OXtoberFest ZC Challenge

(Alex) #348

hey guys, I’ve been a bit of a plonker today.

Woke up at 3.45 after a nightmare where I was having an allergic reaction and my throat was too dry to swallow an antihistamine and I didn’t have any water. (think the histamine thing is getting to me a bit).
I’m working on a job application at the moment and I was super tired and my little tired brain decided coffee would give me energy.

Now I don’t drink coffee because a) it causes me to have panic attacks and feel like I’m dying, and b) i struggle to manage electrolytes when it’s my system.

Tired monkey brain forgot that and when the first one made me less sleepy after twenty minutes I decided to have another one. An hour later I’d gone for a wee 5 or 6 times and then I started having heart palpitations, started to panic and tried to calm myself with breathing techniques. Struggling to think I ended up taking a swig of rum neat which was enough of a shock to stop me dissociating. Still having crazy heartbearts, kinda weak and then a couple of really strong ones, weird rhythms, fun stuff.

Grabbed a burger out the freezer and nuked it in the microwave. I felt like I needed to raise my blood sugar gently so I munched half the burger while I heated a couple of pieces of cauliflower, and then ate the other half with cauliflower mash and butter and salt, and had 2tbsp of frozen berries after. Then did some yoga to try and stay calm while I digested.

Thankfully this seemed to work, my heartbeat stabilised and was a lot stronger, and eating the half a burger first seemed to prevent a spike in blood sugar.

2 hours later and I still feel like everything is wrong with the world and like someone’s watching me. Bloody caffeine! A curse on all your beans!

Anyway, just needed to rant about the shambles of a day I’ve had so far. It’s not been strict zc but I did the best I could with limited brain function. Looking forward to a much less panicky burger for dinner and I’m gonna do some electrolyte water for a couple of days as I feel super dehydrated still.

Patiently waiting for my glorious inner peace and joy to return. :grimacing:

(Edith) #349

Yesterday, was a good carnivore day.

Lunch:
Canadian bacon
hamburger with 20% organ meat mixed in
an egg
bone marrow spread on some pork rinds

Snack: beef stick

Dinner was 2.5 big bratwurst

Today has started out well, too.

Breakfast was a beef stick, two eggs, some beef bone marrow spread on a few pork rinds.

The beef stick started off as a snack to tide me over until lunch time, but I decided I might as well just have a whole meal.

I would still like to work on getting away from processed/aged meats, but they’re so so darned convenient.

Dinner is going to be chicken fricassee. My kids love that. I, of course, will only eat the chicken.:innocent:

@Alexaar, It sounds like caffeine is a poison for you. I hope the it leaves your system soon.
My body seems to clear it out slowly. Even a small amount in the morning messes with my sleep. I try to drink it only when I’m driving long distances.

(Alex) #350

That sounds like an epic carnivore day! how was the bone marrow spread on pork rinds? Not something I’d even thought of but sounds yummy.

Caffeine is definitely a poison for me :frowning: I already knew it but now I’ve had it in isolation when I was feeling well it’s really driven the point home to see just how many of my body’s systems it’s messed with. Salt levels are off, skin is dry, headache, my knee pain flared up for the first time in ages, stomach pain, plus all the anxiety and existential mehness.

It sucks now, but I’m kinda grateful for the experience because it’s changed how I see caffiene from a bad choice for me to just a definite non-option.

Had another butter burger and starting to feel less jumpy :slight_smile:

(Edith) #351

A nearby grocery store sells a package of marrow bones cut into about one inch thick slices. I just fried them up in a pan, sprinkled with salt. I just scooped it out and plopped it on the pork rind. I thought it was pretty tasty, but it wasn’t that much. It maybe equaled a tablespoon or two.

(Keto Koala 🐨) #352

@Fangs Poor old lady thinks her husband is in the room… And thought I was her daughter… And thinks it’s 1972. I snuck out and bought her and the other lady a plushies sloth each. What’s with bloody sloths.:see_no_evil:. I sent Shinita three of the damn things… Lol. But i got get well cards… And a Thank you card to the hospital . They will probably think I’m a freaking weirdo… well I am.:upside_down_face:. I had chicken salad last night… I mainly ate the chicken. Roast beef is for lunch I think. :heart:.

#353

Day #24 One week left on this challenge.

Riding through a rough patch. Even tough love from Fangsy has only had a limited effect.

I can see it in the posts from start to now. 25 posts in 24 days. It’s a compliance thread for me. Intended to do beef, salt, water carnivore. That broke at about day #3. Coffee drought broke the day before that. Realisation that I am addicted to somethings occurred at the same time. Dairy snuck back etc. I don’t need to re-live it.

Yesterday I had sausage meat that I am sure had some kind of spicy carb filler (that doesn’t happen when one just eats meat), chicken and salad, including avocado and a taste of a cake. I reckon it’s a hangover from the wagon fall 2 days ago at the gas station on the long drive home. It releases the demons and they speak to me - scientifically that would be put as the carbs changed my gut biome and now the increased population of carb loving bacteria are communicating with my brain. Then worked all day.

I thought I would fix it last night and ate a big fillet steak and two eggs with rain water as the drink.

At 2am this morning I was woken with heart palpitations and increased heart rate. I started dosing magnesium and some pink salt. slept some. At 5am the rate had slowed but the arrhythmia persisted. More magnesium. I keep oral dosing to gut tolerance. At 8:30am only the occasional jolt in my chest. I had a large cup of warm salty chicken broth and a long, relaxing hot shower while doing breathing exercises. I have emerged from the shower back to normal.

I have to digest what happened. But going off the plan provides cautionary tales to anyone who reads this, as well as a strong learning experience for me.

The horse is waiting. I’ll go and get on it again. The beauty of having a plan, even if you go off it, is that it is there waiting to go back on it, when one is ready to ride again. That is much better than trying something, failing, and then being lost as what to do next. This has been another important lesson learned this OXtober Fest.

3 eggs with bacon coming up as mid-afternoon breakfast. But checking in with myself, I don’t feel hungry. I know Fangsy would say to take a carny test bite and re-evaluate that lack of hunger.

There’s a big football game tonight and the outlaws are coming over to watch it. I am kicking myself that I didn’t think to get wings!

Looking forward to “NoExcuseVember”. Or, “NoCarbVember”… getting in early on the brainstorm.

Need to have a closer look at this as well: Feasting-mimicking diet for carnivores

(Alex) #354

I love this, it’s exactly the sort of internal diatribe I have going on about how I feel vs how my brain understands the science.

As someone who also has heart rhythm issues, I gently recommend you keep aiming for a coffee drought. Caffeine seems to completely dysregulate the way my body processes water and salts, as well as supress my appetite, and I can’t help but feel it’s not helping you reach your goals.

Glad you’re back on plan and feeling better :slight_smile:

(Edith) #355

I wonder about the same thing myself. My caffeine source was Diet Coke which goes right through me. I’ve been considering the idea that drinking the Diet Coke contributed to my electrolyte trouble on keto.

Since I’ve been Diet Coke free this month I tried stopping my salt, Mg, and Ca for several days. Last night my muscles started tightening up and I took some Ca (via eggshells) and Mg citrate. It’s amazing how quickly it helped.Bai for now, the supplementation continues.

On another note: I have a problem with dairy. If I eat it, it makes my joints hurt, especially my back, and gives me a painful itchy bumps on my scalp and back. (Yeah, just those places for some reason).

I’ve heard that ghee, because it’s been clarified, is okay for people with dairy issues, so I decided to give it a try, just for variety. Well, I’ve tried cooking with it twice now and both times, within an hour or so of eating it, I’ve had intestinal cramps and trips to the bathroom. So thoughts everyone: are the intestinal problems a reaction or just because my body isn’t used to the different type of fat in the ghee? I do have to add, that it does not seem to cause itching.

(Edith) #356

I like “NoCarbvember.”

#357

that is wonderful. when we pass on some helpful knowledge about health and more to others it is a wonderful feeling when they run with it and succeed. But only this can happen when the person receiving the information is open to that info and jolted enough to follow that info and make the results happen and it seems everything aligned for them. very good story to read SB and a great share! You are mastering your lifestyle to suit you and that is the best gift of all you can ever give yourself!

holy cow it was tough to read your post. You did go plonkers thru all that crazy. WOW on the caffeine reaction.

this is the big lesson here. you hit an elimination menu of zero carb and when adding something back, like this dreaded coffee, your entire system went off kilter, sounds like a horrible experience for you. NOW you know caffeine is a poison to your body. With reactions like that, I know you will never drink that crap again!! Learning is key on this plan, you learned the hard way, but key is you know what it does to you and that is always a great thing :slight_smile: Work thru it, you got this!!

I know, I know LOL the very few things I keep in my life, like my Taylor ham is just so darn convenient and I get what you are saying. I tried to dump the little I kept, and when I did try to do just that, I found it irked the heck out of me. My menu is so narrow now thru choice selection being on this plan that I can’t ‘voluntarily right now’ take out a few processed things I rely on just yet, might never. I decided I can’t put this limit on me, just yet, and heck I am longer term on plan LOL One thing I don’t want you to do is ‘stress out’ over this keeping a few processed meats in your menu. You ‘focus and stress’ over it TOO much it will become such a negative to you and will then just make the zc plan ‘seem unbearable and severely limiting’ MAYBE to you, and this won’t be good. Carefully low ingredient choice processed meats are allowed on zero carb if you do well on them, so be sure to cut yourself a mini break here on being ‘too controlling’ on this right now :slight_smile: Not saying this is a problem, but saying it could creep up on you this way, so just be mindful kinda thing :wink:

You are doing wonderful on carnivore!!!

---------guys caffeine got me with my heart PVCs and what else got me was the aspartame crap in my Diet Pepsi I was drinking. I read up on how to watch food intake with PVCs and caffeine was a huge flag trigger and then I switched to caffeine free diet pepsi and still I had tons of PVC episodes, and they are darn scary so I dropped all diet soda and boom, I improved immediately. That damn fake sweetener crap was my poison along with the caffeine so? Beauty of this carnivore plan, full elimination and when we add back like coffee that ‘seems innocent’ or slip by mistake with bad foods and our bodies react, wow that is direct info that you are sensitive and boy ya feel it :slight_smile:

So it is a learning journey. A path we all mostly go down. We eliminate and try again and BOOM, you either do great and are fine with that being added again or you suffer immensely and learn valuable information about your food and food/liquid reactions.

This is great chat on the board.

As one holds to a clean zc eating plan, you absolutely learn FULL truths about your body and what it can and can not tolerate. But this is all good information :slight_smile: All this we need for our better health journey!

#358

Nope, don’t need a re-live but you need one thing, a memory and lesson from it. You will find ZC will open up a ton of ‘issues’ and they are all not about what we eat…it is about why we eat and react and more. It is a carb addiction and it ain’t pretty for many of us. I was an addict to the max on the low carb hamster wheel of insanity. ZC got me off and gave results so I floundered around a long time til I hit one realization and it is a biggie. Do the darn zc plan as intended it should be done and hunker down the willpower, eat up as much great meat/seafood I required at all times and lean in low and put that shoulder forward and power thru like a darn linebacker!

See, for me personally. plans like very low car/keto/whatever name ya give it—meant I could have allowances. My carb limit was total 20g per day but I could easily ‘allow’ a heavier carb day when the addiction arose and I would go up to say 60g day and get a tad out of control, but I could then bring myself back to 20g eventually, but damage was done. All I did achieve was bounced out—again!—thru a plan mentality I could ‘control carbs’ but I never could control one thing…what they did to me. Until I accepted that part, I didn’t have a prayer. This is when I had to commit full on with zc to give me the chance to ‘see and feel’ what zc truths I could establish for me. Would it be good or bad? I found it was my savior point blank, but unless I hunkered down and did the plan as needed, I was never gonna get the chance to learn if zc would help me as it has, so again, personal choice on how you go at this.

Elimination plans like zc open up small fissures in our life that we DO SEE in full on truth. Now it is what do we do about them as we have to face them :slight_smile: I had to face it and damn it was a friggin’ hard row to sow for me also but I made it and am thriving for my work I put into myself. We all got it in us!!

I love this!!! It is very true. When we juggle a plan with carbs we can play so much more, and sneakily get away with it ya know, but on a plan like zero carb. Carnivore is it. We eat NO carbs. So our plan when we do grab back on is very simple. But this means nothing unless one eats, eats eats as needed when we start this plan. Without that, one will be on the off/on cycle a long time. Ask me how I know this HAHA Only when I accepted to eat til full, any and all times I needed it is when I flourished! When I ‘tried to control’ my appetite and more, I would find failure. So…learn learn learn thru the hard times, success is right around the corner on the next time you put your efforts into play!!

will have to go see what this is about :slight_smile: no time to read it yet either.

BUT ONE THING----you haven’t mastered staying ON plan long enough to even get real changes from the plan, so what is important now, very very important now is you do not tweak, mangle, manipulate YOUR zc eating at all. Keep it as super simple as possible without brain info overload…eat all you want when hungry to full satisfaction, don’t eat when not hungry but do not allow yourself to go too long without eating ‘just cause we can’ :wink:. ZC when one starts is the most basic easy simple thing. EAT. Friggin’ eat any time you need it and never limit yourself. This is the whole darn key item about zero carb…which many find it to be the most misunderstood part of zc :slight_smile: People fail cause they do not eat enough. It doesn’t get any simpler than that for most new zc people. We see it over and over in failure on zc on the strict zc forums. You come in with ‘dieting’ baggage and apply it to zc and boom, it hurts the plan terribly. Let go of all old info, just eat eat and eat more LOL I can’t scream this out enough for new people coming onto this plan.

FB it is hard to see real truths. I know, I walked them. Key to it all is when you know what is happening, what are you going to do to tackle those issues? I have a personality while I could flounder in self pity and cry life is unfair and all that, and boy I did do that HAHA, in the end my personality finishes with ‘I am going all in’ and fighting a darn battle cause this won’t win over what I want to achieve. We move forward and fight a tad harder and learn more thru our failures and turn all that crap into victories!

and I am with VE! I am liking NoCarbvember for sure. We are a group, a small one at that LOL but we are a darned determined group to find our health thru this journey and we are not walking it alone at all…we are a group running this race :slight_smile: A great one at that too!! :sunny:

#359

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, @Fangs!

#360

So nice! October is when many of us started this challenge!! and here we are with an anniversary date! Love it and thanks!!!

#361

good morning

we are in that nicer fall weather coming around now. Hit into the low 80s, sunny and promise of hot summer weather feeling, but I know it will crash back now to colder and colder. Oh well, enjoy today only cause today is all I got and today’s weather is what it is so just enjoy the hound out of today is key here!! And that is how we approach our eating lifestyle change. ONE meal at a time. Today’s meal. You make that effort with changing your eating lifestyle in only one true way…what are you going to eat on this meal. The one right in front of my face. The fork I am lifting, what is that meal as it goes into my big old gob :wink:

Keep our approach AS SIMPLE as possible. Don’t drag old dieting baggage and old tricks/tips/crazy we did back in the day. Simple is the most complicated action on carnivore cause it is truly a hard concept to put into a plan when all we did back in the day was learn so many crazy ways and tracking and more was needed for health, when zc is the opposite in truth~ just eat. just allow the food to heal the body and change you and it will if we just keep it super simple.

food yesterday was a big old steak which was delish
alot of taylor ham
med. sized cheeseburger patty

I ate late. first meal was at 3 and I was hungry but after that steak and taylor ham, I could only manage a burger at around 6 and done for the day. Got caught on the road and when I got home it was way past my feeding time LOL

I pulled a boner move but it turned out to be a great small victory for me.
I put on my kid’s junior miss jeans and I was rushing to get out the door in the morning and I kept saying to myself, damn these are a tad tight…why are my jeans a tad tight? ugh…but they fit ‘ok’ but just a darn tad tigher than normal and I thought, WTH? but I got moving out the door, did my day, got home and took off the jeans and put on shorts and then held up the jeans and thought, damn why do these look so small? I was truly confused on it :exploding_head: Then I checked the label…junior miss and her brand of jeans that look just like my brand of jeans I buy :dizzy_face: and I wore her jeans all day. I WAS IN JUNIOR MISS SIZE…Weeeee, but being older I hate tight crap cause just my personal comfort is required, so I won’t be wearing those jeans again :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: but darn if it didn’t give me another boost of my body is changing with very very very slow losses on the scale. In my teenage daughters jeans, which means ‘junior’ size shopping is a possibility for me again down the line. I won’t have to avoid the whole section dept of clothes anymore, I can shop junior miss :partying_face: Weeeee…well, maybe. Teenage stuff is not my stuff truly but hey, options are open :star_struck:

All good on zc. Holding tight and doing my thing and letting life cruise on by with simplicity and good eating when it does come to my eating plan! All I can do and when I do it that way, for me personally, I get tons of benefits and results.

We got this Carnivores! Roar loud and attack what you desire! Carnivores don’t back off, we prey on what we do want and we go in for the kill to get success and flourish :crazy_face:, yea corny I know HAHA

#362

OK, don’t do this! :crazy_face:

Read it and say HECK NO and forget this hack and NIPE to all all 'it’s promised glory"!!!

This is a carnivore hack. Yes I get why the user did it. Experimental time for sure. Something to research and check out and observe etc.

This, while could easily work for many to lose lbs way faster, and this is all this is about ya know, how fast can I starve my azz down the scale on carnivore BUT feel like I am eating a ton when in reality, it is a numbers game of low kcals and ‘fasting for 48 hrs’ thru even hungry times? and more.

I wouldn’t touch this with a 39 1/2 foot pole because zero carb is heal thru food intake. All the food your body asks for when it needs it. That is how all new people starting carnivore should approach this plan.

This Brad Marshall guy is not a carnivore. Is not on this plan. He is an ‘experimenter’ and ‘brand seller of products’ to support his experiments so in the end, while I get what he is implying, showing, experimenting on and more is in the carnivore diet realm now, this is not a true carnivore concept of what our plan is about at all.

Nah, don’t give this crap another thought.

I will tell you what to give thought to :slight_smile: eat. eat all the food you need, and let a natural nourished body tell you ‘you are not hungry now for X many hrs’ til ya are hungry again and then ya eat again HAHA

Do not suck down tons of ‘extra fat’ to curb appetite cause the newbie zc person on plan requires meat/seafood FOOD to nourish and feed the body which will make it repair internally and balance hormones and more. You start 'tweaking/manipulating/pretending you can control the ‘diet to this level’ you are sorely mistaken…and that is why all diets fail. We can not control these experimental standards for long. At some point we jump ship the cause the body says, OMG I can’t do this anymore! and ya can’t LOL

So do basic simple zero carb. Carnivore is eat eat eat all you need at all times, then thru a natural change and healing, your body will say I do not require food. And you don’t eat. Then your body says feed me, ya eat…then it says, nah, not hungry so you don’t eat…SEE ALL a natural progression. No hacking required :slight_smile:

any mimic feast/famine forced plan will never work long term. Carnivore works long term if we go at it in the simple concepts as it was meant to be.

so that is my info on that stuff :wink:

remember too everyone, that before we 'go off and find the miracle pill in a bottle or a ‘hack’ to follow so strict and HOPE we can get stellar results overnight as promised and then hope to hold all this fantasy…why not just try the plan as intended? Like we KNOW what carnivore is yet we ‘look right around’ that simple truthful concept of how the plan must function for us to get the best out of it.

give it up everyone with hacks, magic pills, magic plans and insanity.

Just do Carnivore as it is meant to be done when we start. Just eat. Eat ALL YOU need at all times. Don’t eat when not hungry…but the most important, EAT til full and happy and never not do this!!! This is what gets us thru into our plan and time for changes to happen and show us evolving and more. We eat :slight_smile: Again, worst and hardest concept to accept!!! I know, I could barely accept it cause no way I was ‘allowed to eat’ to find health cause not one other plan in life ever gave me that option. It was 'eat less; eat this, not that ever, don’t eat after 6, drink this protein powder and eat only 150 kcals with it and every single other hack BS plan out there LOL It is limit, tweak, manipulate and control something you can’t truly control. Why try to control anything when the zero carb plan is eat eat eat eat and eat all ya need at all times :slight_smile: Darn this plan suited my butt for sure in the end…but that only happened when I did one thing. I ate all I needed any time I needed it and guys did I eat monsterous some days and I thought NO WAY this works, but yea it works, :wink:, I know personally cause it did for me and 10s of thousands of others on this plan and thriving so???

do something radical…let loose and eat eat eat, wooooo, yea it is a scary concept actually LOL

in full truth run run and run as fast as you can from this useless BS of what health and vitality should be…RUN!

(Edith) #363

@FrankoBear, I think you are stuck in the Ketoland mindset of needing fasting/intermittent fasting. I think it is causing you problems with really getting into your carnivore trial.

I do believe, now based on my short time doing strict carnivore, that you need to follow the experts advice and not limit your intake for now.

#364

good post VE cause that was me truly and it could easily apply to FB and any other newbie into carnivore. I was a ‘plan controller’ with whatever plan I was on…lc/keto/paleo, whatever ya call it :wink: but it ‘had limits’ I had to comply with and there were quite a few of them.

Carnivore is unlimited food. Carnivore holds one thing as strict and tight—NO carbs from plant matter as a meal. Yes, some herbs to flavor meat is fine cause it is not a meal ya know, it is a tad of flavor for enjoyment but we ONLY do this if those herbs/spices don’t upset our bodies cause some zc people can and will use herbs/spices even longer on plan while another has to give them up fast cause they make them ill in some way.

So I sure get your post and what you are saying to FB! It is a real truth that has to be seen. We are ‘conditioned’ to ‘do a plan’ for ‘dieting’ and carnivore flips that controlled eating on its butt!

good insight!!

(Edith) #365

There was some model a while back who was given a hard time about saying,”Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

I can see why that quote could maybe be problematic, particularly for teenage girls who may want to try starving themselves, but I think it’s an accurate statement. Yes, delicious junk tastes good, but at what cost to health and waistline? Is the taste worth what is does to one’s body?

By carnivore, you found your solution @Fangs. You ditched all those carbs and you are getting thinner. Those carbs are not worth losing that satisfaction you get from seeing the pounds drop, your body restructuring itself, and how healthy you are feeling. Congratulations.

#366

So agree with you on this VE…problematic for possible eating disorders thru what the statement is and could mean to many…but yes yes yes, it is totally true in that one feels better being more ‘skinny’ but that statement is worded so wrong in a way LOL but I sure get that you are saying.

We ZCers here will make a new one for us!! Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels! Hey sounds good to me!! But ya know what ALL my meat and seafood is so darn tasty to boot and I can eat a ton of it HA

I applaud, thank, am so grateful to long term people on carnivore plan that told me what to expect. How to walk this walk. How to find what they always screamed about what great health, vitality, energy and more they have achieved and any med issues they are solving and changing and ONLY thru those that walked this first can I put all my achievements towards cause they made me. They helped me and they took time to help me. It was only when I listened and could find myself in a place to finally listen did it all come together for me.

My super model days are long behind me HAHA, ain’t getting back age 18 anymore but I know going into my retirement years they will be healthy and active and vibrant vs. ‘thanksgiving day sluggy lifestyle’ and being a couch tater in my later years :slight_smile: that is all I wanted, renewed interest, activity, health in life and I am achieving just that, slowly, one day at a time, just thru eating well! Whew…I feel like I finally got somewhere ya know :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

and VE I see you getting there also! You are doing for you on what it takes, keeping your eyes open and evaluating you thru this and that is what it takes, but never go ‘too far’ from carnivore concept, when in doubt, eat and eat well!!!

(Polly) #367

Yes I agree Nocarbvember has a ring to it!