Not losing anything

carnivore
(William) #1

Greetings,

I didn’t want to hijack the other recent post since that person is keto. I have been doing carnivore for almost six weeks and I haven’t lost any weight or inches at all.
I am a 40 years old male from Belgium, 216 lbs, 30% body fat. I am only eating around 2 pounds of 85/15 ground beef with tallow or butter. I’m not really active and don’t exercise.

I was keto-carnivore (the only green thing I ate back then were spinach!) back in 2018 when I decided to stop smoking, stop the sugar and stop eating junk food all at the same time, starting at 209lbs with 26% body fat. It worked wonderfully and I melted quite fast. Then 2020 came and I completely lost track and went back to eating cookies and milk.

I never cared for vegetables or fruits so that was easy but I wasn’t a big fan of meat either.

Back to now, I didn’t have any cravings during these six weeks and I often found myself forcing to eat because almost everyone is saying that I need at least 2 lbs and a lot of fat. The thing is, if I didn’t force it I would feel like I was starving. And I would also feel deep hunger while eating and right after eating. This sensation was sometimes mistaken for thirst.

My sleep is great as long as I don’t overdo the proteins, I am salting to taste. My energy is constant throughout the day but not that different from before, unless I don’t eat, in which case I crash, making me think I am not yet fat adapted.

To be honest I don’t care about not losing weight but I’m wondering why I am not losing any fat or inches at all, my clothes fit exactly the same, my waist and chest measurements are exactly the same.

I’m looking for ideas on things to try as this forum is the only place I deem nice enough, reddit seems… weird! I have been reading the forum for a while but I’m not one who posts often on the internet.

What I started two days ago was stop forcing the fat to see how I feel. The next thing will probably be to lessen the salt as I feel somehow bloated since the beginning. I often burp a lot after eating, which I guess could point to fat malabsorption.

Sorry if my English is not good and thanks in advance for your ideas.

(KM) #2

Welcome!

Your plan sounds reasonable to me. And so does your English! Of course going too low can backfire, but the beef alone is about 2000 cal. I’ll be interested to see if a bit less fat helps you. Good luck!

#3

I don’t think you need to force fat. Of course you shouldn’t starve but 2 pounds of meat with extra fat? You probably don’t need that much. Some people do so I don’t know but I easily imagine you don’t even need that much protein and I have no idea how much fat you eat.

Hmmm… Beef only is a great elimination diet but maybe you could avoid forceful eating if you add other carnivore items? Maybe it’s just for long term, you may have good reason to do the strictest version and despite everything, you actually can do it!

But eating a bit less may not be good enough as…

What if you eat the meat but with less fat? Do you need the protein or all the fat too to be satiated? And you feel starving even hours later?

Oh that’s horrible. I have that sometimes on some weird hungry days but not all the time, I would go crazy. Meat (especially beef but red meat works for me in general) usually gives people nice satiation, even a stop sign… I have mixed experiences but a lot of meat at once is usually quite satiating… Timing is important for me. How many meals do you have? Did you try it differently? I have lots of hunger on days with more, smaller meals and a really substantial meal easily last for very, very long and I have perfect satiation for most of the time, it’s great!
Oh and we aren’t robots. Sometimes we need less food, sometimes we need a lot. If you really don’t want much meat on some day and you feel okay with less, eat less. Just not too often, we all need our nutrients.

Good luck!

English is my 3rd language but the most used language in my life at the moment and I read a lot… Your English seems quite fine to me.

(William) #4

Thank you!

Meat is very expensive here in Belgium and not particularly good, that’s why I only eat ground beef from my butcher. Pork makes me nauseous for some reason, I try adding bacon from time to time because I like the taste but it’s not great. Eggs cause me issues, even pasture-raised. I sometimes eat lamb, which I love, but it’s a treat.

We have cattle here that are called “Blanc Bleu Belge” (meaning literally White, Blue, Belgian but called Belgian Blue in English), it’s supposedly the pride of the country, the beasts are sadly an abomination, bred to have the least fat possible, they even need help to give birth and many other things they are supposed to do by themselves. And they taste like cardboard.

I have been doing this for two days, it’s ok. I still have that weird deep hunger feeling while eating and right after eating that goes away after several hours but I don’t have it at all during the night.
I felt a little weak today so I added a little more fat, I still don’t think I am fat adapted.

Two to four meals a day at the moment, pretty much the same quantity everyday with some days where I ate 1,5x more, at no specific hours.

#5

How active are you? Do you work out? Even if you do, would you say you’re sedentary otherwise? You say just 2lbs of 85/15 and some beef tallow or butter, you’re looking at 2000-2300cals right there, which is a days worth for many, and if your metabolic rate isn’t great, you’re probably just over eating.

(William) #6

I’m quite inactive, no working out, very little walking.
I thought about overeating too but I can’t eat less than that for now, I feel too much stress and hunger if I do. I will keep trying not to add any fat to the ground beef and see how this goes.

(Megan) #7

@Vnfo

Hi William, welcome to the forum. My advice is to (a) give it more time and (b) find out what works for you. I’ve also come across the 2 pound a day thing but, like every way of eating, what works for some people isn’t what will work for others. When I started eating carnivore, and how I continue to eat carnivore today, is I eat until I feel comfortably full. It started off as a physical experience of feeling “comfortably full” and as time has gone on it’s become more of a mind as well as body experience where I think things like “Ahh that was good, I think I’ve had enough”.

Remember you are 6 years older and who knows how your body may have changed, so try not to compare your 2024 progress with your 2018 progress.

No idea about the “I would also feel deep hunger while eating and right after eating” sorry.

I don’t add any fat to what I eat and, imo, you don’t need to. I just make sure I eat fatty cuts of meat like 80/20 ground beef and pork shoulder. I also wouldn’t force yourself to do anything. I eat when I am hungry and don’t eat when I am not. If that means I have some very low-calorie days, so what? The following days will have plenty of high-quality calories. I also have days I am very hungry and when that happens I eat more. Again, so what? I didn’t start off this relaxed about what I eat, I read too many conflicting opinions online and watched too many YouTube videos and got myself super frustrated and stressed out lol. I can’t remember what helped me to just chill out and eat however much I was hungry for but I’m very glad I did.

Weight loss started off slowly and it took 3 or 4 weeks to get going, but over the period of the 1st 9 months I averaged out at just over 1 pound a week which I was really happy with. Nice slow, steady, safe weight loss. And this was despite eating 3-4 pounds of meat a day plus another 500-700 calories in cream and cheese :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Btw I am female, completely sedentary, 60 years old at the time of that 9 month period (62 years old now), 6 foot 3 inches tall and my starting weight was 270 pounds. I now eat about 1.5 pounds of meat most days and not quite so much cream and cheese. But if I’m particularly hungry I have no qualms about eating more meat.

Your English is great! :smile:

(Geoffrey) #8

Ok, my two cents worth.
I don’t know what your issue may be but from the standard foundation of the carnivore diet one should be getting about 70% of your calories from animal fats and only 30% from protein. From there you can adjust to what your individual body needs are. Do you track your macros? That may help you to see if what you are doing is a good start.
I never did track anything. I just ate when I was hungry and ate as much as I wanted until the food stopped tasting good. I ate fatty meat and cooked everything in animal fat and if the meat wasn’t fatty enough, such as chicken, I would drown it in butter or tallow. Your hamburger sounds pretty lean to me and with most hamburger the fat is cooked out so when I eat hamburger I will always put some butter on it and pour some of the extruded fat from the pan over the burger. I ate lots of eggs. I understand that not everyone can tolerate eggs but I’ve read that many people who are sensitive to eggs tend to be sensitive only to the egg whites and not the yolks. Something to think about.
I’m glad to hear you say that you are not too concerned about losing weight because this is not a weight loss diet but rather a heath optimization diet. Weight loss is a wonderful side benefit but try to remember that we are all different and these ketogenic diets affect and work in us differently. We have to find the path that suits us best.
This is not a miracle cure all though sometimes we receive so many benefits from it that it seems miraculous but since we didn’t get unhealthy overnight don’t expect to be healed overnight. It can take some time and for some things it can take years. Overall health and weight loss generally not being one of them.
For instance Kelly Hogan didn’t experience weight loss for six months. He body had to start healing before it could begin dropping the fat. Granted, women tend to have a harder time of it then men but it just shows that we are all different.
I would suggest that you need to evaluate how you are eating and possibly make some changes. You might incorporate some fasting as well. Then give it more time and just focus on eating a nutrient dense diet to maintain a healthy metabolism.
Oh and btw, your english is excellent, probably better than mine.

#9

Wouldn’t we need to get a proper amount of protein, according to out needs? Be it 10 or 40%? It makes way more sense to me and I do exactly that, not like I am physically able to do otherwise, my protein is always in its natural range (not the ideal one, maybe but what I can do). Even if one has no idea how much protein they should eat, focus on grams or just satiation sounds better to me. But of course, 70% may work well for many as a starting point. I already knew it’s WAY too high for me when I went keto so of course I tried to stay significantly below, with mixed results. I love fat… But we all are able to change (I mean, I always will love fat to bits but I can lower my fat percentage somewhat if I am motivated. And it’s a big feat.)
70% is an awesome percentage, by the way, many good very low-carb food groups have several items around there and if a bit more fat is needed, some added fat (like butter, almost everyone likes it, right?) helps.

Sometimes I wonder, people who have this taste change… They ever had overeating problems? Maybe many had but only with carbs. Tasty food NEVER stops being tasty to me and my SO, we thought it’s a general thing… Desire towards it may or may not change, it depends but the taste stays about the same. It must be so helpful but confusing too when one experiences it differently.

(Megan) #10

Food, in general, never stops tasting good to me unless the only thing on my plate, and next meals plate, and the meal following that is meat and nothing else. I’ve been an overeater all my life and find it next to impossible to significantly overeat e.g. cooked 80/20 ground beef or pork shoulder. It doesn’t exactly stop tasting okay, it’s more that I don’t want to eat any more.

(Megan) #11

The standard foundation of the carnivore diet is food from animals only, nothing from plants. A relaxed carnivore way of eating can include a small amount of herbs and spices if needed to make meat taste good but many people stop using them as time passes and tastes change.

There are people who strongly advocate a focus on fat and a limiting of protein, there are people who advocate just eating fatty cuts of meat and adding a fat source if quite a bit of the preferred meat is lean. Find what works for you @Vnfo William.

I really take my hat off to Kelly, no way would I have hung in there as long as she did!

(Geoffrey) #12

Yes that is true but so is my statement. It is the fat over the protein that is what’s important and that is foundational.

#13

If you are sure you are doing everything correctly in the food department, consider these:

—

:point_right: The way to control the main hormonal gatekeepers of a fat cell:

  1. Insulin > Minimize carbs, eat fewer times but same ammount
  2. Testosterone > Exercise, limit alcohol
  3. Cortisol > Practise relaxation, good sleep
  4. Estrogen > Good sleep, limit exposure to EDCs
  5. HSL (hormone sensitive lipase) > Everything above + caffeine, cold exposure, certain supplements

I can tell you that good exercise and sleep are very effective dealing with all of the above. I would recommend add in exercise couple times a week and keep eating the same and check weight & measurements again in a month. :v:

(Geoffrey) #14

We do get plenty of protein. It’s measured by percentage of calories not by weight. Fat by weight is higher in calories than protein so when you eat a very fatty piece of meat, like a ribeye, the protein will outweigh the fat but the percentage of calories will put the fat ahead of the protein so it works out to around 70% calories from fat and 30% calories from protein.

It’s not a matter of changing tastes or any kind of eating disorder. It’s all about becoming satiated from the fat you are eating. It truly means you are full. I only eat when I’m hungry. That’s my body’s way of telling me that it needs fuel. Food tastes so good when I’m hungry. Then I eat until it just isn’t tasting good anymore. I just can’t take another bite. That’s my body’s way of telling me that it doesn’t need anymore food for fuel.

(William) #15

I’m not really active and I don’t “feel” like working out for now, overeating is a possibility but considering I feel my body stressing if I don’t eat that much, I don’t think I can eat less at the moment.

(William) #16

Thank you for your answer, it was my fourth day of no added fat yesterday and I felt some anger midday which surprised me because I’m very rarely angry, I already ate 1lb in the morning. I ate some fat and it went away after an hour, I guess I have to find a middle ground but my weight/inches still won’t budge.

Maybe I’m impatient and I should stop reading forums with all these posts about losing a bunch of weight on the first weeks, I find myself more calm and less confused the less I read Reddit or watch YouTube videos. I’m just physically tired of carrying all that fat and really didn’t expect to not lose anything in 6 weeks.

(William) #17

I’m writing everything since the first day to follow how I react to things, the only thing I eyeball is added fat because I don’t want to bother to weigh everything. I’d rather not track anything but thought I would do it in the beginning. I pour the fat of the ground beef back in the plate.
I was at about 70 to 80% fat up until some days ago and now I’m at about 65% fat. I will give at least a week of less added fat to see how it goes.

(William) #18

I’m guessing the next step if nothing changes will be to force exercising, I’m repairing an old bike and I live in a very hilly area.

#19

That large drops at the beginning are stored muscle glycogen and subcutaneous water, the fat comes off at the same speed either way.

But on the exercise, keep in mind that it’s a negative feedback loop, the more you don’t, the more you won’t want to. At some point you’ll have to force it, once you do, you’ll start feeling better, which will make you want to do it more. If your BF% is truly that high, you gotta at some point if you want to keep make good progress and be healthy. The beating on your internals and heart is huge otherwise. It can be as simple as 15min walks after meals. Doesn’t have to be crazy, especially at first. Just walks after meals have a pretty decent effect on glucose levels, which will work for you all day long.

(Robin) #20

Regarding adding exercise to lose weight. If you do, you will need to add sufficient calories to support it.
Since you are not a natural fan of exercising… I would not add something that you won’t be able to (or want to) keep doing. I didn’t begin exercising until a year later, when I felt I had a firm grip on my diet and then wanted to become stronger.

Some people lose weight fast and easy. But many of us do not. It really is a process and patience is your friend.
You got this