Keto or Carnivore?


#14

No way my body needs fruit, it’s mostly sugar nowadays… While meat has everything we might need from out food as much as I know…
It’s just the base thing, people aren’t that simple and I totally can imagine he needs something so it’s better for him to eat a bunch of sugar with little other things in it (but those may be super important for him, they do have something. but compared to all the sugar… hardly a good deal for most of us)…

Introducing a bunch of dense sugar to my body, nope, that is not something mine likes :slight_smile: I would add zillion other carby things first. I do eat fruit but only because I can’t avoid it, it’s so super delicious, sometimes it tops even pork and that is something.
But it’s winter now and I am glad I don’t have fruits in my garden until June. Fruit is nature’s candy, not proper food for me.

The very first item I would add would be gluten, by the way. WAY more useful than some compact sugar. Bad for the majority of people but I don’t seem to be one of them.
And I don’t want to add it at all. So I hope I can stick to proper carnivore and get what I want this time…


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #15

No, and in any case, they might be idiopathic and not a general problem. However, if you need permission to start eating fruit and honey on your carnivore diet, I grant it freely.


#16

It is quite possible it was idiopathic, to begin with. However, he now preaches that carnivores must eat fruit.


#17

Human carnivores CAN’T eat fruit though as it’s not carnivore. If I eat fruit, I immediately go off carni… (Except I allow a few drops of lemon juice as flavoring, personally.)

It’s like a vegetarian can’t eat meat…


(Bob M) #18

With all due respect, his deficiencies are mental. Seriously, that guy has some issues. You MUST eat raw liver! You MUST eat raw egg yolks, but MUST NOT eat the egg whites. If covid is on a ship, every surface of the ship will be covered with covid.

These are things I heard him say. I stopped listening to anything he said after these.


#19

HAHA. When anyone says you MUST eat this or that, I called BS. With any eating protocol, I try and measure everything I can measure. The numbers don’t lie. I want empirical data. This would include a DEXA scan and complete blood work including ApoB and Apo A-1c. In the beginning, I did this before I started so I could have a baseline. Again at the 3-month interval. I continue to do blood work and a DEXA scan once a year. Having this data allows me to self-correct if necessary and potentially reduce any risk factors that may have shown up.


#20

Hi ffskier. After having to reinstate a few vegetables because I discovered the carnivore WOE wasn’t working for me (severely decreased energy and constipation), I am seeing things in a different light. I have begun to eat far more intuitively. And I am looking more into how my ancestors would have eaten. Yes, mainly meat, fowl and fish, but they would also have grown vegetables and eaten seasonal fruits and berries. Amber O Hearn shares a passage, of William Banting’s lowcarb WOE in 1864 (described in his own words) and it shows he mainly ate meat, fowl fish, but also vegetables and fruits, but in small quantities. As well as a piece of toast or a rusk. And that to me seems a balanced diet. It is when we try to optimise diets, aka, eat the rainbow variety of vegetables and fruits, but don’t consider just how different all supermarked fruit is from homegrown, there is a problem.

I still remember biting into our own homegrown apples and pears when I grew up, in my own country Norway, as my mom and my grandparents grew fruit trees, as well as vegetables in their gardens. The apples my mom grew were pleasantly sour, the pears not too sweet. She also grew strawberries, rhubarb, blackberries, black currants, red currants, gooseberries, etc, and in the summer we harvested wild blueberries together with my brothers in our mountains. My greatest joy was when we all went out into the fjords and bought cherries from the local farmers. There was also a local farm shop that sold butter, eggs and cheese, and although we didn’t go there that often, as the food in that shop was more expensive than in the supermarked, my grandparents on my father’s side, would buy their eggs, cheese and butter from there. Whenever my brother and I went to stay at their house, we were treated to good saturated fats, and berries in the garden. My grandparents on my mother’s side were much less fond of fat, but their garden was indeed full of berries and fruits.

When all people have left is the supermarked, where they can buy seasonal fruit year round, it becomes a problem. It is consumed in too large quantities, in altered forms (perhaps larger than they would have been, and certainly much, much sweeter). As to honey, unless people were buying raw from a local beekeeper or kept bees themselves, the honey you get in the supermarked is just sugar. Now raw milk interests me. I have long been toying with the idea of buying some from a local farm that sells it in our village, as ordinary homogenised milk, makes me ill. I believe it isn’t that raw milk is some kind of superfood as some people claim, but that milk in itself is highly nutritious when it’s assimilated well, and perhaps the body can assimilate raw milk products better.

I think one of the problems with Dr. Paul Saladino’s advice though is that he doesn’t consider that while he can afford to source the best of fruit from local farms, raw milk, free range eggs, organic and grassfed meats, raw honey from some local (or his own) beehive, a lot of people just don’t have those resources. The second problem about his advice is that Dr. Paul Saladino is a very active man, as in incredibly athletic, a surfer, not to mention he does some body building as well, so his body obviously requires a lot more carbs than the average couch potato. The third problem with his advice is that he doesn’t stress enough the part about being metabolically healthy (as I believe his focus there was on the metabolically healthy) when following this particular advice, and what might work very well for an active healthy person such as himself might not work as well for a recovering diabetic, or for that matter, a recovering couch potato-ish carb addict. Now I feel very lucky in that I’ve never been addicted to carbs, never been that much into food, I like how it tastes of course, but I can eat one single strawberry (which I find too sweet these days) and leave it at that. Or say, half of an avocado, or a small handful of berries. So although I’m sure Dr. Paul Saladino’s advice will benefit some, it won’t benefit everyone. But that’s the thing about any WOE, it’s highly individual the way it works, depending on so many different factors.


(Michael) #21

Low testosterone. I recently had to deal with the same issue. In my case, too much protein I suspect that was his problem as well, too lean a diet with too high protein. Insulin signalling will help, as will replacing some protein with carbs. He feels great, wish I did not have IR or I might eat more carbs myself, but I do have IR, so I will not be following him.

Oh yah, I went carnivore from keto due to IBS-D


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22

So add carbs, instead of adjusting the proportion of lean to fat?


#23

I was gaining on carnivore, it was only 2kg mind, but my clothes let me feel the slight difference. I was up to 54kg (I am 5.2) I added back in just a few carbs (vegetables and nuts) whilst staying below the 20 reccommended grams for keto, and I have lost the 2kg I gained, so I’m back down to 52kg. It’s highly individual how this works, and one solution definitely does not fit all.

And I do wonder if there is something to Dr. Paul Saladino’s claim that carnivore is not a ketogenic WOE, as perhaps the high protein amounts people are reccommended to eat kicks them out of ketosis. The other thing, as has been seen in extended fasting also, and calorie restriction (so might work the same way with carb restriction?) is that the body can down regulate metabolism, can also (possibly?) begin to produce glycose because of lack of carbs. There are individual factors involved and so many variables.


#24

My dietary focus is keeping carbs low while meeting all scientifically derived vitamin and mineral requirements (using Cronometer). I have found no way to do this without eating plants. (I will never eat organ meats…) I’ve seen claims that people in ketosis don’t have the same requirements but I’ve never seen anyone post scientific evidence to back that up — just anecdotes.

I searched for evidence on vitamin C in the Inuit diet and found their need was not so different:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

The one that is documented is Vitamin C. Eric Verdin has shown that elevated insulin activates a gene complex that inhibits the body’s endogenous defences against oxidation, and the β-hydroxybutyrate produced on a ketogenic diet deactivates those genes, thus restoring the body’s endogenous anti-oxidant defences, and greatly reducing, if not eliminating, the need for exogenous anti-oxidants. So
β-hydroxybutyrate has epigenetic effects, as well as providing fuel.

Fresh meat has been known for centuries to prevent scurvy. The problem the British Navy faced was that it was impossible to stock enough livestock to provide their sailors with fresh meat on long deployments, so they settled on Vitamin C from lemons and limes, instead. It was simply much easier to stock citrus than to provide fresh meat. (Once the livestock were all eaten, the sailors’ diet became ship’s biscuit and salted beef.)

But you are right that the rest of the speculation is not documented. However, physicians who treat low-carb/keto patients notice lower thyroid values, but no symptoms of hypothyroidism, so there is a growing body of case studies to show that the body may use thyroid hormones more efficiently, without insulin to interfere.


#26

I guess I would ask, what is meant by “fresh meat” (maybe it’s raw, as the Inuits often eat it), and who is eating it now? The paper I cited found borderline scurvy in some Inuits. My point is that even inuits in ketosis seem to need sufficient vitamin C which many of us today probably can’t get from meat alone.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

“Fresh meat” is meat that has been recently killed before cooking, but that has not been preserved in any way, other than by refrigeration or freezing. For example, the diet that Stefansson and Andersen were on, during that year in Bellevue Hospital, and Stefansson for the rest of his life. I suppose it could be eaten raw, but that raises the possibility of other health problems.


#28

Why would be carnivore non-ketogenic while keto with the same amount of protein and possibly more carbs ketogenic then?
People eat more or less protein both on keto and carnivore… Why would I start to eat more protein if I abandon plants? :smiley: (Though yep, vegs brought a ton of fat into my life… But I need that fat anyway so now meat brings it, among others.) More like less as I manage with a tad less food… I met carnivores eating <60g protein and there are normal ketoers eating 2-300g… It’s not about the plants at all.
There is the super fatty version of carnivore too…

Whenever I used Cronometer, it told me I am horribly low at something and I saw no way to change it even eating 40g net carbs a day so I just ignore it :slight_smile: My body doesn’t complain, Cronometer clearly has no idea about my own individual need on my individual diet… Of course, everyone should do their best according to their attitude. I don’t even see a better option than what I have, my body just not into sugars so vegs are pretty much out.

I have read the inuit thing with the algae. The same article talked about them being borderline Vitamin C deficient…
IDK if it’s true and we eat differently anyway, I just do what I can and if I get scurvy, I will notice :smiley: Never managed it yet. But if it will happen, I will just supplement with Vitamin C (or use more lemon, I like lemon and it’s perfectly fine on my own carnivore-ish). I don’t eat any food if I don’t want them.


#29

But if we cook it into oblivion, it still loses more and more Vitamin C… So it’s an uncertain feeling to think about vitamin C from meat when we only eat it well-cooked. Okay, there is a few dish where I only use 30 minutes but that’s it, I don’t eat any meat cooked for a shorter time. (My little raw meat has no Vitamin C as it’s smoked. Sigh.)
I have exactly zero info about what Vitamin C does, I just know it starts to disappear at a lowish temp, longer time is worse and I forgot about the temp where it simply becomes zero but that’s very high.
SOME probably stays but how much? No idea. And if more has some benefit on carnivore…

But as I never faced an obvious problem regarding Vitamin C, I just use my normal attitude and don’t worry about it. There are just too many things to think about, it would damage my mental health.


(Michael) #30

That was Paul’s solution (if I am even correct that too much protein (think above 3.5g/kg) was the cause for him as well as me). I adjusted my fat content up and seem to have fixed my testosterone (not re-measured in lab, but with performance). I am sure carbs would spike insulin without the protein being as high and resolve as well. So hard to confirm for Paul from a distance, but he has stated openly that adding in carbs spiked his insulin and afterwards his testosterone has gone way up. My thoughts are that he also lowered protein intake to compensate and thereby resolved in a similar way to me.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #31

You would cook your meat “into oblivion”? I wouldn’t; I want to enjoy my meals, lol!


#32

Shinita, I am not entirely sure as to the science behind Dr. Paul Saladino claiming the carnivore WOE is not ketogenic. But he has expressed that he thinks this is a good thing, sharing his concerns about remaining in ketosis indefinitely. In terms of the carnivore WOE ceasing to be ketogenic, it may be a matter of the 0 carb allowance eliciting a response from the body, causing it to produce more glucose, and at the same time the body might down regulate metabolism. There may be other mechanisms involved that I don’t know of, Dr. Paul Saladino has been talking about the high protein intake on carnivore stimulating mTor, the growth hormone, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with it. I have to confess I don’t really understand the science behind Dr. Paul Saladino’s claim. When I am next on a computer I’ll share the link to his video.

My own experience was that when I added back just a few carbs (whilst staying well below the keto carb limit) I lost the 2 kg I gained on carnivore. And I am enjoying vegetables again, though only in small quantities. I never did have a carb addiction, so I can eat a strawberry say, and leave it at that. A small handful raspberries, or a small amount of almonds (which I have with my morning coffee along with a couple slices of cheese, that’s my breakfast). But it is all so individual, what works.


#33

@PaulL: That’s why I cook them for 1-3 hours :yum: I am a hedonist, of course I will make them into a tasty crisp I prefer (or soft tenderness if it’s cooking in the stricter sense)! (Okay, not always. I only use 30-60 minutes for liver and other fried stuff.)
It’s not charcoal so it’s good but I doubt it has a lot of Vitamin C left at that point…

What about carnivore with 20g carbs then? Or animal sugar is special even regarding this?
Carnivore has no special carb or protein intake, it can be exactly like a normal keto macro wise…
Oh well, it’s not like I ever cared about ketosis except in the first 7 weeks as I wanted fat adaptation. I ate high protein then too… I just don’t understand it and it very very slightly bothers/interests me sometimes.