Weight gain woes..help me!

food
carnivore
zero-carb
(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #1

Hello everyone! Long post alert :rofl:

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here so it’s good to be back :blush:
I thought I’d see if I can get some experiences/guidance from the carnivore crew as I’m starting to despair a little at the weight I’ve gained since starting carnivore almost a year ago…don’t get me wrong I’m loving how I feel, my memory has improved drastically, random little sinus problems I had have disappeared and I just generally feel great, however I’m not gonna lie the weight gain is starting to get me down now. I worked bloody hard to lose weight and now it’s going back on without me really trying.

I’d like to hear other people’s perspectives (particularly from females as I know we have hormones and periods to deal with) but will welcome any advice if you can tell me where I’m going wrong.
What’s frustrating though is for about 2 months when I first started carnivore last summer I actually lost weight! Each time I got on the scales the number was going down, it was great! Eating nothing but steak and burgers and cheese and the weight I gained during lockdown was finally coming off, until one month my period came like 8 days early, completely unexpected, my cystic acne came back with a vengeance and it was like a light had been flicked off…all of a sudden I gained 2lbs after that and the weight has continued to creep on. I don’t understand it.

A bit of background info so you can come to a conclusion:

I did keto for 2 years previous, loved it, lost loads of weight but I’ll be honest I did restrict my calories. Always kept them around 1800 a day, I did intermittent fasting too but felt hungry all the time towards the end. I’ve come to understand the weight gain could be due to a restriction of calories…all through my 20’s for 10 years I was also addicted to methamphetamines so I barely ate and when I did it was hardly quality foods so I wonder if all of this has trashed my metabolism? Am I just healing now? I don’t know. I had hoped the two years on keto had healed me. I’m so confused!

I’ve been on anti biotics since last September as my cystic acne came back after I started carnivore, which is weird as my skin was perfect doing keto. I’m coming off them next month so I’m hoping it’ll heal my gut a bit once I’m done the course.

My periods went absolutely crazy. Coming a week early each month which has been frustrating. PMS symptoms have since actually really improved which I’m really happy about as they were pretty traumatic in the early days of carnivore and now they only come 3 days early each month. Are there any others that experienced this? Do they ever go back to normal??

My daily food consists now of just beef and water, couple of cups of coffee and one with 2 tablespoons of heavy cream in the morning. Sometimes I’ll have a chicken breast with burgers for dinner for added satiety, but it works out at about a pack and a half of ground beef in the morning and the same for dinner: about 700g × 2 = about 3lbs of beef a day. I can’t really afford steaks, plus the way I’ve been eating I’d be bankrupt eating steaks every day so I settle for burgers instead :rofl::rofl:
I wake up starving every morning, I (sometimes) force down the burgers and then I feel great and can usually go until the evening when I eat the same meal again. I do sometimes get fed up of the same meal all the time but I do feel great so that’s the main thing.
I rarely eat cheese, and I rarely keep it in the fridge as I know I’ll eat too much of it.
In the early days I did tinker a lot with my diet, such as OMAD and throwing in sausages, for some reason I got into drinking sugar free squash (cordial) too but I’ve kicked all of that and for the past few months I’ve been strictly beef and chicken and eggs, yet the weight is still going on. I do occasionally drink but it’s like once or twice a month. No chocolate or anything else.
I’ve also tried going dairy free and that made no difference either, I do still enjoy one Cup of coffee with cream with my morning burgers and I find it gives me that little buzz I need to see the day through. Just recently I’ve actually not needed all of my burgers I make in the morning but I do like to have them all with me in case I’m hungry for them.

I do keep trying to stay on top of my exercise but I have a shoulder injury at the moment so it’s mainly lifting with weights I do and some hiit.

I’m just getting frustrated now, I’m not ready to throw the towel in yet but I just wanna know when it will get better? I’ve read the Kelly Hogan blog a million times, which gives me a tiny ray of hope, but she’s only one person’s experience with carnivore weight gain …I’d love to hear from you guys. I wanna hear your reality of carnivore, as you’ve always been so helpful in the past :heartpulse: Is there anything here you guys think that I’m doing wrong? I’m sorry this is such a long post but figured I’d get it all out there so you know!

If you’ve reached the end of this I thank you :rofl::rofl: lots of love to you all xxx

#2

Do you think you are gaining muscle mass, bone density and repairing connective tissue? This can all make the scales go up because your body is repairing itself with this influx on protein allowing it to heal things and build mass

Are clothes feeling looser, tighter or the same? The scales aren’t the only way to track progress, often the scales go the wrong way (for the above reasons) but we’re reducing in size because fat takes up more volume per lb/kg than denser muscle mass

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #3

It’s definitely fat weight, to be honest I stopped weighing myself ages ago because it depressed me so much :joy: it’s mostly belly fat (lower belly) I can tell visibly. I’ve been buying a size bigger this summer as all my old clothes don’t fit me nicely anymore

#4

Oh no :disappointed_relieved: this is also my problem too, my size is going up as well as the scales. I’m going to cut out my small snacks between meals and see if its the small insulin spikes causing my trouble

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #5

Are you zero carb too?

#6

I tried it for a month, the bloating was too much to cope with I was in so much pain. So I’ve gone back to having small amounts of salad bits, veg and nuts

(Laurie) #7

No expert, but I’ll share my first impresions.

Maybe 3 pounds a day is too much for you? I eat about 1.5 pounds a day, sometimes less. I am older, so even though I exercise daily, maybe my metabolism is slower or something.

For various reasons, I am also limited mostly to ground beef, usually in the form of burgers. I sometimes just fry the hamburger meat up as a crumble. I don’t like this as much as burger patties, but it provides a change. I have also made carnivore meat loaf from time to time (held together with egg).

(Robin) #8

sounds like you did great on straight keto. Why not go back for a while and see if you heal, or find a better groove for your body.

#9

May be depressing, but start weighing again, although scale weight doesn’t tell the whole story it allows you to track trends and you want to be able to tell if what you’re doing is working or not. Clearly day to day weight is less important than trends over the weeks.

If you’re lifting and doing HIIT, your caloric needs may be way higher than you think. Normally I’d say 1800cals isn’t going to slow somebody down, but if with that level of training if you really need 3000, than 1800 for an extended time definitely would. Protein is very satiating and could have you under eating for what you need, especially if you’re not tracking. With Keto being mostly fat and over twice as calorically dense, you still wind up with a ton of calories, with mostly protein though, you’ll stop yourself from eating too much (sometimes too little) when it feels like you have a bank safe in your stomach.

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #10

Hmmm this is a good point…maybe I should try reducing my food and see what happens. I’m always so worried I’ll end up going hungry! :rofl:

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #11

Funny you should say this. I was thinking about going back to keto again. I just love my sharp mind on carnivore, I’m definitely considering going back though :blush:

#12

Sometimes it requires some maths. But that doesn’t suit all people. Dr Ted Naiman has an interesting protein-based approach. It condenses down to getting adequate protein and micronutrients, and then tinkering with the fat and carb fuel sources, or fat fuel source, if you are carnivore. Historically Michael Eades was one to look at. Sometimes it requires data, and that doesn’t suit all people. More data than a body weight scale.

From my time with the carnivores, especially in sharing ideas with the lady carnivores (@Fangs) the way of eating is all about nourishing and healing the body. The body fat loss is a pleasing side effect when the factors that are required are customised and dialled in specifically for the individual. And it’s more than just nutrition, it’s also sleep. activity, social connection and mindful stress reduction.

I think #1 thing I’ve learned from them is that a body doesn’t heal and optimise if any of the building blocks are restricted. Also, body scale weight can be psychological torture, wheres clothes fit may work better.

Carnivore can be ketogenic. Monitoring some ketones or blood glucose may help refine the approach.

Is the heavy cream pure cream, or does it have additives? Some thickeners can be anti-nutrients to remove.

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #13

May be carnivore just isn’t working for me?
In so many ways I do wish it would :joy: it’s so convenient, plus on lots of ways do I feel good.
But some of the changes that have taken place especially hormonally and with my cystic acne coming back have actually shocked me more than my transition to keto a couple of years ago.
I’m really considering going back to keto. My taste buds will be so happy!

Yes the cream is double cream (UK) and is pure :blush:

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #14

May be carnivore just isn’t working for me?
In so many ways I do wish it would :joy: it’s so convenient, plus on lots of ways do I feel good.
But some of the changes that have taken place especially hormonally and with my cystic acne coming back have actually shocked me more than my transition to keto a couple of years ago.
I’m really considering going back to keto. My taste buds will be so happy!

Yes the cream is double cream (UK) and is pure :blush:

(Edith) #15

If you were eating a lot of nuts and leafy greens on keto or even before, going full carnivore could have caused you to start dumping oxalate. I belong to a group called Trying Low Oxalate and skin eruptions: acne, strange bumps, rashes, are very common symptoms. You may want to looking into oxalates and oxalate dumping.

Going carnivore is the ultimate low oxalate diet, but many people have trouble going pure carnivore just for that reason. Once we stop ingesting oxalate containing foods, our bodies dump the crystals they’ve been storing up for years. It can be a very painful process with skin eruptions, painful joints, digestive problems, and tons of other symptoms. The Trying Low Oxalate group which is a Facebook owned by an oxalate researcher and moderated by nutritionists recommends people slowly decrease their oxalate intake over time to slow down the dumping.

If you search on this forum you can find a lot of posts on oxalates. There are too many for me to link.

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #16

Hello, thanks for this info. I’m allergic to nuts so I wasn’t eating those, I was already quite aware of the dangers of oxalates so I limited leafy greens too.

It’s all very strange why the acne came back. I’m on my last course though so I hope to god it’s gone again :blush:

(Mame) #17

I would always assume that it is too much food (volume-wise) and test that first. You said somewhere above that you eat because you are afraid you’ll get hungry. Is it really a problem to let yourself get hungry? Are you eating for emotional reasons instead of physical hugner. Hunger is not an emergency if you have extra weight on your bod, is it? You want your body to snack on your lower belly right? :wink:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #18

Just throwing this out there. Maybe totally irrelevant, but here it is.

Many days my work schedule is such that my meal break at Walmart occurs as much as 6-8 hours after my breakfast keto coffee. To avoid getting hungry on those days I try to remember to eat more for breakfast, usually cream cheese and bacon bits or roast beef. Some days I forget or for some reason just don’t get around to it.

I start to get hungry about 4-5 hours after drinking my keto coffee if I had nothing else for breakfast. So on days when I have to wait 6+ hours to eat and I failed to add cream cheese and bacon bits at breakfast, I get hungry. But here’s the interesting thing.

My total body weight is currently 145 pounds of which about 15% or 22 pounds (9979 grams) is stored fat. That fat represents a nominal 89811 kcals of stored energy. On those days when I forget my breakfast cream cheese and bacon bits I get hungry around 11 - noonish - but not very intensely and only for about 15-20 minutes. Long enough to remind me that it’s time to eat. Then it goes away and I’m good for the next 2 to 3 hours until my meal break.

So in ketosis, there is no reason to fear hunger. Even a small guy like me has plenty of stored energy to get past the ‘Eat Soon’ alert and carry on normally. The hunger is slight and short-lived as the switch to internal energy occurs.

(Steaks b4 cakes! 🥩🥂) #19

I’ve given it a lot of thought since my original post and you do have a point here…I think I’m eating too much food!
I don’t particularly enjoy the feeling of being hungry, especially at bed time so I eat enough food that will carry me through until my next meal time, not actually realising that it could be too much! :see_no_evil::see_no_evil: just yesterday I did an experiment, for the first time ever I only ate three burgers for breakfast with my cream and I was full! I did have a snack of cheese and chorizo in the afternoon but that wasn’t out of hunger and I rarely snack. For dinner I had 2 burgers and some chicken which is like HALF of what I normally eat, I’ve woken up this morning still feeling full!!

#20

Many of us don’t accept hunger, the challenge is to find food that satiates us enough without eating too much. It’s very hard for some of us… I probably will need lots of activity and more muscles to have any chance at fat-loss but I eat without hunger too, I need proper satiation almost all the time to avoid it (and anyway, I often feel the need to eat and problems earlier than getting hungry. it doesn’t come easily to me when well-fasted). Very very well chosen food items would be enough I suppose but I never will eat that “perfect”.

But hunger and hunger can be wildly different. I basically eat immediately when hungry but only because hunger is usually annoying to me and when it arrives, it’s usually high time to eat anyway - but sometimes I have a nice hunger I don’t desire to change as it’s enjoyable.
And I know very well that waiting a few hours with my meal will do nothing bad, fat adaptation has its benefits :slight_smile: But anyway, I have reserves. And hunger may go away now, I think… I have super little info as I rarely let myself to be hungry but I noticed it changed too. Before fat adaptation my hunger just got bigger and bigger as the hours passed, it was horrible. My SO has no fat adaptation, always eats high-carb but he has this disappearing hunger too. He eats just enough to keep his weight (or lose a bit) and if it means on/off hunger for quite a few hours while working (he doesn’t eat for 9 hours then), so be it.

There was a few times when I ate as much as I could to avoid getting hungry soon but that was due to special circumstances and goals, like I wanted to do OMAD. Now I just stop being hungry and it should be enough. Except if it’s super tiny food and I know I will get hungry in 1 hour again, I hate eating all the time so, so much… I need bigger meals.