OXtoberFest ZC Challenge

#455

Sorry about all that truly. I can feel the stress of this all like everyone and I have to say, we can go bonkers over it all and very sad and tough on us and kids with school etc. Ugh. Do everything and anything to stay positive and upbeat…in fact what I do when I get a bit depressed and stressed is I FOCUS on doing the best darn zc I can. It gives me a goal focus and while I ‘feel the crazy’ stress around me etc. like all, I got a life line with my focus on my eating plan being clean ya know…gives me something to grab onto. Might help you too :slight_smile:

Yea I know. Been there.

Beauty of zc. Just eat zc :slight_smile: You find all that good meat and seafood that works for you and eat up as much as you need to fill you up, satisfy you and make you feel content on plan.

Transition in zc can be hard, not one doubt about it :slight_smile: It took me a bit til I went ‘all in’ and stopped caving into a carb day or 2 or 2 weeks LOL and I had to fight the darn battle also but eventually we grab on and go for it and when you get clean zc eating days under your belt, longer you do, the more gumption you have to hold it and eating this way becomes so easy and satisfying we start to flip stronger to stay on plan, vs. are easier drawn off plan ya know…you just keep moving forward at all times, past is the past, focus on what you will do today to stay healthy :slight_smile:

Congrats on that 7 down!!! You will be fine, you just hang in there and grab onto NoCarbvember when we start and just focus on the future meals and you got this!

#456

yea it is different for all but even a ‘very low carb’ eater comes into zc and thinks easy breezy and for most it just isn’t…that withdrawl from any amt of carbs and all those carbs eaten in the past do have to adapt out of ya, you will have toxin releases and who knows what other adaption troubles you might find, cause each of us are so different…or you could be one who comes in great? Only time tells on that one :slight_smile:

My biggest pain was tired. I was ‘extreme low carb’ and tiptoeing in zero carb for about a year before I flipped to total carnivore, and my worst adaption was being so damn tired…tired where I could barely keep my eyes open. Like the arms and legs felt weighed down but of course I just kept eating well and it all went away and I flipped into big energy. I thought I should adapt fast, wrong, took me a few months truly to come around into a whole new world on zc…worth the time and going thru the adaption tho.

will be very interesting to see what goes down for ya!

(JJ) #457

Yeahhh! That is the spirit! November is a new month and it sounds like despite challenges, you have done well and achieved some progress.

Whinge Alert: I have had a miserable last 12 hours. Utterly horrid. I worked last night and had a lingering headache all night. By 0500hrs it is very intense, struggled through until 0700 when I finished and I got a long black on the way home to ‘treat’ it. No joy. Ate ground beef breakfast once home, showered, felt wretched. I work permanent night shift, so it was more than just that. Headache, fatigue,nausea, dizziness. Then to top it off a cold sore wanted to make an appearance. I only get them every few years at most and usually when I am very run down and always in combo with my period. A 100km round trip to the nearest open pharmacy for some antivirals by my wonderful husband, took them along with an anti-emetic and caved and also took some ibruprofen and had a rest. Ate a hearty red meat lunch, despite not really feeling it, once the first mouthful was in though, it tasted great and I ate it all. Now at 5pm just starting to come out of the fog. My skin is blotchy and feels prickly though, I can tend to be a bit ‘rashy/allergy’ normally, so it feels like that. Looks like the cold sore on my lip may decide not to fully blister, hoping so, as I won’t be allowed to go to work if it does.
Adjusting?
Oxalate dump?
I didn’t like feeling like this as I know I only get really unwell like this when I have pushed too hard, but I really have gone gentle on myself this week and have had a nice, relaxing time of life in general this week.

(Alex) #458

Sorry you had such a rubbish day, it sucks when you’ve been doing all the right things too :frowning: It’s hard to say what it was caused by. I get similar symptoms when I’ve eaten too much histamine, particularly nausea and the prickly feeling, any itching?

As you’re early in it could just be adaptation or oxalate dumping though, I think the symptoms of that are similar.

#459

I love that. What a sweetie! It is wonderful when not feeling well your hubby would do all the work for ya to help you :slight_smile:

I love how you wrote this. This is one of those actions you try to explain to new zc people. A person feels icky thru adaption, really has no hunger and food is not calling to you, but you try food anyway, and after that first bite, you say, WOW I DO want this LOL and eat up very well and you start to feel better quicker. This scenario is what we try to tell newer zc people to do and ya did it and it worked out great for you :slight_smile:

Adaption can do alot to people in the beginning and we never know how each of us will get hit. Not just oxalates and all, your body is truly dumping out all kinds of toxins and it can show on us in different ways, like itchy, rashy and other symptoms. All one can do is treat the symptoms with OTCs if needed for your comfort. But luckily those types of tougher symptoms that annoy us do move thru rather quickly if you hold plan, eat well, and truly get some rest and take it easy on yourself :slight_smile: I know when I started I had a heck of alot of naps, and I am not a napper :wink: but I sure napped every chance I got :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: My hubby even said, what is wrong with you? You don’t nap in the daytime and I was like, leave me alone, I need a nap HAHA

(Alex) #460

Feeling much better after just a day back on zc :slight_smile: I feel like a character from the old sims games sometimes who used to get fat after one big meal or skinny after one workout, things affect me really quickly which seems unfair when one or two days of eating sugar make the numbness in my fingers come back but it’s great the other way round when I feel good quickly!

I have been having so many naps this month. I fell asleep at 4pm the other day and just slept right through to the morning ha.

#461

BOO, luckily kid is older now and Halloween is a low totem pole holiday now. Heck I don’t even consider Halloween a ‘holiday’…so that means nothing for us here. Older I get all holidays are more a bit, eh, I am over it HAHA

Everyone chat up how Oxtober went for ya if you didn’t post up already…and we got a new month, new challenges and goals and just a new whole bunch of days to get healthier, happier and full of zc zen and energy.

food yesterday was

1.5 lbs. NY Strip Steak
taylor ham
2 spoonfuls of chili

I ate the steak and was full but wanted a tad more, then fried up taylor ham slices and BOOM…once I ate that I was stuffed and satisfied and I wanted no more food for the day. No draw to another meal at all, hey I did OMAD day LOL

Made chili for family. I rarely make it, only like in fall cooler weather and none of us here are in love with it, but they want it a few times a year so I ate one big spoonful and delish, wow on those spices! What a taste slap for me. So I was like YUM and ate another spoonful and then I said, NOPE, I don’t want this…my tummy will be on fire and while I loved that taste in a spoonful, I just couldn’t bring myself to be eating more. So chili is not calling my name and I am cool with that :slight_smile: I don’t even wanna ‘take it’, I just wanna ‘leave it’ :crazy_face:

ZC going well. Got 2 nice ribeyes for today. Hubby working so me and kid will just hang out and chill thru today. Easy peasy day here.

Carnivore on everyone!!

#462

yes those of us who are so carb sensitive and have plant matter sensitivity issues and more, when we go off our zc ways, we know very very fast it was a bad thing for us and we are gonna get smacked hard.
I am the same way. In fact just for that reason I truly have a long chat with myself when I ‘want something’ and tell myself, can ya really go there? no you can’t LOL cause you don’t wanna feel that so darn sick.

I remember a long time ago when heading into zc I ate a bunch of old fav junky meals I loved and I swear I was one step from going to the hospital I felt that bad. I thought food did this? To this level. I paid dearly and now when my mind says ‘how unfair it is’ that ‘they’ can eat it all, I sure can’t and I say, ya wanna end up in the hospital? Cause I swear I could LOL and I ain’t doing that :wink:

I NEED to be a zc person. Alot of people come to this plan cause it is a natural draw when one goes extreme low carb or something more active like a keto plan on macros and they tip toe around and think, nah, I don’t need to be here but they also think then, that no one needs to be here, but man I need to be here HAHA

#463

learn learn and HEAR!

#464

Chicken thigh (the best part of the chicken if you ask me though I love the bony parts too, for soup and for fun) was below $1 on sale… In the village store where prices are usual higher. Not now. I barely could wrap my head around it. Very poor people should eat a lot of chicken, it’s hard to eat cheaper than that without sacrificing nutrients epically… Nowadays I wonder why people buy more than minimal vegetables… Almost everything is against them but yep, we aren’t all the same. Alvaro cooked a huge pot of cabbage soup today. And fried the chicken thighs (only 6). The cabbage soup costed much, much, much more… Well the amount is bigger but still. It’s just cabbage soup :slight_smile: Not like the thighs are a proper meal but they are a bit useful.
Now that I bought chicken thighs myself (about the size I ate last week), I can be very sure I ate significantly over 1 kg chicken at my Aunt and it left me HUNGRY. Hungrier than I was before but it’s quite normal for me. Just not with this big amount of food. It’s supposed to be big, it has lots of protein and fat and it’s extreme low-carb. Half of this from some more substantial meat would have been enough! So chicken may be cheap but it doesn’t mean it’s worth it the most even on a budget. And I surely will get bored of it soon. I probably focus on turkey now if I want some cheap fowl meat. And I need some pork. Ruminants are way more expensive (for some reason, it’s a bit cheaper from the farm and I value good farm meat more) but I will buy some at least once in November, I haven’t eat any in the last half year :frowning:

I got so much smoked meat, I soooooo missed this! Ribs and chuck and sausage and even some kind of super fatty Mangalitsa bacon…? Just a bit, the seller really wanted to sell it and it IS nice, I like soft fat, I just like to spend my money on meatier stuff. So I only bought a tiny bit, it will be good, I know, I tasted it. And I bought bony chicken for soup, with some organs and there are drumsticks too so it’s a nice bunch. It’s originally for stew according to the label but I want my soup.

Maybe I add too much details, it’s probably not nearly as interesting for others but I am enthusiastic a bit.

(JJ) #465

Trying to reply on my phone. Pretty unsuccessful so far. No, all super interesting Shinita. Chicken for you sounds like fish was for me the other night. I had to google that sort of bacon you mentioned, sounds yummy.

Cheers Fangs for listening to my long whinge. Glad it all seems normalish. It’s crappy but hopefully will pass. I guess I ate some carby stuff this time last weekend, so I wasn’t starting ZC from a usual keto few days for me either.
Hope you enjoyed your chillaxed evening with your kiddo with your husband off at work.

It’s 3am and out of interest, I stepped on the scales, 4lbs down in 6 days. Wowser. Not quite my intention, but hopefully my body is just quickly sorting itself out back to its natural set point now my carbs are lower than they have been for awhile. Still feeling a bit ‘blergh’. Hopefully will have a good sleep day tomorrow.

#466

Probably fish is similar to me, it doesn’t feel substantial but as I don’t like most fish and it tends to be lean, I couldn’t test it yet.
The chicken was surprising as it wasn’t even lean… And I know it helps with satiation when it’s not all alone… But beef was fine all alone when I tried. I don’t doubt mutton is similar.
I don’t think I ever ate only pork but the smoked kind is very good at satiation. But the amount is tiny there, I just know that if I am well towards satiation (or my hunger is tiny, some hours after a bigger meal), very little can help a lot.

Grats for the weight-loss! I just faced the fact I knew already that my winter pants are tighter than in the spring (much tighter, I have 2 buttons for my different states), it’s rare for me but it happened now. I want to wear those pants in the near future comfortably so I hope to lose a little volume there, I care less about the rest for now, I focus on my health and energy and I am very sure I am on the right way and fat-loss will happen eventually if I don’t make some stupid mistakes.

#467

Day #31

Last day of the Oxtober Fest. Once again a lot to learn. And once again coming to terms that the challenge was not completed perfectly.

Blood glucose (1 hr after omelette breakfast) = 5.7mmol/L (102 mg/dl), blood ketones 0.1mmol/L. So, I finished the challenge in a low insulin state.

Belly tape measure on morning of Nov 1 = -2cm :slightly_smiling_face: this month from the waistline. Neck circumference = no change up nor down. Interpretation: the results are in and they are favourable. I don’t have body weight scales.

NoCarbvember Adventure!
(Alex) #468

I can’t believe Oxtober Fest is over already!

Food yesterday - 1lb lamb mince, 1/2lb beef mince, 1lb chicken thighs, 50g beef tallow, 50g butter

@FrankoBear congrats on the waistline reduction :smiley: you reminded me to take some measurements rather than just weigh in!

I’m down 1.5inches off my waist and 1.5 off my hips, and 1 off each my arms too. Really pleased as the weight I gained from stress eating this earlier this year mostly went to my midsection, and I’m still a couple of inches too wide to fit into my normal wardrobe. I can’t afford to buy anything non-essential at the moment so I’m hoping I can gift my existing clothes to myself by sticking to zc and fitting into them by christmas. Luckily it’s winter and we never go out so I can get away with wearing thermal leggings and jumpers for now.

Think the main thing I’ve learned from this month’s challenge is the importance of momentum. I remember reading someone say (in the context of opiate addiction but I think it applies to all addictive behaviours):

“The first time you choose to go back to [addictive substance] is a choice, after that the habit is in control again.”

The Oxtober Fest challenge has shown me that, for myself at least, that is true with sugars and starches. And I’m still drinking decaf coffee now to manage coffee cravings, so I guess it’s true for caffeine too!

So I think my goal for the november challenge is going to be really simple - consistency. Keep making zc choices and build some positive momentum :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the help this month guys!

#469

Well October was educational. And my carbiest month of the year and believe me, that’s serious.
I had some wonderful (not carnivore but close) times… And 2 very long problematic ones. Certain Aussie sweets (that I never will go close again… half a planet is a fine distance for a long time) and lack of proper food at my Aunt’s place both managed to throw me off orbit so much that I couldn’t find my way back for a long time, not even when I actually tried. It was super uncomfortable mentally as I am not used to that level of slavery though I know the feeling when I do things bad for me… And I must say it wasn’t nice physically either. Very antihedonistic and that bothers me very much. Hedonism is my core value.

So I am very glad it’s November so temptations, compulsions and other bothersome things cease to exit (at least for a while but I will have momentum then) as I have a mountain of determination built since months. And I had so, so, so enough of carbs. I had enough since the first night at my Aunt, I didn’t even wanted to start anything but I was hungry, not on carni anyway and the chicken didn’t help. Next year I request pork and bring 10 boiled eggs. And other things if there will be a national holiday again. My Aunt has margarine (low-fat, of course) and she is rich enough to buy proper food… I don’t understand people. If we just look at the taste, butter tastes y slightly good (very good butter is stronger but still, it’s kind of subtle. I prefer lard from the pig shop, they have a cheaper and better kind that has tiny pieces of pork rind, last time I found a big one, yay :D) and margarin tastes vegetable oil in water. Some are a bit better and fatty enough but still, the difference is very obvious.

So that’s it. In the near future I just will write about carni items and my big success. Won’t I? :smiley:(Yeah, I am a huge, borderline naive optimist, I never could lose this serious birth defect. But it has its benefits :D)

Congratulations for everyone who did this month almost or completely properly! Or the last days, for the new ones, I had to read back much and couldn’t follow who started when.
See ya in the next thread! Be strong, I will be there a lot but it’s MY month. My first one. My most strict one, probably as I probably go back to carnivore-ISH later as my default woe. It’s possible things will keep disappearing but I doubt it will happen in one go just because of my November. But I don’t know, things evolved super quickly even after carnivore days… But it’s ME. Even trying carnivore is still surreal.

#470

wow that is a great drop but of course that is a water no carbs drop and you will balance back out and do very well I am sure!!

We got very stormy weather here today, I feel BLAH too but not zc adaption blah LOL Hope ya get thru it fast and just cruise along well on zc…you will

#471

very happy for you FB. favorable results are all any of us ever want :slight_smile:

you don’t have to be perfect all the time, and how I mean that is if one gets drawn off plan, we have to make it truly part of our journey and it must open our eyes to our challenges. I crashed alot before I got a strong solid all in foothold into zero carb. Thing is I never kept trying and that is you and you will be fine and besides, you aren’t doing all that bad at all my friend!

very happy for you with great results for your Oxtober challenge!! Rock on Alex!!

I also hit a point where I lost alot of weight, got new clothes, threw out the big ones and then gained damn near all those lbs back and did the same, I refused to go out and buy new big clothes, I lived in a few things I could just squish into cause I was so disappointed in me. I said I will fit back into my clothes come heck or highwater and not buy new big ones LOL and I did and SO will you :slight_smile:

That is a wonderful statement to post. And it is so true!!

Allowances are big on how our lives will move forward in positive or negative ways. My allowances are now only great choices on my eating plan. I allow ALL the meat/seafood I want at all time, that is a good allowance, a bad one is deciding I can choose to eat sugar and carbs and junk and ‘be ok’, I can’t, so that is a bad allowance. Love what you posted!

You will have good November momentum :slight_smile: The new thread is active, jump in and chat all things zero carb!!

everyone now jump into the new thread and we will take all things zc there :slight_smile: best new NoCarbvember to all!

#472
(Edith) #473

Here is my last post of the Oxtoberfest challenge: my analysis of two months on carnivore.

Well, when I first went all in last month, I dropped four pounds pretty quick. It was quite exciting since I got down to what I consider my fantasy weight. Well, my hormones turned back on. They were off for about four months and then the weight bounced back up. I’m not unhappy with my weight, but I have to admit, hitting my fantasy weight was pretty exciting.

I had a fair bit of oxalate dumping the first month that made me very uncomfortable. That seems to have diminished a fair bit, but I think I have mini dumps every once in a while. Nothing like September, though.

I gave up Diet Coke for October. I was weak about seven times. So, that means I was good 75% of the time. That IS an improvement. I aim to turn that into good 100% for the NoCarbvember Adventure.

So, as far as how I feel. I have to admit, I’m not feeling any different. My back is still an issue, but I also understand that if carnivore is going to help, it is certainly not going to help over night. I’m not noticing any significant changes in anything else either. :woman_shrugging:

I have tried to cut back on taking extra salt and magnesium, but so far, stopping them makes me feel terrible: cramps, muscle aches, and an overall unwell feeling. I know that magnesium helps with dumping, so it could be that when I stop the Mg, it makes it harder for my body to handle the dumping. For now I shall keep supplementing. Who knows, if I stay carnivore for a long time, I may find I eventually don’t need those supplements. For now, as @Fang says, I’ll do me.

I have gotten used to not eating any plant matter. In fact, I feel it is quite easy now. I am definitely going to keep on carnivoring for now.

See y’all in the next thread.

#474

very cool you are used to not even bothering with the veg etc.
I know, it gets easier and easier doesn’t it and for those who are tired of obsessing over food like me in the kitchen, I still find zc that plan that works so well for me.

Glad you are going on and just hang in there, changes come and this is month 3 and if into month 4 and on…around 6 months alot of differences can come into play. Time on plan gives so much but darn it is time, I no I never am used to having alot of patience :slight_smile:

see ya in the next thread! good report!!