Jerky Jubilee ZC July!

[Fangs]

I don’t even have beef broth at the moment, having just gotten here.

so your back in good ol’ TX?

when I do anything on the grill I always have to ‘rub’ something on it for the family but ya know, I never smoked anything basically plain.

I would think that just regular ol’ salt and bit of pepper if ya like it would be good with that smokey taste so…if that brisket is a good chunk of big fat then I swear that is all the flavoring ya need. I leave smoking mostly to hubby cause he so loves it and I just default and lucky thing is he doesn’t like alot of spice/seasoning so when he smokes meat he does a very light amt of rub for effect which actually helps me.

with his mom in hospital now and not doing well he hasn’t been tackling the grill or smoker right now. But for you, I think smoking a plain ol’ salt only or tad of pepper for a baby kick might be a great experiment to try and see how ya like it. You of course gotta let us know!

[VirginiaEdie]

We considered trying this last year when our dog ate all of the siblings. I’m guessing you’ve researched this already, but just in case…
At some point you are going to have to seed the little bunny’s gut flora. Rabbits have a special poop they excrete (its small and sticky compared to their normal poop) and then eat to reseed their digestive tracts. You will need to get a hold of that poop and mix it in to his or her formula before you introduce grass/hay. They will need that in order to digest plant matter. That was the main reason we didn’t attempt to raise the baby bunny.
I wish you and Miro the best of luck.

[Karen18]

Oh dear @FrankoBear I feel for you with the effects Covid is having on you. My friend and colleague got Covid in March 2020 and is still living with the long term affects. She was as fit as me before as we used to bump into each other every lunchtime in the gym so she finds it incredibly frustrating. It just seems to be one thing after the other with her as she has plantar fasciitis in both feet now. The covid effected her lungs and heart too and she may be looking at having to go down the same road as me at work. She is younger than me by about 6 years.

Just keep doing breathing exercises and building strength up day by day.x

@JJFiddle we are very fortunate to have some beautiful local places on our doorstep to visit. I of course had to drive to collect Raymond and then drive him to the Park as even though it is just literally round the corner from him, less than a mile, it is just too flippin hilly for his legs to manage and also he get a bit out of puff. I don’t want him over doing things and taking a spiral downwards again.
@Fangs last time I cooked brisket I did it in a slow oven and it just wasn’t as tender as when I pop it in the slow cooker over night and thats just how I will be doing it next time I buy one! I don’t have a smoker unfortunately. I have to take the tummy tabs every now and again when I have indulged in too much spice, I can get terrible wind under my ribcage and spend half the night rubbing my ribs and turning over to squish the wind out in humungous burps … very rarely botty type burps though thankfully hahaha

[CaptainKirk]

My daily fasting blood glucose is more than 100mg/dl. Often it is 120 to 130.

FrankoBear, I am right there with you. One of the things I have found is SLEEP/STRESS.
I just cycled back to Clean Carnivore, no dairy, etc. It takes over a week to see it settle in on the BP, and other numbers.

But I was still stressed out, and that’s worth 20 points on my glucose readings. Yesterday, I was exhausted at 8pm… So I went to bed. I woke up briefly at 3am, and went back to sleep. I awoke this morning with excellent numbers, and I had dropped 1.4 lbs.

For me, I am realizing that NOT getting good sleep and BEING Stressed over work, or just working 12hrs can really de-rail my glucose and weight-loss. It’s not always the macros. Our environments trigger Epigenetics as well.

[Shinita]

I will have some walk too, not a long one but not the usual short one either, 10km, I need it after skipping days. Yesterday was all rainy. Finally.
It’s hot again But it must be done. My big mission is buying 3 liters of carbonated water - and if possible, the 70/30 pork I couldn’t find last time. I run out of lard again and it’s nice anyway fried… I want skinless cracklings again.

But due to the walk and slightly complicated things my pork won’t be ready before 7pm. But I made grill sausages, I have eggs and cheese so I can have some late lunch before a late dinner, it should be fine.
Last night I ended up eating leftover scrambled eggs and pork and yogurt, I wasn’t particularly hungry but I wasn’t fully satiated and entered the kitchen with ready to eat food… It always happens. I know I should eat enough during the day but I stuffed myself as much as possible yesterday and it wasn’t enough. Well, still an okay day.

[…]
My legs are a bit tired (at least the left one, still not 100% healed but I rarely notice) but we got stuff. Okay, not the 70/30 pork… Maybe they won’t have it again…? Why things I like tend to disappear…? I bought a tiny green ham instead, well almost 1 kg, it’s something there…
Alv bought rice flour (I can’t imagine anyone being triggered by that, honestly…), the price got higher again. It does it all the time nowadays, I am so glad meat doesn’t do the same.

I didn’t forget to take a photo (I just can’t make pretty ones of my food):

Didn’t have coffee until 4pm and even then it just flavored my egg milk, no stupid standalone black coffee It feels more proper and I am pleased.
About 1000 kcal, I am super satiated now.

And my succulent new flowers looking all pathetic since months are truly flowers, they started to bloom! Yay! I will bring photos later, the rain started just now…

@JJFiddle: I know little about brisket but when I looked it up, every recipes talked about pepper and I don’t remember much more as only pepper made sense to me… I think brisket, salt and pepper is very good. I couldn’t smoke it, I just fried mine last time but I only used pepper if I remember correctly. Not like I taste it on it… Must have used very little… But this brisket is SUPER tasty, it’s very apparent at every bite. It may be lean and chewy but it’s surely delicious so I will gladly eat it all, a little at a time.
So people use apple juice on it? OMG why? Okay, apple and its relatives are special and isn’t necessarily horrible with meat, I used it with deer once but that was another era and the apple was diluted by a lot of potatoes… (Mmmm, my old fav easily can be a trigger. I needed a decade to think about it and being fine without any in my next year. And a year is a very long time to me.) As much as I love fruits, I never mix them with meat. But many people do…
But brisket is SO tasty (at least this one from the beef farm. I am a fan I just can’t eat much of it at once, not soft and fatty enough for that. but it lasts long then, yay), why to add anything? A little pepper sounds okay but it should be fine without.

Nowadays I stop to wonder about these things sometimes. WHY to add zillion things to perfectly fine ingredients? If it’s just some spice, I understand but I saw too many recipes with very different strong flavors in it. It even bothers me, I can’t focus on all, they may fight with each other… A big exception is all the very great very complex spice mixes where we don’t necessarily feel the ingredients but the end result is very harmonic and nice.

Btw I saw a spice mix in the shop for “pork shoulders”. What, they think different cuts require different spice mixes? I don’t feel so big differences but maybe it’s my problem. Or there is some traditional idea about cooking pork shoulders… I just roast it, being me. I know my meat preparing is extremely simple, I have tiny experience but my roasts are good enough the way they are (oven, pork, salt, maybe little water and some hours) so I don’t feel motivated to complicate it.

[VirginiaEdie]

A slightly better night’s sleep although still very wakeful as per.

I don’t know if this pertains to you and your exercise schedule, but I figured out something I just realized about myself and sleep.

Two months ago, I joined a kick boxing fitness gym. I love it!!! It is really fun. Turns out I really like punching and kicking stuff. Lol. I like exercising in the morning, but the gym doesn’t open early enough for me to get a workout done before work, so I go there after work, sometimes not until 6:00 or 6:30 PM. Then I still have to eat dinner afterwards. Even though I am going to the gym late and therefore having a late dinner, I am still going to bed at my usual 9:00 - 10:00 PM.

I started going to this gym at about the same time the warmer/hot weather was getting started and my sleep quality went down. I started getting a lot of night sweats that were constantly waking me up. I figured it was just menopause hot flashes exacerbated by the warmer weather. The other thing that changed was instead of having gentle twitches as I dropped off to sleep, they were more like convulsions.

Well, for the past two weeks, I was out of town a lot and the number of night sweats was way less. I was not exercising late in the day, and I was finishing dinner 3-4 hours before going to bed. The day after I returned from my traveling, I went to the gym (actually, a little later than usual) and had a late dinner. Sure enough, that night my sleep was terrible: convulsive twitches trying to fall asleep and on-and-off night sweats for most of the night.

I have three theories: 1) I’m eating dinner too close to bed time and my body is running hot because it is still digesting when I go to bed. 2) The workout is VERY high intensity, and my body is too ramped up to settle down for sleep. 3) A combination of 1 and 2.

Yesterday, I went to work late, so I could go to the gym early to try out my theories. So… morning workout to allow my body to recover from the intensity and an early dinner, finished four hours before bed. Oh my goodness!!! I slept sooooo much better. Falling asleep was much calmer, and I only awoke once during the night.

Now, that’s one data point, but I figured I would share incase you may have something similar going on with your schedule. I’ll be trying this schedule for the next month to see if better quality sleep continues.

I will add one more thing. If I do gentle exercise, such as go for a walk, stretch, or pilates close to bedtime, I don’t run into this problem. I think the high intensity workout is probably releasing a lot of cortisol that my body hasn’t cleared out by the time I’m trying to go to sleep.

[Karen18]

Thanks for sharing VE … unfortunately my sleep pattern dates back years, way before menopause too! Mine probably stems from years of being kept awake by my Autistic son and then when I was getting divorced from 2nd hubby had to force myself to stay awake to make sure I was still alive in the morning, took 3 months to get him out of the house! Hey ho I am still here to tell the tale … children, ex’s, crappy work shifts and one Stroke later!

Also I tend to only workout mornings though I might do some dancing in the afternoon or walking afternoons and early evenings if my daughter wants to go walking.

I was under the sleep clinic for a while before Covid but with my shifts it was really impractical to follow the regime they suggested … I would never have got any sleep if I had lol.

[Shinita]

Not a bad day. My meat finally got ready after 7pm (but I got out the small pieces and fried them a tad in the pan. Just because they are tiny, they didn’t get reddish brown in almost 2 hours… But they were surely super tender!) and I had my dinner together with Alvaro. Didn’t really feel hungry but there was something and anyway, I know I need food. I can’t do 1000 kcal days normally.

Fresh, nicely but not too warm pork chuck roast is the best thing ever I already liked it before roasting, it had such a wonderful red color, right fattiness, marbling, everything I can expect from pork chuck.

So I went over a pound (even half a kg), finally. I don’t trust multiple low-meat days in a row.
Between chuck and sausage I ate much fat, 68% - but I could actually afford it today as I walked and had a little workout (the big muscle groups, chest and back. I never train my legs with weight as I hate that and if I ever will need it, I do it in a way more enjoyable way. even now, I must use them for something Oh my I didn’t cycle since ages… but I prefer walking. running is out due to summer but I will try a little here and there).
I am getting a bit stronger again after gotten weaker. But it goes slowly. Next time we will use 23.5kg for chest press. It was 22.5 kg today, a bit little for me currently and while Alvaro did his usual 12x3 (half pyramids are way more logical to me so I do 12-10-8 before I raise the weight), he definitely got near to his limits. He never trains with weights alone and he almost only does chest press as that’s when I need help and he is bored. But he runs and cycles 10km a day so there’s that. He has impressive thick legs and that’s it.

My summer lilac bloomed nicely, so many flower clusters in some days, I will try to make some nice butterfly photos soon…

I am very full now, it happened so suddenly I left a tiny bite of my half sausage and didn’t even finish my second eggy-buttery coffee. It was over. It’s still a bit strange. And even before, I need some effort to start eating…? Hopefully it won’t change for the worst. At least I have small meals but just right sized for TMAD.

Tomorrow will be different, I focus on my roast first Lost interest in eggs and dairy again and pork chuck doesn’t need the help of fattier things so badly as fresh ham (what is sold as “pork thigh” here).

I hope I will get less full soon. I want my perfect satiation, that’s a lighter feeling.

My dinner minus most of the brisket plus my small eggy coffee:

I try to figure out why I haven’t eaten more pork chuck roast in the near past… Though not all of them are this good. The last slab was leaner.

[Karen18]

Another wakeful night, what’s new?
100 flights of stairs run, ran to CrossFit and did weightlifting and a wod of power cleans and double unders (Skipping) and ran home.

Sat in between pottering around the garden, read some of my book and did some codewords before the temperature dropped and I started to feel a bit chilly.

Food today brunch 2 scrambly duck eggs with some sliced cheddar followed that with some cold pork while the 2nd Pork shoulder joint was slow roasting. When that was cooked I couldn’t resist some of the crackling and a bit of the hot meat (much prefer it hot). A little bit more cheese later and then was going to go to bed and thought the crackling wouldn’t be as tasty in the morning so ate the remaining half! now I am ready for Bed!

[coopdawg]

Try watching the ‘English Lionesses’ female football team combat the Austrian team in the female football Euro football tournament, going on right now on BBC1.

It’s certainly got me going.

England just scored!

[coopdawg]

I presume, because of the low traffic on this forum…that everybody is watching the England match!?

Better be the same tomorrow night when Northern Ireland play in the finals for the first time (against Norway)!

[coopdawg]

[FrankoBear]

A new day. Renew day. It feels great to wake at 5am in winter. Feeling fresh and rested. Restart the fire. Literally. And feel satisfied that the foundation of fuel, the foundation of the day’s nutrition are set and planned. Staying on plan. Hunger switches from anxiety into a hunger to create and learn. Each day healthier.

Fasting glucose: 6.6 mmol/l = 119 mg/dl, and blood ketones 0.4mmol/l.

(Photo from the front door @6:38am. Sun rise is at about 7am).

[MeganNZ]

I’m just a beginner with less than 7 months in, having lost about 40 lbs so far; but that’s my 2 bits for adaptation.

Thanks for the welcome and great advice Judy. How much weight did you lose when you 1st started keto? Another 40 pounds on Carni is impressive. Still trying to wrap my head around vegetables containing poisons in large enough quantities to do us harm. I need to find some research papers on the subject.

Some days I ate 3 lbs plus of meat but many days I ate around 1.5 lbs and many days I settled in that 2 lb area and some days I ate only a lb. so each person’s appetite can flip around ALOT as we change and adapt into this lifestyle. But one only learns that IF they do the plan

lol hey Fangs, I grinned reading your reply. I love how passionate you are. Good to hear about your experience quoted above. I’m getting closer! I’ll keep you all posted.

[Fangs]

@Karen18
fab pics and so sorry with you and those sleep issues…ugh.

@FrankoBear
every day healthier, super glad for ya feeling better! and you are challenging yourself with walking more and increasing mileage…cool, but you go slow tho, you are taking good care of yourself, keep on doing just that.

============== great reading on the board!! Enjoying the posts!

last night around 10 I was famished. I never get ‘super hungry’ and darn if I didn’t do just that. But I didn’t eat. I came so close to frying a ribeye but it was too darn late at night for that to set well on the tummy.

This morning I woke up kinda not hungry but my mind is focused on a big ol’ steak in a bit.

I think I was lower leaner eating for too long. tuna and salami and chicken can only cut it so long. My thoughts of wanting beef are now coming back to me at warp high speed Yes, Karen, there is a ribeye in that fridge for you to eat in a bit…weeee…and I am gonna hoover it down and I might eat another HA

Summer and high heat always monkeys with my eating plus I am in a very high anxiety and stress level with mother in law still very sick in hospital, finalizing the sale of my parents lakefront home has been a negotiating nightmare in a way but I feel we are maybe with the right buyers now and we can sell this home and take that off my list of having to deal with…I feel like I flipped around now to ‘back to what the body loves’…beef!

good thing I stocked up ribeyes while they were on sale

after I take dog to vet appt I am coming home and hitting the pool. I want a relax, float around, listen to music, blank thoughts and big sun high temps happening and everyone leave me the heck alone…and dream of steaks! Ta-da…sounds like a fine day for me.

ZC on strong guys for July!!!

[FrankoBear]

@Naghite Michael. HbA1c = 5.7% (pre-diabetic). Previously: ZC: 5.8 (April '22); ZC: 6.0 (Oct '21); Keto: 5.4 (Oct '19).
@ctviggen Bob has counselled in previous comments about extended red blood cell life span in ZC carnivore eaters that may affect the blood result.

[coopdawg]

They won!

[Karen18]

Just realised you were aiming the footie at me! Never been interested in watching sport on TV or on the sideline, ex hubby always got very annoyed with me when I didn’t noticed he had scored a goal … too busy exercising my jaw with the other wives
Always like yo know they did well though x

[coopdawg]

Let’s hope Norn Iron can do the business tonight as well against Norway.

[coopdawg]

Match starting now…