Rudolph the Red Meat Ruminant


(Karen) #162

So line manager visited this morning. He always turns up on time which is so good. I like prompt people.

He stayed about am hour and a half… me doing all the talking again… I can talk for England. He got me up to scratch on the return to work and how we would do it and where he might be able to put me. First 13 weeks starts with first day popping in and having a mooch around chatting to everyone which no doubt will be a biy overwhelming followed by 25% then 50% then 75% of my my part time hours before fully part time again. He said he had no intention of rushing me back into anything which sounds all good.

Then came brunch at a better time of 12.30, more of a normal time for me and I had Mexican spiced chicken breast sauted in butter with melted cheese. Fortunately not as spicy as yesterdays chicken wings so my tum coped admirably with it

Then after garden rescue on tv, I got on with putting those herbs into my planter. I’m sitting outside, as it was sunny but now just starting to cloud over again, and I can hear the birds singing very loudly and the slight breeze is wafting the smell of the herbs to my nostrils. Utterly divine! I am really pleased with my first attempt at this gardening malarkey :laughing:

I have a steak ready defrosted for later… with cooking roast pork and all these different things I haven’t squeezed any beef in and I am definitely missing it… energy and taste wise.


(Robin) #163

All in all, life is good, right? You are chugging right along!


(Heather) #164

Wow! So many good posts to reflect on regarding “tweaking” with ZC. I have tried leaner eating, higher fat, cardio, weight training, no exercise, no salt, no dairy…the gamut.

I would still like to lose another 15 pounds or so, but I guess what it boils down to for me is, how bad do I want it? When I eat too lean, my body lets me know. When I eat more fat, I get satiated more quickly, but I can only do that for a few days before my body is screaming for more protein. It’s amazing how clearly our bodies speak to us on ZC.

I have settled upon weight training and eating what my body is calling for and being good with that. I would like to get rid of the additional fat on my thighs and stomach, but I also understand that I am a 48 year-old perimenopausal woman who gave birth to 4 children. I am never going to have the super lean body I’d like. I’ve never had that body and never will.

I wish the number on the scale was as meaningless to me as I know it should be–I’m weight training, I know in my head that muscle weighs more than fat. I have actually seen the muscles develop in my biceps, so I know it’s working, but it’s so hard for me to let go of that stupid digital number that I see every morning. When I take a break from weight training, the number on the scale goes down. Why? Because the water retention in the muscles goes away and I lose water weight. I get so happy to see that number drop, but I also hate to lose the progress I’ve made by stopping altogether. It’s such a mental battle for me…

I need to just learn to embrace the NSV of ZC and be happy where I am. I have stayed at basically the same weight for the past 8 months. I am healthy, happy and have absolutely zero desire for any carbs. That is a win-win in my book!


(Robin) #165

I have gone down an entire pants size during a month long stall on the scales. Those scales are not worth the head games, IMO.


(Heather) #166

Yeah, everything is status quo for me—no drop in pant size. I’m wearing size 6 to 8. Maybe I’m at my body’s set point for where it wants to be.


(Daisy) #167

@Azi I would also love a link!
@Redrobins I completely understand all you’re saying! It’s so hard! I avoid the scale for months because, like you, I’ve tried it all and get so frustrated. Right now I am doing omad and exercise. I eat to the point that I literally can’t eat anymore. Some meals are higher fat, some higher protein. Some are 1300 calories, some 1900 calories. It’s just what it is. I have been consistently losing weight all week. I am sure it’s about to stop or go back up, it always does, but I’m enjoying the daily weigh ins as long as it keeps dropping :joy:

Speaking of omad: here is today’s: I attempted to eat the rest of the burned chicken drumsticks. I over heated them in the air fryer so that they were almost inedible. But I got most of it down. Plus bone broth jello, a bacon/feta omelette, and a small piece of leftover salmon.
image


(Heather) #168

I have tried OMAD, but I get nauseous if I don’t eat more than once a day and my body feels really dissatisfied. 1300-1900 calories per day? Wow! No wonder I don’t lose anything! I consume 2400-3000 per day! If I go much lower than that my body gets angry-LOL.


(Robin) #169

Well, I don’t know how tall you are, but I would kill to be a size 6-8. Literally… who do I have to kill?


(Daisy) #170

Our bodies are all so different and different at different times! I was just reflecting back in where I was at this time last year. I was doing omad, probably closer to 2500-3000 calories a day because I was focused on higher fat. I always felt very satiated, but this was also when I was gaining 10-15 lbs. now I do a bit leaner approach. I still eat a very high volume of food, but I’m not adding copious amounts of fat like I was last year. I cook my omelette in butter and I added garlic Parmesan butter to the chicken, but I don’t add any fat on top of that. I stick to more leaner cuts, but if I want a nice fatty ribeye or some brisket, I have those things. I’m definitely not taking a low fat approach, but it’s certainly leaner. My macros for the last week have ranged from 40/60 to 60/40 protein to fat.

image image image image image image

Vs here are a few sample days from last year
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(Heather) #171

Very interesting. My body doesn’t care if I ear high fat or low fat. My weight won’t go down, but it doesn’t go up either. I think it’s just at its set point and happy where it is.


#172

I got hungry at night again… I don’t know why but if it won’t go away naturally after a while on carnivore (as it usually does), I will try to make my dinner bigger somehow…? Especially on workout days. I ate the leftover biscuits and more meat :slight_smile: I seem to have a pound a day now and it’s so little calories as it’s lean… I went below 65% fat, it’s rare but lean pork does that to me unless I start to add lots of extra fat as well and I don’t want to overeat.

I got somewhat bored of the lean meat and that caused a somewhat off day in the end but it’s December anyway and I didn’t stray far as that wouldn’t be hedonistic at all. I do what I can in this month and it’s not so bad, I eat lots of meat and eggs, always making sure I have enough meat and some very fatty meat at hand as well. OMAD is tricky on carnivore for me but everything else feels very wrong and messed up… I had NOFUSS again, 5pm is my perfect time for my meal. It’s just not easy to make it big and satiating enough. But I keep trying as it seems my only okay option and I have less difficulties with it than ever (except when I did carby OMAD. that’s ridiculously easy for me. was. it’s sooo not my style anymore, it wasn’t even then but it made big meals possible and even easy even on OMAD).
I eat the chicken liver one bite a time. It may help me out a bit but I sooooooo won’t buy it again for a looooooong time. I will buy pork liver (unless I find beef liver :heart_eyes:) and Alvaro can eat something else, no big deal. He eats sunny side ups quite often when he needs some protein with his carbs, I just can’t let him to do it all the time, that would be boring. Today he ate lean pork because we had that. Tomorrow I will make those skin+meat+eggs frikadellers again. I do my best to avoid making such things only for him so it’s usually either sunny side ups or whatever I eat. I don’t like sunny side ups much. The runny yolk is great but the fried white isn’t. Edible but I rather eat eggs in some other way, now I still go for scrambled eggs with pork jowl ~. And later with ham.

I’ve heard about the Bear just not much… But we are all different anyway and I don’t even have a big room to change up things. But I have a little, at least short term. And it’s fun to read about veterans and their experiences!

I am SO excited about January! :smiley: I need to fill up my freezer… I want variety, I may need that. Not like it’s bad now. I have chicken liver (ew), beef tongue (nice when some more time passes), a bit salmon, lean and fatty pork and tiiiny processed pork. As we just ate up the beef and will get more the next time we visit a bigger town or city. I want turkey too, I am not into it anymore but it adds variety.

@Karen18, you have one of the best wall colors if you ask me :smiley: Nice, warm, comforting… And it goes well with the plants. The planter tries to get the attention with those colors :smiley: Mine are all soooo gray and it’s good as they aren’t cute and I put very colorful pansies into the ugliest… :smiley: So things get balanced out. Yours looks good with the wall and everything.

Yay, me too! My weight basically never changes but I always said I don’t care if I stay 75kg as long as it’s lots of muscle and not fat, not like it would be realistic for me :wink: But numbers are really not so important. And being slim may be nice but if you have a healthy weight (of course it’s not about the weight only but muscle and fat mass), it’s already plenty, the rest is aesthetics and vanity and less important than HEALTH!
I still wanna be slim but as long as my fat mass isn’t a burden to my poor body, I don’t feel too bad about it. Not like I know what is a real burden and if I want to live many more decades, I probably need to lose some weight but it’s fine not to have a great figure ever. I just wanna lose this stubborn big belly roll… How will I be able to show off my tiny but improved muscles (that I will gain in the future, mostly though my biceps are really much better :smiley: my fav tiny muscles aesthetics wise :D) if I am covered with fat on many places? But after ~9 years of stalling, my time has come! I feel ready to use the method I consider right and promising.
I still won’t weigh myself often as I know it’s 75kg every morning, why to check? :smiley: But if I track tiny numbers almost all the time, I will check to see if I lost a bit. But once a month sounds enough. And I notice if I get slimmer anyway. I have about 40lbs to lose…

I can’t tweak much but NOFUSS longer term carnivore, that will be new and very promising. I will have leaner and fattier times, it happens anyway and maybe I will push a little, NOT eating a TON of extra fat with my lean stuff and not eating extra fat with my fatty meat…
No dairy is a good direction but I am already doing it, partially, I eat very little dairy on most days. It was 12g cheese today only because I lost interest in my leaner meat too soon. Not like it helps much but Alvaro was eating it so I grabbed a bit.
I do my best to minimize added fat but I opened my nice pig farm lard today, it’s brown here and there, I always buy that tastier kind (it’s cheaper too, I don’t know why, it’s better :D), the result of making pork belly cracklings. The box will last for ages…

I wrote too much again, sorry. I try to be scarce until it’s finally the 25th and I do some relaxed carnivore-ish until January! Or who knows what I will fancy at that time but my plan sounds good to me.
At one point I wish to do a comment about what changed lately. Not in 2021 as I don’t remember what my woe and life was like in the first months of the year… But I do know a few changes in the last half year. And it happened without doing staying close to carnivore for more than a few days at a time! I expect some serious changes if I manage to do a full carni January and hopefully a not too carby February, March, April and May. And I will be a different person at that point so I can’t even guess what my June will be like though I have some idea. I should write it down for myself and check it in June :smiley:

And my yearly Christmas baking goes… Not well. I am not in the mood, I am in the mood of meat eating so I just don’t do it (I always start to experiment or practice early, I need that time). I should make my painted rock gifts at least. I make a guinea pig and some rock gingerbreads, pretty ones. Even my big white oil marker is easier to use than icing…

I know the feeling though I am not that bad. My body always was pretty fine with 2000 kcal on low-carb (with the occasional higher-cal day). I lost fat eating like that but it was only enough to get borderline normal (I am more than that now). Fat adaptation caused fat-loss for a while too but then my body wanted its 2000 kcal again. Sometimes much more. Focus on eating as little as possible (2000 on most days, more on the rest) is tiresome.
Then carnivore came and interesting things happened but until I don’t stick to it longer term, it’s not good enough. I need my carni winter now :slight_smile: Well, next year. I just practice now, especially OMAD but my food isn’t so bad either just possibly not good enough. I need to do everything right so if I inevitably mess up something, the other parts keep me “safe”.
I imagine 1600-1800 kcal should work for me on most days but I don’t need to decide it as I can’t enforce things anyway. I just choose items (kind of) and hope for the best :slight_smile: I don’t go below as I inevitably would need another not small meal later and even the next day would be worse. The bigger the meal, the longer the satiation in my case so small OMAD meals are no good. I need tracking and if my meal is small, I rather eat some more 1 hour later.

It’s probably a very low volume for a normal person, isn’t it? My carni food is very dense, the volume is tiny! In my eyes, at least. I was used to big volume in my past, it’s good I am not a volume eater (Alvaro said volume is very important for him, not only calories. he needs both. I need calories but carbs may or may not count or may count as negative, that was my old normal for sure)! 300g food is just as good as 2000g, I merely need my satiating fats and protein (and a little joy most of the time).

Thanks for the data, it’s always interesting for me to see such things!
Interesting! If I drop the fat, I just get hungry and eventually add it back (I hardly can go to bed until I do)… I can do somewhat leaner but not lean… But I still plan to try out lean. I just don’t know how. I automatically add fat, I miss it. Even eating fatty I tend to miss it as I wish to eat fattier sometimes but that wouldn’t be right. I eat 280g fat and say: that’s it? I want MORE!
And I should keep it at, like, 100-120g. Sometimes I can do that. Yesterday it was 150g and it’s already almost overeating, my successful workout was my savior :smiley:

I go now and won’t be back until this craziness is over, hopefully. Or I just show my painted rocks :smiley:

Oh no I still didn’t react to everything…

Oh my body is simpler. If I don’t lose fat, I eat too much fat therefore calories. (Even if I could have other causes, this one is almost always present so I must deal with it somehow.)
But lowering carbs still may help as they lower my fat intake. On keto, it was even more serious as carbs made me hungrier and probably feeling worse though I didn’t know that back then so I needed more fat and some more protein to balance things out. Carnivore carbs don’t seem to matter but they may matter for others, we are so wonderfully different. But my carnivore carbs often come from dairy and those bring too much not satiating fat (except quark). Liver and eggs are fine.

It would be fun to eat as much fat as I like (nope as I would overeat fat, massively, I mean even my body wouldn’t like it and I would get slight nausea… stupid desires. maybe it would be okay long term? Maybe I will try it out but first, I go as lean as I can without messing up my macros)…

I agree with not drinking (much) alcohol but the rest is sooooooo not me. I don’t disagree at all, it’s just fully unrealistic for me. But I am nowhere on my journey yet.
I still think the “fat first” can’t be a generally good idea, it’s very different for me and for someone who needs a ton of calories and no fat-loss at all. I need to avoid fat as much as possible - and I still overeat fat unless I am very good. Fat comes too easily and some fats don’t satiate me well. They are great to boost my calories but not when losing fat is my goal.
But I can say again, I didn’t try long term carnivore yet. I doubt it matters much BUT timing, that matters. If I do OMAD, my relationship with fat should be very different. I still can’t eat as fatty as I want as that would be overeating and I would possibly still get hungry later, I still must avoid added fat and dairy as much as I can but fattier meats are okay, even needed. If I don’t do OMAD… I am doomed to stay fat unless I do everything else right but that’s not me.

Sorry I go and work on not talking about me in walls of text ALL the time.


(Heather) #173

This is what I am working on focusing on - HEALTH!–not vanity and aesthetics. Thanks for the reminder!


(Heather) #174

:joy: I’m 5’10".

Ironically, before ZC, I would have given anything to be a size 6-8, now it’s not enough. I’m just too greedy. :roll_eyes:


(Daisy) #175

I average about 1.5 - 2 lbs of meat a day, sometimes more, very occasionally less. I just added up 2 days for references and one was 771 grams and one was 808 grams, which average about 1.75 lbs of meat.


(Linda ) #176

https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/fdwkRKurNPhO


(Linda ) #177

I didn’t get the feelingo that he is overeating fat but he eats it til you get nausea feeling then eats lean to finish the meal…his thinking it is not the added saturated fat you were eating that causes weight gain but rather the carbs in that fat…i.e …cream/. Cheese / sour cream liver/heart ect
According to him there is scientific evidence that fat thats is consumed does not go into adipose tissue…but the carbs do…
Interestingly he cooked his meats in the same fats as the meat he was cooking…but with chicken he added butter with spices under the skin


(Robin) #178

Good grief… you and my daughter! she has her dad’s build. (He’s 6’6” and long legs. She’s 5”10” and all legs and also wears about a 6. She can gain 20 and you never see it. She just has the build. Whereas I take after my dad…. Sturdy. I’m 5’7” and 155-ish. And honestly thrilled. That’s a size 10 all day long. I’ll take it.


(Linda ) #179

I think you hit it on the head before I started i didn’t care about weight I wanted to walk away from diabetes I was one test away from being diagnosed and having it and on record I wanted to fit back In to a dresser full of clothes mostly size 4 well I achieved both of those so why do I need more lol …I got down to 134 with keto but I couldn’t hold it because I was still restricting calories and to stay there I’d have to hold that restriction for ever …so not sustainable Mistake no 1

.The needle keeps moving on keto/ carnivore websites and message boards and we have seen it go from eat everything from animal kingdom then it was eat all the fat you want and add it to everything,even fat upon fat upon fat in coffee 《 eggs, butter and cream and even mct goes in some ppls coffee but in doing so we started adding more and more carbs) now its we went to the other extreme pushing low fat high protein…did we not learn anything in the time we spent in the beginning of what actually worked …
I.e fat is not how we got fat no you shouldn’t be scared of eating fats but if they come with carbs then they start to add up…we can’t live on pure protein. Or we are dead in no time we can’t live on junk oils and carbs they start destroying us from the inside out…and we start getting sick…so.whats left is fat if we had to we could prob survive for quite awhile on pure fats and water but still not optimal
The only essential things we need is saturated fats on our meats and water to stop us from getting protein poisoning and hydration… when we eat that way we are getting the essential fatty acids we get the essential amino acids… and from the basics we need to move forward and find our sweet spot of how strict we want to be …another thing that bear said is if you cut your fat ratio to lose more weight we need to know that to hold it we probably have to continue to hold that restriction…


(Michael) #180

Missed two days so I will catch up but then I will not visit as we are doing the monthly fast starting now.

Yesterday I had heart, marrow, liver, tongue for breakfast.

Cheese, bacon, eggs, salmon, snails and mussels for two more meals. Ate 3000 calories both these past two days winding up for the fast.

This morning was liver, heart, marrow and half a sheep lung.

Had an 11 oz ribeye for snack and then cheese, bacon and eggs afterwards Always feel great when I get so many calories in.

I will be back in 5 days to catch up on what you all are doing.


#181