Low carb < keto < carnivore?


(Primalwoodsman) #1

Sharing my progression over the last 25 years, Low carb on and off for 20 years, keto, for around 5 years, .then I craved protein a lot and struggled on keto. Recently carnivore. So I have stocks of keto stuff, hard to toss out. Ok to just use up spices and stuff? Have bags of zero carb sweetners. Thoughts?


(Karen) #2

I once read somewhere…why ‘waist’ food inside of you becausej you cant bear to waste it … ust throw it in bin or give it away.!


#3

Yeah - I read some advice a while ago which was along the lines of, you either:

Take item > put in bin
or
Take item > eat > damage your health > put in toilet

The end result is essentially the same; don’t put your health in the middle of it.

If any of it’s unopened, you can give it away to friends, family, neighbours, a food bank etc - that might work? Or maybe a local keto group on Facebook?


#4

unless you are not sure about carnivore being ‘you just yet’ as a lifestyle change long term, I would keep them IF they are things you can just store for a bit. Out of the way, out of sight, into a back pantry you don’t open alot or something like that before ya chuck it all. You might dump back into keto?

yes use up some spices if you do well on them. No sweetener at all.
Don’t eat any keto stuff like keto bars etc.

but if you feel carnivore is the way you want to grab and keep on going, yea bin them :slight_smile:

wishing you the best!!


(Bob M) #5

While I have no problem if you want to eat carnivore, it’s easy to eat as much protein as you want on keto. This whole “macro” thing should be binned. Are there some people who should eat a ton of fat? Absolutely. Are there others who should eat higher protein, lower fat? Absolutely. Are they both keto? Absolutely.

I fall into the higher protein, lower fat group (at least for now). I eat things like top round, which is low fat, high protein. One pound of top round:

image

So, it’s entirely possible to eat keto while eating as much protein as you want.


(Allie) #6

Just eat more protein?
Many of us don’t limit it at all.


#7

It depends. I don’t throw out anything edible and not clearly harmful to me (I agree with @Karen18, eating something that isn’t good for you is an even worse waste), it’s against my core personality… I use up the stuff I handle well when I actually kind of need it or it’s worth it anyway (eating sweets vs eating carbs, I chose my sweets as it feels great, eating keto bread vs eating wheat bread I don’t even like so much but it’s there and I can’t stomach my carni food), I put the pretty useless low-carb flours (and any other powder, actually) into the wheat breads I bake for my SO…
Well I will compost the herbs, I have so much…
I use up most of the spices anyway so that’s fine.

I would keep the low-carb sweeteners if there is a chance they can be used. I actually bake cakes with them for the family, they are welcomed. But I use sweeteners anyway when I get super bored with my carni food, it’s the tiniest amount of carbs and non-animal stuff I can choose in that situation. Of course, it would be different if my body had anything against them. I have some weird things (like maltitol, thankfully my SO could eat the sucralose mixed with xylitol in fruity things, it took years probably) that I just can’t do much with but I will have very off times one day, it hardly can spoil… But I wouldn’t really cry if someone would throw it away (I can’t. really. just like I tried to buy sugar once to practice icing and just couldn’t)…

Sorry, too many words. So I would try to give it away or make something for friends and family members if they liked that and I liked baking too (I do)… But if you don’t want them, your body doesn’t want them, eating it worse than throwing them out (unless you have some serious mental problem with wasting the money that way, kind of though the waste already happened, you just need to decide what to do with it. so even in that case try to see what’s best and that wasting money happens sometimes, we aren’t all super smart from the very beginning :wink: even I waste money on food, eating something can be a bad waste, I just can do it while throwing out stuff is out of my skillset, it works with everything, I have so many “maybe I will can use this scrap wood for something one day” type things around…).


#8

Yeah I didn’t understand this either. I always ate high protein, all my life, on every diet I was on (my 5 day plant based period was the time when I finally could eat adequate protein only). And I did try and failed. My body wants high protein, period. It’s fine, @Primalwoodsman, many of us are like this :slight_smile: There is such a thing as too much protein but it’s typically very very much. I never could reach it. Once I had it around 5g/kg for LBM but it couldn’t pull it off, well it was just a single day, my average is just a bit beyond 2!

Why to crave protein? I understand it for fat, I would so love to eat more fat but I hate overeating and want to lose fat. But it’s fine, carnivore and even anything close to it lowers my need for food. But protein… I can’t help it, I need much! So I have much. It feels nice.


#9

Of course, with all the protein sources and what else would we eat? (I love fat but can’t just eat that with a tiny protein.)
We don’t even need meat for it, actually (well I don’t). Or lean meat (if it has way less fat than protein in grams, it’s lean in my world). My highest-protein days tend to include copious amounts of pork shoulder roast… I kind of banned it at this point. Fortunately it’s not among my favs.


#10

ZC is ALL about the fat/meat ratio and that ‘suits’ us personally, as we need it, to flip and change about about those ratios, but ALL on a personal very individual time on plan and what we are healing, since our med issues coming into this are never the same with age and more…so…eat all ya need, as you need it, wanting fat eat it up and wanting leaner one day, eat all that :slight_smile: Meat/seafood fish and fowl and go for it all in and enjoy!!! A newbie might never ever eat like an older zc person, so just ‘be new’ and do you at all times :slight_smile: that is the whole thing to zc, eat as you need to eat and never give it another thought, when we overthink it, we truly start a more losing battle


(Bob M) #11

I just said what I said because I listened to Zoe Harcombe recently and she related how she went to a keto/low carb meeting, and sat beside someone who was putting butter on their steak…because of macros.

For me, who started with Atkins, macros have always seemed unreasonable. Mainly, because I’m a “whole food” guy, and to eat 75% fat by calories (or whatever the macro might be), you almost always have to add fat. Even ribeye is less than that (though not by much - but ribeye has gotten eye-wateringly expensive where I am). To me, that’s not “whole food”.

I did go through a high fat phase, after I read Keto Clarity by Jimmy Moore. But I never found satiation in butter or other fats.

I’m not saying everyone should ignore macros, and the PKD and other high-fat diets have their place, particularly for certain people.

But “keto” encompasses a lot, much of which has nothing to do with macros.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

But on the other hand, Dr. Phinney says he also puts butter on his steak, because of satiety. He doesn’t calculate macros. His logic is that he’s no longer eating much in the way of glucose—carbohydrate—so his energy needs to come from some other nutrient; in other words, fat.

(Amino acids—protein—are not, under normal circumstances, used by the body for energy, since (a) they are needed for structural purposes; and (b) there is a much higher energy cost for metabolising them, so the energy yield from glucose and/or fatty acids is much greater. And if one is trying to keep one’s insulin low, fat is much to be preferred as the energy source, since it has a negligible effect on insulin.)


#13

Not with really fatty pork (pretty cheap here)… And there are super fatty dairy items. Yolk is over 75%…

And there is nothing wrong with eating butter because it’s yum even though I don’t do it (too expensive and I can’t afford the fat either. I tend to be around 60% now, it may be a tad low for higher-cal days - still great if I desire that much protein but maybe would be better at higher).
And most of us can’t avoid a tiny added fat. I won’t make my scrambled eggs on water, I just minimize the added fat. But 10g lard a day, I can live with that. (I eat much more pork fat, it’s just the rendered stuff called lard.)

But it’s pretty silly to stick to 75%, no matter what, without a good reason. If one needs it, fine but newbie ketoers wanting 75% because keto says so. Nope. It doesn’t. It’s some popular version for people who love numbers and forced macros but there are no valid reason it to be sooo desirable for everyone on keto.
I can’t comfortably or willingly do 75%, not even 70% because that’s typically overeating in my case and probably feels yuck longer term. 60-65% works loads better for me. Of course I have fattier days here and there. (I eat plenty of fat anyway, percentages have not much to do with that.) That’s when I typically eat way over my needs but if it’s just one day, it’s fine, I may need it.

75% is so, so, so awfully wrong for some of us. And anyway, what if we don’t know the number? And why is it important if we feel right?
It’s a carnivore thread, we don’t need to track to ensure a low carb intake. Our personal keto/carnivore style is another matter but we are very different there. One needs 55-60%, another 90-95… (I don’t want to be THAT active or giant but it must be interesting :slight_smile: Probably not enjoyable, I love fat but I love protein too :smiley: I will be glad if I will be muscular and lean and active enough for 75% fat one day :D).

(Why I started on percentages again. I talk about those since a decade… As it’s so silly to blindly follow some semi-random percentages…)


(Bob M) #14

True, but Zoe Harcombe in the same interview said she sat next to Phinney, and she came back (they were at a buffet) with a plate filled with fruit. He said something like, “I guess if you can do it, you should”. She can eat a lot of fruit; he can’t.

For me, butter does not cause satiety, as I learned not only eating more butter for Keto Clarity, but eating butter for The Croissant Diet. While there were times I combined butter + carbs (as in a croissant), there were plenty of times I just ate ghee + stearic acid, sometimes with cacao butter, but not always. Gained 20+ pounds.

Butter, for me, is a sure way to gain weight.

Now, there may be fats that could be better in this regard, but I haven’t found them yet.

Edit: some other sure ways for me to gain weight: bacon and nuts. I can eat these with no limit and no off switch. Stopped eating them a while back. High in fat, but the opposite of satiating.


#15

I understand where you’re coming from because I felt like this.

But I started adding extra fat recently and I feel a million times better. I’m satiated far faster, and I have a lot more energy.

That’s not to say it’ll be the same for everyone, or that I’ll feel the same in 6 months - but right now, that’s my experience.


(Bob M) #16

I am 100% for trying more fat. Some people do well.


(Allie) #17

I used to add fat just for macros, but now I just let it happen and feel better.
Maybe I should do one of my tracking days just to see where I’m at, out of curiosity.


#18

Bob, I find added fats not satiating either BUT what if I am fully satiated for a day by 1300 kcal (it happened lately, repeatedly) but I do NEED more calories? I can eat fat for energy, it’s better that way due to multiple reasons.
And I am a small, still fat female person, now with a sprained ankle, my activity dropped a bit.
If I needed 3-4000 kcal, I couldn’t eat some lean diet, I would stay HUNGRY and couldn’t eat more meat as my body tends to close that route after I reach 4g/kg for LBM and it’s a smart move from it. When I need more energy, I get hungrier but I can’t eat insane amounts of protein and if I did regularly, I would eat too much protein and suffer from it. I am not even into eating UNNECESSARY amount protein, I just can’t avoid it to some extent (and I easily may need the nutrients anyway).

Wanting to eat a lot of energy from not satiating items may be our very important goal at some point.
When I have undereating days, I often think about this and gladly use my not particularly satiating but delicious, beloved fatty items :wink:


#19

I suspected fat in meat is that but after two massive overeating days involving 1000g pork shoulder roast (raw weight), among other foods, I don’t think so anymore… (I never do anything like that with other cuts, I don’t understand.)
In this very case, fat seems hunger inducing.

But it’s not that simple that this fat (or protein) is satiating, that isn’t. It matters a lot what we actually eat in total. And when. Fatty meat works just fine for me until some extent. Very fatty meat is tricky. It may be my ally but not in bigger quantities. I overeat it too easily.
And I suspect that fowl alone and fowl paired with some properly satiating meat of mine is different but I couldn’t test it well yet. I don’t even know if it’s true that chicken has no satiation effect on me (alone, at least. I eat 1 kg and stays hungry, every time I tried) and turkey is way better or there was some other factor in play…


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #20

You don’t actually need to add much, usually. If the meat you are eating contains equal amounts of protein and fat by weight, that’s 31% and 69%, respectively, by calories.