Keto vs. Carnivore and optimal weight (fat) loss

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(Mary) #50

I hope this isn’t a stupid question, but when you guys talk about carnivore being meat and eggs do you include bacon? (I can give up most things but bacon will have to be pried from my cold, dead hands…)

(traci simpson) #51

I did a meat only type deal years ago and I absolutely had no energy whatsoever. I would eat and then get sleepy as crap. I was constipated and lethargic everyday. I just don’t know how you do it.

(Chris) #52

If eating avocados you’re still getting fiber and thus not allowing yourself to even adapt to carnivore. Some would argue coffee puts you in that category as well. It’s just a more extreme keto.

#53

Bacon is perfectly fine on a carnivore diet

(William Shafer III) #54

I’ll give my 2 cents… I did Keto with occasional fasting from January 2018 till March 2019. Dropped from 340lbs to 260lbs then back up to 277. I stopped doing any intermittent fasting and eat a huge amount of cheese (16oz a day). I then got fed up and cut dairy out half way through March. Dropped back to 268lbs, then decided to go OMAD and am down another 8lbs in April. Carnivore only lasted till mid April. The past few weeks I went back to eating limited veg. and nuts (I eat peppers, onions, mushrooms, and pecans/sunflower seeds) as well as beef and eggs.

One other thing… I don’t here it a lot on any forums but I ferment my veg. (lacto-fermentation) and from my knowledge when you ferment the lacto-bacillus digest a good amount of the carbs and turn them into lactic acid. So, my veg. consumption is most probiotic and fiber.

(L. Amber O'Hearn) #55

I avoid using words like “true” and “pure” (and even “dirty”, because it implies there is a “pure” for which it is the opposite). These terms ignore or deflect from the purpose of the carnivore diet.

Here is an historical lesson: On the original ZIOH forum, there was a falling out between the admins there and a woman, S, who felt that eating some small amount of plants should still be considered carnivore. The admins wanted to have ZIOH be only about plant free diets, because for many of us, and certainly the forum founders, the therapeutic effects don’t kick in just from lowering plants. S left the forum and created her own, which she called Dirty Carnivore (in part appealing to the sexual connotation). I belonged to both fora for several months. At a certain point I left S’s forum, because I and a few others including R, were being ostracised because we didn’t eat any plants, basically accused of being puritanical. S also came onto another third forum just to respond to one of R’s posts, insisting that R was a fraud, because she was “pretending to be a pure carnivore”, but had once in the old forum reported eating a handful of nuts (which she did, and paid for it with symptoms and didn’t do it again). This is what happens when you make it about purity.

Words like “pure” make the mistake of conflating the need or decision to stick to a strict definition of a diet with morality. Moreover, they essentially deny the existence of people who have an acute response to the diet as defined by those people. That is, the definition of the carnivore diet is one that excludes almost all plants with the exception of certain things like coffee, because this is the diet that a group of people got together to talk about how it helped them specifically to follow it. If a diet that is low in plants is helpful to someone, that’s great, but it’s not the carnivore diet that we are talking about. Someone who normally eats no plants and then one day eats a small amount of plants doesn’t become a non-carnivore because of that, because it is not about faithfulness or purity, but someone who normally eats a small amount of plants isn’t eating a carnivore diet, period. I’m sure there are tricky edge cases we could take to a judge, but the meaning should be clear.

Words like “true” evince confusion with the purpose of the diet. The diet is not an attempt to try to mimic the diet of other carnivorous animals! Besides, the definition of carnivore as it pertains to species is fraught with complexity, as I’ve argued many times in the past. I have an entire book chapter (not yet published) devoted to this problem. It’s a complete red herring. It’s not what is meant by a carnivore diet. What other carnivores do or don’t do is irrelevant.

Why not avocado?
(Chris) #56

Such a simple explanation. Thanks @amber.

(Heath Braunstein) #57

I often do carnivore meals and find that i have reduced my overall veg consumption since going keto

(George) #58

Forgot to ask this before, but did you gain any weight after ending carnivore, or any weight when starting carnivore?

(William Shafer III) #59

Hi there. I definitely didn’t gain any weight but to be honest at the time I transitioned from carnivore back to keto I also switched over to OMAD so that does complicate things a bit. I would say it depends on how many nuts and veggies you add back as well as which ones. My net carbs are still well below 20 grams. I usually am between 10-15g net carbs daily.

(George) #60

Well I’ve been OMAD for a while and plan to stay OMAD. I don’t really eat many nuts to begin with, maybe a handful of almonds every 2 to 3 days, if that. The only veggies I consume now are pretty much spinach, Asparagus, brussel sprouts, avocados and lettuce. Occasionally broccoli too, but main the leafy ones.

I’m going sort of carnivore/ZC next week just to try it out, and hoping I dont gain any weight from it. I’m not expecting that I will. I feel I have lost a ton this week (won’t check for sure till Sunday, but this week I just had fatty salads (spinach, chicken thigh meat cooked in butter, cheese, tons of extra virgin olive oil, bacon bits, avocados, pork rinds,etc. all in the salads) so I’d hate to see a gain if I indeed did lose alot this week.

(William Shafer III) #61

Looks like you’ve been doing a pretty standard keto. Nothing really stands out, all the veggie’s you’ve been eating are low starch high fiber. The one bit of advice I’d give for carnivore is you might want to consider beef, lamb, venison, etc. Chicken is less calorie dense than ruminants I found if I eat only chicken I’d have to eat approx. 25% more. Beef makes OMAD easier IMHO.

(George) #62

I definitely agree. I usually eat ribeyes or NY strips, I just happened to get a free pack of thighs from my mother in law last week, and since I meal prep for the week out of convenience, I settled on those salads.

A typical go-to meal I have other than those salads every once in a while consists of about 7-8 oz of beef cooked in butter, a butter fried egg on top, bacon wrapped asparagus cooked in it’s own fat and maybe some olive oil on top too for the hell of if it, a whole avocado, pork rinds, and maybe some feta cheese. I like to keep it simple.

So pretty much next week I’ll just be eliminating the veg and dairy, so, OMAD steaks, butter, bacon, eggs, and pork fat all week.

(William Shafer III) #63

Best of luck you’ll have to keep us posted! Just to give more examples for people I list what today look like: I cooked 12oz of beef, 12oz of spiral ham (parents gave me ham, need to use it up) 2 slices of bacon (chopped) I cook all that in a skillet till browned. Then I add 1/2 cup of yellow onion, three stalks of green onion, 1 minced Jalapeno, and 1/2 cup of red bell pepper. I cook the mix till the veggies wilt then wisked 4 eggs together and pour into mix. Other than a big scramble I do a protein shake with some Lionsmane extract in it and maybe 1/8 a cup of lacto-fermented veggies to aid digestion. Typical macro’s approx. 70 fat / 27 protein / 3 carb. Hope this helps give somebody another prospective.

(George) #64

That sounds delicious and filling!

I tried upping my intake similarly to what you just posted a few weeks ago out of fear that I wasn’t consuming enough calories, especially on OMAD, but it was a daily struggle to eat. I think I was having 5 egg omelette with a little heavy cream and spinach in the mixture, butter, homemade mayo, cheese, approx. 10 oz steak, and I felt beyond stuffed after each meal. Granted, I still lost a little weight at the end of the week even though I was eating well past my satiety threshold., but that was after a 60ish hour fast (I fast 36+ every week),

#66

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(Richard M) #67

That is what I am wondering. I have been trying the carnivore diet for 2 weeks and I’m a lot more hungry than on a LCHF KETO diet. I ate breakfast this morning for the first since December. Is that normal? And fill more bloated. And I can not fast as long as on keto. Is that normal and has anyone else had the same experience.
I will probably go back to keto and try carnivore later. I loved the control I had on keto. But I will keep on researching carnivore diet.
I have to ask the most debated question. Does excessive protein get stored as fat?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #68

Carnivores tend to eat twice as much meat as they did on their ketogenic diet. Eat to satisfy your hunger.

As for excessive protein, I suppose it depends on how you define “excessive.” We don’t really advise eating more than 2 g/kg lean body mass/day. The body has a limited ability to store amino acids, and the excess has to be disposed of, in one way or another. One way is to deaminate them (i.e., remove the nitrogen), excreting the ammonia generated in the urine, and finding some way to deal with the amino acid remnants. Within certain limits, these remnants can be converted into either glucose or fatty acids, depending on which amino acid they originally were, and those molecules can then be metabolised. I suppose that the excess could be stored as fat, if insulin could be persuaded to rise; otherwise they would have to be excreted, if not metabolised. At some point, the excess of ammonia from the deamination process overwhelms the uric acid pathway, and ammonia toxicity becomes a problem.

#69

Do you know how your macros changed? I usually need more meals to eat enough on carnivore as my meals often are much smaller due to my ridiculously easy satiation… But I still get hungry if I don’t eat enough.
I can’t fast on carnivore, yep. Even my very natural IF that I have on all other diet is in danger, it’s due to my smaller meals. Sometimes I need 6 meals or 2 but with a huge eating window (I very typically, almost always get hungry 3 hours after my meal except the last one of the day on any woe except carnivore. it’s 1-12 hours on it). Keto was consistent and convenient (just not good enough, I need extreme low-carb), I must solve this problem on carnivore too and I will. Maybe it takes time.
And food choices are very important. Meat is often too satiating for me and I have not satiating items so if I really want, I can do TMAD and occasionally OMAD but it takes much effort and feels less natural, I couldn’t do it longer term, it must come somewhat naturally.

Sometimes it’s boredness with my food that keeps my energy intake low-ish for a little while but it can be solved with huge variety. I think. I never went beyond 2 weeks for various reasons.

I would (and do) experiment with different styles, fattier/leaner, more or less meat, different kinds of meat etc. to see what works best. I start to figure out after more than a year on/off carnivore-ish but there are still so many experiments to do! :slight_smile:

Breakfast after a long time without it? I only am hungry early (after years almost never eating before noon or rather 2-3pm) if I simply didn’t eat enough in the previous days… I don’t know what the reason of your body but maybe it wants more food, it sounds a valid option to me not only because I have that…

But it’s possible the jump was too big for you. I do things a bit gradually as I need that and I had to be ready for the changes first anyway.
So you may be right, trying it later may yield better results. But it’s possible you can’t avoid some harder times in the beginning.

Good luck on your woe, whatever style you choose!

(Bob M) #70

I eat way more protein than that. Today, I had about 1 pound of top round, so about 140 grams of protein, for my first meal. I also had some cheese. My last DEXA scan indicated I had about 130 pounds of lean mass, but I’ve gained more muscle since then. Let’s say 150 pounds, which is unlikely, but it’ll do. That’s about 75kg, so 150 grams of protein.

I’m basically near/at 150 grams for my first meal.

Today, we’ll likely have the roast beef I made over the weekend (my lunch was sous vide-ed top round; the roast beef was made in the oven). The roast beef is made of…top round. I’ll easily eat another pound.

So, I’m at near or above 300g of protein, so 4g/kg, a day. And this is a pretty normal day, though on the higher side of protein. But I’m consistently well above 2g/kg/day.