It’s a pity, because I really like eating carnivore and hoped it would improve some of my health issues (ME/CFS for a start). But in the 2 month since going (nearly) carnivore there is no improvement in overall energy, my mood is significantly worse, my weight loss has stopped, I’m getting a lot hungrier (went from OMAD to 2MAD) and my sugar cravings have gotten a lot worse.
Back to more salad, olive oil and cauliflower…
That catches my eye of course 
What is nearly and how dirty of carnivore were you doing? Just cause it is important. If one goes into a carnivore plan with the ‘eat beef, drink water’ type and holds it for 2 months straight the results could be very very improved and different than (nearly) carnivore and then what carnivore were you eating? As in can you post a daily menu of how you were eating?
Many need more than 2 months on clean carnivore sometimes for true internal healing to happen, so on (nearly) carnivore???
Sugar cravings worse, cause on (nearly) carnivore you are eating carbs? and that keeps cravings alive.
So just wondering how close to clean carnivore were you and what was the other foods eaten and maybe we can chat out why some of this didn’t work well for you, etc.
Now I am carnivore thru and thru and if I had to do this…Back to more salad, olive oil and cauliflower……I would just fall off the face of the earth and call it quits HAHA (joke here in a way but if I had to fall back on that I wouldn’t make it a day)
No carbs. Mostly fatty beef and eggs with butter/lard, target was OMAD. On the days I had breakfast I usually did bacon and eggs or something like this, maybe bone broth. “Mostly” means some dairy, cocoa butter, nuts or vegetables on some days, 100% carnivore on other days (up to 20% of calories may have been non-carnivore).
Frankly, the fact that I improved a lot when I went to keto but things got progressively worse the longer I went nearly carnivore sheds some serious doubt on the “results could be very improved”. After all I reduced the amount if vegetables very much. If I had seen no change then I might have continued, but I changed for the worse. Right now I feel that I’m right in my “one size doesn’t fit all” approach to nutrition.
no carbs…yes there were carbs. coca butter? nuts? veggies?
100% carnivore on other days
Without deletion of all plant materials you aren’t seeing what your body can do without any in its system. Even if you are only eating a little…the % amt. eaten doesn’t matter. You are doing some mix of keto plan plus carnivore plan and in all honesty if you were keto before all ya did was cut out a few keto days and throw in an all meat day. So this isn’t a carnivore trial at all.
Now I sure get what you say one size does not fit all but if the trial time isn’t a true go at carnivore then it isn’t the plan, it is something of the keto eating and carnivore combo plan that is not setting well with you.
without a true go at carnivore as it should be done…you just don’t know and I don’t know and no one knows LOL there is no ‘shoot for OMAD’ on carnivore, it is just eat when hungry and not eat when not hungry. There are no targets on carni and that can monkey with the trial time also if we put restrictions/limits on carnivore.
But if you know you did feel better eating a certain way before you started a keto/carnivore combo plan, then go back to how you were doing, kinda make that a new trial for ya and see if any positive changes or whatever come and re-evaluate yourself. Only really thru walking around plans, trying things and seeing where we end up and what works best for us is one of the best things we can do for each of us personally. So hope you find a better way to make it all work for you!!
It’s very individual. It matters very much to me. But indeed, some vegetables and nuts might be problematic. They often cause problems for me if they aren’t in the tiny amounts that nicely compliments my meat (definitely not a tiny side dish, more like spice), it doesn’t matter I still am in ketosis, vegetable carbs mess things up, make me hungrier and so on.
Surely carnivore isn’t for everyone as no diet is. But sometimes it’s just the way one does their diet. Keto worked not that very well for me before because I ate too much carbs (but I didn’t see any other way back then). And the amount of meat makes a big difference too. Even the kind of meat for some people. And so on, so many options.
I’m not doing carnivore here, although I wish I could get my life straight enough so that I could try it.
In all fairness if you weren’t doing a pure carnivore you don’t really know if it would work. I would like to give it a shot sometime because while I would like to heal some problems, I’m vain enough to want to lose weight.
These are the same type of arguments that have been made from the low fat faction: If you’re not seeing results then you’re doing something wrong. God forbids that there might be a reason why the diet is not suitable.
If I cut 90% of my carb intake and replace them with beef and I get worse, with suitable time for my body to adapt, why should I see an improvement if I cut out 100%? Anything that is rooted in science please, no religious beliefs that carnivore is that only those pure of heart will see enlightenment.
Ockhams razor says that these veggies were good for me. I’ll stick to that, unless somebody convinces me to do otherwise.
The point is that I’m off worse than before I started carnivore. If I would see no improvement, OK, maybe I should cut the remaining veggies. But as it is, chances are that I shouldn’t.
It’s not for everyone, that’s for sure.
Good luck and hope you find what works for you.
As a side note, I tried carnivore a couple of times before settling on it. I found that the stricter I was the better I felt. Restricting or cutting out processed meats and dairy made a big difference for me. Also, depending upon your degree of metabolic damage you’re dealing with adaptation can take a while.
because 100% will ever be a 90% try. A 100% off all plant materials and plant oils will never be the same as off 90% so the game is being played on your end of not doing the plan correctly. It truly boils down to no other simple reason than that.
No use pretending the results would be the same as 90% of something bad being ingested by the body will always work against you, even if a small %…100% off all to an elimination menu of carnivore and followed correctly MIGHT show improvements when it is done long enough for your body PLUS if at any time you feel the 100% trial is not for you for whatever reasons, as one does add food back they can get a very real knowledgeable results if that food has any effect on them at all or if it is a food the body handle well. But without 100% trial, none of the other can ever happen.
Keto plan with carnivore plan works for many. I mean many keto people absolutely pick a few days and just eat all meat days…but it won’t work for all at all but never can one say eating carnivore is bad if you don’t eat it.
and no, no religious or carnivore we hate all plant talk for ya LOL I get it HA
It is like saying I am allergic to nuts but will only eat 10% in any day and just get a little sick. And this is IF you know nuts are bad for your body but if you combine keto on plan food with carnivore, you will never know if that one veg or that one whatever food you are ingesting even at a 10% small amt could be a culprit of all things not going well for you.
But if you go back to the way you were eating and improve a bit then that is great. Maybe a combo of some foods is how your body works best but if you go back and still are not in a better healthy way, then is even keto good? I don’t know cause we are so individual and have to find those foods that improve us and not ruin us so usually one then goes into a real elimination menu to find out personally. But those trials and experiments do take time and we all just find our own way to make it all work best we can.
You just will never adapt into what carnivore can do if one doesn’t eat it 100% so pretending 90% clean (and most get this wrong, probably more like 80% cause none of ever like to say we fubbed up on what we ate in a day etc) and that is just normal for all of us I think.
Worse thing is you said it is a pity cause you liked eating this way. If you liked it truly and found you are a meat/seafood person and enjoy the actual food…then cleaning it up to a 100% clean carnivore eating trial might really float your boat without those extra days of nuts and veg. But that can only be a way to roll if you find you want to go down that road again
Wishing you nothing but the best on what plan you find that suits you best!! We all got one that works best for us and we all wanna find it!!
Well, the thing is that any protein is insulinogenic for some people even on keto, their body produces insulin as a reaction to meat even though it shouldn’t. Judging from what I see (more hunger, more craving) I belong to these people, hence a diet with less protein will be better. Maybe my body will have tuned down insulin production in a year or so…
@Fruno I had the same issues in my first few months of carnivore. You’re right, you needed to get you fat:protein ratio to a place where you’d continue to have low insulin and high ketones.
For me the PKD protocol works. 2:1 fat to protein by weight not calories, or just over 80% of calories from fat. Everything fell into place when I made carnivore actually properly ketogenic.
Yes, you are worse so it’s probably not for you, I think that too. I wasn’t clear enough, sorry. I just agree with Fangs in that part that little vegetables and no vegetables (possibly almost no in some cases) may be very different.
You got WORSE and that may be a hint it’s not for you, after all. It’s surely complicated, I can’t tell, obviously, my knowledge is little about it too and I understand you stop, I would do the same.
I only have the personal experience that even small amounts may interfere. Maybe the negative effects are due to something else. Maybe they are because you ate way less plants.
Either way, we can’t surely say what would happen on 100% carnivore unless you try exactly that for a not very short time. I never heard about a case but I can imagine one where tiny amount of plants is worse than zero or a somewhat bigger one.
But just because we aren’t sure, it doesn’t mean you need to suffer and try it… Carnivore is surely not everyone’s way, no diet/lifestyle is. Or not right away.
I couldn’t even do keto in the beginning but some years later I was ready.
Maybe your protein:fat ratio is off. Maybe something else. Who knows?
You can go back and take smaller changes, maybe? Keep the vegetables but not the nuts? Avoiding some vegetables for a while? It’s your decision. I hope something will work.
Actually, this happens with everyone. If you eat meat, your insulin will go up. In fact, the vegans use this as an argument that meat is bad, since the insulin effect can sometimes be larger than the effect for certain carbs. See this, for instance, where they quote everyone’s favorite vegan, Dr. Greger:
The problem is carbs cause way more effect on blood sugar than does meat. My blood sugar, for instance, does not move no matter how much meat I eat. That’s not the case with carbs.
Simple answer, if plant anti-nutrients are having an inflammatory response without getting rid of every single bit of those in your diet you’ll never know if they have s negative effect on your body. It’s like if you eat poison cutting down won’t be enough, you have to stop putting it in to heal and healing is never instant, it’s a process we go through that takes time. You didn’t expect instant results doing keto, you took the time to get fat adapted and the results were rolling in over time. I see Carnivore the same way and having some just meat days isn’t enough to find out what an elimination diet will do. That’s unrealistic and like saying “I eat keto food all week and carbs on the weekend for a break but keto just doesn’t work for me. You have to stick to your plan to get results as @Fangs and @Keto6468 Karen said. You have to be ready to dive right in the deep end of the pool and stay afloat till it’s had time. Clinging to the edge of the pool is a lot different than swimming. You want science but faith is required and sticking with it tells all. It works or it doesn’t but in between tells you zero. I do hope you start feeling better Thomas. 
Interesting… the nuts could be making your symptoms of CFS worse. Nuts are netorious for increasing systematic inflammation in the body.
For example: If i eat peanuts or almonds, i get achy joints and my hands retain water in my joints and fingers. If i eat PB, it actually makes me feel bloated and sleepy.
If the purpose was to heal your body or reduce symptoms of pain and/or system inflammation, i would be cutting out nuts completely as a precautionary.
Yes, I know You might be sensitive to some lectins. I have looked into several kinds of antinutrients: Peanuts should be avoided in general, they have very high concentrations of various lectins (that’s why so many people are allergic to them). I really don’t get why they are so popular. (Yeah, they are tasty. Granted ) Peanut butter sometimes contains sugar and emulsifiers. The sugar might be OK in small quantities (guess a portion of PB has 2 grams or whatever), but emulsifiers are toxic.
Almonds should be avoided by people who are oxalate sensitive (about 5-10 percent of the population can’t detox oxalates as well). Almonds also have phytic acid. I avoid both, as well as cashews (too much sugar). Many nuts including pecans have nickel. However, nuts do have benefits, they contain some rare fatty acids that are hard to get otherwise and that we need (in small amounts). Don’t remember exactly which ones, either omega-7 or omega-9 or both. So there’s always a tradeoff and the dose makes the poison. A handful of nuts every now and then is probably more beneficial than harmful. I stick to macadamias, pecans and pistachios mostly, as they have only nickel and I’m not sensitive to that one (at least I don’t have any of the symptoms). Sometimes hazelnuts and brazil nuts, never almonds, peanuts, walnuts.
But all plant food have antinutrients, that’s the whole point why many people do well on carnivore. However, industrial meat contains these antinutrients too (if you feed animals with soy, their meat will contain soy lectins), and frankly there is no way how I can afford to live only from pastured/grass fed meat.
In the end you need to figure out which antinutrients you can tolerate and which ones you can’t, and make sure that you don’t consume them in too large amounts. I’m OK with some lectins (from zucchini and cooked tomatos for example) while I’m very sensitive to other ones (even small amounts of peppers will result in hefty reactions).
Sorry, but I stopped believing in things a long time ago. Faith is responsible for the mess we’re in (you know, sloth and gluttony). Faith is responsible for some of the worst crimes committed in human history. I’m done with faith. Show me the science, that’s the only approach that I’ll accept.
We’re in the current mess because we didn’t care about science. If the people around Ancel Keys would have bothered to check the scientific data, we would never had developed the low fat policy. If people would bother with science in nutrition in general we wouldn’t have processed food and all the crap we put into our bodies. But we don’t, because we believe that everything is bleeding obvious and we can just use our gut feeling.
Plant food is not poison. Evolution designed us to eat some plants, and we do need nutrients that we get exclusively from plants like omega-6. (Yes, we eat way too much of it nowadays, about 30-fold too much, but if we get no omega-6 at all then we die.) About 65% of calories came from meat for hunters and gatherers, and a third came from plants. As long as there is no strong evidence to the contrary, I’ll stick to the notion that the optimal diet is the one that our hunter-and-gatherer predecessors ate, and it contained plants (in moderation). As with all food the dose makes the poison, and if we eat 30 times as much omega-6 as we’re supposed to then it does become poisonous, sure. The same is true for any (micro)nutrient, they always have a U-shaped curve of optimality: There is an optimal range, and too little is just as bad as too much. (Take salt, for example.) But a nutrient is not poison just because we eat way too much of it.
Naturally, if we ate a diet that was low in meat and high in plant-based antinutrients for decades then it might be best way to counter it with a few years of carnivore. (Just as keto is the way to counter the damage from eating too much carbs metabolic syndrome). That’s why many people feel great with carnivore, their body slowly restores nutrient balance back to where it’s supposed to be, the amount of omega-6 goes down, the lectins/oxalates go down, and it might take years to counter the damage done and the antinutrients accumulated depending on individual detox capability. But we really, REALLY should make sure that we don’t go too far and go to the other end of that u-shaped curve.
We don’t have any long term evidence for carnivore, because nutrient imbalances may take decades to result in symptoms. Sure, many people are fine after years of carnivore, but the same is true for a vegan diet. There is no scientific reason to assume that eating 100% meat is better than eating 100% plants. And I’m sick and tired of people using analogies and gut feelings to “prove” their points. After all, it’s completely obvious that we get fat if we eat too much, why even bother to check that? And what harm could come from eating too much carbohydrates, since we’ve eaten it for centuries? But you know, it’s wrong! And we realize that, and wham! make the same mistake again, and again, and again, because now it’s completely obvious that plants are poison, and there can’t be any harm from eating no plants at all, right? No, the world isn’t that simple.
We’ve got to stop this simplistic black-and-white way of thinking about nutrition, and turn towards science. We have to identify which components are indeed detrimental (mercury clearly doesn’t have a u-shaped optimality curve, and I believe many of the added chemicals in processed food are in this category) and which ones we need but may appear to be poisonous because we eat too much or too little.
Relying on the “science” would be gold standard if the science was being conducted into nutrition. I mostly think that funding issues mean that real science is likely to be missing from the area of nutrition because anyone funded to investigate anything has a commercial end in mind.
No-one is going to make money from the “just eat real food” message, but that does not mean that JERF is somehow unscientific and wrong.
Oh, but the science is there. Read blogs like hyperlipid, watch low carb down under on youtube, read Lustig or Taubes. The science is there (even though we need a lot more), even though it requires some digging to find it. We might need to chuck all observational studies and all studies funded by big food, but there are a few well-designed studies telling us a lot.