OXtoberFest ZC Challenge
and glad that worked for you, but 95% donāt make it to 6 months, mainly from not eating enough. Hereās another GREAT post from a long term carnivore https://www.zerocarbhealth.com/tweaking-the-zero-carb-diet-dont-do-it/
@Elizedge, there is a post on zero carb health that gives all the details of following a carnivore diet including thoughts on seasoning and mayonnaise. Could you add it to this thread for all the newbies to the challenge? I found it very useful.
your wish is my commend 
https://www.zerocarbhealth.com/non-optimal-zero-carb-foods-are-ok/
Oh, I totally get this. I wasnāt fasting for weight loss when I did that- it was entirely for spiritual and emotional reasons. Discovering that I was āpalate cleansedā afterwards was kind of an odd bonus. Right before the fast, and during it - I was reading about the carnivore diet, and decided Iād try it. (We raise grass fed beef cattle afterall- so carnivore seemed like a natural progression.) I donāt fast as much as I used to. When I do, its tied to something spiritual or emotional. But yeah, definitely not a routine thing anymore. I totally identify with Sarah- in the video. That was spot on.
thank you for posting all of this!
Iām taking all the good advice here to eat lots of meat Trying to shift my mindset as iām used to intermittent fasting. Feels weird not waiting until midday to eat!
Got a lot of ruminating going on, my mind seems determined to find some reason this experiment will fail. I did 30 days zc earlier this year but ate mostly bacon and steaks and felt terrible, chronically itchy and tired, then tried adding sauerkraut as i thought maybe i needed something green and ended up struggling to breathe which is how i learnt histamine is a thing. Thankfully i had antihistamines on hand but iām still a little shaken from that as i thought i was dying, so gonna keep it simple this month and wait to add in anything other than ruminant meat cooked from frozen.
I am eating lots of it though! Super tired today and kinda hating lamb and ghee even though it still tastes good. Hunger signals are all over the place, think itās the shock of eating breakfast for the first time in like 6 months 
I feel like I could eat a few more bites though so I will power through the last of my lunch. Thatāll take me up to a lb of meat. Then probably a nap before burgers for dinner later.
I wake around 5 am, eat between 9 and 10ish (have my ONE coffee with this meal), unless I get busy at work and donāt feel hungry (1-1.5 lb) Then perhaps 11am. Then I have no thought about food until I get home, then dinner (another 1-1.5 lb) is normally 4 or 5 pm. Nothing between, nothing after. My only change is if I am socializing and will be eating late so Iāll break the first meal into 2, eating half at 9-10 the other half at 3 ish. Then late dinner. This has worked well for me for over a year now
Really interesting videos, thanks for posting it
Hard to watch at times as itās made me question the impact IF has had on my health, iāve definitely gone down the fasting rabbithole and whilst AIP and ketosis have brought me back from a really dark place and healed the majority of my autoimmune symptoms and i no longer have chronic pain or numbness yada yadaā¦ iām so frigging tired all the time and now iāve stopped counting amounts or timing iām getting moments of what i think are genuine energy and itās likeā¦ maybe iāve got chronic fatigue because iām starving myself thinking itās healthy? Iāve struggled with anorexia and bullimia in the past so i think not eating has always felt easier but it feels different to just eat meat, no crash afterwards, i can just get on with my day.
Lots to think about, and from lovely women, iāll have to hunt out some other vids from them!
Youāre eating pattern is very similar to how i did keto before i started IF, so i wonder if iāll end up on that sort of schedule once iām better adapted.
Did you find it took you a while to get into that eating rhythm or has it been similar since youāve started zc?
I ate three times a day plus lots of snacks, even with keto. I listened to the veterans and I would always cook at least a pound of meat and I think it probably took about 6 months to get into a pattern of just eating twice a day Thatās what works best for me.
IF is the mindset you need to dump in the beginning of carnivore.
On zero carb we NEVER put ourselves on any time window to eat. We eat any time we want, whenever we want.
BUT remember, as you stay on planā¦this will change. Your body WILL PUT you into an IF type NATURAL lifestyle. So donāt think your āIFā type situation is leaving, nope, in the end, as long as we stay on plan, eat as much as you always must when startingā¦then later on plan you find your natural body puts you into a natural eating state.
Like all of the sudden you only want to eat around 10-11 am and then maybe not til 5pm or maybe even you donāt want anything til like 7. One morning you will wake up and say NAH, I donāt NEED anything. Another day ya might wake up ravenous and eat breakfast for sure!
but in the end, longer you go the more you will natural out your eating pattern like Elizedge mentioned. I eat around 10-12 and then I eat 4-5 and done for the day BUT AT ANY time I feel I need more food, any time of the day (which is more rare for me now with being years on plan) I eat. I never deny myself ever if the hunger is real.
So ZC will give you a natural eating time in your life as your body needs it, just hold on, eat whenever you are hungry, never deny thatā¦but you will change up ALOT down the line to fit your personal eating pattern for your body. You will be doing the most natural IF type situation of all times that suits you and it will come natural and all of the sudden you go from eating alot to just your normal eating pattern with no hunger ever and more great benefits. Just let it all happen naturallyā¦we on carnivore never force anything. Just eat to heal and nourish and it all changes on a personal level for each of us.
Just hang on for the ride
Some wonderful chat on the thread! ZC ALL the way baby LOL
Good zc info coming out to chat about!
Well my body manages to make the signals even more confusing as ever. Until now I merely had (rarely):
- negative appetite (0% chance for eating, itās very serious) + strong hunger
- being completely full (my maximal stomach capacity is reached) + strong hunger (easy to avoid and anyway, extremely hard to reach as I can handle 2 liters)
Today I had
- āstarvingā (hard to explain, the most annoying needy hunger. I canāt feel really strong hunger anymore since fat adaptation, itās something else) + no real hunger
- had enough, no way to eat another bite + hunger
Oh well. They will pass. But eating is such a burden sometimes I am amazed I donāt do EF just to avoid it. I like eating but I hate this even more.
Oh well, my personal little problem. But why itās so perfect sometimes, normal other times and just horrible now and thenā¦?
Letās not think about it. I have photos 
I am sure my rustic liver spread (if itās warmer) isnāt pretty enough for everyone. But its rustic appearance is just perfect for me. But I like it for its perfect hardness and taste. The bottom is smoother if someone is happier to look at thatā¦
Itās the liver still but inside one pancake 2 are cheesy and the half one is empty at this point.
My flat soufle pancake
Today was hard but in the end I ate enough (my second meal was unsuccessful, a few bites and I couldnāt eat more. odd). It seems raising fat (the way I can, adding not satiating kinds) has absolutely no effect on my protein. It stays a bit high. No surprise here. Well, last time it went higher when I added fat but maybe I had a bit more carbs tooā¦?
I hope it will be okay tomorrow, it would be nice to have some consensus between my various urges regarding food. I donāt even need some eating disordered brain, my body is against itself just fine sometimes.
I ateā¦ kind of 4 times today but itās always the signs of things going wrong. I had to use this number to get satiated and satisfied in the end but it was a torture. I feel best on my OMAD and TMAD days, only that feels natural and only then I feel no starving. I have some ideas how to stick to them and I will do that (I still eat more if I need that but I make sure my first meal is successful and practically ensure a good day).
Heās not a carnivore and doesnāt have science on people in this community.
Day #3: I feel good this morning. Slept well and dreamed of a t-shirt slogan.
Reflecting back on yesterday (journaling), I enjoyed a natural urge to be more physically active in the spring sunshine. A beach walk with my dog and digging and planting some grape vines that will provide some shade and dappled light this summer.
This is a prototype idea. Eat Less Get More
I know it needs workā¦ Let me explain.
People are shapeshifters. If you are going to change shape, do it without the Hunger. Werewolves and vampires are examples of shapeshifters with the Hunger. Itās mythology, but it makes us fear hunger. So, the idea, not new but not widely known, is to eat the most nutritionally dense foods available. And the available part has to include nutrient bioavailability. CICO has failed us. CICO (pronounced, psycho) seems scientific. But those of us that have experienced the Hunger from the 1980ās onward, now know the base science had a flaw. It worked, āEat Less Move Moreā still pervades the main stream and is propped up by the industrialised food complex, but it was not the whole, nor the wholefoods, story. To lose weight, and in doing so, hope to lose body fat, and in doing so hope to shift our shape, and in doing so hope to shape our lives for the better, we have been convinced to eat less.
The failure of the CICO model is not the physics. That is undisputable. The failure is the way it was applied to nutrition. 20th century CICO was based on eating less calories and eating less nutrition. It was aimed at eating fibrous bulk for satiety to avoid energy. We know how wrong that is and how much harm it has caused us. That method leads to distress and hunger. But if we seek to get more. Get more nutrition, by eating the most nutrient dense and bioavailable foods available to us we end up eating less. Immediately I see a flaw in my design. It should read āGet Moreā first. āEat lessā is a consequence. And in there somewhere is the body fat loss from a fear filled body storing fat, to a nourished body cycling fat stores and not compelled to store excess.
09:30am Fasting blood glucose: 5.2mmol/L (94) Ketones: 0.6mmol/L
This morning I drank some beef bone broth + supplements (Mg & Vit B3) + iced long black coffee.
Get More Eat Less
ok I get it but I donāt like those 2 words together, Eat Less. Gives me the williesā¦ohhhhhh, LOL
I remember watching Kelly H or Dana S or some video I think where they had a āzero carbā Tshirt that read: Eat a Cow, Save a Human Life!
I found that a great play on words for sure about carnivore.
A beach walk with the dogā¦oh my, so jealous here reading that one!!
-------------good carnivore morning!!
Feel wonderful.
yesterday food was
8 oz small NY strip steak. Thought it was gonna be the chewiest little sucker in the world, but it surprised me, it was very tenderā¦woofed that little bit down in a flash. Too small but I bought some cause they were on a cheap sale price and the big steak packs were sold out, so I grabbed them but shouldnāt fried up 2
8 link sausage
1/2 lb. cheeseburger patty
4 slices salami
Got a seafood hankering again. I know a lb. of jumbo shrimp will be on my list of eats today, will pair up with that other little 8 oz steak from that package. other food? not to worry, I can find meat around me LOL
Brrrrā¦weather changing so much colder. I AM SO HOT! HAHA yes I am a hot weather lover, like under 85 to me is frigginā Fall weather 
, oh boy gonna be a long cold winter approaching. ugh. Give me 95 any old day! I dread it already :(, summer leaves my happiness goes with it kindaā¦oh well, luckily the world keeps turning and eventually my 95 and sun comes back!!
ZC ON!
This afternoon I felt hungry, so I buckled.
I have cooked beef strips (cold) and I felt I needed to eat those lean strips with butter. So I did.
Staying on the elimination style beef, salt, water is a real challenge. Ah, well start again.
I had a weird cravingā¦ for eggs. I ate a steak. Scotch fillet cooked in suet. Bubbly rain water. Still feel like eggs. Not hungry now though. So, thatās a ācravingā rather than hunger. Might have to blame a butter trigger. Interesting stuff going on.
The challenge is real.
I understand Fangsy. I do and Iām sure all would agree. Eat Less is not palatable. I had thought on it while in that timeless dream space. But for low carbers of a certain vintage (GenX), it is ingrained. Our generation is currently messing up the world as bad as the Baby Boomers. So, I thought it is better to work with it. But, youāre right it might be better to break it off, right here. Break up from āEat Lessā.
Yep, I try this lately. Carni is my way to eat less - but itās not a given it will really work. I donāt eat less just because my food is more nutritious and vice versa. Itās more complicated. And calories play a bigger and bigger role as time passā¦
But I mostly focus on low net carbs for health and well-being and the other things do whatever they do. I do my best to avoid overeating (my best isnāt so great) but itās way too easy on carni. I probably overate yesterday but thatās a single day so doesnāt matter. A stronger day now and then is good anyway, I always have those.
Hi guys!
After my 5th meal at 2am (not the best idea but it wasnāt an idea, just happened. if I can eat, I tend to do that, lack of hunger and appetite and a strong day already never really bothered me. itās no problem on a good woe) I ate again at 1pm today. A late meal, cycling, visiting the pig farm shop and the weekend all tend to trigger an earlier meal and I didnāt resist. I had little food though, just some leftover fish, I put eggs and cheese on it, I tasted the pork hocks we boughtā¦ And ate pudding with whipped cream and erythritol for reasons. I already had some difficulties in the last day (without any better reason than it was the 3rd day alreadyā¦ I canāt seem to stick to any not very general woe lately. I canāt even stay away from carni for many days, I always come back. and then I want to go away, no idea why. and then the next day I want to come back. I am a flip-flop) so it was expected and itās the subtlest break I can do. I was already too flexible but it was my only option now. November will be easier as I will be stricter. But I will have more meat too. And I have determination, I build it up more every day.
It didnāt help that the pig shop was out from lard, sausages and ribsā¦ Just the items I wanted. I bought chuck and hocks, I actually wanted the latter too, I get my pork skin and extra fat tissue from that and the remaining part is very very good cooked. Only the cats get nothing as the big bone is useless for them and we eat everything else. Sometimes they get a little taste but thatās it. I can use pork skin just fine, some of my new dishes require it.
I bought chicken neck instead of liver in the village shop now. At least thatās almost proper meat (to me, Alvaro doesnāt understand what is edible in it but I love bony meat). And dirt cheap. And meaty bones of a bird, I surely can make a soup with them. And I make this silly Tofu happy tooā¦ Or whichever cat will be here but Tofu is the one we can depend on. She is very nearly always here, playing the poor starving cat act zillion times a day. But she is slim so I usually give her food. Not always. Yesterday she was extremely upset about the fact that I gave her food only 3 times in the last hour and I focused on my own meal. As far as I can tell, she does this with every kinds of food and as a cat, she likes to eat many times and not really big amounts. Though she eats pretty much for her small, always quite slim figureā¦
Weather is perfect now, sunny. Thatās what matters to me, I need solar energy The temperature is almost irrelevant as long as it is below 25C/77F Itās autumn, I finally can be out, it should be sunny and dry a lot! October usually have the perfect temperature and weather for me and my house. But this week was cold and it wasnāt pleasant as it was hot before and I canāt get used to things that quickly. But humans can wear clothes. It was just very strange, sudden jump from summer to late autumnā¦ It gets warmer now as it should.
My tomatoes surely missed the sun (we had sunshine every day but very very little), they are green since ages. My sweet chilies need to ripen too.
My little sunflower bloomed, itās not that choosy, time canāt be stopped and the flower must be born. I planted sunflowers and they are dead since ages, this one is a surprise close to the fields and outside of my property but itās considered mine too Just now officially but who cares? Itās my sunflower next to my summer apple tree with tiny apples because the fire confused it and with new leaves, new flowers happened. How it could make apples, are summer apples okay all alone? No other silly apple tree bloomed in early August or when was thatā¦ Whatever.
I donāt talk about all my flowers but I have quite a few still I like autumn. I need to go out a lot, colorful trees, still warm but not too warm weather, sunshineā¦ Some people think about autumn and think of rain. Well, we have lots of sunshine in October. November is different, once we had 3 weeks of FOG. I probably almost died. I canāt function without sun for 3 days. I am immune to depression as far as I can tell but I was horribly down. But it was only once. Normally itās just cold and windy and rainy. And I still have fresh fruit in the garden, at least in the second half of it Plants are amazing. I like most of mine, be it tree or bush, fruit bearing plant or decorative, evergreen or notā¦ I really love my lots of little mosses too. And not so much my zillion thorny monster plants. Though some of them are beautiful, I have a soft spot for them.
By the way, it was exactly 6 months ago that the beef farm offered ruminant meat (so the last time I could buy any and that wasnāt much for various reasons, this off time was very unusual) - except the way too expensive veal I canāt afford and I am not sure it is worth it anyway. I am almost sure they will have something in the beginning of November or even earlier.