Been doing (mostly) carnivore for the last 3 days

[BRBsavinWorld]

Why shall peeling carrots matter? Doesn't chewing do the same thing? Won't they get modified before going into the intestines anyway?

Thin peels of carrot is greater surface area for the coconut oil to bind to. This will remain undigested, and kill fungus all the way thru the digestive tract. Insoluble fiber like carrot, is not digested… it binds to nutrients, which is precisely why Ray suggests taking it away from other foods.

Why should gelatin be balanced with inflammatory protein kinds?

Glycine and a few other proteins, found in gelatin, neutralize the inflammatory proteins cysteine, tryptophan, and methionine, which cause stress and aging.

Studies on fasting found that restricting those inflammatory proteins are why fasting increases lifespan — not fasting itself.

In an ideal state, about half of protein consumed will be gelatin.

 

[ironfist]

Didn't Jordan Petersen do carnivore for years?

Re: instinctive eating, @Waynish I sort of think this sounds like a good idea. Some people stick too rigidly to behaviors /because they're supposed to/ however they may not be good for them! But how do you know the difference between INSTINCTIVE and CRAVING? Is a person who can't stop eating brownies eating instinctively? Why do they think their body needs sugar?

Interesting. B12 in whole foods vs synthentic B12 might make a difference, but who knows.

I have found that insoluble fibrous foods seem to cause constipation and bloating rather than... ease of transit. But my digestion is also not very strong at this point, and was way worse when I was on carnivore.

The biggest issue carnivore caused was intense, unrelenting nausea. I also started getting little bruises on my arms and legs, out of nowhere. I was constantly irritated, very high strung, moody, and had just insane PMS (probably could be considered PMDD). The more fat I ate, the more nauseous I became, so I started eating less fat, and then less food altogether because I was so nauseated by the sight/smell of meat. By the end, meat just seemed to sit in my stomach. My breath became fruity smelling (possibly in keto acidosis), and I felt like acid was running up the back of my throat whenever I bent over even slightly. I had problems controlling my blood pressure, and felt dizzy and faint when I stood up too quickly. Nausea was constant. Fatigue and irritability became constant. I had lost weight, skinnier than I'd been in high school, and yet my stomach seemed puffed out and almost distended by the end of the day, despite eating very little and only eating meat. Whenever I went off of carnivore, I had massive reactions to non-meat foods (intense feelings of depression and doom, sleep paralysis, more intense bloating and joint inflammation, etc), but at a certain point, I realized that staying on carnivore put me in just as bad a state as going off of it. At least when I ate non-carnivore, I wasn't plagued by the nausea. So... I quit the diet.

Everyone will have a different tolerance for this type of diet. My memory of the carnivore community is that the more problems a person was having on the diet, the more strictly they were encouraged to adhere to the diet. Any sort of cravings were just 'addictions' to sugar/carb, and you were supposed to ignore them. Eat more fat. Eat more meat. Maybe add electrolytes. But keep removing more and more foods until you were at the beef/salt/water ideal, the diet that supposedly no one could do poorly on. This is trash advice, and can be incredibly damaging depending on the state you were in when you started the diet, and how long you persist in following it despite negative side effects. Funny how following the 'evolutionarily ideal' diet means rejecting any and all food cravings that don't align with what you "should" eat, and ignoring all bodily cues except those that you are told are correct.
Best case scenario is probably as @Blossom said, listening to your body signals and taking in carbs as needed -- if you decide to continue the carnivore route. The problem that most people have though, especially people who are obese or ill, is that they cannot tease apart which body signals should be listened to, and which ones are coming from a place of habit and can be safely ignored. It's a very tough place to be in and it adds to the danger of following someone else's prescription of a 'healthy diet.' If you follow the space long enough, you'll also notice that the advice of the 'experts' changes -- Saladino once preached that meat/organs only was all one needed to be healthy. It was only when he started experiencing negative side effects himself that he changed course and now advocates for eating fruit and honey. Funny, that. Saladino 1.0 would have told me that I must not be doing the diet right if I was feeling so ill on it, because meat/organs is the only evolutionarily appropriate diet. But, if I'd done the diet a couple years later, Saladino 2.0 would probably have said "Well of course you must add in some fruit and honey! Long term ketosis is dangerous, don't you know??" So ... yea. The carni diet 'authorities' are often wrong and change only when they themselves notice issues, and if you follow them while ignoring your body's signals, you do so at your own risk.

As for why the negatives of the carnivore diet are ignored in carnivore forums? Looking at it from the outside, it seems like a cult. Lots of zealous true believers who cannot tolerate anything that contradicts their claims to it being a healing or optimal diet. Seriously -- some of the people who are the loudest in those spaces, including moderators are ... so consumed by the narrative of the diet (it can heal almost anything, it's the optimal, evolutionary diet for humans, etc.) that they are, frankly, nuts. One of the even told me he was on a mission to save the world with his diet, and he wouldn't be stopped by some liar like me (ie someone whose experience on the diet was very, very negative and will now readily caution anyone who does the diet about its dangers). If you follow the diet strictly, and you have a negative experience with it, you are basically considered a heretic. You are evidence of the diet's imperfection, and therefore you must be expelled so that the narrative can remain intact.

Look, I'm so glad you wrote this.

I'm so tired of this "YOU WILL FEEL WORSE AT FIRST BUT KEEP GOING" stuff. That's like some goopy nonsense. There are probably some cases where it is true, but for the most part I believe this is bad advice.

Carnivore groups seem to be very authoritarian. It reminds me of kung fu schools from Wing Chun lineage that used to argue with each other over who had the purest lineage. Anyone who said anything other was WRONG AND NOT TRAINING REAL WAY!!!!

How horrible is it when people are like "yo, I'm feeling bad," and more people are like "KEEP GOING, KEEP DOING THE THING MAKING YOU FEEL BAD"?

I can understand the people, however, who believe that any bad reaction means they need to do more of it. It's like personalized rage. If you hate yourself, when you feel bad you think you deserve it.

 

[ironfist]

Thin peels of carrot is greater surface area for the coconut oil to bind to. This will remain undigested, and kill fungus all the way thru the digestive tract. Insoluble fiber like carrot, is not digested… it binds to nutrients, which is precisely why Ray suggests taking it away from other foods.

Glycine and a few other proteins, found in gelatin, neutralize the inflammatory proteins cysteine, tryptophan, and methionine, which cause stress and aging.

Studies on fasting found that restricting those inflammatory proteins are why fasting increases lifespan — not fasting itself.

In an ideal state, about half of protein consumed will be gelatin.

What about gelatin by itself? Could you have been trying to say inflammatory protein needs to be balanced with gelatin versus the opposite?

 

[Jennifer]

Thank you, @Josiah Baldwin. I appreciate that. :)

 

[animalcule]

Yes, I mentioned in a carnivore group (just in passing) that I tried some cucumber I had grown my own garden and got a very stern warning. You would have thought I’d murdered someone by the reaction. That’s when I realized I couldn’t keep interacting with people who were that authoritarian about food.

Exactly. One of the rising carnivore influencers, Dr Chaffee, told a story about how he ate a piece of lamb with an herb crust and almost immediately suffered a bout of near-suicidal depression. I've experienced major mood swings while on carnivore when I would eat a bit of plant food, so I absolutely believe his story and empathize with him. BUT what was his takeaway from this experience? Basically, it just confirmed his belief that plant foods are toxic and that because he's running so cleanly on carnivore, even a little bit of herbs triggered a massive reaction. My takeaway? For such a big, muscly guy, his body sure isn't very resilient if he has thoughts of suicide after eating some mint. But that's how it is inside the carnivore sphere - any reaction that is evidence of weakened digestion is just interpreted as further confirmation that plant foods are really, super evil. So no cucumber, not if you're following the Truth of Carnivore!

 

[animalcule]

Didn't Jordan Petersen do carnivore for years?

Re: instinctive eating, @Waynish I sort of think this sounds like a good idea. Some people stick too rigidly to behaviors /because they're supposed to/ however they may not be good for them! But how do you know the difference between INSTINCTIVE and CRAVING? Is a person who can't stop eating brownies eating instinctively? Why do they think their body needs sugar?

Look, I'm so glad you wrote this.

I'm so tired of this "YOU WILL FEEL WORSE AT FIRST BUT KEEP GOING" stuff. That's like some goopy nonsense. There are probably some cases where it is true, but for the most part I believe this is bad advice.

Carnivore groups seem to be very authoritarian. It reminds me of kung fu schools from Wing Chun lineage that used to argue with each other over who had the purest lineage. Anyone who said anything other was WRONG AND NOT TRAINING REAL WAY!!!!

How horrible is it when people are like "yo, I'm feeling bad," and more people are like "KEEP GOING, KEEP DOING THE THING MAKING YOU FEEL BAD"?

I can understand the people, however, who believe that any bad reaction means they need to do more of it. It's like personalized rage. If you hate yourself, when you feel bad you think you deserve it.

There's a book I haven't read yet, but I've heard the author give some interviews and it sounds interesting. It's called The End of Craving. One interesting bit of info the author mentioned was that when researchers examined obese people, they noted that the experienced much higher intensity cravings than non-obese people. BUT despite the high intensity cravings, their reward reaction after eating the food (dopamine) was at the same level as non-obese people. So, much higher cravings, but no greater reward payoff. Just something I think about now when considering the difficulty many obese people have losing weight.

Edit: Also yes, Peterson is still doing carnivore, too. I believe it probably contributed to his extreme anxiety that led him to take benzos that led him to his withdrawal disaster and near death. But he's taking his diet cues from his daughter, who is still deep in carnivore.

 

[SamYo123]

Yup. I thought I was elevating testosterone on carnivore, but after a few months in, it felt more like anger (still thought that was testosterone lol)

exactly. I could only do a fraction of the workout and manual labor I did prior... I did increase my endurance a little, but, that was short lived... I had to rest more, and lost muscle mass, and did a fraction of the varied long term enduring labor and exercising I did prior to carnivore (even if I could do more reps of an isolated workout routine).

yup.

I think people are missing a fundamental aspect of Peat's approach to food... just because you feel better when you remove a food item, doesn't mean you need to, it means there is a gut issue that is preventing its digestion. In fact, avoiding that food item can make it worse: avoiding carbohydrates to starve fungal overgrowth, simply causes it to leach out of the intestines looking for glucose, at which point it becomes a million times worse, and is exactly what happened to me on carnivore! If you had a poor reaction to steak, I wouldn't say go vegan, I'd say fix it! Peat happens to have the solutions that fix indigestibility of healthy foods that humans have consumed for thousands of years!

no pro cyclist in the tour de france, whips out a lump of meat for energy.......

 

[BRBsavinWorld]

Thank you, @Josiah Baldwin. I appreciate that. :)

:)

 

[ironfist]

Does it make sense to do this a day a week, but not every day? Sounds like a stupid idea long term. Has me feel great over a quick period.

 

[Gânico]

You can do well on "carnivore" but you have to mimic tribes and animals whose
were able to thrive on it, having mainly fresh and raw, sometimes rotten or cooked variety of internal organs, glands, skin, connective tissues, bones, fats, muscles, which i don't think many modern "carnivores" are having by eating selected store bought plastic stuff.

By the way, many carnivores tribes/animals eat fruits when they can, no reason to avoid it

 

[GreekDemiGod]

Why not just do Carnivore, but add lots and lots of honey to lower stress hormones and support your thyroid, but still maintain the benefits of reduced endotoxin/ gut irritants?

 

[Nomane Euger]

Why not just do Carnivore, but add lots and lots of honey to lower stress hormones and support your thyroid, but still maintain the benefits of reduced endotoxin/ gut irritants?

do you include dairy into carnivore?

 

[SuperStressed]

Why not just do Carnivore, but add lots and lots of honey to lower stress hormones and support your thyroid, but still maintain the benefits of reduced endotoxin/ gut irritants?

You could even do more cheese instead of just meat. Also could do sugar coke if you can't get good strained juice.

Cheese + Sugar coke + Carrot salad could be a short term plan for dramatic lowering of endotoxin