I see posts all the time about how we evolved from a meat-only diet and we don’t “need” carbs.
Well, I am of the opinion that some have “evolved” past a meat-only diet and some DO need a small amount of carbs to remain healthy. To think our bodies aren’t very adaptable flies in the face of how our immune system reacts to “invaders”.
I’ve seen a theory that some of the people who have had issues with carnivore and went back to eating carbs ate too much liver and the like, and then needed vitamin C to overcome the very high vitamin A content. Paul Saladino was eating a TON of liver.
Don’t know whether it’s true, but it’s at least plausible.
Also, Amber O’Hearn said some people who have thyroid issues on carnivore … don’t eat enough. One woman who said carnivore trashed her thyroid, she since increased the amount she ate, got her thyroid working again, and has retracted everything.
While I’m still of the opinion, we don’t “need” carbs, I still eat some of them.
agree. you do you. you eat what suits you only. after that the body reaction is key to what level you hit on carb intake and from what foods.
simple as that. All in carnivores are here for their specific reasons thru med issues and food gut issues and reactions to plant based and we know who we are and need this lifestyle but many can walk back into lc land.
again who ya are with mind, body and soul reigns key here on all of it.
There’s something about berries & honey outside the keto world. I know of 3rd generation doctor who has an autoimmune disorder. Berries & honey are his only exception to his carnivore diet. He gravitated towards this way of dieting because of his studying of the evolution of phytonutrients.
For me personally, they are a bit strange. I grow berries and have access to lots of wild berries. I can eat buckets of berries without too many issues. Seems like I can get with over 100g of carbs from raw honey without hardcore issues.
50g of added sugar and I’m sick for a week at best. Seizures aren’t out of the question. Honey and berries really stick out to me. Glad other folks are shining a light on this keto abnormality.
for me a few berries and that sugar hit would and has derailed me off plan and backtracked me horribly…hence off ‘all sugar’ for this person.
interesting you do so well on them as VE has put some back and did fine also and actually felt better but I also think like you ‘a low GI thing like a berry’ would be my first try back, but for me it was a 0 go on that.
again, who we are and I don’t think you can explain or anyone can for that matter 
why you can add back XYZ and do fine while another can’t which is why we gotta be our own N-1 in all this and base it on food reactions/invasions and/or qualifying fab foods that do work for us and only give us better and take nothing from our health.
interesting thoughts on that from your post.
I wish I could eat a bucketload of berries 
always like them. but you also said ‘without too many issues’ so where is the berry line for ya and what can it trigger at some point for you? just wondering.
Humans started developing lactose tolerance around 8,000 years ago, give or take. That is pretty recent in human evolution. But, not every human today has lactose tolerance. It is mostly people of European descent and some tribes in Africa. So, if we totally went by what we evolved to eat 200,000 or more years ago, we technically should not eat dairy, but many of us can.
Plant foods have been in our diets for longer. What’s not to say that some portion of the population has evolved to eat certain plant foods? And… just like not everyone is lactose tolerant, it could be that not everyone is plant tolerant.
For me, I tried eating more on carnivore to see if it solved my troubles. It did not. I was not overloading organ meat. One could most likely say I didn’t eat enough of them. I’m somewhere between 50-100 grams of carbs a day. Most days on the 50 gram end. Its that really enough nutrients from the fruit to provide what I may have been lacking on carnivore? 
It does seem to be enough to help me hold onto my electrolytes.
wow no idea you are hitting that high on carb intake and DOING SO WELL…more darn power to ya VE in working it out for you truly!!
wish I could be you but you always gave all to your N-1s and found you and I always love that about your forward progression!!!
a very personal physical body issue you are working out for you…just so happy you are progressing to suit you and feel great!
When I had honey the last time (last December, maybe?) I noticed it’s just pure sugar to me. I may get away with a few grams but that’s about it. It’s sugar and a very pure one (as I tolerate fruits somewhat better). My body only handles animal sugars well. Using fat helps but it has its limits. Sugar alone? I become borderline sugar poisoned from a very small amount sometimes. Or whatever is it when I feel I had sugar and it feels bad.
And I am a healthy one and I can handle a ton of added sugar, I mean, I survive and don’t feel pain afterwards but I surely feel I overdid it. And pain would arrive if I kept at it.
But my body doesn’t want a sugary woe and isn’t shy to tell me. Barred true necessity, it refuses to accept a too bad woe. In need it shuts up and use whatever is available as far as I can tell but if there is a better option, it nudges me to grab that. It may indulge me for a while but its tolerance regarding quick sugars isn’t huge. Honey doesn’t feel different, I wonder why it’s not the same for some people…
If I added back things and I would care about what my body likes to handle (and not what I desire 
I usually add fruits, first of all but it’s not what my body likes), sugars would be the last. Starches would come before but it still makes little sense… Legumes would be better but sweeteners and gluten would be the first ones as they never felt bad and they are very useful when I get bored of my carni food. I have non-physical problems with them (like sweeteners aren’t food so I don’t want to use them if possible) but if I consider things, they are the potentially very useful and pretty harmless things to add…
IDK if GI matters to me noticeably, I never felt that but as my body can handle pretty much carbs compared to many other people, maybe that’s why I just can’t notice the difference. Jasmine rice (super high GI so of course it’s my fav) is normal starch to me so I handle it way better than most fruits… But lower-carb fruits are fine, it’s true I am unable to eat much of those though… There are few fruits I ever compelled to eat galore (in my world, not what a normal people consider a big amount I suppose) and they are all very sugary. The (not real just people call them like that) berries are perfect in tiny amounts. Tiny amount is perfect for all fruits, I just can’t do it with some. But that isn’t often a problem, I only have one such fruit in my own garden and overdoing it once per year is fine, I don’t feel actually BAD just worse than without it.
I definitely get ZERO physical benefit from eating carbs. I would lose my sanity without some taste here and there and first of all, getting a break from my normal carni food (I still get bored of it too quickly) but I always feel my body doesn’t want (non-animal) carbs at all, ever, it’s happiest without them. I met several people who were different, of course, they are numerous.
Well… I did gain a few pounds back, but I decided the few pounds was worth not having a pounding heart and/or palpitations. When I think of it, 100 grams is probably waaaayyyy too high of an estimate. It is actually hard to eat a lot of carbs even from fruit. I’m most likely around the 50 gram mark. I should probably measure it some time. 
People think they need carbs. They certainly want them and will justify them.
Personally I don’t need or want them. That said, some foods with carbs in small quantities have value in them, for me.
seen ya in pics, you are super fine VE!!! a few lbs is squat if you find that better health feeling for sure!
Interesting thread. There is so much we don’t know about the human body. Taking a hard line on most anything seems foolish. I think n=1 is our best bet. We can be guided by information sources we trust if we choose to but in the end it always comes down to our n=1 to tell us what we feel best doing.
One pet peeve is the talk about “going back” and “back tracking” and “going backward” when moving from carnivore to non-carnivore. If someone eats carnivore and doesn’t do well on it, they are moving forward when they eat differently and feel better eating that way. Carnivore isn’t a religion in which you lose your salvation by stepping off “The Path”. Someone choosing to eat non-carnivore after trying carnivore shouldn’t affect those who choose to eat carnivore, regardless of the reason and how long they gave it.
Whilst things like adaptation are real, we do not know enough about the human body to know whether adaptation will resolve issues or not. A long enough adaptation period seems to resolve many issues when looking at anecdotal evidence, but many isn’t all and nor is it for all people. So it’s probably more accurate to say a long enough adaptation period will resolve many issues for some people, with what is “long enough” varying person to person.
I think it’s safe to say the food we eat today doesn’t have the same nutrients as food humans sourced in the past. What affect that has on us is unclear. I think this might be another n=1 issue. Some people seem to do fine on a non-optimal diet, others notice deficiencies and excesses and foods that affects them keenly and need to address the issues.
I think it’s also possible humans who eat a lot of unhealthy “western food” think how we feel (energy level, cognition, physical symptoms etc) is “normal”, and it’s not until we make some significant changes that some folks discover the normal we accepted was actually quite sub optimal. But how many of us know what truly optimal feels like for us? And how many of us have the time, energy, money, and ability to sift through all of the information claiming to speak to this issue to find out? And even then, how much will end up being n=1 and all we can do is say “this is what worked for me”. Which is all any of us should say on pretty much every issue we discuss on this forum, along with links to and discussions about various research and others’ n=1 experiences.
I think saying going backward is a correct term and it isn’t coming from a negative tag on it as many perceive it. One is going back into a plant based menu. Simple as that to me. We have diff. perspectives on it.
what is my pet peeve is so many feel carnivores have a religion LOL we don’t I truly don’t understand that type of statement I see alot about our being on the carni lifestyle?
no one going backward into eating plants effects other carnivores ever. As long as a zc thread stays clean in its chat for those doing no plants in their menu I feel like I have safety in a thread that addresses my lifestyle. Like when I dip into a ‘Keto Plan’ I know I am gonna read about someone eating plants, I can adapt to that but in a carnivore thread that I use daily as my support I would hope it could be only about the lifestyle plan and not include people eating plant based. I don’t mean that negative either, I mean chatting I ate a salad and broccoli and taters, I don’t mean anyone wanting to come in and say HI in any thread is a bad thing
good chat on it all for sure on how we do all see and feel what support and chat we do have to get from our support threads.
So agree our food from before is not what we are eating today! just from GMO and pesticide intervention and more we know we are more toxic in our food supply along with ingredients from manufactured who knows what chemicals to ‘enhance flavor and shelf life’ LOL
We absolutely know we are all different when it comes to what we need but many are alike. So as we experience issues it is good when one is struggling to give advice on how a process went down for that person, but of course we know that not one item fits all ever. So even tho timelines are diff. and healing/repair of damaged bodies is diff. we have many commonality along the way
good post, enjoyed reading it!!
LOL too funny
now I see it as you went forward into a non-plant based menu 
my thoughts are is a person eating plant or non-plant menu.
if one is not, and eating carni, no plants, and one wants to go back into eating plants and be keto, cool, but they went ‘back’ to plants.
if one is eating plants and wants a non-plant menu and try carnivore then they went forward into a non-eating plant lifestyle.
Just how I preceive it 
to me when any of this is chatted this way I don’t see a negative spin on it tho
Yes. I felt quite healthy and okay on high-carb and only going low-carb showed me that there is something better. It was so significant, I feel sorry for all the masses who consider their suboptimal normal because they never experienced something better.
(I don’t talk about high-carbers in general, I talk about people who would feel much better on a different diet. I happen to be someone who ate a suboptimal carby diet and it turned out my body prefers extreme low non-animal net carbs. It was a poor match. My body is a hero and sturdy and I had a quite nutritious diet at least so I had no problems, per se, I just had it worse than it could have been.)
I so hate the existence of all those stupid beliefs that keeps even many open-minded or desperate people to try out new ways… Some of us do it anyway but it should be much more 
Apart from some research (I am a curious one, it wasn’t hard but yes, I have found knowledge so slowly), I just experimented on myself I consider this the best, I depend on experiences of others too… Science is important but I get too little knowledge there due to the limits of experiments, differences of people, my inability to understand anything Chemistry related and there are bias and probably other things. But if my body suddenly feels happier when I drop carbs and always feels a tad worse when I add them back, any non-animal kind… That tells me A LOT.
Certain facts are easy to find but how our individual body responds to which diet, that requires experiments.
I saw so many things showed as almost or truly proven information that are contrary to my own experiences… They say one thing and I experienced the opposite all my life (or in all my keto life). So I don’t really trust results of experiments and even scientific things (the end conclusion as I wouldn’t understand the whole detailed thing even if it would be available or if I did? there may be another factor messing it up. but even experts aren’t on the level where they could really understand what happens in our bodies).
Plant-based diet is no animals, we usually go back to an omnivore diet
But actually… We go BACK to carnivore as we hopefully started with milk only
Okay, that’s a very special meatless carnivore…
Going back always sounded to me as it probably is intended, it’s merely doing it AGAIN. It was that before, then came carni and now it’s the plant containing diet comes again. If we do carni->something else with plants->carni, then we go back to carni. It’s not a judgement. If it is, I don’t agree with that particular carnivore who think so.
I’ve been experimenting with re-integrating carbs (plants) now for several months. My gym performance has returned to the levels I was used to pre-carnivore. I am slightly more “puffy” (less lean) and am still tweaking things. And I still go back to carnivore for a week or two at a time if I have a specific purpose (to reset, to drop fluffiness after a carb experiment, etc).
After a year, eating a few nuts again is like eating them for the very first time.
After a year, eating a mandarin orange is like eating it for the very first time.
Last night I had 4oz of mixed greens cooked in red wine and balsamic. It was the most flavor-rich thing I’ve tasted in a year.
I am tasting these foods fully, I am experiencing them, and its amazing.
I am still keeping carbs low (sub 100g/day, usually less). And I am still watching blood sugar and crp/hs-crp closely.
But re-integrating a small amount of plant matter has been fantastic.
Dr. Paul Saladino, author of The Carnivore Code does this as well. For the last 1 1/2-years he has been talking about adding fruit, raw honey and raw milk to the carnivore diet. Lots of reasons why he is doing this AND he also recommends it. (lots of YouTube vids on it). You may agree or disagree watch the videos first and then decide.