why are you fasting?
I know you know ZC is not fasting in full truth of it all. Yea we do eat less on certain days cause we are just not hungry and I get that, but are you force fasting today cause??? just curious on it. You probably mentioned it before or something LOL but heck if I can remember 
I had to pick up my daughter from school as she now has a stomach bug. After the volleyball game last night I could not find my water bottle and realized that my daughter had it. I say that because when driving my daughter home from school I asked her if she drank from my water last night. And of course she did. Sheâs determined to get me sick. lol. So far, Iâm good, but just waiting to see if the bug hits me, too. On another note, I am really excited about this weekend. My husband and I are going to a Murder Mystery Night with two friends at a local restaurant. My character is a pyschotic nurse who used to fry her teddy bears as a child. My name is Electra Cushen. 
My husband is a strong man named Mr. Big. I am hoping to talk him into eating out before the event at an Oyster bar. They will have hor dâoeuvres but I have no idea what they are serving. It will be a fun night, and I am exciting to get in character and pretend to be someone else.
Hi @Fangs, there are some things I truly like about carnivore: the Simplicity and lack of waste. We frequently threw out veggies or fruit that we didnât eat soon enough. I still miss taking a taste here and there when Iâm prepping fruits or veggies for the kids.
The first month was very challenging with the oxalate dumping. That seems to have settled down for now. I havenât noticed anything different with my back, but I understand the damage from arthritis will take time to heal (if it can.) I have seen on Zero Carb Health people mention how much better their arthritis is, so I figure thereâs a good chance this can help. I am going to give this WOE at least six months. At that point I will decide if the strictness of carnivore is worth it for me or not.
Btw, why did you start eating carnivore?
oh that is super cool. I did one of those long time ago and it was fun as heck! if you get into it and just go with the flow it is so much fun for sureâŚlucky you, sounds like a great night. Just eat big before ya go, no temptations for munchie foods then. neato!
yes I sure understand this. I would buy alot of salad stuff and in the end alot of money would go into the garbage, ahhh, that burned my butt ya know. work hard for that money and in a flash, the veg would be fine one day, 2 days later you go to use it and mushy and icky and you are like, darn it! So yes I am right there with you on that one and prep to eat zc is so simple. There is no waste hardly at all which I love too.
6 months is a super good trial period. That gives you a very true reading of what happens if you add back some things. Like you will know real fast if anything you do want back and try will effect you. So that is a great way to roll forward.
I am a super carb addict. If I go over about a total of 10g carbs from plants I go into binge mode literally. I donât eat off the zc plan ever. Yea I might lick a spoon or I might each the smallest nibble of something the family says âyou gotta taste this!â but in the end I never eat anything off plan. I canât. I tried, believe me. I tried for a like a 1 yr period to go from zc back into extreme low to âallowâ a few things I wanted, but the carbs I want back are not veg ya knowâŚI want my old favs, not no icky lc substitutesâŚso in the end, I know what I am. I am an abstainer, I canât be a moderator of any carbs point blank for me. I faced it. I tried like crazy to keep carbs in my life but in the end, I thrive on zc and have for years now. I canât go back and wonât. I got it allâŚtotal nutrition, totally satisfied and no real hunger ever, got tons of energy, other improvements and going back is out of the picture for me ever⌠but that is fine 
I love my food thank goodness and this zc plan suits me so well that I do find it my savior with my eating lifestyle.
So I am all in til the grave LOL Got this almost 4 years under my belt and in truth, I see no reason to âgo backââŚcause with this amt of time on plan, yea I get some cravings for old favs, but they are now way back in my core ya know, where I wonât act on them. I am now a true ZCâer for life and nice thing is I donât just say it, I feel it deep down and I am very calm and satisfied on that about me.
I fought food with low carb/keto/low kcals, low fat diets like crazy for like 2-3 years, gained and lost the same damn 70 lbs a few times UGHâŚnow that is over with. When I hit zc and thrived I realized I will never diet again, and boy oh boy that is the most satisfying feeling in the world. Food dieting crap etc. is out of my lifeâŚomg it was miserable finding me in all this, but when I found zc it all worked for mer personally. So that is me basically.
I might regret this ha, but I would like to share my thoughts on fasting.
After watching all the fasting videos from kelly hogan and various women, I do wonder how much the impact of gender plays into the varying views of fasting.
I find it interesting to consider things from an evolutionary viewpoint, and from what Iâve read itâs likely that in hunting societies woman and children were fed first and men would have gone longer periods without food, either while hunting or just in times of scarcity. I see many men thriving with fasting in their life, particularly in combination with ketosis, and canât help but feel like provided men get the feasting element right (i.e. eating enough when they do eat) that itâs not a huge deal for them.
In fact, all humans would surely experience times without food, potentially of a few days or so. However this would be sporadic and likely seasonal.
I guess what Iâm saying is I agree with both points of view. I certainly think repeated, prolonged fasts can do great harm to the body and I read about people feeling faint on day 5 of a fast or spending all day waiting for their omad and wonder why theyâre doing that to themselves. But I also know from my own experience that my body benefits from a forced break from food occasionally. A couple of times a month I just feel like even though Iâm hungry my body would benefit from a break from food, and on these days the hunger passes and I wait happily until later to eat a good meal. That said, if I feel sick or weak I would eat.
Bringing this up as today is one of those days for me. My digestion was very sluggish yesterday, I think due to stress, and I just feel an aversion to food despite physical hunger signals. I know Iâve got a pork shoulder Iâll be feasting on for dinner, and Iâm happy to wait.
ZC is fast teaching me that this is the case for me too. I noticed yesterday that I had no cravings at all until after my bowl of berries (about 11g net carbs) and then craved milk chocolate like mad. I ate some bacon with butter and it went away, but now Iâm having carbs so infrequently itâs become very clear that my body responds quite dramatically to what I thought was fine for me as a low carb option. Makes me wonder if carb creep has been responsible for my woes this summer.
My energy levels are still increasing each day though now Iâve been sticking to just that 11g carbs a day and eating lots of meat and ghee otherwise. I feel almost joyful which is unusual for my grumpy self. I voluntarily got up before my alarm today! This is after only like 4 days of zc plus berries. Wonder where Iâll be after 4 years 
Food yesterday was 1lb lamb mince with ghee, 1lb pork shoulder, berries, 1/2lb bacon with butter
Setting myself the challenge of no berries today
good post. you are working on you and registering how things are effecting you and then gonna act on handling them. That is what I had to do. I had to face just what I did eat and how it would effect me and when we go âso lowâ into zc like this, the smallest things we do allow back into our eating sometimes show us amazing effects on what they do to us. I am like that too
very cool, dump those berries. For some of us something so small we think doesnât matter in such a small amt does matter.
longer on zc one becomes a whole new you you will love it!! Keep on trucking, you are doing great!!
food yesterday was
1 lb ribeye steak. got me a great tender one, big yum
2 cheeseburger pattiesâ1/2 lb of meat
6 slices bacon
tin of sardines
Just holding a very calm easy eating pattern. Not ravenous, feeling lighter type hunger. So in that zone of just being and food is not a big focus right now. I am in autopilot low eating kinda mode right now, which I like. Even makes zc more simple and easy
ZC is SO different than my old dieting days. LC to extreme low carb, atkins induction foods only, keto attempt, into zero carb. Only zc has worked long term for me. Not one other plan. Yes I could lose my lbs. but in the end would gain every one of them back. ZC is the only lifestyle that gives me tons of foods each and every single day to eat and never feel âguiltâ or âanguishâ over what food do I eat and how much and all that nonsense. ZC gave me my lbs lost back and keeping them off long term now without struggle.
Driving to the store the other day I thoughtâŚdo you know in 4 years of being zero carb, I have never once said I was on a diet All other plans to me were torture. All about reward and punishment over food. Fasting âcause I ate sugar/junky food etcâ was a nightmare punishment that sure never worked for me. Fasting is the exact opposite fix for my type of personality LOL Been there, done that and will never impose another fasting day in my life on myself, that is one permanent constant in my new zc lifestyle.
And at the store I ran into a friend I havenât seen in about 2 months and she said, wow you lost alot more weight and I said, hmmmm, making a face and nah, I only lost like 3-4 lbs since you last saw me and she made a face then and said, hmmm, you look like you lost more than that. huh. I was like huhâŚLOL but it dawned on me. inches lost and changes to leaner/meaner body machine is what zc does for a person even tho the scale drops very little with that number soâŚit was nice to have some extra confirmation from an outside source on that one.
you know a few weeks ago when I went to visit my mom she said, yea you are losing more, you are doing good and that went in one ear and out the other but now it registers as she must be seeing changes too cause heck yaâll I only lost around 3-4 lbs thru the last 2 months LOL
I mean my smaller clothes are fitting better, and I find I do hate them more now, I am getting into that âfeeling so much better thru this allâ I wanna shop for new clothes and I hate shopping HAHA
Dumping all carbs was the best move in my life and I truly canât shout that out loud enough to sing the glory of the plan that works for me!!
Yea, corny but so true 
So my local store put NY strip steaks on a low sale. $6.99/lb and when they open at 7AM in a bit I will be there and grabbing for the freezer.
They have whole chickens at 99/lb so will grab like 3-4. Cooler weather is here, I wonât mind turning on the stove to roast a whole chicken.
A steak a day keeps the Dr away!
ZC ON!
Thank you for your thoughts on fasting @Alexaar
I would be interested in knowing your source for the proposition that women and children ate first and men were more likely to be fasting. My limited knowledge/experience/thinking about and of patriarchal societies suggests that men always eat first and best and the women and children take whatever is left over from the menâs âtableâ. Also that women often sacrifice their own diet in order to feed their offspring.
On the subject of fasting, my instinct these days is never to force a fast but also never to eat when not actually âhungryâ. I know that with ZC we are supposed to eat and eat and not fast but I am afraid that after many years of low carb living I have found that two meals a day suits me and on occasion I donât feel hungry for the evening meal so just relax into OMAD for that day. Despite hanging out on the borders of ZC, and having done 8 weeks of total ZC recently I am finding carnivorish suiting me at the moment. The veg I am eating is more of a garnish than a substantial part of the meal, but I am also still having decaf coffee and red wine regularly. I may eventually slide more towards total ZC again and find myself hitting the ball with the centre of the bat more often but at the moment what I am doing seems to be working for me and I donât want to rock the boat for the sake of the âdogmaâ. (not using the word âdogmaâ in any derogatory sense, you understand, but merely to cover the fact that if carnivore eating is something hard to define but a fellow carnivore will recognise it when they see it, then I suspect that my current way of eating would not be recognised by carnivore folk as belonging in the set.)
No no you are fine We eat and eat when we transition into zc any and all times we are hungry. We say EAT instead of just ignoring any gnawing hunger signals to get your body off carbs and onto zc.
Many ZC people do âIFâ and I hate hate hate to use that term cause we do not ever force an eating windowâŚwe naturally fall into eating 1 or 2 times a day on zc plan for most of us when we get thru adaption and further in control and more nourished. So you are doing very well.
We say eat and eat but it isnât that thru the entire plan at all, it is eat and eat in the beginning and your appetite will change as you heal and you will fall into a very set eating pattern for your body. ZC people usually hit 1 or 2 times a day and that is normal and yes we do âgo without foodâ for long times in between our means but it is never an âeating window of IFâ we put ourselves on.
hope that makes sense how I wrote that but you are fine!
You are ok on coffee and wine. That is relaxed carnivore. If it suits you and you find they are ok to keep in your life, then yea, have them. If you find something is âgetting offâ on ya, maybe address the coffee and wine down the road if need be.
little veg as side garnish and not the full meal is OK but one has to recognize that zc people donât eat plants. We might use a tad of garlic on steak, a sprinkle of whatever plant seasonings on chicken, or use regular old mayo cause a few teaspoons a month in, say tuna, ainât gonna kill ya but we donât âeat side dishesâ of veg, but if you are saying garnish then I assume that is like nothing? So yea you are good to go on that but again, if you wanna see how you do off it, then drop it a bit and eat more meat instead and see how ya do. We can all do those little experiments on ourselves.
Sounds to me you are doing great actually! You fit into Carnivore fine I think
I watched a show on a guy who was allowed into a tribe in Africa and the men went hunting. This tribe lived on truly nothing ya knowâŚas bare bones and rough life as it gets.
They hunted and were after a hog but it outran them and in the end they came across a (wanna say but not sure) senegal cat or savannah cat? in a tree and they used their bow and got him and he was not big but when back at camp they cooked him up and everyone got a fair share which was not much.
Guy said for ALL the days hunt and amt of miles they logged to come back and eat like 250 maybe calories of meat each among the tribe was so horrid yet so satisfying. No one went hungry, everyone shared.
So to me I would think that the hunters would not go without when they are the ones putting in the main energy use to get anything in a hunt.
Wish I remembered the show and tribe name, national geo show, but it was one of the last tribes that was entire mother nature based and I tell ya, rough and tough and hard are easy terms to describe their lifestyle but very natural.
just chatting fun talking this stuff
Honestly I have no source I can provide. I remember hearing it in discussion/interview about the impact of fasting on men vs women and the idea of protecting the species by feeding the women and children first was mentioned. This was in the context of very early humans so I have no idea if patriachal societies were a thing back then, but if they were perhaps the women were left until last. I think in tribes of lions theyâve shown the eating order is more related to social standing so maybe the leader and his wife and kids had the best pick. Iâm definitely not qualified to say anything definitively, but surely a tribe would realise that letting the women and children starve to death in times of scarcity would be unwise? And I am only talking about who would be more likely to go without when there isnât enough, Iâm not suggesting any of them were doing IF by choice!
I think women sacrificing for their own kids is a separate issue and honestly I have no clue on that. In a much harsher environment it would make sense to put your own survival first if you were still of childbearing age and had multiple kids.
I think I worded it badly but this is what I meant by men being more used to a fasted state. If the reality of hunter gatherer tribes is they are out hunting and moving on little food, theyâre more or less in a fasted state regularly. Do you remember if the woman were hunting too or were they more inactive?
Itâs nice to hear everyone was sharing and it makes sense, I was thinking the women needed to raise the kids but obviously if the men starve then the women would then lose their food providers.
Looking at what I said earlier about not eating because I could sense my body would be better without food, I think I would not that consider fasting because it had nothing to do with time of day or to force a fasting time. I do not have a set âomadâ day or say âiâm gonna do 16:8 todayâ, I just woke up and was like âugh, I feel like Iâm still sluggish from dinner, Iâm gonna hold off on eating until I feel ready to eatâ. I got a little belly rumble at breakfast time but felt full of energy and so I waited until 4 or 5 hours later when I started to feel genuinely hungry to eat. Iâm used to hunger signals being a drop in energy or body temperature rather than coming from my stomach which can sometimes just be set off by the sight or smell of food but always passes quickly.
It is fun pondering these things
Also on a totally different note - I just invented what Iâm calling the Victoria Burger and it is delicious!
I made a bunch of 1/2lb beef burgers which are quite the feat to eat plain, so I sliced one in half and put in a 1/2inch thick layer of butter in the middle and ate it like a meaty version of a victoria sponge cake. Gonna have to eat this every day now.
yea it is cause as everyone chats their experiences and more we can gain alot from another. good olâ chat it out helps me alot and I just absorb what I think would suit me and I am always so happy to get info from others this way and sometimes some things are just what I needed to read
the women in the tribe didnât do the hunt, only the men went.
I wish I remembered more on it darn it LOL
Love your burger concoction, the Victoria Burger springs forthâŚyou will probably eat alot of them now 
and to me butter beats that darn hamburger fat. I canât handle it at all so your butter would be welcome to me for sure! Cool
One of the Facebook zero carb groups I am a part of had a post from a lady who said that she only lost .8 lbs in however many months, but she went from a size 16 to a size 12. That was amazing to me and shows how insignificant the number on the scale truly is. I bet you have lost a lot of inches even though the scale only show 2-3 lbs lost.
Interesting conversation about the hunting and fasting of earlier humans. I thought I heard once that the hunters eat some of the organs and bring the meat, fat, and rest of the organs back to the tribe. I could be wrong, but I canât imagine that the hunters would not eat first since the kill is so fresh and also that they would not bring the remaining animal back to the tribe. I think they would have used every bit of the animal as food for their tribe.
I read this somewhere, too. The organs spoil too quickly so the men eat the organs at the kill site. I also heard in a podcast recently that women can assimilate and convert the precursors to DHA found in plants slightly more easily than men. Maybe itâs because women had to develop other ways to get all their nutrients via plants since the men usually ate the organs.
Yesterday was a crazy day. For lunch I had a triple quarter pounder with bacon and mayo from McDonaldâs. Three patties was a little too much. I wonât do that again. Dinner was some chicken wings, about eight pieces.
Breakfast today was bacon and four wings.
Breakfast was the same as every other day. Two strips of bacon, one sausage patty, two eggs w/ HWC poured into the grease.
Lunch, maybe after a stick or beef jerky, leftover pork loin that was grilled last night.