The seasons are changing.
What changes do you need to make to settle in “on plan”.
Would we agree that we want our eating to be effortless and instinctive?
It’s time to break up with our food cravings and enjoy fine tuning the other parts of life.
Welcome to newbies and the curious. Share your stories, questions, ideas and experiences.
Thank you for getting September started. I’ve had enough of August, lol.
I’ve settled on “meat only” for September. No coffee, dairy, or eggs. I’ve debated on supplements, and am keeping them (a minimal multi every other day, krill, and a calcium/ magnesium. I was undiagnosed with celiac for 12 years and worry about bone health.)
I’ll add caffeine tablets for a taper. I was on the fence about coffee, but hubby decided to quit, so my first thing this morning is to put away the coffee makers. Together is easier.
My 30 day goal is going to be hard for me, so I hope to create some accountability here, even if it’s a quick once-a-day “still on-track (or not)” post.
My personal dumpster fire continues. Covid is going through my already too small staff and hubby also has it. I’m negative. I hope I stay that way, and I’ve been pretty resistant to hubby and grandkid germs since I started carnivore. This strain of covid seems pretty contagious, though. No hospitalizations, but it does seem to really lay people low for a few days.
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the United States, so hopefully everyone has a chance to recover.
I interview next Friday for a full faculty position at my university. No staff to supervise, no budget fights. Different line of reporting. Only 40 hours per week. I know the department would like to hire me (I’ve been teaching for them as an overload for 4 years), but there was some weirdness with my application that makes me suspect I might not get the job regardless, even if I interview well. I’m putting out some resume/ vitae for some remote jobs this afternoon. I really need to change jobs - I cannot go through another budget season with my current VP.
Full speed ahead into September.
Wishing you good luck on the faculty position and staying COVID free.
Also, hope your transition away from coffee and cream goes well. Good for you and your husband!
And since we are talking about GLP-1 analogs in a different thread, I wonder if you might be interested in this about GLP-1 and celiac.
“Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is a hormone that regulates proximal gut transit and may be a potential treatment for celiac disease. GLP-1 may have beneficial effects on celiac disease through its anti-inflammatory properties, gastric emptying, and intestinotrophic effect.”
Yes please!!
Despite having a birthday on September 3, September-February is the hardest stretch for me because of the waning daylight. I really am solar powered. I try to get outside every day, bring all kinds of light into the house, battery powered string lights everywhere to bring sparkle and magic. But Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day all bring terrible temptation I used to be able breeze right past but anymore I sometimes fall victim to.
Wish I had the wherewithal to go only meat, ditch dairy, but it’s not in me right now as my mother becomes more & more immobile but no closer to dying that I can see. Only more struggle & challenge in my foreseeable future. Darkest depression held at bay only by the slimmest of margins. I miss my independent life so much. Over six years of caregiving under my belt now. Carnivore is my lifeline. I’m going to hang in there. I’m relentless.
You are a hero, Liz and deserve better but well, it is life now 
You still do what you can to keep things from getting worse and that’s good…
I am solar powered too! But I like the dark as well. I don’t have much problem from it in autumn and winter as the weather gets better and I don’t need to avoid the sun like in summer (of course I can’t totally avoid it so I still get much of it). I can just go out for a nice, sunlit hour of walk in winter, even in the middle of the day, fabulous! Well we need a sunny day for that but there is plenty of sunshine in winter here and I am not particularly time restricted when it comes to my walks.
But if there is a foggy November (we had 3 weeks without ANY break ones, I don’t know how I survived that) or a rainy winter period, that’s bad. Rain is fine, even fog is but not for long. On the 3rd day without sunshine I am in bad shape but I can totally miss it on the 2nd one too.
I wouldn’t be okay in the far north, that’s sure. I couldn’t even drink as that wouldn’t help at all… (But I couldn’t handle well the white nights either.)
Christmas etc. temptation is a temptation for me unrelated to the sunshine I get or don’t get. And it’s not too bad. Well before Christmas I always get nostalgic feelings regarding food and of course I taste things on Christmas (my normal food tends to be close to carni as what could be more enjoyable than that?) but it’s not as bad as it was in the past.
Valentine’s day is just a normal day to me (I never were anywhere where it was different, it’s a newer holiday and I got less and less social as time passed) and Halloween is ALL about aesthetics. Witches, vampires, ghosts, lots of SPIDERS (I even put up a few more downstairs and I have quite several already, all year long. and my 1000 live spiders do their best too. just an estimation, they aren’t pets, they are just there and house spiders would die outside)… Well Halloween is a newer holiday too and I doubt trick or treat is a thing here… People just carve pumpkins or ignore the whole thing saying it takes away the attention from the real and important holiday, All Saint’s Day. (I don 't know why it would.)
If anything, Halloween can take my mind off food! But no, I do eat. Fried pork and eggs and the usual. Sometimes I make Halloween themed snacks, my bacon covered pork hand turned out great last time. I even love to watch videos about Halloween food but the insane amounts of store-bought sweets on it are a bit troublesome. Still, they can be pretty and sometimes inspiring. Not many of them can be done on carnivore but my hand was a nice exception. And I can handle a few black olives (they make nice spiders).
For reasons, I will start tomorrow. Monday is better for a first day for me anyway. I don’t have green ham now, we ate it up so I will fry and roast a nice slab of pork shoulder tomorrow.
Can I quit coffee already I wonder…
I really hope my early hunger will just go away (it probably will, easily). It should be better with Alvaro at his workplace again… His meals can trigger my meals BUT I felt hungry without that lately. Odd. I never had that, it’s unrelated to my diet. I just don’t get hungry early. So the exceptions, especially when it’s not just the occasional day, confuse me.
Thank you Shinita, I appreciate that. I’m so lucky mom is keto, it could be so much harder!! And I’m so grateful I’m keto/carnivore too. I see a lot of caregivers who get sick because they deal with the stress by eating processed snacks all day long. I really understand why they would do that! Thankfully I am able to stay carnivore 99% of the time.
Busy busy as always and it doesn’t look like it will be any different in September. I will keep on eating in same manner…can’t see that ever changing now, it works for me.
Food piccies…
Been a bit in to cheesy scrambled eggs this week! Steaks have been great, very tasty.
Workouts have been good too. CrossFit Thurs and Sat were great. Dancing thursday and friday afternoons and last night. Today i have done nothing atall except try and keep.my eyes open. I shall be in bed very soon. Busy week ahead… CrossFit in the morning then to take Raymond shopping and then to pack bags as we take my son away on tuesday to the Peak District for a few days.
On plan day 1.
Chuck steak and water.
Took a nice long walk.
Caffeine tablets hit different than coffee.
Last night’s dinner was two lamb shanks cooked in ghee and cast iron on the wood-fire stove. Two soft-boiled chook eggs, and a tin of sardines completed a varied species meal. No breakfast hunger signals yet at 10 am. I’ve been sitting out in the Spring sunshine.
I hear this and empathise strongly. I sacked my micro-managing line manager at uni, and have a new line manager to try out. Might be a frying pan to fire scenario. At the moment I am in brain-deep in marking student projects. So, the coffee and circulating blood ketones does help in doing the best job for the students’ learning. One day, one of them will likely be my boss 
.
I love this food report. And @Karen18 you are so inspirational to get us all moving! Thanks.
I cared for my dad during the final stages of a slow onset but rapidly finishing form of dementia. 2012-13. It was the main trigger to change my own diet and lifestyle. It was very hard to stay keto (at that time). My dad was big and aggressive (it’s a Bear family thing). With the dementia his addiction to sugar was raging, and he did not take well to any dietary intervention that took away starchy (potatoes) or sweet foods. His brain was screaming and craving energy that it could not access. My mum is still on the planet, 82 years old, independent-living, T2D, and has bursts of low-carb eating and feels the benefits, until the cravings and ‘devil-may-care’ attitude reassert. So, I, and my two brothers with our wives, ride that health roller coaster. In some ways we don’t want to become our parents.
Winter finished here over the weekend according to the Gregorian calendar. Here is a postcard it left me as it disappeared into a sunshine filled Spring morning. I don’t doubt it will be back for a visit. The rare black cockatoo in the bottom row is extracting seeds from native tree fruit. It’s their breeding season. And, yes, we have tree nesting ducks. I have never eaten one (apparently delicious according to the old farmers here a-bouts. But don’t catch and eat them while they are nesting otherwise no future duck dinners).
Happy September!
Bean, good luck with your interview! Changes…
@betsy2 I’m always fascinated with Ozempic (GLP-1)articles! Celiac huh? @FrankoBear did you end up taking it? I did read all the allusions to it in the search you posted. Looking forward to hearing more.
This weekend was even more taxing than other event Saturdays here. We were on call to perform with our little violin bass duo for 6 hours in the 97° temps at the winery which is all outdoors (covered), and ended up actively playing for 5 of the 6 hours, moving a few times up and down the hill as other bands were called in. We don’t know what exactly happened but we kept being relocated.
We were home for 45 minutes before leaving for the evening gig, then played til 10:15,our usual. But the manager took pity on us and bought us a ribeye to split. That was really nice. Slept well after that!
We plan to leave in the morning for the 3 day drive to VA. Just a 2½ week trip this time with the second week staying north of Chicago to play an Oktoberfest.
Hang in there @LizinLowell! Do remember to rest 
I feel for you, dealing with aging parents is hard enough without sugars adding problems, as it does for most folks. My husband’s mother had some dementia and after she broke a hip at 92 & ended up in rehab/memory care for her last days would only eat the desserts they served. I bet that’s incredibly common.
Thank you, kindly! I am extremely good at self care by now, might be verging on self-indulgence tbh 
And to add to previous points about aging, dementia, sugar addiction, any time I mention I’m keto to stay slender, avoid type 2 diabetes, and heart trouble, but also to ward off the worst of dementia when I’m elderly, if I’m lucky enough to become elderly, anyone over 65 looks SUPER ANNOYED at me lol. And skeptical. About the dementia part specifically. I pull out the “type 3 diabetes” idea and that really makes their sugar addictions push back at me. Which, as an addict in constant recovery, I totally understand. No one wants to hear their snacks will ruin their lives in 15 years. It’s information they feel very hostile to. Yep, I know, right? But I’d rather live in the world of science and facts. So here I am, the bearer of terrible news 
I already know if the fact I lost 100 pounds AND HAVE KEPT IT OFF FOR YEARS doesn’t pique their interest in a low-carb lifestyle makeover, nothing will because, in my experience, vanity is even stronger than vague notions of future disease prevention. Here I stand before them, a freaking miracle of successful weight loss and their addicted brains say: “No, there HAS to be a way I can keep eating mostly like I already do and lose weight a different way from reducing carbs.” Ok friend, good luck with all that.
But, as always, my compassion for the addicted is boundless because that’s me. I get it.
Ah yup! Either 1. If that actually worked I’d know about it, or 2. I’m still alive so it’s obviously not a good idea or at least not necessary. Never mind that she has every chronic disease known to man at this point!
I went to bed very early last night and felt a whole lot better for it this morning. Was up at 7am although awake sone time earlier than that. Murky day which stayed with us till about 2… then the sun emerged for a short while. Quite humid and we have been threatened with thunderstorm warning for past few days…not heard any 
i like a good thunder storm.
Speed walk to CrossFit this morning got puffy and very sweaty then a speed walk home again.
Took Raymond to Morrisons to top his fridge and cupboards up so he didn’t run out of anything while i am in the Peak District. We ate lunch there and i had 2 fried eggs 2 portions of bacon and 2 sausages. Sausages are nice but quite small.
Came home and got a few bits ready to pack first thing in the morning. Don’t need to take half as much stuff as i will be taking the following weekend on our dance weekender 
don’t need to look so glamourous hahaha!
Had a little bit of cheese and then about an hour later 2 sirloin steaks with butter.followed by a small tub of rollmop herrings from Morrisons…half the price of the Sainsburys tubs… also half the size and half the sweetness which was such a pleasant surprise.
@FrankoBear loving the photos… can’t believe your winter is over… are your winters as short as they appear by your posts? Our last winter necer really came to an end… spring hardly got started and summer was even slower at starting! If you could see out my kitchen window now it looks like winter is here again!
Seasons don’t care about the calendar… I knew September will be a summer month (at least the first weeks) but sadly, it’s a very hot (forecast expects record breaking), dry summer. Some of Hungary’s smaller lakes in the worst areas simply dried out completely… 
We badly need rain but it doesn’t come.
I am barely ever in my room as it’s way too hot for me. And we can’t even let the still okay morning air in as Alvaro leaves the house too early (mosquitoes would come in. surely some expert could put mosquito nets for a ton of money, it definitely can’t be done simply, we tried and failed… but it will be when we finish the house at some point I guess) and I wake up too late for that. I should sleep earlier but it just won’t happen, I have been trying since decades, in vain. But I do keep trying, I have better times and we need that now.
I am waiting for October as I wish to go hiking and without Alvaro, I can’t bring myself to go to my walks in his super hot weather either. Maybe if I wake up at 7 tomorrow if I am very lucky. We went to a walk at 8 yesterday but it wasn’t enjoyable, very very hot.
Why people consider talking about weather small talk? It’s a highly important topic, it affects our life very much, directly and indirectly alike. Okay, some people don’t feel the direct one so much. I do.
[…]
It’s 4pm now. Oh yes, the heat record is broken… Oh my, there was a teeny tiny frost in 1962 on this day? Very unusual for September, THAT record won’t be in danger, like, never again.
It’s a wee bit reassuring that even the new heat record is 36.6C, not 40 or something 
But I try to talk about food too, okay? I fried some pork shoulder in the morning, for reasons… And of course I couldn’t resist eating it up… I trimmed the pork shoulder and ate the fattier parts, it wasn’t even a pound but produced a lot of lard! But the half-scratchings weren’t actually lean either, they were fabulous!
So I wasn’t hungry at lunchtime but of course I ate with Alvaro. Just a sunny side up and some quark mixed with sour cream and a little dill and some milk. No coffee from today on!
I am curious how much I will eat for lunch and how my satiation will behave with this very early first meal (I started at 10am? oh my. but no regrets, it was highly enjoyable and I need experiments).
I just do whatever now and see what happens. I would think I should have my really meaty meal for dinner so it keeps me perfectly satiated until bedtime - but if I eat earlier, I still like a decent sized meal and just some eggs and dairy can’t cut it… Probably… I had small lunches before, rare but possible. And I get hungry in 1 hour but that’s not necessarily a problem if I can wait 1 hour more… 1.5-2 hour between lunch and dinner is very normal for Alvaro on workdays. That’s why I often can’t join him properly at dinner if I eat a big lunch. So I eat a few bites and get hungry later. I want to avoid that. But we will see! I don’t want to use even my experiences to restrain myself. I am experimenting now. And I have ZERO control on my timing with my melted summer brain. A tad more on my food choices but my taste is good so I don’t expect that being a problem. I really can’t push myself now so if I eat a lot of fatty meat and dairy, so be it. I do try not to go overboard but I do it in a very soft way.
I told Alvaro about you two again. You are our heros, very impressive!
My quark has a nutriscore. And it’s A. Wow. The nutriscore is usually super wrong but not this time I guess Alvaro said maybe it’s A because it’s not fatty? But I told him about my experiences when I look at recipes online (sometimes I get inspiration, sometimes I am curious and sometimes it’s just very pretty and colorful), they are pushing for NOFAT dairy (how crazy is that?) and this isn’t low-fat quark (there is no such thing as nofat quark, right…? but there is nofat cottage cheese, apparently. we barely have any cottage cheese here and those are normal and I need to look up the differences between cottage cheese and quark. I know they are very similar, we actually learned quark is translated to cottage cheese. but we had no cottage cheese in the supermarkets back then)… It’s low fat if you ask me but it’s the fattiest kind you can get.
It may be unpleasant but I actually like to hear it if it’s the truth… I am a hedonist who loves food (and making food), you can’t take away my carby sweets without me ensuring my new desserts are at least as enjoyable I can be creative if I must. Why are people THAT super clingy to their bad food? I understand not everyone has time to make all kinds of stuff but many don’t even try to make the easiest little steps! I still blame their very very low level of health-consciousness. I just don’t see that people want to be/stay healthy at all. While it’s more important for me than my food joy and that is extremely important. Thankfully I don’t really need to choose. I would be miserable without my off times but those can be pretty harmless and rare… I may be lucky never experiencing sugar addition, though. Added sugar was extremely easy to avoid (not counting a really tiny amount in certain condiments but it’s not that hard to avoid those too), I bet keeping it would have been much harder. But it’s sugar, I did and do have my own challenges. But I could do several steps and I would abandon basically ANYTHING if it was clearly unhealthy to me. Health is super important. It has a HUGE impact on how we feel. Don’t people want to feel good? It’s supposed to be some basic urge… I understand eating can interfere with it as it may have a good feeling part too, even if it’s unhealthy but it’s not too hard to see if the whole picture is good or bad… In the most obvious cases, I mean. Acting according to it is tricky too, I experience that sometimes but it’s occasional for me, the trend and basic attitude is based on my knowledge about what food is good for me. IDK how it works for others but apparently very differently in most cases.
I am not vain and never was beautiful so that doesn’t move me much Well if it’s about youthful looks, maybe, I do want to stay young for long I do have some wrinkles but oh well, 35 years olds have some too. I do want more muscles though…
There may be, actually. Just eating little would work like a charm for me. Not like I have ANY chance to do it with carbs Alvaro could do it, not me. He is vain, can suffer a bit for his looks and carbs work for him just fine. But it’s fine I needed another way as I happened to find a much better woe for me! Even without fat-loss, I get important benefits. And it’s not like I miss out on anything. If I go, I just go off a bit, still loads better than keeping a bad old diet. We just shouldn’t keep a bad diet, no matter our figure. Alvaro abandoned his old sugary one too. I think he changed his diet whenever I changed mine. He slimmed down and stayed slim without any diet change though as it’s possible for the right type of people. It’s probably not very common.
[…]
It’s evening now and I did something with my animal pics, finally but can’t bring myself to make a postcard style thingie yet. But this one can’t be made into a square so you get this:
But if you want food pics, here. I have problems with the focus, I don’t see it perfectly and the autofocus annoys me so I don’t use that.
I still have a ton of lard from that time.I want summer to end already Forecast says it gets slowly better and maybe we get rain too - but it’s for next week and no one can predict weather so far away, it’s too chaotic for that. Still, let’s hope we get some rain finally…?
I had dinner, just what I already ate before plus pâté. And I felt some need for something else so I had some dry sausages. I am quite fine without dessert now but it won’t last long I suppose.
Day 2 on plan.
Chuck steak for lunch
Lamb ribs for dinner
Water and one mug of tea.
Still negative for covid. Today is day 5, so I guess I’m in the clear for now.
@Karen18 WOW 17 weeks and Freddy really is getting ready to run to CrossFit with you! What a strong boy!
@Shinita Thank you. You inspire me too and love those beautiful animal pics! I’m very sure I wouldn’t have the endurance to get through one of these long days of playing if it weren’t for my dietary changes of the last 2½+ years.
Alvaro tweaking his diet along with you is so much like hubby. He’s just about the next thing to animal based. Eats what I do but we add a green veggie to his plate. He’s quit starches and desserts except if it’s something I eat, like my cream /eggs only ice cream. (I make him a ZC chocolate sauce which I don’t eat due to the sweeteners.)
We’re on our first day of the 3 day road trip from central Texas to northern Virginia. I put a chicken in the cooler but couldn’t get to it so grabbed a pack of pepperoni wrapped mozzarella. I’ll eat chicken at the motel tonight.
My visualisation is powerful.
Winters don’t really count here. It just rains a bit so we can have something to drink in the long summers.
Tonight is lamb chops. Today I had a four egg omelette cooked in last night’s lamb fat. I have computer-based work to do. Sitting makes me agitated and hungry. So I ate two soft boiled eggs and a tin of sardines with some bone broth this afternoon.
This evening as the Sun was setting we had a rain shower. I caught a few images on my iPad and then added digital paint. Proof that it does rain here.
