Episode #70 - The 30 day Steak Challenge
New podcast published!
A basic question about carnivore nutrient imbalance
Here’s the challenge day by day here in the forum.
LOTS OF STEAK PORN
Thank you! It was fun! We stayed connected the 5 of us and talked long after the taping was finished. These people are great!
Oh hell, what am I saying. These people are my friends.
may be my ineptitude but podcast says it should be 66 min…mine cuts out at 21 min…twice now (RIGHT AFTER MAIL)
Thanks for the podcast and results of the steak challenge! You guys discussed what might have caused the high trigs (weight loss or nutrient lack from missing things like organ meats).
@Brenda-- after the steak challenge what did you add back into your diet before you tested again? for example did you add in more organ meats or veggies or …?
TIA!
@Richard thanks for talking about my issues on the podcast this week! Based on all my frustrations, I decided to get a DexaScan and RMR test this week. I’m actually listening to the podcast now on my way back from the RMR test.
Incidentally, I found out my BF% is higher than expected. I’m not nearly as lean as I thought. It turns out that my BF is actually 31.5%!! I was pretty upset to hear this, considering how much I work out, how long I’ve been ketoing, etc. BUT the good news is that if I lose just 15 lbs, it’s puts me at 23%. (I’m only 5’ 2") It’s embarrassing for me - to think I was 5% lower than I actually am, but I’m putting my ego aside as I try to solve this puzzle.
I also got my RMR done and she said I’m about 10% below normal (likely from all the dieting I’ve done), so not terrible but not great. It says my RMR is 1222 before activity, so 1350 cals with normal daily activity.
I also plan to get my insulin tested soon and will report back.
My gut feeling is that I just need to reduce my caloric intake, but I think there’s something wacky going on with my hormones. I currently do IF daily, and am integrating a 24-36 hour fast on a weekly basis plus a longer fast once a month in the hopes that it will help heal whatever is going on inside me.
I have a sneaking suspicion that my digestion issues may be a big part of the problem (I currently take TONS of magnesium, eat lots of salt, drink lots of water, and I even take stool softeners and Aloe Lax and I still don’t “go” more than 2-3x/week), so I plan to see an endocrinologist or an integrative doctor about it. (I’m looking for a doctor that knows about keto.)
Thank you so much - for the podcast this week and for the podcast in general and for this forum. I’m 100% positive I would have given up on keto without the support and answers I find here. You have no idea how much you and @carl have helped.
PS If anyone knows a doctor in Vegas who is informed about keto, please let me know!!
Thanks! The only guy on it is a wound care specialist. 
(ironically, I could have used him about 6 weeks ago!)
Great Podcast, it’s always nice to hear from the “Girls”!
About the Erythritol study, I’m fairly convinced (and you even mentioned, Richard) that the Erythritol in that study was ALL endogenous. It seems to be a byproduct of glucose metabolism, and we know that exogenous erythritol is excreted and generally NOT metabolized, so it seems to me that the endogenous Erythritol found in the overweight subjects was primarily a marker for glucose consumption, rather than an underlying cause of obesity. Erythritol itself doesn’t appear to be obesegenic and I don’t see yet that exogenous Erythritol needs to be avoided (which seems to me to be something you were suggesting).
Maybe people are using more Swerve these days but most people seeking out artificial sweeteners are still eating highly processed foods with Aspartame, Ace K, and/or Sucralose. I don’t think Stevia and Swerve have penetrated too far into the non-LCHF/Keto crowd yet. So I don’t think E is that common of a sweetener that young people who would have been study participants are necessarily using much of.
My 2 cents worth, but not scientifically validated. 
We’re not scientists, this wasn’t a controlled trial.
It was for fun.
Keep Calm and Keto On.
Yeah that’s not right. I’d say your device got interrupted as it was halfway through downloading it. I’d delete your copy and re-download it.
I had the other problem. I was having hard time lowering my body fat from what I thought was 36% body fat. I was using several online calculators, as well as body impedance scale to come up with my lean body mass around 69 kgs. When I had a DEXA scan it turned out that my lean mass was more like 80.5kgs, and my body fat percentage was more like 25%.
I’m a nerd. More data = more better 
I need to get an updated metabolic cart done too.
10% is not bad at all. I know of people who have RMRs around 800 from a lifetime of dieting.
I hope this gives you a better look into what is happening. The fasts will lower acute insulin and that should help lower your chronic insulin.
If I had your diagnosis - lower lean mass than expected, more body fat, slightly lower metabolic rate … I would be tempted to reduce caloric (cardio) exercise and increase weight bearing (lifting) and eat at a modest caloric surplus for a few weeks to attempt to establish a higher metabolic rate.
I just know of one who likely MADE me diabetic in the first place by telling me to try replacing a meal a day with slimfast. He’s still got a practice in Henderson.
My Endocrinologist was a professor at UNLV and a world famous expert in diabetes, but he passed away after we left Vegas in 2006. I remember at my first consult he wanted to to get me into a bariatric program quickly … I went Atkins instead and his comment was “Dunno what you are doing, but keep doing it”. He was entirely uninterested in what I was actually doing - he had his next patient to see. That next patient needed his help and I apparently no longer needed his help.
I’m going to get my insulin tests and then see where to go. In terms of workouts, I do kettlebells, TRX, and Pilates. Strength training and HiiT for sure, but not heavy weight lifting. Would you recommend switching to more traditional weight lifting?
I think she responded how many of us would, when getting a routine quarterly blood test and seeing Triglycerides jump from 110 to 575. Especially considering the most evident marker of her disordered diabetic state was triglycerides up over 1000 (as was mine), and her triglycerides have been normal for 3 years (as have mine).
Concern at her immediate health. Worry that she had borked her metabolism doing some trivial fun food challenge. But mostly concern for friends who also did the same challenge.
So she paid for another test from the same lab to see if the result was just a single sample error, and paid for a test from a separate lab to rule out a lab error, and got a test a few days later, and another a week later to rule out that this was just a transitory spike. It appears from all evidence this was a transitory elevation, and I’m not sure what caused it or even if it was related to the “steak challenge”.
Dave has a few theories why that food challenge could have caused a transitory elevation in triglycerides. You’ll probably have to listen to more of the podcast to get to those.
Not sure why you got a bee in your bonnet about Brenda’s lab test and her response to it, but “hypocrite” is laying it on a bit thick.
Wow. It was an off-the-cuff bit of fun experiment. It was n=2. It was not scientific. They noted and tracked results and discussed possible reasons why certain things happened. I am not sure why you would attack that. It was never claimed to be a ground breaking way to prove anything. I would say more of a healthy curiosity and two stubborn women who were prepared to have a go at something to see what happened.
I did a similar but way less kind of experiment when I added the fat that people put in a BPC every day for a week just to see what happened. Some of us like to do things like that, to test theories that are out there, to challenge ourselves and see how our bodies react. I am not sure why you would attack that. It feels very much like you have an agenda here. But hey, let’s all KCKO.
Yet another great podcast from the dudes and guests!
Have you considered that the challenge didn’t work because you were getting too much methionine from the muscle meat and not enough glycine as in the article below from the Weston A. Price foundation website?
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/beyond-good-and-evil/
I won’t quote the whole article, but it goes on to explain how glycine is used as part of the buffering system with methionine and since muscle meat is reportedly low in glycine, I could see how a diet that relied on it would start to be overwhelmed and unable to properly process all the methionine.
Remember @Fiorella’s attempts and how she determined that she needed to vary her protein sources? I think this is because she’s naturally switching between sources that eventually balance out the amino acids so methionine isn’t dominant.
Methionine is an amino acid that we obtain from most dietary proteins, but is especially abundant in animal proteins (Table 1). As shown in Figure 2,1-3 folate and vitamin B12, and to a lesser extent vitamin B6, niacin, and riboflavin, assist methionine in carrying out one of its major cellular functions: the addition of a single carbon atom together with a small assortment of hydrogen atoms to a wide variety of molecules, a process known as “methylation.” Methylation is important for the synthesis of many cellular components and for the regulation of gene expression. As a result, it is critical for the maintenance and repair of existing tissue, the building up of new tissue, and cellular communication. Methylation is especially important for the passing along of epigenetic information from parent cells to their daughter cells as they multiply. Liver is rich in all of the B vitamins important to this process. Muscle meats provide smaller amounts of most of them, but are relatively poor in folate. Folate is found primarily in liver and legumes, with modest amounts in egg yolks and some seeds, seafood, and leafy greens (Table 2). When any of these vitamins is missing, methionine fails to contribute properly to methylation and instead generates homocysteine, a potentially toxic byproduct that may contribute to cardiovascular disease.4
Dan Quibell did the 30-day bacon experiment and if you follow the link below to the amino acids found in bacon 
, you’ll see that glycine is triple that of methionine, so I think the bacon is more sustainable which is one reason he and many others have succeeded although some add eggs/yolks which are also high in glycine and choline.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/pork-products/7676/2
Because chicken wings contain skin, they also have plenty of glycine.
Perhaps a “30-day bacon challenge” or a “30-day chicken wing challenge”?
Edit: I found the link below from Dr. Axe detailing the benefits of glycine.
I suspect bacon with rind may have a lot more than bacon without rind. Glycine is apparently more common in the collagen found in connective tissue, and less common in the protein found in muscle fibres.
