I just want to say I could absolutely binge on like, carrots, broccoli, forget berries. Carbs are carbs in my body and I have no leeway with my addiction. And those carbs harm me. Even if I don’t gain weight they keep that little carb flame burning in my addicted mind so I’m always having to make a choice how many carbs to eat every day and constantly fighting my urges. So that’s another reason why I wanted to try zero carb and yep, it works! I cannot have even a few plant carbs, I’ll be down that rabbit hole so fast and never come back. My addiction does not care how lousy it makes me feel. I’ve been struggling at this since 2003 and I know myself by now. I’m all in on animal foods only. Now I still have the addictive behavior to heal, but without the food triggers it feels possible.
Hi Edith. I enjoy fruit seasonally. If I want something sweet to eat at other times a carrot does the trick. The seasonal fruit is never bought. It’s picked. It’s very local, pesticide free, from the food forest outside the door, or a local orchard. And it is wonderful. I have to fight wildlife to get it.
Um, I could eat a lot of berries all at once. There are blueberry bushes and strawberries in the garden. But because the supply is naturally limited by the number of plants and the growing season, the binge factor is forfeit. Strawberries are coming into season.
The ‘processing’ of these fruits I hadn’t thought deeply on until your post. And that is the packaging of those fruits into huge bags, it’s the human amplification, that turns them into a binge food.
The reward centres are still triggered, it’s how we know where in the garden to tend and find those fruit bearing plants. But I think that ‘gardening’ instinct is a more natural approach than the hyperstimulation of seeing the packaged fruit at the grocer or supermarket.
As I’m typing this I can imagine some of my friends and family, and maybe quite a few nutritionists looking at these words and thinking we are insane in classing fruit as possibly not good for our health.
Fruit is not piled up and concentrated in nature, neither are vegetables. They are piled up and wasted in monocrop human-made farming systems . There is foraging and work required to access them from the wild. The rewards are simultaneously great and small, and the ability to lose a whole crop is a constant reality in a small, home, gardening system. It provides incredible connection to the planet, though. And that mental connection feeds back into stabilising eating behaviours messed up by the false fantasy of constant abundance perpetrated by supermarkets. Did you notice what happened when supply chains were cut during the pandemic?
The keto WOE way to cope with fruit and vegetable sugars is fermentation.
The ZC way to deal with it is leave those things alone (abstinence some call it. But abstinence without the application of will power is just instinct.)
This next bit may be controversial here, but pairing fruit with meat is sometimes a delicious marriage (pork and apple?).
My wife gets severe allergic reactions to certain fruits.
I can enjoy stomach pain and diarea the day after fruit.
We are not rare exceptions. This pretty much tells its insane to think fruits are healthy and harmless.
I would love some berries from your garden, they must be delicious. Willing to pay the price of a punishment the next day.
A bit of badness now and then makes you stronger
Like a cold beer or a tomato slice.
I taught all three of my kiddos to eat fruits and veggies when they were little as well. Of course, my boys are now both adults, so they eat whatever they want and they’re both skinny. I keep reminding them that their metabolism won’t stay like that forever, but they don’t want to listen🙄.
My daughter is 14 and she recognized the effect carbs were having on her and how out of control they made her feel. She’ll be celebrating her 5 month carniversary on a few days! She’s so proud of her way of eating and doesn’t take any flak from friends or family. I’m very proud!
My husband, well, I won’t even go there🙂. He knows ZC would be best for him, but he just can’t do it. Sigh…
I had my first decent night sleep in forever last night. The elimination of salt seemed to really help! We’ll see how tonight goes. Breakfast was a pound of ground bison and beef fat cracklings. Lunch/dinner was raw sirloin, liver pâté, broth, and cracklings
But how much of this is due to our microbiome shifting due to the lack of plants? I would imagine that our microbiome would have to readjust to resuming plant consumption.
I love you hit that level RR! Feels fab doesn’t when you take back your control of what you want outta life COOL!
wow, you are me Liz. I am the exact same. I love what you said at the end, you know yourself now. Me too. I walked a few years of total struggle trying to ‘control the carb count’ and live like that and I could not do it. Then those few words hit me, know yourself in full truth ya know, and once I did I knew that zero carb was the only way forward for me. It was a darn hard thing to accept for me, I fought it but in the end, the only possible way to make it all work for me was to accept knowing what it takes for me. Great post Liz!
@Ketodaisy, your a zc rock KD! Love your pics as usual!
@Carnivoor, ohhh so sorry about your cat Vic. I love cats, had a few great ones thru the years. Always sad to lose a pet but I bet that kitty lived a great life with you
----------------food yesterday was
12 oz NY strip steak
chicken breast
wasn’t very hungry. I ate so well the day before I just didn’t need much.
Not sure what I want today…well, I know a steak as my normal set food, but not sure what to pair up with…maybe shrimp today?
will see.
wonderful chat on the board. I really enjoy the zc challenge thread
True. And often the amount is tiny and the sugar content is low. But not always. I could pick a ton of rosehip around here (and blackthorn but not all winter and it’s tangy while the former is super sweet. I don’t understand why the birds don’t eat it up). I am a lazy one and I prefer fresh fruit so I only eat them when I pick 1-2 during my walks in winter. I am strict so skip that right now It’s not like I need it, it’s just nice and opportunistic
Many people are into that for some reason. I hate it with a passion in most cases. Apple and quince may be an exception but not anymore, they are way too sweet. I hate when anything really sweet goes near my meat, I was shocked when learned that people actually use sugar/honey in marinade or sauces. Though it’s not that surprising in retrospective… But it’s so very important that even long term ketoers squeeze some real sugar/honey into their meaty dishes. It’s very odd to me.
Most apples are way too sweet, some berries sound a better idea (for many, there are popular dishes where meat meets berries) but I never would touch that either if possible. I just don’t mix meat and sweet things (maybe some vegetables? I always found some vegetables very sweet but it was tolerable before). I don’t like that but can’t even see the possible need. It’s meat, why to add sweetness? Others surely have some different relationship with sweetness… I love sweets but hate sweetness near my meat.
And I consider boiled beef with sour cherry sauce an abomination. It was a frequent dish in school (I don’t understand, beef isn’t cheap. oh well, the meat was tiny in school lunches). I consider it barely edible. And it’s my favorite fruit. And the least favorite way to eat meat, even without the fruit. The dish included semolina too, by the way, that made it even worse so this combo was my most hated school dish (I ate it up, I was hungry and not super choosy, I just found no joy in it and probably caused a long term mild trauma). I hope no one gets triggered by semolina, it’s not that tempting Though I liked it boiled in milk as a kid, with cocoa and of course, sugar. It was a super frequent school dish and very popular as it is very hard to mess up. School kitchens messed up even boiled potatoes, well the ingredient was the culprit there just like with meat sometimes.
The average Hungarian school lunch in the 80s wasn’t really good. But it could have been much, much worse. It was edible and sometimes (rarely) really tasty. And sometimes quite bad and truly messed up, not just bad according to my taste.
As far as I know, it’s better now but there are those trendy guidelines… So I wouldn’t be happy with it.
Is there a thing as fermented fruit? Ew.
Fermented veggies are lovely
I have a very different expectation towards veggies and fruits, I know that. My sweet tolerance is way lower for veggies too.
I don’t know when I stopped thinking fruits are healthy… Probably when I realized carbs aren’t good for me. But amount matters a lot so I don’t think my fruits are unhealthy. But I definitely don’t consider them healthy. They are little joys that I can handle. Like a very tasty booze (even though that is toxin. but I can handle it and it’s worth it, that part is true for both occasionally). Mostly harmless but I never would consume it for health for sure. Even if fruits would give me something good (they surely have some nice stuff in them), as I get barely any sugar from them (usually), I get almost no good things either. So it’s irrelevant.
I love fruits but I wouldn’t eat any if I would feel truly bad afterwards. But I can’t understand these things maybe because no food can cause me pain - unless I eat it really excessively but that’s hard to manage. I do choose something tempting if there is a price but that’s way less than pain in my case.
But fruits are enjoyable without eating them too, it probably helps me a lot. My garden is full with fruit bearing plants, it would be painful not to love and enjoy my fruits anymore. My passion stayed while my fruit consumption plummeted. I can’t even eat a quarter of my raspberries during the whole year… And that was my most important keto fruit in the past, one of my big favs and the amount isn’t very big either (much for raspberry plants but I have big fruit trees too and those are on another level).
Sometimes I wonder if Alvaro will be able to handle our fruits… And our small fruit trees are growing… It would be nice if he wouldn’t buy so much fruit but those are different from ours and can’t be replaced with them.
I try not to talk more about fruits in the near future. It’s winter anyway, not like it matters. I pick fruits in winter too anyway…
I am very determined to make an old idea of mine happen now. Alvaro still says okay. He will eat low-carb at least for a day. Tricky, not sustainable but I am curious how he will feel. Probably just as perfect as on his HCHF. The ideal would be if he could eat a tad similar to me, it would make things easier a bit. If he has no “staple” as he calls his carby side dishes (he uses the English word in a Hungarian sentence), he almost panics. And if he has no cooked food, he is lost. Unlike me. And I start to have enough of baking bread every week, seriously. It even triggers me sometimes despite I don’t like his bread. While he clings to bread more now and if we are out, he requests it. He was so fine without bread for days before. And years, at some point. So a little change would be nice and even possible.
He never will try carnivore, I know that. That’s fine, I am glad he eats the same meat dishes. But my kitchen work is mostly making things for him (or extra little things for me but I will work on it. but anyway, it’s a choice of mine) and it’s multiple things per lunch. Why can’t we just eat simple? Sometimes we do but not always and not simple enough… That should be a goal for 2021.
Today I don’t need to cook, yay! Only scrambled eggs with bacon but that’s nothing. I had that for lunch, I ate very early again but 3 eggs and a little something else (various things but no food making was involved) did the trick.
Downsides of his low-carb day that it must be meatless (or I need to put more effort into it). He eats meat with a lot of carbs, no exception. And I find it so fun he had no meatless days since weeks (several months ago he talked a bit poorly about people who eat meat every day and firmly separated himself from them. even when I pointed out I eat meat every day. he was fine with that) and don’t want to break it But a meat soup will be an option a bit later. Fortunately he isn’t among the many people who eat soup with bread anymore… He lost it when he had his gluten-free years.
Same except it’s emergency drink. The water content is often very good! Fruit is horrible for food as it makes me hungrier and I never can get much energy from it, I get carb poisoned first. My body changed too and now I can’t eat more than a ridiculously tiny amount of sugary fruit without immediately eating fatty meat or something afterwards (but I strongly desire fatty meat then). Okay, if I have normal food, I may use fruit as addition… I can handle much more in that case, I feel a bit worse but no serious discomfort. I still have a low limit for energy from sugar so normal food is very important. I need protein and lots of fat. The more sugar I eat, the more fat I need (it’s similar with carbs but sugar totally demands fat to balance things out. my body is screaming for it, I can’t ignore it).
My condolences for your cat… But it was a long life, hopefully/probably very fun and loving for the cat… Cats are wonderful, I look at mine and feel such a lousy hedonist. They are better at it, it’s borderline annoying how they can enjoy themselves almost all the time…
And now I truly will be scarce and talk about carnivore stuff anyway, it’s January already… I try to bring photos sometimes but when I have some nice warm food in front of me, I tend to eat it right away… Lack of light and my food photography skills doesn’t help.
This is exactly me. Before ZC, I would sit at my desk at work, shoveling in handfuls of jelly beans or baby carrots (it is was a healthy day). I was so tired in the afternoon, because of all of the carbs. I wasn’t truly hungry, just carb hungry and want something to eat. ZC has fixed that for me and it is amazing! I actually use food as fuel now, not for pleasure.
ohhh, I get this statement and I agree, but damn I get massive pleasure out of a ribeye steak or crab legs, shrimp, my bacon, all my freaking’ wonderful meats, in fact I can’t say I eat anything I dislike…not like old days, omg I ate all kinds of ‘fake low carb crap’ to fit the plan, eat it and say geez this crap sucks but it is on plan ya know…now there is not one thing I eat in my life I do not love…wow, that makes me love my plan even better
but yes I get that pleasure thing, for me it was more about ‘comfort in carbs’, that damn addiction…just shovel it in, yea I did that too Now I shovel in steaks and sausage HA
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That is a huge achievement. 
. There is foraging and work required to access them from the wild. The rewards are simultaneously great and small, and the ability to lose a whole crop is a constant reality in a small, home, gardening system. It provides incredible connection to the planet, though. And that mental connection feeds back into stabilising eating behaviours messed up by the false fantasy of constant abundance perpetrated by supermarkets. Did you notice what happened when supply chains were cut during the pandemic?
COOL!
