Carnivore/Zero Carb January 2017!

[RedMercury]

Thank you so much for sharing Rosemarie x

I can’t IF for long periods of time at this stage, however I do IF 18/6 most days.
I find if I go any longer than that, I don’t feel well the following day, plus I’m hungry anyway and feel as I need to eat.
I’m unsure why my BM have changed so much since going ZC. I was always the opposite while I was keto and paleo.
I too only really have about 10kg to loose at absolute most, so I’m not overly concerned if my loss is slow, as long I don’t gain I guess.
I do feel better on ZC. I have so many food allergies and sensitivities, ZC is just so easy and less stressful. I have loads of energy, I sleep better, I never feel bloated, or have an upset stomach which was how I felt every single day, I just didn’t feel well like I do now!
I’ll keep going for sure, I just don’t understand why I have diarrhea almost every day. I can’t remember when I had a normal BM in the past 22 days!

[Smitedogg]

Thanks to all that joined together in Zero Carb January!

It is something I never would have thought of on my own. Over the last year, I have been somewhat Keto with many non-Keto binging episodes (each of which I seemed to be able to justify). I needed the discipline of zero carb to see how far off the mark I had really been.

Other than losing 17 lbs., the biggest change this month has been how well I sleep. Before January, I would wake up at least once every night in a panic & it would often be an hour or more before I could fall asleep again. This past month has been wonderful. I shut my eyes, fall asleep in seconds, and suddenly my alarm is ringing!

• My weekly outbreak of rosacea (skin inflammation) has not appeared this month.
• My “stiffness” in my back muscles is 90% gone.
• My mood and brain clarity seem much improved.

I’m not sure if these improvements are from eating no carbs, avoiding certain foods, or getting excellent sleep. I would assume it’s a combination of all of these.

I realize that the benefits I’ve listed (and many more that I haven’t) are often the result of regular Keto. I think, for me, it took a zero carb month to see that I had been very sloppy in my “keto” eating over the last year.

I plan to continue zero carb at least through May. In late May, I have a doctor’s appointment for blood work & to discuss my fatty liver problem. I am hoping for some positive changes!
After that, I plan to Keep Calm and Keto On!

[Cat]

I was always resistant and a little scared of ZC. However I slid into it as I discovered my beloved veggies were the the culprit of indigestion and bloating. I have to say my body is very happy most days eating a fatty ribeye in the early afternoon and that’s it. ZC is so easy. Love not buying veggies and tossing most in the garbage a week later. I also lost 5 very pesky pounds that kept bouncing back up. I defiantly will continue ZC most days. Just love it!!

[Adam]

Zero Carb January was awesome, thanks to everyone that posted how they were going it was nice knowing others here were doing it too. I also did Zero Dairy in January, ate bacon, beef, lamb, pork, chicken, a bit of fish, salt. My almost obsessive focus was/is blood sugar though it was nice to see the ketones up & weight down. There was a 3 day/67 hour Zornfast in the month which kicked sugar down & ketones up too.

Average blood sugar data I have closest to ZC start date is from 20 Dec 16:

20 Dec 2016        

7 day = 7.8 n= 21
14 day = 6.8 n = 50
30 day = 7.1 n= 107

1 Feb 2017

7 day = 5.5 n= 19
14 day = 5.2 n = 41
30 day= 5.6 n= 83

ZC has given me great blood sugar control, reduced my appetite to a point where I typically eat one meal a day & feel good. Have shed 7.6kg (17lbs) in the month and am at my lowest weight in 20 years. This month got me through a weight plateau I’d been at for a few months which was a weight I’d hit a couple of times in recent years but hadn’t been able to break through despite lots of exercise & effort with food. How nice to break through with no exercise & such a simple eating plan.

I will certainly feel no fear eating ZC frequently from now on & will have many ZC meals/days. I am however going to begin slowly adding back a few basic greens & some dairy, always testing & observing how my body reacts.

[larry]

In late May, I have a doctor’s appointment for blood work & to discuss my fatty liver problem.

Ask for a retest before you meet. A number of people, including @richard have seen fatty liver resolve completely on keto.

[Smitedogg]

That is my hope! I’m sure they’ll re-test because my diagnosis was last summer and I’ve conveniently avoided the follow-up visits. My doctor will run all the labs again to see if it’s worse. I’m hoping that 5 months of zero carb (by then) will show an improvement - so he can ask me how I did it.
(I really hate getting nutritional advice from an obese doctor that is on multiple medications.)

[larry]

I’m hoping that 5 months of zero carb (by then) will show an improvement

I believe that Richard went a couple of years between imaging.

[Becky]

Thank you to all for the Zero Carb month, this has been one of my favorite topics to follow. I had less to no inflammation, more energy, lower morning BG, and generally an improved overall feel while eating ZC, and to boot I lost 17 pesky pounds . I missed some plant products primarily in seasoning. I’m happy to add another tool to my options for reducing weight, keto and IF are not quite enough for my body to release my oodles of stored energy; EF, ZC, and fat fasting are needed to give my body access to burn all the carbage I ate over the decades. I’ve graphed data I collected, this has helped me develop other strategies for future ZC and fat fast experiments along with the fab data @Fiorella has been sharing.

I ate ZC without other restrictions so no required IF or EF, although I did end up doing this naturally. I wanted to see if ZC would provide more hormone regulation for my sense of “hunger” and “full”. I felt my sense of “full” was easier to feel, my feel of “hunger” seemed to appear toward the end of the month. At least 50% of the days I ate breakfast before 10 am, which I rarely do on regular keto with IF, and dinner after 7 pm. This timing had more to do with my work schedule and my Hubby traveling for work. I’m glad I collected data, I ended the month with the “feel” that I ate huge amounts of food, which I did on some days; however, I averaged 1,774 kcal/day for the ZC period, and I average ~1,500 kcal on regular keto when I target 80-85 grams of protein. I ate a lot of protein this month, averaging 114 grams/day. I suspect this average would have been higher if I hadn’t mixed in the bacon/pork belly and egg/bacon/pork belly weeks.

My two weeks with the fastest weight loss were weeks with pork belly and bacon only and a week with eggs, pork belly, and bacon only. My morning BG and feel of hunger were lowest during these weeks. I’m going to restrict food sources next round like @Fiorella protein test 32 day ZC Variable Protein Test

[Fiorella]

Wow, Becky. Great analysis and insight. And wow, congratulations on the weight loss, too. It must feel great!

[amber]

Ugh. What a bummer to discover that!

I just saw this now, but coincidentally, I told my boyfriend last weekend that if I ever get put in the hospital, especially it it’s a traumatic brain injury, he must protect me against a glucose drip. I told him about how ketogenic diets are particularly neuroprotective, and that this would be exactly the time when it would be critical I am kept in ketosis

I’ve long been considering getting a medic alert bracelet for this purpose. Is that nerdy or what?

[amber]

I see meat and read fat!

[amber]

I have the flushing and redness type of rosacea. This developed in my thirties while I was eating a low carb diet. The symptoms went away when I went ZC, except for a couple of triggers: high histamine foods, decaf coffee, black tea, and coconut oil, which I tried adding at one point. Except for the high histamines, those are all plant derived…

[Smitedogg]

Interesting. Alcoholic drinks used to regularly trigger mine. There were other triggers as well, but I was never able to narrow them down. I’m still doing ZC and have very little inflammation. When it does occur, it’s mild & seems to come after eating spicey food.
Limiting my diet to meat, eggs, & cheese seems to work well for me in many areas.

[amber]

Are you saying you ate more calories, and 35-40% more protein and still felt better and lost stalled weight, without IF?

[amber]

Oh, yes, alcohol, too, of course!

[Genevieve]

Wow!! Thanks for sharing!!

[Becky]

[quote=“amber, post:256, topic:1902, full:true”]
Are you saying you ate more calories, and 35-40% more protein and still felt better and lost stalled weight, without IF?
[/quote] Yes!! I decided to follow your linked guidelines literally “…Do not limit your consumption of healthy, fatty, whole cuts of meat. Whenever you sit down to a meal, just eat until you are completely satisfied and you naturally lose interest in having any more…”. I wanted to separate ZC from fasting this 1st round. I was successful 20-years ago on LC, and I realize now I felt the best when I followed a high fat ZC diet for 18-months, although I didn’t know at the time that it worked so well because I was ZC and LCHF. I was a classic case of not listening to my body and giving into other people’s fear of fat… not anymore!

[Fiorella]

What a brilliant breakthrough, Becky!

[Adam]

This is Awesome @Becky, well done - nice graphs!

[nadine1073]

Not nerdy at all!!