Keto to Carnivore

(Kiethen) #1

Hi friends, first off the bat just wanted to say I’m super glad to have found this community that helped me through my journey from when I first started keto last month, just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has helped me!

So I transition from Keto to carnivore last week. Today marks a week. The heart palpitations went away on carnivore that I experienced on keto. But for some reason I’m a bit more hungry on carnivore. I’ll be full but I won’t be full for long. Also having cravings of sweets such as fruits. And carbs here and there. I dreamt of eating fruits 2 nights ago LOL. I’m eating 1800 CAL a day. 128 grams of protein and 148 grams of fats. Could it just be my body transitioning from no carbs at all? On keto I was eating 50 grams or less of carbs, now 0.

(Alec) #2

Your body may take a while to get used to zero carb… if you have cravings it means you still have some carb addiction going on. Stay strong.

My advice in the early days of carnivore is to eat when hungry… don’t worry about calories or macros, just eat meat and eggs to your heart’s content. As you progress, your hormones will regulate and you can start trusting your hunger signals. But if hungry, go eat a fatty steak. Your body will tell you very fast when it’s had enough: the meat will start tasting not so nice in the middle of the meal, and I find that fat starts tasting too rich when my body has had enough. At that point it just becomes hard to eat more.

Good luck, and welcome to the light side!

(Kiethen) #3

Let me try some ribeye’s tonight! I have been eating steak but not fatty ones!

(Kiethen) #4

Oh quick question, is it normal starting out carnivore to be full but still crave carbs and sugar? cause I’m so fully right now but I’m wanting sugar and carbs haha

#5

That sounds like still some carb addiction.

Personally, I can only do carnivore for a week or two at a time, then I start craving things like spinach and tomatoes and even lemons.

I have been on keto/low carb/carnivore for years now, lost a ton of weight. I find I get stalls periodically and I let them happen. Eventually, when it’s too long for even me, I go strict carnivore and it jump starts my loss again.

But I never last, and don’t need to, once the process has started again, I go back to Keto. This has worked for me.

But if it’s sweet you crave, you’re probably just entering ketosis again. Don’t give in, eat fat.

(Kiethen) #6

If this issue doesn’t go away by the end of the week I will switch back to keto

(Alec) #7

No, no, no, this is giving in to cravings. No, it’s not normal, but I think it can happen…. If you are feeling full but you still want to eat carbs, it is definitely an addiction talking… and feeding an addiction is unwise. I would say give it at least a month to see if the cravings subside.

If I really want something sweet, then I have some warmed up cream cheese with some sweetener in it with double cream on top.

#8

I have such times on carnivore, it’s due to my smaller meals (carnivore food satiates me the best and sometimes they do it unusually quickly and easily). But it’s not very common, thankfully, I so hate when I need to eat 5 times in 5-6 hours to get longer term satiation… One can play with different food sources, I suppose, I just have such days and it can’t help much.

Fruit craving, I had that when I jumped into keto from very fresh low-carb times. I quit for some years then, if I crave something, I eat it especially when I am heavily affected physically too. So I can’t help with that. When (many, many years later) I tried out carnivore, my need for fruit (and nuts and sweets and everything) DISAPPEARED (only my coffee addiction stayed with me). I ate fruit every day on keto, it was so odd to lose this need… But our body should be ready for it I suppose. You are still very close to your carbier/carby times and certain changes take a long time.

If you get hungry, eat. Do you eat 1800 kcal because you think you need this or you just get satiated by this amount each and every day? My numbers are all over the place, sometimes I get hungier, sometimes I want to eat a chicken leg (330g meat and skin with almost zero satiation effect so I get hungry soon and I don’t eat it all alone but with eggs and pork… sigh. but it’s fun to eat it sometimes)… For me, red meat always work. If I eat my fill of it, I get satiated for a longer time. (It wouldn’t work with lean meat but I eat a lot of fat even if I try not to so I get my fat while I get my protein.)

#9

Good fatty meat always tastes the same to me, sure, it’s nicer when I am hungry and my body welcomes the food but the flavors never change. I have this with most food.
I get a stop sign when I focus on meat, quite often. I just suddenly notice I had enough and that’s it. It’s still tasty but I don’t want it and the idea of eating is so wrong I don’t even try. Very interesting phenomenon, I never had that before (I ate no meat on keto and low-carb or only very occasionally so I couldn’t notice it back then. but carbs easily interfere anyway.)

Hmmm odd, I don’t have that on carnivore but it reminds me of people (like me) having a dessert stomach. I had enough of my normal food, I am not hungry anymore so it’s time for dessert! (It’s a habit. I used to have dessert in the end of most of my meals for decades. And I love my desserts.)
I kind of have that on carnivore too, not nearly as often as before, a lot of satiating meat turns this off easily… And it’s just a mental thing for dessert, I definitely don’t want carbs. I eat some cottage cheese or something and I am okay :slight_smile: I used coffee for this role too but I quit (day #2 now, I rarely get to this number… sigh).
So maybe it’s that and you can substitute…? But if you specifically want carbs, it may not work…
But maybe it’s just some lingering habit and if you can handle it and not give in, it will go away…? I can’t possibly know.
You can try various carnivore items, maybe some can help? Whatever you individual woe allows. It’s easy for me as I have sweet, very dessert-y stuff like cream :wink: nice tempting stuff like some cured pork or sausage… I always can find something when I want some fun bites in the end of my meal. (Sometimes I go a tad further, that’s why I do carnivore-ish. I just couldn’t stick to pure carnivore for long, it just would give me mental anguish and I don’t see the point in my own case. I always worked well with extras if they were kept in very, very tiny amounts. Without them I would quit in no time. I do try to be stricter but I have my limits. They are different every time so my woe gets stricter and looser too. It wouldn’t do to be all relaxed all the time, that’s a slippery slope.)

I thought maybe I shouldn’t write about my abnormal style - but if you think about going back to keto, maybe it can be relevant. Maybe not now, I don’t know what you are ready for at the moment… But staying close to carnivore and doing keto with 40-50g carbs (I can do 40 net, maybe 45 but 50 is probably not keto for me), that can be extremely different. It is for me. I relax a bit when I feel restricted or seriously tempted or just can’t see a better option (I got bored of meat all the time in the first few years. it has just recently changed. I was super hungry and couldn’t stomach anything carnivore… how odd is it to me now…) - but I still stay as close to carnivore as comfortable possible, most of the time. As this is the best to me. My old keto for several days wouldn’t end well for me (well it wouldn’t happen. I would start to eat more carbs after 1-2 days despite I don’t really want carbs but there are some nice stuff and the keto carbs bring ideas).
So maybe something else would be best, not the old keto (though it’s still pretty new in your case), not carnivore if you can’t handle it yet… I don’t even have a fixed woe as that doesn’t suit me. I have a default one but I should be flexible as I can’t force myself into too small boxes, apparently. But I don’t forcefully keep my days relaxed, in the contrary, I go for the strictest comfortable if that still makes sense to me and let carnivore change me more. So being stricter get way easier. And even if I have my wild, very free day when everything is allowed… I still want my pork and eggs, mostly. My ultimate end goal is eating whatever I fancy whenever I want all the time and eating in the ideal way for my body and mind simultaneously. It’s not too bad now but it’s not that perfect yet.

Whatever you will do, good luck to find your sweet spot! :slight_smile:

#10

Congrats on going carnivore. You will love this lifestyle if you hold it and don’t eat the plants and fruits :slight_smile: :slight_smile: Only way truly to get best benefits and changes is to literally hold the plan tight.

You aren’t truly having a carb addiction here…what you are experiencing is carb withdrawl. You are off carbs and now your body wants them back. Carb addiction is more like…you must eat fruits, sugar, junky cause more thru like habit or emotional eating for comfort and all that more mental aspect stuff of that term addiction but of course your body is responding also with the carb withdrawl aspects. As you dump them your body knows it and wants them back, so carb withdrawl is your issue here and only way to beat this is to not allow them back, by any means. Dump then and eat ALL you need on carnivore to be satisfied and happy and full. Do not count macros or anything.

Key to new on ZC is eat all the meat/seafood fish and fowl you need. Your body is now wanting more nutritional value for repair/healing and balancing hormones so zc food is required to make that process happen so never skimp. Eat all you need at all times.

Once thru detox and fat adapt and more into healing transitions things will level out but the beginning can be tough for many of us. Hold strong and best of luck!

(Fast Freddy) #11

If you are hungry you are not eating enough and/or not eating enough fat. Some Carnivores eat 2-3 lbs of meat daily. Listen to your body and give it more.

(Fast Freddy) #12

Thats the issue right there - Carnivore is fatty meats.

(Fast Freddy) #13

You dont count calories on Carnivore, you eat fatty meat until your comfortably stuffed.

(Geezy) #14

So, @Kiethenbbundy, how are you doing? Still hanging in there?

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #15

Think I might give Carnivore a try.
Do I need anything? Apart from a sharper knife and a bigger gas and lecky budget?

#16

I don’t understand your last sentence (and I thought I got okay at understanding English in the last few decades) but I don’t think one needs anything beyond what they probably have anyway. Though a bigger freezer may come handy :smiley: My next fridge will be way bigger especially in that department… Still not a standalone freezer but the latter can be useful for people who likes to buy half an animal from a farm sometimes :wink:

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #17

Sharp knife for meat and gas and electricity for cooking meat. (replacing raw veg)

#18

Thanks. I got the knife, of course, couldn’t figure out what “lecky” means. Plant food doesn’t seem to require less cooking to me, I can imagine it takes more as I need way more of it. It depends though. People can use zero cooking to many hours on meat and plants are similar though they are okay with up to 1-2 hours. But I don’t go higher even with meat.
IDK the electricity costs elsewhere but the food ingredients are the real cost, not cooking it. Storing too if one has a big freezer but I don’t and modern fridges use little energy.
Sometimes I calculate my food costs and cooking is just negligible.

(Geezy) #19

This pretty much covers it Peter.
The carnivore food pyramid.

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(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #20

Many thanks :yum:
I’m now doing one of my 2MAD as Carnivore (dirty) So far so good. Hoping to trigger more weight loss. Already noticed the expected lack of poop.