Lots to catch up on.
I am still holding fast with the ZC life, am enjoying not being ruled by food or a perceived sense of hunger. I am enjoying the lack of ‘wind’ and reduced bowel output.
I still have not dropped any weight though. I haven’t weighed myself about two or more weeks now, but I know from how my clothes are fitting that nothing has changed. Kinda annoying, now that I am 6 weeks on ZC.
I was monitoring my BGLs for a few weeks and they are awesome, staying in the 4.0-4.8 range pre and 2hr post meals. Steady as can be.
Some days are 2MAD, others are 3MAD. I do the rare OMAD- but that is uncommon.
I know things take time, but this is so slow for me. Normally any intervention or adherence to keto sees a pretty prompt response in my body and I can drop 5-10kg pretty fast. Am I just being an impatient jerk? Is menopause getting me? Is shift work ruining my metabolism? Am I just asking too many impossible questions?!
Carnivore Chewy July - 31-day Challenge - 2023
I apologize Frank , I didn’t intend to ignore you. I’ve had some issues with my account and had to create a new one and I’m just now getting caught up.
Anyways, mesquite is a type of wood that is very common in Texas, especially in south Texas where I’m from. It’s my favorite to use for grilling and smoking meat. While it can be a little strong for some people, the flavor it gives to the meat is just perfect for me.
Jules, first congrats on not weighing. Why add more stress?
Of course menopause may be a factor, so could work stress. Or maybe it will just take a while. I lost the majority of my weight during my first year of keto. When I transitioned into ZC, the rest came off very VERY slowly. But 2 years later, I am where I need to be.
I didnt post yesterday for some reason … food yesterday was the following
The lamb was awesome and just enough for one meal split in to 2 sittings. Delish. I swear by Morrisons lamb shoulder. The burgers at the top in 2 pics just to show what was in the dish
very tasty and i finshed the other 2 burgers off in the evening. Did 6m yesterday. Walked to my daughters house as she had left a printout of an email on her stairs for me. Pet Astrid with some treats, Ren didn’t venture downstairs and i only stopped for a brief moment. Carried on walking a circular route down to the station where there is a cafe opposite. Was going to have a brew and read the email but it was a bit full of youngs mums and babies and i didn’t fancy the noise so just kept on walking into Long Eaton. Popped to Asda and bought 3 coleus plants. They are annuals and i bought and planted some last year and loved their vibant colour. Finally walked home and planted the coleus into pots and ate brunch. Later on walked to the retail park to buy a few little pretty smellies and a detangle brush for my neighbours daughter who surprised me with washing my car for me at the weekend. Popped them in a little gift bag and handed them over the wall to her.
Up early this morning, 50 stair runs, coffee in the garden with books, ran to CrossFit, great wod, ran home and ate a nice chicken n cheese omelette.
I have a couple of lamb chops from the organic farm shop to cook later for dinner.
@FrankoBear how are you doing? Hopefully just busy.
But check in, please. We don’t like it when you are off radar…
Howdy y’all!
Broke my fast a little earlier than normal today. Just felt hungry after my walk.
So I found a new sausage at the grocery store and as I do these days with everything I purchase, I read the label and lo and behold, no sugar, no fillers! Yeah! So often when I look at the labels of store bought meat products (sausage, bacon, etc) I find them to be made with fillers, preservatives and sugars. Yuck!
Now quite often I have my own home made sausage or bacon but I’m currently out so until I butcher another animal I’m stuck with buy from the store.
Anyways, so bought the sausage and the only bad…semi-bad ingredient, depending on how you handle it, was pepper. While I do limit my pepper intake I will take on a small amount if necessary.
I sliced up some of the sausage and fried it in some beef tallow and some fat cracklings (from the same tallow rendering) then tossed in some scrambled eggs.
I am now satiated. 
Brunch today after CF was a chicken n cheese omelette which i mentioned earlier and so posting the piccie now plus the lamb chops… eaten some cheese and then the mackeral.
Also pics of the 3 coleus plants… 2 in the little barrow cart and the other one solo in pot. Also the lovely pink rose and there are more buds to flowe. I should have pruned it when it was finished flowering last year but didn’t so i must remember to do it at the end of summer this year. It has such a wonderdul scent.
I can’t do carni now but the vast majority of my food is carni food and I need to write here sometimes to not to stray too much… (My non-carni stuff is almost exclusively fruits as it’s July. I don’t have much control over that but the amounts are usually very tiny.)
I still eat fried and roasted pork as my meat (with some sausage here and there)… No photos as it’s not interesting, my pork, sponge cakes, boiled eggs, dairy… Just the usual.
But tomorrow Alvaro will cook the chicken liver and heart stew! 1 kg liver, 1 kg heart. That will be nice. I will put some sour cream in it if the liver will be too strong flavored…
Now I have meatballs with smoked pork hock skin too as I had the skin and had some too lean pork…
I may eat a bit much dairy now, I bought yogurt and it’s so very nice and cool on a hot day! And we almost always have a hot day. I am very low if it’s about cheese, cream and milk now, it’s something.
I still drink coffee but it feels nice, I have headache sometimes (coffee still doesn’t help)… But I still stubbornly try to get determined about quitting…
I can’t do things even remotely hard now, summer is so much not my season, it affects my brain very negatively.
We had some rain lately. But then it got hot again. I walk a bit but I am not active at all otherwise. I hope to change that soon.
The fridge and freezer is super full after our shopping on Monday and whenever I get out something from the freezer, I can’t put the rest back easily… Sigh. But now it slowly gets better, I need a significant amount of meat every day and Alvaro helps a bit too.
I wonder how long the stew from 2 kg organ meats will last… I don’t normally eat much organs (400g liver is my record), heart is different, it tastes better to me but still, it should be enough for a few days… I will take notes about the amounts for both of us, I am curious.
Maybe you are at optimal weight? or,
Maybe you are replacing fat and fluids with denser mass lean muscle?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but from your profile pic and description, I gather that you aren’t overweight, you are highly active and hard working, plus your health stats (BGL) are in healthy range…I’d chill out and be content- job done and continuing to be done!
Great food there, and good pics!
Eggs cheese and meat are always a winner for any type of meals; but that lamb has me literally drooling! (Mental note- time for lamb cuts to be bought.)
Menopause can mess everything up for a while. You’ll be a very happy Jules though after it’s all done.
Not taken the wrong way at all, I shall take it as a compliment Ooooo maybe I am secretly getting buff and muscled- we can hope!
I am heavy for my very small stature, but yes, not conventionally ‘overweight’, I used to be in the obese classification, but keto sorted that out in 2018/9 for me and it actually went the opposite way where I could not do anything to stop the weight coming off and I ended up underweight in an unhealthy way, which is why I let carb creep happen to stop the weight falling off…then the opposite happened and I rebounded! I just haven’t found that comfortable spot yet. Maybe the fact I am not wasting away on ZC is a positive in that way then? I am not dramatically dropping weight, it just seems all very stable. I hadn’t realised that until I just started typing my reply to you. Ah therapeutic. Thank you all for listening to my self-indulgent moaning.
Loving the pork pics in particular in this thread. Always so appealing. What a magical animal a big is.
Good food.
This place always makes me hungry!
That’s right. Jeez! I’m trying to do 2MAD 
I have been away in the forest and on isolated mid-winter beaches. The Internet reaches for me but finds only smoke.
I had a rib eye steak this past week that was Lord of the Rib Eyes! The steak that tasted greater than … the steak to drool them all. I found a new local beef farm that raises Jersey cows eventually for beef.
Have you ever had a Hungarian goulash? The stewed beef in that dish falls apart at the touch of a fork tine. That was the tenderness of this wood fire grilled and cast iron baked Jersey rib eye. Forget Wagyu, old dairy cows are more delicious.
Shoulder is by far the best… used to swear by leg but changed my mind and i always try to but the blade end. Delish!
That ribeye sounds delish @FrankoBear and loving doggo on beach x
Bacon was from last night before going to bed.
Pootled about this morning watering indoor plants, reading and then getting ready to dance this afternoon at Lichfield. Rain has been a bit relentless today, hence why i remembered to water the plants, had to sit in the lounge to do my daily reading. They were feeling sorry for themselves but soon perked up with a good drink.
Brunch was a simple cheese omelette to tide me over till i got back from the dance. Had a lovely afternoon and it was quite busy today… no one able to work in the garden due to inclement weather lol it still felt warm in the dance hall even though lichfield felt cold at 14°c, colder than Nottingham and so wet. The roads were horrendous and we had to take a diversion off the route home which took us out of our way and added about half n hour on our journey. Anyway most importantly i danced all afternoon
With the extra time getting home i felt i was running on empty and while the chicken wings were in the oven i cooked up the 2 burgers as an apetiser! They were actually nicer than the wings which were far too salty and too sweet. I had also taken the small packet of cooked chicken out of the freezer so it needed to be eaten so i had to stuff it down as i wasn’t overly hungry
I put some beef in the slow cooker and just looked and seen i had switched on the slow cooker but not at the switch on the wall 
so it is 2139hrs and i have to stay up a further hour before being able to turn the cooker to low for the rest of the night. I don’t think you friends in USA have to ever worry about the switch on the wall as i believe you don’t have one!
Tried something a little different for myself today.
I’d been craving some deviled eggs but traditionally they have regular Mayo, which I won’t eat, and mustard, but all mine has sugar, along with sweet pickle relish, well that’s out due to vegetables and sugar.
So what I did was find some mayo that was made with avocado oil instead of seed oils and mustard with no sugar and a little Cajun seasoning and a dash of hot sauce, also sugar free.
And here you go,
They were tasty but I’ve got to admit that I missed the sweet relish.
Then for this evening my bride and I decided we just wanted to binge watch a series we’ve been following and just snack so I made a couple of dip to use with our pork cracklings.
The first dip I made was with cream cheese, some sockeyed salmon that I had smoked and a little Cajun seasoning. Came out pretty good.
Then the second dip I made was with cream cheese and Mexican chorizo. It was very tasty. Sorry but forgot to take picks.
Lucky. My mom never made it… I loved her cooking but meat wise it was poor. Mostly just chicken for Sunday lunch and that traumatized me to the point of becoming a vegetarian to avoid it (I had some other reasons too). It lasted until I moved out though I never bought or cooked meat for several more years…
I don’t remember having it at my Grandma either… I just remember chicken as meat. Nice, beautiful, very well fried, crispy skinned chicken but I still liked the sides better, at least toward the end…
Of course I had goulash a few times as it’s very basic in some occasions here in Hungary, sometimes it was the dish after an organized hiking tour provided by the organizers.
I prefer when we make it as it never will lack the right amount of meat… I like it meaty. We very very rarely make it as it’s a very carby soup even if we make it quite meaty. It has too many important carby ingredients.
I started a comment yesterday but didn’t send it. Nothing interesting in my diet, well the chicken liver ad heart stew is not super common but I don’t even have a photo and it’s not particularly photogenic… I will shot it if I will remember.
I still eat fried and roasted pork, eggs and dairy (and non-carni items, mostly fruits as it’s July. I kinda got bored of it but it doesn’t mean I can resist… but I eat mostly carnivore again and it gets better). I had yogurt, that’s very rare but I enjoyed it.
Timing wise… I had some crazy days where I started to eat very early but as I focus on my meat more and try not to taste everything when I am not hungry yet, it got TMAD and almost OMAD. I had one big meal yesterday at 6pm and some bites (like milky coffees, it’s amazing how many coffees I can drink using 30ml milk). I had stew, mostly, with egg dumplings/crumbles. But I made my jelly fluff dessert and ice cream variations for when I just don’t want more meat. Anyway, I wanted to try ice cream with yogurt. Not so good, not surprising 
Too watery. I prefer using whipped cream (and the base is always egg yolk, of course as it’s my ice cream). I really like cool and ice cold things now…
I don’t track because I can’t (Alvaro had stew before I could weigh the pot and he said NO WAY he used 90g fat in it… while I measured the fat, yes he did. but as he used 2kg lean organ meat, it’s not a big problem. I wouldn’t like to eat it alone but I have my eggs and I made sure I used more whites to lower the fattiness there) and because it’s such a chore, I will do it for very simple meals. After I ate the stew where I don’t have all the data.
Mom always used sour cream instead of mayo in everything that used mayo. Not deviled eggs, she used tomato puree there. I swap tomato puree to sour cream in deviled eggs and egg stew alike and it worked!
I have mustard without sugar - and with erythritol but that can’t be helped and it is still fine in my books. Though for deviled eggs I could use my own mustard. It’s not creamy, not good to put on top of things but if I mix it into a bunch of stuff? May work. I will try.
I wonder if it’s possible to make a good homemade mustard to my liking? But as time passes it gets less and less important so I just don’t bother to try, my self-confidence regarding it is minimal anyway.
If you are like me, it will pass I wasn’t into much sweetness in my savory or sour dishes to begin with but some on/off carnivore-ish years and I decided sweetness is overrated even in desserts… But maybe something missing and some extra flavor could do good, who knows?
I surely would miss something sour… Though maybe not, there are so many flavors, I just never made deviled eggs without mustard therefore vinegar…
I should make deviled eggs again. I never need extra fat there, the sour cream is only for creaminess too. Even so, my deviled eggs are significantly less fatty than eggs I prefer my hard-boiled eggs with way more egg whites than yolks/filling.