Losing body fat?

(Courtney) #1

Hello!

I am new to the “carnivore” lifestyle. I started on 1/28/22, almost exactly two weeks ago. I am doing a transformation challenge at my gym to see who can lower their body fat percentage the most, and on 1/28/22 they took a scan of my body fat, weight, muscle, and fat pounds.
I also have had my whole life awful stomach/digestion issues. (GERD, Celiac Sensitivities (I carry the gene for celiac disease and could have very well adapted to have that over the years of eating), bad acid reflux, and gall bladder issues.
I’m trying carnivore not only for the body fat loss challenge, but also to see how much better my body can feel eating this way. (I was always sick when I ate before)

So far, two weeks in, I feel great mentally, and physically in my stomach. Performance wise though, I feel very weak in the gym, and I have not only lost what seems like muscle, but also a lot of my stamina.

I’m getting nervous that the weight I have lost in the last two weeks has been a lot of muscle and not a lot of fat. (Which is not good in my opinion, I don’t want to lose muscle at a fast pace, and not lose fat pounds)

I’m a 5’2” female, 25 years old.
Beginning marks: 149.5 lbs, 29.3% body fat, 58.9 lbs muscle, 43.7 lbs fat.
2 weeks in: 142.3 lbs (dont test the rest of the info for another two weeks)

Is it common to feel very weak only during workouts? And is it common for my stamina to decrease a lot?

(Allie) #2

Yes to both. You’re asking your body to completely change the way it operates and that takes time to adapt to. Keep on top of electrolytes, add plenty of salt to your food.

(Robin) #3

Welcome and good job! I would ask how many calories you are eating. We don’t focus strongly on calories in keto because they tend to decrease as we make the dietary changes anyway. But make sure you are eating enough. Very important.
I personally didn’t feel tired in the beginning but many do. So it will likely pass.
You may want to hold off on strict carnivore. You might fare better doing a nice clean keto (staying below carbs) first. Then after you have settled in and feel great, carnivore can be a nice easy and natural transition.
Either way, good luck. A competition is a great motivator! You got this!

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

For comparison:

https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/my-carnivore-adventure/112525

The first few days/week you’re losing mostly water stored with glycogen. Since glycogen can store 3+ times it’s own weight of water, it can look like you’re losing muscle. You’re not. That said, you must first lower insulin sufficiently to free up fat stores for use. That’s the ‘cutting carbs’ part. Once the fat stores are open for use, your various organs, cells, etc must then relearn how to use it efficiently for fuel. That takes a while. So you feel tired and weak as the relearning progresses. Will you wake up one morning and feel like a new person? Maybe, some do. For most, it’s just a slow transition over the course of a few weeks or months. Best wishes.

(Tim Cee) #5

Once you get used to carnivore, you’ll put on more power. Also, it seems like a common pitfall is to fear fat. Animal fat is healthy and it’s your best source of energy.

(Joey) #6

@Hi5bell Congratulations and welcome!

Along with echoing the great replies above, I’ll simply emphasize that (assuming you’ve been eating lots of carbs until a couple of weeks ago), your body now needs some time (weeks+) to switch over to burning a new kind of fuel - and weakness and fatigue are not uncommon effects during this transition time.

Longer term, burning ketones will give you greater endurance and just as much strength as you need.

As for GERD, my increasingly annoying reflux disappeared completely within about a month of cutting out the carbs. Since then, it’s never returned. I hope you enjoy the same outcome!

Hang in there - and stay hydrated and salt’ed up :vulcan_salute:

#7

Seeing this weight-loss, I am curious about how much do you eat as too little isn’t the way to go… If you eat well, it’s mostly water and it’s fine… But some people manage to undereat longer term, not just eating at a deficit for some healthy fat-loss but truly eating way too little.

It’s normal to have worse performance while your body does big changes… But I doubt you lose much muscle as long as you eat properly and even use your muscles. Even with performance problems. It should pass but I don’t know how quickly, probably depends? I never was active enough to notice problems when I changed my woe but I did it gradually anyway.
Feeling good is a good sign.
Good luck for reaching your goals!!! :slight_smile:

(Courtney) #8

Great! Thank you so much!!! Do you have certain electrolyte supplements that you recommend? I’ve been adding Redmond’s salt to my water. But as far as the other aspects of electrolytes go, recommendations??

(Courtney) #9

Hi, thank you for the reply!
Calorie wise I’m sitting close to/ around 1800-2000 a day.

I eat some type of ground meat at lunch with some smoked salmon, and a steak or type of lamb shoulders for dinner.

I haven’t used any seasonings other than salt.

(Courtney) #10

My daily calories are around the range of 1800-2000

My BMI is 1,630
And my TDEE I calculated is about 2,300
So at 1800- 2,000 calories I’m in a deficit to lose weight, since I am trying to lose the most body fat in 8 weeks as possible for this transformation challenge.

And I get that a lot of the weight loss so far is water, considering carbs store plenty of it.

I did come from a very SAD before doing this. (I was still working out very heavily and often, but was eating bad because I knew I had a challenge coming up at the beginning of this year)

I guess my biggest concern is losing weight, and muscle. BUT not seeing my body fat go down.

I’m okay with losing some muscle for this challenge, I just want to make sure I’m doing everything correct so that my body fat goes down as well.

#11

Hi Courtney, welcome to the forums.

I think the crucial questions here are:

  1. How long is this competition?
  2. How important is the competition to you?

My observation with carnivore is that it’s a real overhaul of how your body operates. In the long term, the benefits are fantastic - but it can lead to things like short term weight gain or stalled fat loss, depending on your body composition at the start.

These things seem to resolve in the long term if you stay on plan, but if you’re looking to win a short duration competition, carnivore might not be a quick enough solution.

For quick fat loss, you’re looking at some form of PSMF or Showtime diet - one of the ones that’s popular in the bodybuilding communities. But they’re notoriously miserable to follow.

If you can handle the short term stalls and failures whilst your body adjusts, with the long term goal of improvement going forward, then stay on carnivore.

If it’s a short term competition and you really want to win, then maybe it’s not the best route forward. You will be a bit more tired at the start - although I did see better muscle growth on carnivore than with other ways of eating in my younger years; I’m not sure how much was the carnivore way of eating, the vast quantities of red meat with the vital nutrients for building muscle, or the calorie surplus. Or all three.

I’m not trying to put you off; going carnivore is one of the best things I’ve ever done.

(Courtney) #12

The competition is 8 weeks long, I’m finishing up week 2 right now, and we have a mid point body scan at the end of week 4.

The competition is important to me just because Ive convinced myself that I’m going to get very lean with this diet. Which maybe that was the right mindset to be in, but maybe more long term is what you’re saying?

I used to be vegan for a few years, and I will admit that I loved how I looked on it, BUT I HATED eating vegan foods lol. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of junk vegan foods that can be tasty, but when you’re favorite foods is literally meat, it was awful not being able to have steak, chicken, bacon, and lamb.

I see so many people everywhere saying to not eat in a deficit and don’t track calories/macros, but I’m easily a person who can/will over eat if I don’t pay attention.
(One day I decided to eat until I was satiated with ground beef and steak, and I consumed so many calories that I was shocked)

Now I tell myself I need to be conscious of what I’m eating since I’m trying to lose body fat.

(Joey) #13

In short, the healthiest sustainable way to lose body fat:
1- Convert your metabolism into burning your adipose stores of fat…
2- Do this by severely restricting carbohydrates…
3- While eating plenty of healthy fat to fuel your body so it doesn’t shut down…
4- And stay well-hydrated and electrolytes (NaCl, Mg, K) along the way.

Sounds like you’re off to a wonderful start! Hopefully the “competition” doesn’t get in the way of your success. Everybody’s body is unique and comparing results is a slippery slope.

Eat fats and be happy!

(Bob M) #14

Hmmm…Maybe you’re lacking in nutrition those provide? I can tell you right now that I cannot eat that much beef. In fact, beef is my losing weight meat. I eat a pound of top round, and I’m good for 7+ hours. No hunger at all during that time.

But I have been eating a lot of beef for a long time now.

I would say that if you went from a high carb diet to carnivore, that is going to be a challenge, without adding exercise to it. Add exercise, and it’s possible, but it’s going to take a while. Several months is my best guess, before you get back to good workouts.

I had a great workout today, 1h hour and 10 minutes, body weight training to failure. After 32 hours of fasting. But I’ve been doing this for 9 years. Could I have done this two weeks in? No way.

#15

It sounds good to me! Not too little, not too much… As long as your body agrees, of course, sometimes we need to eat much because only that feels right. Of course we have different priorities and that matters a lot.

Wow, SAD->carnivore, that’s tough!
Some little muscle loss probably would happen but I still don’t think it will be serious unless you make some stupid thing but you seem to do it about right?
Hard to tell what is RIGHT as we are all different and we hardly can know our own TDEE… I have some vague guess and that’s good enough for me (not like it influences my food intake anyway, if my body wants food, it gets food) but of course it’s subject to change. And we aren’t calorimeters so it’s complicated. Focusing on calories work differently for different people too but I guess you know what are you doing so I stop.

Wow. Why did you do that then?
And there are lots very proper and very tasty vegan foods if you ask me :smiley: I still would put an egg or 5 on it so I never went that far. I was a vegetarian as I easily skip meat as long as I have other stuff. Vegetarian keto? A bit tough without the usual amount of vegs but fine (on and off, I wasn’t motivated as keto gave me nothing beyond fat adaptation). THEN it turned out my body LOVES extreme low-carb and that’s soooo better than mere ketosis… Meat is a necessity now (but I like it too, just not all the time in big amounts).

Hopefully it will work wonderfully for you! It’s not for everyone but it’s worth to try as it may be what you need.

Yeah it happens. But does it happen again and again? I have shockingly high-cal days (usually after I ate less meat for a while and I have plenty of freshly made roast and it feels the best idea ever to my body, it’s irresistible but I trust my body anyway) but it’s a single day so I suppose my body needs those.
Or I can eat too much every day if my timing is off. Or if I have problem items, not all carnivore food satiates me well.
But many carnivore say that if we feel we need much meat, we should eat much meat.

(Alec) #16

Courtney
My advice:

  1. Treat the Challenge as a bit of short term fun that you may or may not win
  2. Make fixing the stomach issues that you have had all your life your primary focus
  3. Be happy that you have found carnivore that seems to be helping enormously with your stomach issues (same happened to me!)
  4. As others have said, much of your initial weight loss will be mostly water but there will be some fat loss in there as well
  5. Getting fat adapted is what this is all about…. Getting your body to run on fat, including your body fat. This takes time… 6 weeks to 6 months. Body machinery needs to be built, this doesn’t happen overnight
  6. A switch from a carb diet to keto/carnivore diet can make you feel unwell for a couple of weeks… stay with it, things will get better as you get fat adapted.

My short experience on carnivore has been nothing short of miraculous… but I was already fat adapted, which helped a lot! But I am down 5kg in 3 weeks on carnivore and loving it!

One big difference I am seeing between you and me…. I just can’t eat that much meat… I am just not being hungry. I sit down to eat a normal sized steak at a meal and I can’t finish it!

Best of luck.
Cheers
Alec

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #17

Many prominent carnivores (Amber O’Hearn and Dr. Georgia Ede among them) have stated that the reason they stopped eating plant foods was to deal with health problems they could not treat any other way.

This is perfectly normal. After years of insufficient fat intake and excessive glucose intake (in the form of carbohydrate), your muscle cells are coping with damaged mitochondria and have down-regulated other processes involved in fatty-acid metabolism. It will likely take you six to eight weeks for your mitochondria to heal and for those cellular processes to be fully reactivated. We call this process fat-adaptation, and you will know you are fat-adapted when you get your endurance back.

It’s probably mostly water, so no worries. You are getting plenty of protein, so you shouldn’t be losing muscle. As a number of long-term carnivores advise, eat plenty of meat. In fact, they say that the answer to practically any problem a newbie to carnivore experiences is to eat more meat.

(Courtney) #18

Thank you everyone for all of the information! I’m taking it all in and appreciate any and all advice!!
So far I’m loving it!
Once I do my mid point scan, I will share updates/changes in my body.

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4A68E35B-B795-47FA-A780-392943F93672.jpeg1086×1438 593 KB

Idk if this is allowed, but here is my “before” picture. I’ll keep everyone update at week 4 and 8!

#19

I don’t see much evidence of excessive fat I hope you don’t mind me saying.

Maybe it would be best to go keto for a few months before going carnivore?

On keto, I think it will be natural to be largely carnivore anyway…but I’ve never went full carnivore- i like cooking and variation in flavours too much.

Good luck!

(Robin) #20

You look awesome to me. I think what we often consider overweight can sometimes just be our body shape/type. Since you don’t have much to lose, you may not win the comp, unless they go by the percentage of body weight loss… which I think is the only fair way to compare.
But whatever… good luck! (And you are adorable.)