I didn’t see a chat, so I’ll start one. These carnivore threads seem to be useful accountability conversation so let’s continue.
Many of us went into 2025 with progress over perfection. How’s that going? Do you need to fine-tune anything, or do you continue to move forward?
I’m on track. I’ve got some unique egg and dairy free carnivore recipes I’m working on, and I’d like to get two of those online before the end of March so they are available for others.
Otherwise, I’m slowly dropping a little weight and putting on muscle. I’m down two pants sizes since last November, but only about 6 pounds. I’m down 12 from my highest point last August though (after a very stressful July and August.)
Switching out of the stressful job seems to be key. I’m also at my usual stall point, so I’ll be curious to see if I can break through this time with my new routine, taper off of antihistamines, and a consistently shorter eating window during the week. Really OMAD, but usually over 2-3 hours.
I have always been active and used to run 10Ks. I’ve been carnivore long enough that I wanted to run again (my drug of choice). I’ve been careful to do strength training and intervals rather than just running like a crazy person and injuring myself. It’s working, and I’m set to run a 10K with one of my adult kids and a friend of hers at the end of June. I may need to tinker with my protein. I’ve been very high fat, but was suddenly famished yesterday, so I think I need to up the protein for muscle building.
Work is good- but I’m building three classes and taking on two additional academic projects this term, keeping my screen-time focused elsewhere.
I’m off again now, focusing on lunch skipping (I had 3 OMAD days in row, wow. I broke it today, totally mental reasons, not hunger) and eating leftovers (like Alvaro’s not carnivore but pretty low-carb and meat heavy chicken breast curry… nope, I just don’t like it, only eat it because my only pork is some subpar pork shoulder. that’s it, I won’t buy it for a while if I can do it, no matter the sale. it’s annoying as the last one was so nice 
but it’s the second time I have problems with the taste of the fat)… I plan to come back to carni soon but OMAD (actually, not eating until dinner but it usually means OMAD) is my main goal. When carni and OMAD meets and stays together, I expect results then.
Coffee “quitting” goes pretty well. I have coffee-rich days but multiple coffee free ones per week as well, you can’t expect any better from me any soon :). The new coffee is cheap and tasty, I enjoy it when I have it.
I welcome and appreciate the thread (thanks @beannoise!), it surely will help me in the near future.
I’m taking a year off from work. That way I can work at regaining some health. That has been a difficult task over the post-COVID years. The low carb carnivore and keto-carnivore ways of eating have been keeping me healthy enough to injure myself with working too hard. I think if I hadn’t looked after my nutrition in these years, I probably would have died.
I got quite unwell during January. So unwell that it was at the level where it’s best not to burden anyone close with the telling of it.
This year I was laying in the Emergency Department looking at the heart monitor. My blood pressure was low 107/78 and my heart rate was about 150bpm. My heart rate was actually switching between 50 and 150. My hands and feet were swelling and my lungs were filling with fluid. So I decided it was time to get this sorted out. I’m not yet 60 years old. Mrs. Bear was upset. The ER doctor looked very stern.
I lost about 7L of fluid, about 7kg in a week on the medications. But the doctor is insisting on beta-blockers. I halved the dose, otherwise I couldn’t get out of bed. Today I feel fine. My feet are normal size. I was out in the sunshine cleaning and refilling the birdbaths. I can breathe. I have lost 4 inches from my waist circumference and can easily get up put of bed without a struggle.
It takes a lot of paperwork and admin to get a year off work. Mrs. Bear wanted me to quit and we would sell the farm. But it seems quite a few levels of management don’t want a loyal employee (who almost worked himself to death) to give up the job. It turns out I have income protection insurance and they want a pile of paperwork as well. It’s a full-time job being unwell.
Anyhow, my eating is very strict. I am getting outside, and also writing and creating art. So, despite the broken heart, life is good. Other things in the world aren’t that important.
Scotch fillet steak tonight, cooked in butter. My aim for this month is to reduce the stubborn visceral fat inside me that won’t shift while I am under chronic work stress.
Here is a postcard from the homestead. My Labrador likes eating carrots and apple (I don’t). But when she chews the carrots the cat runs up and rubs the bowl like it’s catnip. The red flowers are blossoms on a gum tree that signal our second summer season if we work by the indigenous people’s calendar. The large black cockatoos are rare and going extinct due to human stupidity and avarice. They are magnificent and intelligent birds running out of time, as was I.
One day at a time. Sounds like you have a good path forward.
The black cockatoo is stunningly beautiful.
I am so glad! The forums were down for a few weeks and I was concerned when you didn’t show up again. I know it’s odd to feel such camaraderie with someone you’ve never met, but I’ve always felt like your off-work lifestyle was so glorious, and your work life so deadly. It reminded me so much of my worst years, after I visited Australia but before I quit my legal job in Manhattan. Congratulations, and the best of health to you. 
It’s been hard, I have cheated a couple weekends in a row now. I’m discouraged but I’m going to keep trying. Family outings and alcohol appear the be the culprits. Practing self discipline is good though.
That was my plan but of course I ate off during the week too… IDK what is with me this winter : ( The previous ones were better. I still made big progress in other areas, I am very elated I keep my dairy and egg consumption low nowadays and eat more meat. Not always though, sometimes I am just not in the mood so yes, I go off then. Unless I can pull off a fat fast day, that helps.
OMAD helps too, not like I didn’t fail epically at it today… I keep trying!
You are correct, of course, wise cat friend. The camaraderie is good and important. It’s also fun for a storymaker like me. @beannoise Bean read the room well. Even though it’s a flat spell, people need to hear and reconcile the ups and downs of others as they find their way to health improvements.
It’s very much not odd to feel camaraderie IMO (but I get it, there is various type of distances and zero irl contact)… Humans are social and we can even cry over imaginary people sometimes but hearing about real persons? Especially if there are similarities so we can relate? Being in different continents have too little power to stop us feeling something. And I for one totally can miss others when they disappear. Sometimes I think about Fangs and the lil doggy… And fondly think about several persons wondering what they are doing now.
I never liked the almost sterile, strictly ontopic places when it was about hanging out. I mean, a specific topic about something only, that has its place in my world too (even if people still tend to go offtopic sometimes and it’s fine for me) but when the topic isn’t specific, of course people are people and it feels much better if some feelings and freedom is there… I don’t even like stories where there is only action and whatnot and no soul and I am pretty sure that pros consider it a vital part in most cases (there are always exceptions, there are some big fantasy works out there depending on huge worldbuilding and as I saw, little else, not my cup of tea but it can be interesting). There is a guy on YT giving writing advice and I love that despite I am sure I never will write anything. I still can be interested, I do read and can’t help but criticize it… And it’s interesting to see how many things a writer should focus on (a ton, I always knew it, IDK how they are doing it… it’s clearer to me when it’s a painting and it’s one look to see if something is very, very wrong) and how to do it.
I don’t want to take up too many peoples’ times and all, but this story has me more curious about your background or overall story. Have you ever posted more details about how you monitor yourself and the things you’re experimenting with? Something you could point to?
This is a pretty hair-raising story. My problems and questions seem rather mild and unimportant in comparison. I’d like to learn more about your background.
Hi Bob, you found my diary thread where I’ve been tracking events for years. I really should print it out.
Bacon and eggs for breakfast at midday. Coffee and some MCT oil. medium Chain Triglycerides for heart muscle fuel.
It got a bit busy today, so not able to get to this reply until now.
I haven’t done MCT oil in quite some time - it gave me stomach pain, which was an early warning sign my gall bladder was going to bail out on me. It bailed out, screaming, in '16. Aside from that, I tend to do the same as you in TMAD, with a mix of OMAD or 40 hour fasts. In the last couple of months, first meal tended to be leftovers from the night before more often than bacon and eggs. I’ve been full keto since the spring of 2015, so coming up on 10 years.
My adventures with afib started the day after my birthday in 2013, so 12 years ago this month. I felt awful for a few weeks and had an overnight Holter monitor that said I had a bunch of bad rhythms: afib, pvc, pac, and stuff I don’t remember. Since then, I’ve never had an exact repeat of that, and only a few times felt like my pulse was weird in some way. That has happened more times in the last year, but I never felt like I needed to see the doc. I just have a faster pulse than usual, and it’s irregular. No pain, no real shortness of breath.
With one exception of a few years back from around 2012 to 2018, I’ve been running or cycling (or both) since about '77. I’ve had those episodes of what I think are bad rhythms while riding and one time, I think the summer of '23, I gave up on a ride with a few miles to go and called my wife to come get me.
I’d like to be able to know what’s going on - what those sensations really are. I don’t know of any way other than going back to the cardiologist and getting in line for a Holter monitor.
What are you using to measure HR? I´m asking because they all give different numbers if you have Afib, some register the in-between beats more accurately than others.
My Polar chest belt “sports tracker” may read 200 bpm while Omron arm BP meter reads 140 bpm , for example.
I use an Apple Watch. But before that watch, and I still do it, I listen to my heart with a high quality stethoscope, and count my heart rate.
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Breakfast at noon today was a 4 egg omelette with bacon, butter, and salt. 6:15pm dinner = 300g steak and two fried eggs, butter and salt.
It’s been a mixed bag here too!
Carnivore has got my RA back to symptom free, no meds. Win! When my breastfed baby weaned, my LMHR cholesterol lowered a lot. Win! Have been lifting weights and building muscle for a year now. Win!
New peripheral neuropathy put me on Gabapentin and neurological testing, not such a win. I also put on fat and seriously lowered my metabolism with too much intermittent fasting, not such a win either.
I quit IF and am cautiously reverse dieting out of that hole. It’s partly muscle, but going from 115 to 135 lb in a year messes with the head. Carnivore isn’t supposed to do that!
Staying on plan. No blips on Valentine’s Day. Mrs. Bear laughed that I remembered.
2MAD: eggs and bacon at lunchtime. Steak and eggs last night cooked in butter. Lamb chops the night before. Some hot summer days here and a bushfire in our local town.
It’s the time of year when I go out photographing the last of the rare black cockatoos that are going extinct.
The cockatoos look very cool!
We met a lot of ravens at once in the weekend, it’s rare, the crows tend to be in big flocks, not ravens. I so love their voice 
One of my fav songbirds 
I am back to carnivore-ish (it was high time, my body seriously complained yesterday. minor bloatedness and borderline stomachache but that’s bad enough for me. I ate some very fatty protein even though I needed no food/calories as that virtually always helps). Pork shoulder roast, bratwurst, pork jowl, quark, eggy/milky coffees… I don’t drink very much coffee and I have bigger things to focus on right now but I will go back to trying to avoid it soon…
I made a batch of cheesy fluffs yesterday, 10 for Alvaro, 2 for me (with sausage on top, he gets cheese cubes inside. the egg white contains cheese too). We eat much cheese nowadays… I had a phase and Alvaro likes his days nicely cheesy without a need for breaks .
