Lunch today was a meat smorgasbord: leftover knockwurst, leftover steak, and a leftover lamb chop.
Dinner was a few pork rinds (to tide me over until I was finished cooking), a hamburger, an egg pudding, and some wings. I’m not sure what the total weight was for the day, but I definitely won’t be waking up hungry.
It has definitely gotten easier sticking to strict carnivore as time is going on.
Hey Fangsy. I’m fasting for convenience. It’s not really fasting, it is OMAD. Or Intermittent eating, 23:1.
There are two intense work days when I teach all day on uni campus and I find that I have sustainable energy and clear thinking for teaching uni students (college students) if I do those days OMAD with a carnivore meal in the evening. I add extra fat, if needed, but the meals are generally fatty beef cuts (ribs) based. That fat lets me access and make blood ketones, I chase those for fasting maintenance (hunger/craving suppression) but mainly to fuel my brain.
What you may be hinting at is that I am not eating because I have a hangover mentality from a long-term dieting past. There is that as well. The naysayers constantly state that weight loss on low carb is due to reduced calories consumed. That message is hard to shake having lived it for 3 decades.
Turning one’s thoughts from losing weight to gaining health. Is the psychological adaptation that I have not heard clearly stated by low carb gurus. It’s probably because I am not properly listening. I can hear it, but internal voices sometimes will question it and not allow me to believe it.
Day #15. (Happy Half Way)
Breakfast 1pm: a big pile of pan-fried streaky bacon fried in suet, 4 scrambled eggs, 3 slices cheddar cheese. Black coffee with double cream.
Today I have put some beef marrow bones and chunks of lamb (from the farm next door), and some Himalayan pink salt in the slow cooker to cook all day and make some bones to pick over and a marrow rich bone broth to drink or add the gelatin to meals.
that is so true for most of us who go into this lifestyle. the first hurdles can be very tough but if we hold the plan tight, it truly becomes extremely easy with time.
you are doing some good eating 
wow KP that is like super dramatic for sure. I hadn’t seen anyone chat that one. Cool, love reading big results like that.
Oh, very cool on that. that darn word of fasting You are just following your eating pattern you need on certain days that are convenient for ya. Smart, we need to fit the plan into our lives and whatever floats our boat is a good key for us and suits us.
yes that is a biggie in zc world. you hear it alot that it is not a ‘go into this for full on weight loss and at a rapid pace’ plan…it is a healing plan for health. I also had to dump alot of mental bad baggage about eating to gain health cause when the focus is always weight loss as the #1 key reason most of us start this journey, we just leave the ‘whole person’ fix behind. Start to fix the whole person for health and everything else surely benefits and improves and it all falls into place. Fix the big picture, not just the 1 symptom.
food yesterday was
10 oz NY strip steak, sucker was small but delish
few slices taylor ham
1/2 lb. cheeseburger patty
All in all that is not alot of food for me at all. Just in eating less mode and feeling wonderful. Appetite just tells me what to do and I do it.
AND WEEeeee…1/2 lb down on scale…so at this point OxtoberFest has given me a whole lb. off 
Will take it, I don’t care how long it takes to see a little change on the scale anymore, but it is very very nice to get a small confirmation every now and then that my plan is still changing me to the good! Happy about that.
Still feeling that eating a bit lighter feeling so today I am not sure on food. Woke up without a firm…I am eating XYZ and alot of it! and just will go with the flow. I do have a smaller sized NY Strip steak to finish up and with ?, not sure. Will just see where the food falls today.
Feeling fab. Darn knee got twisted again and am crippling around a bit still. Royal PIA to the max. But will survive 
ZC all the way!
Good news day for me today Got my blood test results back and I am the picture of perfect health - liver, thyroid, electrolytes, iron, blood cell counts, A1c all on the right side of the normal ranges.
Which means the itching is nothing sinister whoop!
The itching was almost nonexistent yesterday, certainly reduced. I’ve been using a new batch of ground beef from the butcher these past couple of days which I think is making all the difference. I asked him to put aside enough from his fresh delivery to make me 12lbs of mince, so the beef isn’t aged like the standard stuff is, well it’s like 5 or 6 days after slaughter and kept in his chiller and not cut up until the morning I came to pick it up. Then he ground it when I arrived, I walked the five minutes home, made burgers and stuck them straight in the oven, then they went straight in the freezer. So butchering to freezing was only like an hour. Histamines aren’t gonna get the best of me!
Had 2 of my 1/2lb butter burgers this morning and feeling fabulous today 
super congrats on great bloodwork results.
Love the way you are adapting your needs on your meat purchases.
You sure found a great way to go past bigger hist. levels and you are so active in the personal approach you need for yourself. I love that…self care and putting in that bit of time and effort for your health! So smart!!
Happy you feel fab today
Correction: Size 10 to a size 6 with .8 pounds lost. It was posted on the zeroing in on Health facebook group 10/1
Hi guys. I was sooo good at staying away this far I so don’t do carnivore lately but now I will get very close again I think. I do Zornfast now, not the foggiest idea what it means this time. I probably will eat today as I have a weightlifting day and I never ever didn’t eat afterwards. But Zornfast is very very flexible, that’s why I do it. It just helps me not eating without a good reason. Enough meat helps even more but that’s for November.
I dropped moral things, chicken is dirt cheap and I realized it’s tasty enough even from not good source. I keep this at a minimum and not for long I guess but well, I had to choose something and it seems the best idea for now.
It was so frightening to see what I wrote in quotes I truly had very little animal protein at some point but that never lasts for long. Just a few days before we get eggs again and go shopping other stuff. But it’s still uncomfortable. Even though I know I can get something very soon. I like to have lots of food and like to be able to eat as many eggs as I may desire. And variety is important too.
My supplies aren’t so well now but better and it will change in the beginning of November.
The beef farm butchers only veal now so I still didn’t buy anything there. And we dropped the emu idea. But we will make a big chicken stew… Alvaro says 3kg fits our pot. It’s definitely something. He loves filling our biggest pot with food and it’s fine and dandy in many situations. And a bit unlucky when he cooks 3 kg green peas (the dish is not fit for freezing)… I totally enjoy when he makes food for himself that lasts for 4 days but this amount is more than that. We needed very lucky circumstances to avoid throwing out much (hopefully any but he should be ready for a big portion today). He rarely did that before (that 2 kg mushroom stew years ago was interesting too but freezing works in that case. it was for 2 people and I didn’t want much of it) and I could help more in the past anyway. But he will learn.
Fasting is a cool thing. I love eating, I spend lots of time in the kitchen, I am addicted and eat with zero hunger and appetite too - but I love fasting as well (short, natural ones. like 20-26 hours. sometimes 48 but that’s rare. not getting hungry for that long probably wouldn’t be rare but I rarely wait for hunger. it would be interesting to try and I did try and failed. I just can’t wait for hunger). Balance is important and we need to eat and need to fast. It’s just longer for some people than for others.
Fasting and forced fasting are two very very different things. I never do the latter, not even when I am very curious. My body appreciates my determination and doesn’t want food but it was my single longer fast and it was only 120 hours anyway, nothing special. It was fun but I am fine with my tiny fasts.
I am against forced eating too. That’s why I fast and dislike people who want others to eat all day. That’s unnatural, not hedonistic and very very unhealthy for me. It should be free and natural and proper. Listening to the body, it knows best, probably.
We don’t really have waste problems with our vegetables. We simply eat them all. Yeah, sometimes even we throw out some spoiled tomato but it’s a very tiny amount and it often happens when Alvaro’s Mom gifts it to us, not when we actually buy it because we know we will eat it in the next days.
But I dislike being forced to make and eat vegetables just because they will spoil. Well, good luck for that now, even my mind can’t force my body to eat vegetables… But it’s a bit fuzzy what is my body and my mind as they are connected.
But it’s the same with animal products, I need to be careful what kind of stuff with a short shelf life I buy. That’s why we have mostly dry plant matter as they don’t spoil or it takes years (the same is true for my canned things). It’s trickier with animal products but canning, freezing helps - and nothing stops us from shopping regularly. If I had to stay alive without shopping for half a year, I would eat plants most of the time, what else? Especially that I still don’t have the mini freezer (that is still much bigger than my freezer in my fridge).
I so would hate it, I could give up meat, that’s easy if I can have plants but not my eggs (HOW I lived without eggs for 1-2 years as a vegetarian, I can’t imagine and don’t remember at all.)
I often think of November. Yep, the chicken was a good idea, I would have huge difficulties without it for sure. The beef farm surely will offer something not veal or guinea fowl too, I get some little allegedly farm pork again… And livers and turkey! I must try turkey.
As for October, I mostly stick to my general plan, I mean what I decided for even off days.
I don’t drink alcohol (I totally forgot and put whisky into my little ice cream - I had leftover yolks and had no better idea. and success! it’s not too alcoholic but it didn’t become hard!) and I don’t eat peanuts (except a few wasabi ones but I stopped those too). My first month since forever that I resist the salted, roasted peanuts. My carnivore(-ish) times stopped my addiction but on off days they still happened. My desire pretty much stopped but I see the jar many times a day, after all and they ARE tasty… I consumed very very little but still. And now only the wasabi ones. November is carni so it will be totally zero. And I expect it will be practically zero afterwards, no matter what.
I wrote before my big goal is making my off days better. As they will happen anyway, if not in November, in December for sure. And I am so not the type who says oh it’s holiday, why not to be super crazy. Super crazy isn’t hedonistic to me, I don’t feel optimal that way. And I was a slave of my habits and whims for too long. I still won’t resist temptation but I except my temptations and desires target the right things. At least most of the time.
And it’s idiotic to eat something just because it tastes good and we survive it just fine. I have good proper food, I am choosy about the carbier ones, they must be worthy.
5 fruit seasons at the moment, not “dangerous” ones but I will make lots of jam in October (mostly from already canned fruit). Because it’s the unfortunate time when I am cold in the house but it’s not cold enough to heat yet. So I bake and make jam (I think quince-pear is good for little Christmas gifts too. I don’t feel bad about it at all but yeah, my thoughts are different than they were before when I think of fruits), jam is better as it takes several hours in the oven and warms the kitchen very nicely. And our rooms are upstairs so the warmth comes up.
It’s an exceptionally cold, rainy October now 
The house gets colder very quickly. 18 Celsius now. It’s borderline okay for us but I am still used to warm days and miss sunshine anyway. So I am cold a bit.
Congrats for everyone who wrote good news
I still can’t control my comments, at least they are rare now. I try to be scarce until November and I will be around a lot then I guess (hopefully with smaller walls of texts and I will be so relevant… I will merely announce the beginning of my last fruit season at some point. I am so proud of my fruits especially when I have fresh fruit in December. but it starts in November. I will have a few tests but easy ones. visiting Alvaro’s Mom without eating plants there, that’s serious. the fruit can wait until December. oh and I will be surrounded with zillion apples all November too). It’s my big, planned since long carni month, after all!
best wishes to everyone ~
That’s great, Fangs! I’m happy you are seeing results.
Great news, Alex! I hope you get your eating and the histamine issue figured out.
Nothing much new with me right now. I eat eggs with butter most mornings now and I’m back to eating beef patties for lunch. I am still having one to two cups of coffee with HWC in the mornings. Tonight I’m having chicken wings w/ medium hot sauce & blue cheese. I have two small steaks in the fridge which I plan to eat right before going out to the murder mystery event on Saturday night so I will not need to eat any of the hor d’oeurves at the event.
I enjoy your comments It’s nice to get different perspectives on how people move towards a carnivore lifestyle. I mean within a 10 minute walk from my house I can get to a butchers and two large supermarkets with all the meat I could ever want for very low prices (£3-10/kg), so my experience is going to be very different to someone without that constant easy access.
Thank you!
Different perspectives are fine indeed… But I tend to stray away even from the topic… Okay, we have no fixed topic and it’s my life, my circumstances tend to influence my woe to some extent…
I am fine with my surroundings. The closest village is 3.5 km away But we usually go shopping into a town (20km) or a city (25km). Except for the eggs (the farther place is 10-15km, it depends if we can cross the forest in the wildlife part. NOT in this rainy weather. but it’s not extra travel, my SO works close to the place), my smoked pork (a very cute cycling tour, 20-22km) and I can buy liver and some chicken in my village (4-5km). These are all very short distances, easy with some cycling, one needs exercise anyway. Still, we go to the city rarely, our shopping requires a car anyway. But I could go there more often if it was important. So it’s fine… I couldn’t buy meat even in a supermarket as I had standards but not much money. Now I lowered my standards, again, for a while but it’s not like I can stand buying much meat from not proper sources. I only buy a little that I really need for carnivore.
I can buy meat for 1-2/kg or even significantly less if I accept bony chicken meat :) I saw it on sale for about .6/kg… Chicken is dirt cheap if we don’t want the good stuff. But honestly, I don’t feel a huge difference. Like, many times more expensive difference, definitely not that… I enjoyed the cheap stuff too and bones mean I get broth and it’s precious to me.
If I had a big freezer and especially much money for way more expensive meat (theoretically I could buy expensive meat, not always but still - but it doesn’t worth it now), I could just buy lots of meat at once. I very rarely considered being “far” from stores a problem. Yeah, I can’t just pop in for a nice sale but if I see a rare, really good one, I can visit the city that weekend.
I dislike shopping, maybe it’s hard doing a big one every 3-4 weeks but at least I don’t need to see a supermarket for weeks afterwards and we get some socialization with a relative, the only close one nearby.
And my eggs are close The remaining hens (after the fox attack) are diligent, it seems and we still get 20-25 tomorrow! And 30-40 from the other place. But we grab some from the groceries if we find better ones. It’s a bit stressful never have even 80-100 eggs. I am pleased when I have 150-200, it’s still not very much, we easily 70 or more a week. Not always but very often and always if I do anything close to carnivore.
It’s necessity too but I wouldn’t give up my precious eggs even for the best meat. Well, some of them, sure but I need to keep quite a few per day. But we will see what happens if I get access to lots of good meat in the distant future.
That is cheap! I would not trust anything that cheap in the uk, we have pretty good food standards here but it comes at a price. amost farmers have their cows and sheep on large fields so grass fed with some supplemental feed.
My christmas present to myself last year was a full sized standup freezer so I buy a whole lamb at once from a local farm and that lasts me 3-6 months, probably less on carnivore! It’s like 70lbs of meat though so it does last a while. The farm store does awesome honey too, a local beekeeper moves his bees up there during the spring and shares the profits with the farm. It’s funny how different my life is compared to when I lived in London. Even though the convenience is still here, you have so much better access to the actual source of your food. It’s a much more sustainable way of living, and the meat tastes better!
It was a sad day for me when i realised eggs are a definite trigger of autoimmune symptoms for me. Sounds like heaven to have so many fresh eggs!
Sigh… I went to visit my mother who just had to go to a nursing/rehabilitation faculty. My brother picked us up some seafood salad from a nearby deli. He is not financially well off, so I didn’t wan t to say, “I can’t eat that,” so I ate it.
Boy, was it tasty! I finished the whole container. Unfortunately, it did contain non carni things such as bell pepper, lemon juice, soy oil, and other additives. I ate about 800 calories worth but I couldn’t stop eating it until it was gone. I ended up with about 50 grams of carbs.
It’s been a good lesson/reminder about how easy it is to not have brakes when carbs are added to the mix. I have a headache now.
I’m not going to feel guilty or stressed about it. It was worth it to not hurt his feelings, but back on track starting now.
Yes, it’s dirty cheap… I never really looked at chicken prices (okay, I couldn’t avoid seeing chicken breast on sale, well that’s 5-8 times as expensive as bony parts while being way less valuable to me… yeah, it has more protein as it has no bones but borderline inedible and I can’t make broth with it :D) and now I got almost shocked how extremely cheap it is if I don’t care about the source. Normal chicken in the supermarket is extremely cheap. Well they grow up quickly I guess… Pork is kind of cheap too but way more expensive than chicken. Beef is always expensive. But nice for variety. Turkey is cheap like chicken. Duck is way more expensive.
Even my very tiny freezer is fine for half a sheep, it’s not much meat! About 11kg, they said and it’s a proper adult one… Not a particularly small sheep (but not a big one for sure, just normal around here), just the meat part (and the bones in it)… I was surprised when I learned its meat content, I thought it’s much bigger! But it’s all the wool and blood and guts.
Good honey is easy to find here, losts of people are beekeepers. I ate much honey until a decade ago, maybe more than sugar but probably not in December with gifted sweets and baked goods… Gingerbread or not. Only I make gingerbread in the family anyway. (Very much anti-carnivore topic, oh well. Everyone and their mother put great effort into making them soft and not super hard, seemingly. Only I am unable to make not soft baked things despite my efforts… Life is cruel sometimes. But when I was younger, all my wannabe-biscuits became charcoal. At least they became soft little cakes later And I had to get my crunch from cheese wisps and nut wafers… Chicken skin and pork skin or pork fat entered the fam since then…)
Sounds like a stressful day. Sometimes we just have to do the best we can.
Hope you feel better soon!
Carbs are tricky. Amy is totally amazed how hungry she becomes eating carbs… Poor girl surely comes back eventually but now it’s hospital time for her. At least she eats more using carbs (and meds. drugs. whatever she gets there that makes people hungry besides boredom. but carbs alone has this effect too), she needs the weight.
That is one type. Carbs immediately raise hunger and calories.
I was that type but now the effect isn’t immediate. I need days to lose my “very low-carb satiation” (or something special like a very serious drug pretending being an Aussie chocolate. I never want to touch it again). And I feel okay too. So it’s not zero tolerance but carbs eventually mess with lots of things.
And for some people carbs are just as satiating as everything else. I always will admire this attribute of Alvaro. His body must be good at calorie counting too, he almost always automatically eats the same amount of calories, no matter the food. And reaches the same satiation (except if he consumes much added fat as he stays hungry and overeats and later becomes unwell. so it’s satiating but with a delayed effect).
Eating only 800 kcal is having super strong brakes to me I never could go below that before carnivore (and I tried for long, in vain. that was when I decided to try keto before I give up losing fat for good or make a miracle and exercise more or gain muscles first… I am horrible at giving up). But it’s kinda big for some people, I guess. It’s tiny to me - but possible since carnivore, it’s amazing. I can do it even off carni now - for a while, at least. And while not eating zillion carbs or pancakes. Because pancakes are special to me, I easily eat up them and they aren’t low-calorie at all, at least mine aren’t.
I am back to very low-carb now (not exactly carnivore but very close to it), my calories immediately dropped, well it’s an OMAD-ish day (I ate a little, then I realized it’s not enough and ate again soon. stupid quick satiation).
Yes, I understand. 800 kcal is a tiny meal, it was impossibly tiny for me until recently. 1500-2000 kcal was a decent-sized meal in my world (for my TMAD lunch. with such a meal, dinner could be significantly smaller and sometimes I could eat only 1200 kcal for my first meal). When I did low-carb, on my rare quite carby off days around Christmas I ate 2 meals, about 2000 kcal each and it felt pretty normal for an individual, somewhat indulgent day… Even though it was overeating. But with carbs, it felt okay. Carbs are frightening.
Today I ate a small OMAD meal and it was 1300 kcal. It’s odd as sometimes I eat less and it feels more. Maybe it’s the cheese and the sour cream, they seem so little nothings. Only 4 eggs and no proper meat… Well it worked for a not hungry day.
