I can relate though I love meat too now. I changed a lot. Until a few years ago if I ate meat for a meal, I didn’t want some again for a month! I still could do keto though it wasn’t low enough in plant carbs (for some reason animal sugars are fine for my body).
Vegs and fruits are fine if you can keep the carbs low enough to feel good… And there are so many other things than just vegs, fruits and meat to eat! Even on carnivore let alone keto. If you want some more or less decent amount, use low-carb vegs. But high-carb vegs and fruits may be worth it even more sometimes as a tiny is packed with so much flavor! It’s lucky when you are content with just a bit, I quickly reached that with my fruits but my high-carb vegs in my soups were similar: a little goes a long way! And raw vegs helped when I missed my vegs, they gave me more and I couldn’t overeat them…
It may take a lot of time to figure out what works best and to change enough… But I believe there is a pretty nice sweet spot for most of us if we work for it. Maybe it’s not perfect but good enough.
Vegan eating kills masses of animals too. Just saying, I don’t say it’s the same, I don’t even have enough knowledge about these things. I only was an ovo-lacto vegetarian and that very seriously and pretty directly involves mass-kiling animals even if one doesn’t eat the flesh.
I don’t have a keto happy end story yet and I am super slow at getting benefits anyway (well it was quicker when I tried carnivore but I need a long time to change my ways enough), hopefully the others with true success stories will encourage you soon! Good luck!
Thanks for the toughtful reaction! It is helpful. I hope to find my way in a similar style…playing a bit with the veggies/fruits that are still allowed.
I’m still thinking whether to go carnivore or not. What was the difference for you? What did you notice with carnivore?
It seems easier if my body first adjusts to keto. Before trying carnivore. But I think I still want to try. (It’s a bit funny to me that I work at a vegan place, but will eat carnivore… :)).
I needed YEARS on low-carb before I could go keto and several years on keto when the miracle happened and I lost interest in vegs I jumped from on/off vegetarian keto to on/off carnivore-ish… (Low-carb was the lowest-carb diet I could stick to longer term this far. It was so easy and natural… And about 80g net carbs.)
Many people can do it more drastically but some people never will feel comfortable on carnivore. I did it in my own way, never going against the wishes of my body too much. I don’t do hard things. If I don’t feel better than on my previous woe, I quit. But I am healthy and patient enough to do it this way.
Well, I never will know what would have happened on a very low-carb non-carnivore keto as I never had that. I did 40g net carbs and unlimited total vegetarian keto and then carnivore-ish. The two was vastly different and the carbs probably had not much to do with it but who knows? But my higher-carb carni days feel just like my 2-3g ones, animal carbs are fine for me
The benefits… I appreciate them but they are often subtle and more like mental as I already felt physically pretty healthy even on high-carb let alone on low-carb. I got my fat adaptation on keto, that softened my hunger but since I drastically dropped my non-animal food, even that changed, it took more time though. I barely ever feel a stronger hunger - but it’s true I eat a lot, way before proper hunger could emerge, usually… But part of this is that I lose my satiation at 2-3pm, later I get a baby hunger and then it stays super cute, not annoying and tiny for a while, it can even go away. On mere keto, I got a tiny hunger and it quickly progressed into a serious one and IDK if it would have went away as I rarely waited for it, I can’t stand serious hunger. With my overeating tendencies, not getting seriously hungry often is a big gift.
But the immediate things? I felt a bit even better and I lost some troublesome desires. Like my peanut addiction. I ate it every day, sometimes in too big amounts, it’s easy to do… And I couldn’t stop until carnivore. Then it was fine, didn’t miss it at all. (As long as I still ate crunchy things.)
My relation with food changed for the better too.
And meat is wonderful for satiation especially without the hunger inducing plant carbs. Before carni, my most satiating item was eggs and they aren’t THAT good at it. (Gluten is even better than meat at satiation as far as I can tell but I feel no desire to depend on it ever, for reasons. But it’s good to know it is an option in desperate times.) Dairy has no satiation effect whatsoever in my case (except maybe quark) so I really need to depend on meat. Anyway, my body misses it now.
Hmmmm, is there something else? I need proper, longer term carnivore to figure out how useful it is for me… It seems my energy level raises a tiny bit but it’s so tiny I am not sure it wasn’t a fluke when it happened.
Well it’s quite convenient to cook simple things But one can do that on most woe I suppose. Still, it’s very easy on carnivore and the cleaning and if we want, the duration of a mealtime can drop drastically too (I ate fatty anyway so that didn’t add to the cleaning. I wash my hands way often now due all that raw meat handling but that’s fine). But one still can complicate things and bake (with serious limitation but still. baking is important for me)… It’s just not needed if one is happy with simple food. I just toss some pork into the oven with some salt and bam, I have my main dish for days. I add a few eggs, some dairy and I am set.
Even if one realizes they need plants too (my body doesn’t but I do), it’s so much easier to stay keto if we mostly eat carni food… Do I want to spend nearly all my ketosis carb limit on a small thing? No problem, I still can do keto very easily as my normal food contains barely any (dairy is more like extra and dessert to me, addition I can go without for a day). It may not be fully good, I got too bold a few times but it was in the beginning…
I probably am not even aware of everything. It’s really a bunch of subtle but important, helpful things. In my case, non-animal net carbs mess with me. My hunger/satiation, my desires… They trigger overeating while I am less content and satiated, feel a bit worse… So avoiding them does great good. I still can keep a little here and there but not nearly on my old keto level.
But it’s just me.
That’s about what I eat, timing is very important too and can mess up things. And that is very individual too. We should figure out what works for us, there are just too many personal factors.
I mentioned that too… Of course, crops kill masses of animals, innumerable insects, tiny mammals, birds…etc. And it’s just the start… Food making isn’t as an innocent thing as many vegans seem to think.
If we are modern people, we aren’t innocent, we kill animals galore with our lifestyle.
Hang in there and tune out the misguided judgements. I never understood why vegans feel they have the right to tell others what to eat - how rude and arrogant.
I have been keto over 6 years and love the benefits. It really hit home when I ended up in the hospital for emergency gallbladder removal and then had to wait another 24 hours because my potassium levels were too low. By the time I was discharged I had gone 3 days with nothing to eat or drink - fluids through my IV. And it didn’t matter - I never was hungry. Before keto I would have been miserable!
Just relax and think of it as a lifestyle change (this is how I eat now) and not a “diet”. I dont even think about what I eat anymore since it is just habit and how I eat.
I know families where one member is vegetarian and the others not and it is no big deal. Can work for keto also.
Yeah, I really don’t think that vegans actually have a leg to stand on about environment/animal rights. The amount of wildlife that dies due to the production of grains and other vegetables due to modern farming techniques is certainly on par with death of domestic animals for eating. And like @ctviggen said, ruminants are very important if you care about the circle of life and regeneration the soil.
This is a good book, although the author does get a little melodramatic here and there.
Although I remain pro-vaccine, my experience with my particular gene set has made me rethink almost all vaccines for me at this time (age 60) other than shingles and hepatitis as I am a first responder here at work. I’m onery but I don’t want to find out just how onery
Birds, rodents, fish, reptiles, and insects are killed both intentionally through “pest control” measures and unintentionally by tilling and harvesting machinery, pesticides, and environmental degradation. Fertilizer and pesticide runoff are major threats to fish and marine life.
In the 2019 book On Eating Meat, former chef turned pig, beef, and dairy farmer points out that in Australia alone, 40,000 ducks are killed each year in the course of rice production, and one billion mice are killed to protect Australian wheat production.
Commenting on this phenomenon, Evans told ABC News, “So a duck dying to protect a rice paddy for me is not much different for a cow dying to produce a steak. They are both animal deaths that happen in the name of us being able to eat. So there is nothing that we can do that doesn’t have an impact on animals.”
The toll that plant-based agriculture takes on animals and insects has led many vegans to a carnivore diet based on meat from large pasture-raised herbivorous animals like beef, bison, elk, and lamb.
In terms of doing less harm, the math is pretty simple. On a carnivore diet, people consume around two pounds of fatty meat per day. This provides over 200 grams of fat and protein and around 3000 calories.
A single pasture-raised cow yields around 430 pounds of meat, or about 1.18 pounds per day, per year. So you’d need less than two cows to provide nearly all of your nutritional needs for an entire year. Add in some local pasture-raised eggs, and ripened cheese, and you’re still at only 2 deaths per year.
Davis found that if half of the useable land in the US was assigned to plant production, and the other half to raise pasture-raised cattle, far fewer animals would die to produce meat.
Not only would pastured animal production cost the lives of half as many animals and plant production, but the quantity and density of both macro and micronutrients provided by large herbivores are far superior to plant foods.
Beyond doing less harm, Davis’s pasture/ruminant model offers other advantages, including
Providing and regenerating grassland habitat for numerous species of land animals, birds, and insects
Ruminant animals thrive on forages–plants that humans cannot consume
Pasture forage can take place (and even grown by cows through defecation) on rough land that cannot be used to produce crops for humans
The official diagnosis of diabetic ketoacidosis requires a serum β-hydroxybutyrate level of at least 10.0 mmol/dL, accompanied by hyperglycaemia. In any case, symptoms don’t start until around 20.
If your pancreas is producing enough insulin (or you are properly taking your daily insulin dose),
ketoacidosis is not a concern.
The urine sticks are inherently inaccurate. They are meant as an early warning system for Type I diabetics to go get checked out. A blood meter is more accurate but is still not as precise as a lab test. As Gary Taubes points out in Rethinking Diabetes, part of the problem of managing Type I diabetes is that patients are instructed to eat a lot of carbohydrate, and “cover” it with insulin. This is an inherently complicated process, since patient’s response to carbohydrate and to insulin is variable from day to day. As Dr. Richard Bernstein, himself a Type I diabetetic, points out, minimising carb intake greatly reduces the risk of both hyperglycaemic and hypoglycaemic episodes.
But agin, if your pancreas is producing any insulin at all, diabetic ketoacidosis is not a concern.
You can always say, “No thank you; perhaps later.”
The A.A. literature talks about an alcoholic early in sobriety, who was given the task of organising a cocktail reception. The solution she hit upon was to say, “Oh, not just yet, thanks,” during the first half of the party, and “Oh, no more, thanks,” during the second half. And apparently no one noticed that she never drank at all. I find that this strategy works equally as well with abstaining from carbohydrates as with abstaining from alcohol.
A low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet should definitely help, whether or not it relieves the symptoms completely. The brain does much better on ketones than on glucose, and lowering insulin is also a great help. What little glucose the brain actually needs can easily be manufactured by the liver, if we are not consuming it by the boatload (all carbohydrates are just glucose molecules arranged in various ways). Avoiding other mitochondrial toxins, such as fructose, is also important, since healthy mitochondria are essential for health throughout the body.
Exercise is your friend, in that regard. It has been shown to have little benefit, so far as losing weight is concerned, but it has great benefits in promoting mitochondrial healing and the production of new, healthy mitochondria.
That last is very true. There is an adjustment, however you go about it. Many times it’s easier to adjust to keto first, then go carnivore later–spreads out the changes and makes them more manageable. Though, on the other hand, there is also something to be said for getting it all over with in one go, lol!
This is a point that gets overlooked. The deaths of animals are inescapable, whether it’s the life of one larger animal killed for its meat, or the lives of all the smaller animals killed when the ground is tilled for a crop–either because their habitats are disrupted, or because they get caught up in the machinery. There is no food production method that is death-free, sad to say.
Thanks all. It’s late here and I can’t respond to everything now…too tired to read well. I will respond later. Just a slight update.
Thirsty. Heard that is normal.
I often have severe disabling fatigue. But today I worked all day, went in for a quick sauna visit, did groceries, cooked, ate. That’s a lot more than normal. Not sure it’s the keto or iron pills. But it is good.
Mood and stability are good now. I feel more positive. A bit like my old normal.
Executive function is still shtty, but less shtty than other days.
No flu symptoms.
Just like last time…there is something my system likes about keto. No clue what. But it likes it.
Make sure you’re getting adequate fat - definitely eat the chicken with the skin on. Don’t worry about calories. If you’re thirsty, drink, there’s no benefit to getting dehydrated and it can be a leading cause of feeling lousy.
Everything you’re having sounds good to me, but if you’re feeling hungry it sounds like you could certainly have more, all of this except the pepper is very low carb (and the pepper is pretty low carb too, nothing to be worried about unless you’re eating, like, 5 of them).
Seconded. Sounds good but get enough fat (I have no idea how much there is in your food, maybe it’s enough, maybe not).
You eat in some super strict way compared to me even on carnivore This day seems very close to carnivore at this point. There is some very low-carb vegs, that’s it… Of course, the vegs can make a difference one way or another… But you still are way closer to carnivore than many of us in the beginning. Good. As long as your body and mind is fine with this strictness
I often butter my chicken, because otherwise I don’t find it as satisfying. I enjoy fish, but again, it sometimes needs extra fat. I avoid vegetables these days because I am trying to become oxalate-free, so when I do have a few these days, I feel it. However, 95% carnivore is 100% excellent keto, so I wouldn’t worry about it, in your situation.
As already mentioned, fat is your main source of energy now, so don’t fear it. And restricting calories can be counter-prpductive. Be sure to eat to satisfy your hunger.
Thanks all. I’m changing it a bit according to your ideas.
I feel odd. I’m all okay one moment. Thinking I’m happy and stable forever. I’m in tears a few hours later, hopeless about my life. Which is obviously not so stable, overall. I knew this could happen. But I hope it passes.
I think I’m going to make it a bit more gradual. And add veggie and fruit carbs.
but I need a long time to change my ways enough), hopefully the others with true success stories will encourage you soon! Good luck!
I jumped from on/off vegetarian keto to on/off carnivore-ish… (Low-carb was the lowest-carb diet I could stick to longer term this far. It was so easy and natural… And about 80g net carbs.)
