Rip it off like a band-aid or ease in?

#1

Hi!
I posted earlier today about getting back on the horse in the “fell off the horse” section after falling off because of pregnancy/nausea. I was paleo/low carb and keto a lot before going carnivore before and it was not easy for me to go carnivore then. I experience serious side effects, especially nausea and diarrhea. So I would be carnivore a while until I couldn’t stand the side effects, then go back to keto, and repeat, and gradually my stints in carnivore were getting longer until I was 2 months in when I got pregnant and quit (that was a mistake, nausea did not get better). Now that I am ready to try again, initially I thought I would do what I did last time again and start keto then go carnivore, mostly because I am afraid of the side effects especially nausea which was just awful at times and had me throw in the towel a couple of times. Now I’m wondering though, am I just prolonging the adaption phase? Does anyone have any experience getting back to it after quitting and was it the same or different the second time?

At this point I have been eating a diet I would not call SAD because I make everything from scratch/ no boxed or fast foods but its not great either. My husband prefers and thrives on a diet that is more traditional in style so while babe was new and I didn’t have the willpower/energy to resist what I make my husband we just ate the same thing. I don’t know if it matters but what a typical day of eating for me is:
BF- eggs bacon toast/fried potatoes, fresh apples or apple sauce on the side or waffles w/ whipped cream and real maple syrup occasionally, coffee with cream and sugar.
L- butternut & apple soup w/ bread and butter or fresh apples w/cheese, cold roast beef or salami, w/ bread and butter on the side
D- roast beef or chicken or leg of lamb with gravy, mashed potatoes or roasties, veggies often peas or carrots, & apple pie for dessert

I make our bread its just salt yeast water flour. Everything is homemade from scratch, no mixes or frozen short cuts. Not ideal but at least we are generous with our meat portions/ use real ingredients. So that’s where I am coming from and straight to carnivore would be a very big change for sure. I am still nursing as well. Would it be best to just jump into the deep end or ease in?

I’d also be interested if anyone has gone straight from SAD to carnivore and if it was just awful when compared to other peoples adaption stories or did it seem about the same?

Thanks!

(Tony) #2

If you are eating bread and desserts your diet is likely to have similar macros to SAD even if it is a lot healthier.
When I get back into very low carb I do it in stages otherwise I get headache etc. it is much quicker than the initial adaption i.e. week/s instead of months. I just kept taking the carbs away, if I started to feel symptoms I’d just slow down a bit.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #3

Headache when starting keto is generally because of a lack of sodium, which is easily remedied. And we need quite a bit more salt than the dietary guidelines recommend, to begin with.

#4

Thanks for the advice. You are right that my macros are probably just as bad. Today I did keto; heavy creamed coffee for breakfast, lunch was cheese and salami, and dinner was a fatty steak with bacon and broccoli, mushrooms and onion stir fried. Going to have very dark chocolate later. Enjoyed it but I itch to get back to where I was before. I felt so great on carnivore emotionally. I have bad anxiety, carnivore cures it among other things but I don’t want to feel so crummy I fail. I drink salted water when adapting to avoid headaches so I at least don’t have that problem but as I said before I worry about the nausea the most, it was really unpleasant last time. I hope its just weeks this time, that would be great.

(Laurie) #5

Mentally/emotionally, diving in is easier for me. It’s less confusing.

Physically, I’ve never had keto flu or other problems, so I can’t comment on that.

(Joey) #6

@eim Wish I could offer a useful suggestion. I’m puzzled by the nausea from cutting out carbs. I’ve heard of lots of reactions (headaches, irregular digestion, fatigue, interrupted sleep patterns, …) but I haven’t heard of nausea as a symptom of carb-withdrawal.

Perhaps if others have experienced this they might chime in with some direct experience and suggestions? Meanwhile, staying hydrated and maintaining electrolytes remains key for most everyone who wanders down this path.

Best wishes!

#7

Because of the nursing I’d just dial back the sugary carbs to sane levels and run with that for a while, don’t want to make drastic changes that screw up your milk. I’d have to agree with @TonyFlute though, you’re very much eating SAD, you’re just making it all, which is better from an ingredients standpoint but it’s kinda the mindset as somebody that buy cookies and cupcakes at Whole Foods and thinks they’re healthier because they were made with organic ingredients. STILL cookies and cupcakes!

I say this as somebody that eats way more carbs than probably most here, but I’m very selective on where I get them, when I eat them, and what else I eat with them. I’d recommend using cronometer to start tracking your intake daily, I think you’d be very surprised at what you see.

#8

I don’t even believe in “bad macros” in general… I saw very healthy people thriving on high-carb, after all… Well, I need extreme low-carb to feel close to ideal… But I have only positive effects when cutting carbs. I did it gradually, though, it took 10 years to go from high-carb to carnivore or close to it as my default woe, probably a few years would have been enough but a few months? No way. (Now that I spent enough time on very low-carb, I don’t need any adaptation period anymore. But it was very different first.) But some people do a drastic jump so one should try and see and decide what they are willing to do. If carnivore gives you very great benefits, you are surely more motivated to put up with the bad ones. I personally would choose the less stressful method, a baby is surely a great task and not everyone wants to be strong enough to make things hard if possible not to…? I would think easing into it is better but surely not for everyone - and I say nothing about the pace. Easing into it still can be quite quick just not immediate.
Your current woe is extremely carby, I probably would just stop eating all the sugar and starches first (or at least seriously drop the amount. sometimes it’s way easier and a better idea anyway to eat 1-3g sugar from fruits than stop eating them… but sometimes zero is easier. I experienced both)… Your body (and mind, well, habits and desires, I think about those) gets a smaller shock (very useful for a nursing mom I imagine…) and if everything is fine, you lower the carbs again…? But the decision should depend on how you feel and your knowledge about the benefits of carnivore.

Whatever you do, good luck!!!

Maybe the carnivores here will have ideas what causes problems for you on carnivore… :frowning:

#9

@islandlight Thanks! I do tend to be an all or nothing person often but I don’t want to set myself up for failure if its going to be crazy difficult…so jealous of no side effects! Lucky!

@lfod14 Thanks for the advice! I have now dropped all the carbs. I am not sure if there is one definition for SAD but to me its more processed and junk food laden. When people come over they always comment on the lack of junk in our pantry and freezer, so it is different from what most eat and we NEVER eat out, ever. So that’s different too. That’s why I was saying it wasn’t quite SAD, from my perspective. I wasn’t trying to say homemade pie or bread is healthy, only that it is better than buying it and in addition to getting carby/sugary food you also get hydrogenated vegetable oils, preservatives, weird emulsifiers, soy/other strange flours, etc. I started making everything myself because I didn’t really like all the additives and soy makes my husband break out but I realize its not great for a lot of people but its the craziest thing, my husband thrives on this diet. We used to paleo together when we were in college but he got down to 150lbs as a 6ft+ man and he was trying his hardest not to lose weight. Then he caught a flu and lost 10 more pounds and looked like death. When he recovered he told me he couldn’t keep eating this way because he couldn’t eat enough paleo food to keep the weight on. This diet was the compromise. We added stuff back in for him but kept it homemade and kept out the chips, sodas, processed foods like ramen noodles, take out, etc. I always thought of it as his 1950’s diet, though I am not really sure if that’s accurate or just what I imagine a 50’s diet looks like. He is ~180lbs now, a great weight for a man his height and he is muscular despite minimal deliberate exercise. I actually have to make a pie about 1x a week because if I don’t over the course of a month or so he will have to tighten his belt! I wish that were my problem.
For me however, like most people here I would guess, the fewer carbs I eat the better. I don’t feel well eating this but I also didn’t have the energy to turn it down and get back on the horse until my kid was sleeping through the night (he just started a couple of weeks ago). As I said, getting on the diet takes a lot of will power for me but once I am on its fine. I get pretty addicted to carbs so that’s an added layer of difficulty for me, I have to keep making this diet for my husband that is very tempting to me but really bad for me. I need to do it though, for my health and mental health. Its so easy as a mom to slip into doing stuff for others and doing what you need for yourself last and that was what I was doing for sure but I am now making a priority of eating the diet I need too.

@SomeGuy Thanks! I get the nausea when I go no carb.I have tried a few things but I still would get it last time I did it.

@Shinita 10 years! I would be way too old to get pregnant again by then haha! I’m trying to get healthy again so that I can have more kids. I’m 29 and have 2 sons, I don’t have 10 years :sweat_smile: Thanks for your perspective. A few months is about what I did last time though I wanted to do it sooner it didn’t work out before. I was hoping to dive in. Carnivore does give me great benefits or I would have given up long ago due to the downsides too. I have a reaction similar to Mikhaila Petersons which if you heard her talk about it she had 6ish weeks of side effects and similar reasons for doing it too. When she or her father talk about he depression/anxiety I feel like I could be talking about my experience and it would be the same. When I go carnivore this is gone almost INSTANTLY. Like within the week. I couldn’t believe it when it happened, I wouldn’t believe it if someone else told me that but it happens every time I go carnivore (from doing keto at least) but as I said earlier I fall off because I also get bad side effects. So previously I had just plucked away at it but I was hoping someone who had been on it a while had found it easier going back. Which Tony kind of said they got down to a few weeks rather than months. On the other hand as many have pointed out my diet was vary carby until a few days ago when I decided I could tackle this again. I think I will definitely do keto, and maybe I will try 1 day carnivore soon, dip my toe in and just see how bad it is lol

Thanks all!