Brenda's personal 30 day steak challenge journal

[Brenda]

Day 14 continued.
10 oz of beef shank meat and marrow, braised in its own juices until tender.
No photo. It’s ugly anyways. Lol

[Brenda]

Day 15.
4.5 ounces Wagyu, eaten raw with a new specialty salt.

[Brenda]

Day 15. Fini.
Cut some lean off of a NY strip. It was the perfect amount of food to end the day, along with a small grassfed ribeye.

[Brenda]

Day 16.
I am finally settling in. No desire for other foods or should I say craving or boredom wanting change.
This challenge is good for me in so many ways. It forces me to view food as fuel, not a source of entertainment as our society tends to condition us to do.
I am much more in touch with hunger signals, actual hunger, and most of the day I am not hungry at all. That is very freeing.
I am eating a much higher fat to meat ratio now, and that has been a very good decision. I am choosing fattier cuts of meat, and am staying sated much longer and wanting MUCH less food.

Important lesson here. I may love lean meat, but too much of it is NOT ideal! Luckily I also love fatty meats, and am enjoying my luxuriously fatty ribeyes each day that Hackenmueller’s meats provided. I’ve been cutting away the leaner parts of the sirloin and tucking it into the freezer. When I’m off “steak only”, I’ll deep fry it or cover it in bearnaise sauce.

When I started I was eating on average 30 to 35 ounces of steak, and at times eating in the morning. That is over 2 pounds of steak a day. Much more protein than I need to maintain and repair my lean body mass. It seemed like such a waste, and it really was. Upwards of 200 grams of protein a day? Ludicrous. Besides that, the last thing you want your body to do is burn protein for fuel. Trust me on this. The higher fat I am eating now has kept me sated and satisfied and NOT thinking of my next meal. And although I remained in ketosis (I have a blood and breath ketone meter), my numbers were lower than I wanted.
Now, I am achieving the ketone range I prefer.
Optimal range.

Protein now is closer to 125 grams a day.
It may be why I ate so much more protein the first week or so. Eating too much lean meat led to continuing to eat too much lean meat!

Fat is magic on the ketogenic diet, and it’s best to heed it’s call.
Overeating of protein stops, fat to satiety heeded, ketones go up. #winning.

[Brenda]

[Brenda]

Day 16.
Two 4 ounce beef shank steaks, slow cooked, and an 11.5 ounce very fatty sirloin end piece.
19.5 ounces total steak meat today.

[Brenda]

Day 17.

I had an especially exciting day yesterday. My first DEXA scan. The results were lovely. Apparently I am very dense. Lol. As I suspected. My LBM was fabulous. I was told I have 40 pounds more muscle than most women, my arms and legs being double the muscle of average. I always knew I was very strong. I still haven’t seen a woman lift as much as me at the gym, or most guys. Lol. It was nice to be validated. My goal weight is MUCH higher now, and that is a wonderful relief.
Get a DEXA scan if you at all possibly can. Knowing your body composition helps TREMENDOUSLY. Plus, now I have a baseline, and can work towards even more improvement!!!
Today:
Woke up hungry. This isn’t normal for me. Maybe it was from my exciting day yesterday! After a few hours it did not go away, I ate an end piece off of a sirloin steak that was 3/4 fat cap this morning. It was 4.5 ounces. Going to be at work out of town from 8 am to 5 or 6 pm today. Maybe later. Brought a 10.5 ounce piece of nicely marbled chuck steak with me.
No photos of the days food.
Maybe I’ll grill something pretty later. Lol

[Brenda]

Day 17. Continued.
15.2 oz Tbone. Minus bone, 13.5. Still hungry! Also had 4.4 ounces of sirloin that was 3/4 fat. A lot of fat today. Probably 20 ounces of meat and another half pound of just thick steak fat today.

[Brenda]

Day 18.
My first day was February 28.
Waited until 630 pm to eat because I was out. I was fine today. No hunger until my normal IF window approached at 4. I grilled one of those beautiful Tbones again, along with a piece of sirloin that was mostly fatcap since I seem to be needing a bit more fat. It was the perfect amount of food.

[Brenda]

I’ve been lowering my protein to more moderate levels, and upping my fat. I am achieving more fat and less meat (protein) by buying fattier cuts of meat and sometimes literally cutting away some of the leaner parts.
The result? Higher blood and breath ketones. The higher protein did not affect my blood glucose, but it DID affect my blood ketones!!!

For me? This proves for a proper ketogenic diet, protein MUST be moderate! I am eating closer to .8 or 1 gram per pound of LBM now, instead of how I ate protein the first week or two of this challenge, and that was 1.5 to 2 grams some days per pound LBM.
I feel better now too. More energy. Better mood.
Less hungry at mealtimes. Better satiety.

No wonder.

[Brenda]

I just had a DEXA scan this week and have an accurate LBM (Lean Body Mass) calculation now.
My LBM allows me a generous amount of protein daily.
Phinney and Volek (authors of the book “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living”) recommend between .6 and 1 gram protein a day per pound of LBM (Lean Body Mass).
I can still eat over 100 grams a day and stay under 1 gram per pound of LBM!
These are the macros for a ribeye that weighs approximately 10 to 11 ounces.

Look at that.

Only 69 grams protein. Lol

Keep in mind these fat macros in no way resemble my current steaks. Lol. And my steaks would have less protein per ounce as a result.

[Brenda]

So…

IN CONCLUSION

1.5 pounds of very fatty beef steaks are right up my alley for maintaining LBM at Phinney and Volek’s recommended .6 to 1 gram per pound of my LBM.

AHHHHH. I love the numbers. The science. The analogy.

Never gets boring.

I’m going with .8 per pound of LBM. I’ll be concentrating on increasing my lifts, then I’ll repeat a DEXA.

Goal?
Increasing LBM and decreasing bodyfat, of course!

[Brenda]

Update:
My weight started dropping again.
I expected this.
Nice to see it happen.
This is the lowest ever on the challenge so far.
6.5 pounds GONE
…and I can tell it’s not coming back. Also, lowest my BG has ever been unless doing an extended day fast. My norm is 80’s or 90’s in the morning.
This is an exciting development. Ketones are still in optimal nutritional ketosis range.

[Brenda]

Day 19.
Saturday March 18th.
Tbone and small chuck steak. 23.6 oz total minus bone. Fried in my 110 year old cast iron pan, not grilled today.

Look at that fatcap!!

[Brenda]

Day 20, Sunday March 19th.

That fatcap added 6 EXTRA tablespoons beef fat!
I measured this steak today, carefully, subtracting the 2 ounce bone and adding in the extra 3 ounces of beef fat (the unusually thick fatcap)

It contained 84 grams of protein and a whopping 132 grams of fat!

So funny.
Protein macro to maintain Lean Body Mass at .8 grams per pound? NOT MET YET

Day 20, March 19th continued. Ate a small piece of pan fried sirloin a few hours after the Tbone tonight. NOW I’ve met my protein. Not that I was concerned, I just did it cuz I could. Lol. The lean meat weighed 3.5 ounces and there was an ounce of fat attached as well. No photo. It was boring.

Ketones are still rocking today

[Brenda]

Day 21. Monday March 20th.
Seven pound total loss in 21 days. Body composition changing. Moved my belt to the
seventh and last notch today. When I bought the belt two years ago it was on the first notch…

Falling into a routine with this steak challenge, not so difficult anymore. I may be continuing the challenge through March 31, so that would be 32 days total for me.
11 days to go. I can see the finish line. Tonight? Tbone and a piece of sirloin with the fatcap, rare as usual.

This is the “Belt with 7 notches”

[Brenda]

“ZC” or Zero Carb means no plant foods. I did it for seven months in 2015 and lost 50 pounds in 5 months. It was easy to do a ZC then because I was eating such a wide variety of animal products. Dairy, eggs, seafood etc.
This month has been much too restrictive, but I will prevail!

[Brenda]

After 30 days of strictly steak and coffee (remember, no spices even), my body will be primed and pure. Lol.
I’m going to use this opportunity to test for food sensitivities. That means I’ll be adding foods back one at a time.
Each food gets 3 days of it’s test run. We’ll see how patient I am.

I want to test nuts and nut flours, dairy, nightshades, cruciferous vegetables and artificial sweeteners…
One.
At.
A.
Time.

[Brenda]

Still. Rocking. It.
Why? How? It’s my proper ketogenic diet.
Low Carbohydrate (in this case, zero)
Moderate protein.
MODERATE YOU KNOB!!
.8 to pounds LBM
and high fat YES I SAID HIGH. NONE OF THAT EAT THE FAT OFF YOUR BODY SHIT!
Fat is NOT the lever, it is the magical ingredient to making ketosis work. MY BODY LOVES ME

[Brenda]

As of today, 7.5 pounds lost since February 28th.
I didn’t do this steak challenge to lose weight, but I’ll take it!