tender. When people cook them longer, they’re easier to handle, not so delicate, but they start to get rubbery and I don’t care for the mouth feel. When they’re super delicate they’re almost “chewing optional”. :slight_smile: I’m just that way, though, I like things juicy and very tender, even steak, which is a tall order. If I need a knife, it’s tough to me. I guess we’re all different. :slight_smile:

(Geoffrey) #18

Around here it’s a violation of the health regulations for a processor to butcher an injured animal.

(Edith) #19

Only if they get caught.

#20

If it comes to boiled eggs, I am difficult :frowning: I love hard-boiled whites (that is rubbery? I LOVE that) and runny yolks. The two never happens at the same time to me… Oh well. I am fine with the ones with not runny but not dry yolks and some of them are even easy to peel. (I realized there are no way to ensure my eggs are easy to peel unless I am fine with dry ones. I tried out zillion tricks. But it’s okay if they are mostly easy to peel.)
If I want great boiled eggs, I keep the whites runny (easy to pour out and drink) or I just keep the yolk runny so I can forget about being able to peel it but I use a spoon to get the egg out, it’s not bad…
I don’t consider eggs overdone ever - or underdone except if it’s totally raw. I am not very choosy if it comes to edibility, what I prefer and really enjoy (the impossible state but soft-boiled eggs are good enough too) is another matter.

But hard-boiled egg is about my 4rd least beloved egg dish (still quite nice sometimes and very useful so I make it often). I almost never eat the first 3 (mayo, sunny side up, egg salad).
I know very very many egg dishes as it suits a variety loving egg maniac. Sponge cake is on the top (100% eggs and it causes flows but still sooo good).

And I never ate a guineafowl egg just heard great things about them. Sigh.