Being Carnivore for 60 days now, only meat and water. I have cut out IF (made me binge), I am eating breakfast, lunch and dinner and work out pretty hard. Eat about 3000 kcal a day, not tracking and measuring as I did being Keto, about 250 grams of protein and 230 grams of fat per day (ZC). Eating a lot more, but mye weight is still standing and my body composition is getting pretty good. Before I was measuring everything, doing IF and EF and thinking about food all the time. Now I just eat how much I want whenever I want. My conclusion is that not devoting so much time to fasting and being afarid of insulin response from protein etc. has made me relax more around food and not letting it control me as it did. This ease of mind is what my body needed to let go of fat and building a real lean and natural body as well as my mindset is much better. I would say that that is more important than to struggle with counting calories and ratios and being busy with the fasting. Just my opinion. I think weight loss and or body composition is more a cognitive function and giving your body what it needs (but no carbs what so ever). Any one agreeing?
Anyone also increased calories on ZC and been leaner
great. I came from very strict keto where I had reduced my calories to 1,500 a day and was hungry and angry and actually starting to gain a little weight. When I went carnivore I expected to put weight on, I almost doubled my intake caloric wise. And I did gain 8 lb the first month, But when I increased my meat to nearly 3 lbs, ( slightly leaner meat) I dropped 10 lbs effortlessly in my 9th month. So here I am at almost 15 months, pretty much the same weight as when I started over a year ago, but I’m a full size smaller in my clothes. I still have 30 lb I would like to lose, but I have not been that weight since I was 17, my entire adult life I’ve been 50 to 80 lb overweight so if I stay where I am at my age, my health is phenomenal and I’m pretty happy with it. The best part is I eat as much as I want when I’m hungry. I’ve never cheated on carnivore and I don’t see any reason to. I may reevaluate in a couple years but for now this works great for me. I’ve been very fortunate and that I’ve had the same doctor for 7 years who has seen me through standard to keto to carnivore, keto did help me lose 50 lb. And she does extensive blood work every 6 months and is thrilled with where I am, she says I’ve reversed four decades of metabolic damage. I don’t believe everybody needs to be carnivore or even keto, but for me it is a perfect way of eating.
It is a well-known phenomenon that, even on a low-carbohydrate diet, restricting calories causes a body to retain its fat reserves. Paradoxically, giving our body abundant calories is the key to losing weight.
People who grasp that the body cuts metabolic expenditure to match intake often have a hard time grasping that the body is equally capable of increasing expenditure to match intake, as well! Prof. Bikman makes much of mitochondrial uncoupling in adipose tissue, as part of that process. He also cites excreted ketone bodies as a form of increased energy expenditure, as well.
Regarding Bikman comment. Could you elaborate “increased energy expenditure” related to ketones? I may be a bit slow here to understand it. Thanks
Just as the human body is capable of reducing its energy expenditure to meet a lowered caloric intake—a response to famine—it is also capable of increasing its energy expenditure to accommodate an abundant caloric intake. It does this by ramping up the basl metabolic rate, by speeding up hair growth, by sending energy to the reproductive system, by adding muscle, increasing bone density, and so forth. The body can also excrete fatty acids and ketone bodies as another form of disposing of energy.
Prof. Bikman has even demonstrated a phenomenon called “mitochondrial uncoupling,” in which the mitochondria in the cells of the fat tissue actually waste energy by burning more fatty acid than necessary to keep their parent cell alive. It is a phenomenon by which white adipose tissue (which is primarily intended to dedicate itself to storing fat) begins to behave more like brown adipose tissue (which is primarily intended to produce heat—it is prevalent throughout the bodies of newborns and slowly disappears as the baby gets older).
Normally, the mitochondria in the cells of white adipose tissue are strongly coupled to the metabolic needs of the cells that contain them. As they become uncoupled, they can metabolize fat simply for the sake of wasting energy. Of course, all this happens only when the caloric intake is high enough to support that level of metabolism.
There was a very interesting overfeeding study done on the extent to which different individuals are capable of burning excess calories. The study used pairs of identical twins to quantify the variation between individuals. What they found was that there was great variation between pairs when exposed to excess calories, but much less variation within twin pairs. The range of additional bodyfat gained in this study was 4.3kg fat to 13.3kg. That’s a big difference!
Apparently some people are much better than others at burning off excess calories. Some store almost all of the additional calories as fat. Other overfeeding studies have found a similar phenomenon.
Since their diets were 50% carbohydrate, it’s no wonder they gained weight under the influence of all that insulin.