Mesa_John

It seems like an eternity ago, but COVID nearly killed me back in 2021. I spent 9 days in the Hospital and a collapsed lung made it even worse. I will never forget the morning of Day 8 in the hospital. I placed my order for breakfast, my first meal in about 12 days. When the nurse walked in the room with the scrambled eggs and bacon, I immediately started dry heaving at the smell and they had to take the food out of the room. I grew up on a ranch and on occasion we would find a dead cow that was at the height of being eaten up by maggots. Once you smell that rotten flesh, you will never forget it and that morning in the hospital..... yeah, that is what the bacon and eggs smelled like. For the next 6 months I struggled eating anything with protein because of the taste and smell issues. Yep, COVID really messed up my taste and smell for a while. Eventually, I mostly returned to normal, but on occasion some meats still give me a whiff of that rotten smell, when there is nothing wrong with the meat. This morning is one of those moments. This morning it is the scrambled eggs the wife made for breakfast. UGH... I normally love eggs and when this happens it is frustrating, especially when that is all I have to eat. Anyone else struggled with something similar while doing carnivore?

Before reading this, the wife suggested we go to 2MAD, starting today. Her idea is to skip lunch, eating breakfast and dinner. I suggested we skip breakfast, eating only lunch at noon and dinner at 6pm, fasting for 18 hours, true intermittent fasting. She doesn't think she can do that while doing Carnivore. So this week, we will skip lunch eating at 6am and 6pm. Back when we were eating carbs, we did a lot of OMAD, so it is my hope she will adapt and adjust to skipping breakfast.

Tomorrow evening and Thursday evening will find me behind the scorer's table, running the scoreboard for our High School basketball games. In the past, I would just eat a nasty hot dog or nachos, but not anymore..... This happens regularly with me and the wife, where school things keep us from coming home until 7-9pm. We've got to figure out some remote meals that aren't junk eating, even if non-carb. Tomorrow evening, we will have the wife pick up a pound of smoked brisket from the BBQ joint, but I won't pay $35 a lb for meat every time. Gotta figure out some solutions. Suppose the smart thing to do is Pre-prepare meals and freeze them, take them to work and reheat in a microwave. ??????????

Neither Iron or Stainless like high heat. We have both and it has taken me two years to get the wife to understand NOT to turn the burner on HI with either. Once Iron is seasoned well, it can nearly take on the appearance and behavior of non-stick. I honestly don't think Stainless is superior in any way over Iron, except one thing.... Cooking eggs. For some reason the Iron skillets leach a flavor into eggs that neither the wife and I are found of. Therefore we cook our eggs in the stainless skillets. ......

My father, a cattle rancher, loved a steak cooked in butter in an Iron Skillet. The Chuck Wagon cooks did everything in Iron and that's what he grew up with. I think I will start cooking that way more often, but not because I am afraid of a little ash and smoke. .........

Just pulled the jerky off the smoker. 7 hours between 140-170 degrees. My yield is right at 3lbs or 48oz. Good use of time and meat when grocery store jerky is about $8 for 4oz. Yeah, great jerky is $30-$40 a lb in the stores.

The wife and I are fanatics about Mexican Food and we simply refuse to give up on it. Also, over the last three decades, we have learned to cook our own. We just have to be creative on carnivore, so here is how we make extremely low carb, Beef enchiladas, perfect for the Carnivore diet. The only carb is see in this whole recipe is 1 gram in the Sharp Cheddar Cheese, 1/2 a gram in the Garlic Powder and 1/2 a gram in the Cumin. So 2 grams total and the sauce serves two-three people.... so very, very little carb, maybe less than 2 grams for the whole plate. (By the way, zero carb in the dried chili's.) 1. Make your own Enchilada Sauce, because we have not been able to find zero carb Enchilada Sauce and homemade is better. Start out with a bag of dried chili's and toast them in a dry Iron Skillet for 5 minutes. Then put them in hot water for 30 minutes, and into the blender with salt, garlic powder and cumin. (very small amount of garlic and cumin). Once blended, strain the sauce and pour in a skillet to simmer. 2. For two plates, crack three eggs and whip, adding about a 1/4 cup of water to make it more runny. Thinly coat a large skillet with butter, leaving very little oil and pour 1/2 the eggs in... (This is the one place I have to use a non-stick skillet). Rotate the pan handle, allowing the egg to flow all around the pan, making something that looks like a crepe...... very thin. You have to flip and cook the other side, or you can cheat like I do and have an oven cook the top with the broiler. 3. Brown a pound of hamburger meat and salt to taste. 4. Now you can build your enchilada. Lightly coat an oven safe plate with melted butter and place the egg crepe on the plate. On the crepe place your hamburger and a little sharp cheddar cheese and then drizzle some of the enchilada sauce on the inside and roll up. Drizzle the outside with more sauce and put a little cheese on top and put the plate in an oven on 350 degrees for 20 minutes. 5. We put a dish towel on the table, as a hot plate is about to come out of the oven. If you called this a splurge or a meal on a cheat day...... you are cheating very little. I need this meal once a week. I suppose you should stay away from this recipe if you have determined that chili's and/or enchilada sauce mess with your body. I was eating EVERY chili and hot peppers since I was a child and my body loves it. By the way, chili's are rich in vitamins and minerals - a good source of Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Vitamin B12, Vitamin E, Phosphorus, Calcium, Potassium, Zinc and Selenium. PS. If you wanted zero carb enchiladas, just eliminate the cheese, garlic and cumin. They will still be darn good.

I love breakfast sausage and Spicy Jimmy Dean's makes me happy. But in my effort to continue to eat cleaner, I am always looking for opportunity. Opportunity showed itself three days ago when I found Boston Butts for a smoking sale and purchased three of them. On this President's Day, I used the day off to make 21 lbs. I also thinly sliced some beef, brined in Salt and Powdered Garlic and it is on the smoker at 150 degrees for the rest of the day.

I think I agree with the formula..... I am 6'4" and it calculated my target weight at 215lbs, with my wrist measurement. I would like to get down to 225-230lbs, but I am also a weight lifter, so that extra 10-15lbs is muscle mass. The Wife is 5'9" and it calculated her target weight at 152lbs, with her wrist measurement. She feels that 145-150lbs is right for her.

I am a bit of a fanatic of smoked meats. Every chance I get, I grill/smoke on my Pitboss pellet grill. (When I do serious smoking, I use Mesquite in my big vertical smoker). Anyway, the wife asked me last night..... "Every meal we have prepared since we started has been cooked on the Pitboss. Should we be concerned about carcinogens in the wood smoke grilling process that we are eating three times a day, 7 days a week?" I haven't taken the time to research, but I am certain I will find some studies that will show grilling meat will kill anyone of cancer in short order..... humor injected. This does beg the question.... how is it best to cook our meat? What have you learned over the weeks, months and years? Here are a few of my own beliefs...... After watching a video from Dr. Baker, where he said cooking at low temps is far, far better. I also found a recommendation that oven cooked bacon should be cooked below 300 degrees. It takes nearly an hour to cook, but we now cook our bacon in the oven at 275 degrees. Non-stick skillets and pans are GONE. It is my belief that those non-stick treatments are poison. I didn't even donate to Good Will, to poison someone else. They went to the trash dump. We only use Iron and Stainless cookware. Storing in plastic Tupperware and Baggies, in the frig or freezer is OK with me, but I NEVER reheat in them to avoid the micro-plastic leaching at high temps..... What are your thoughts? ..........

I was concerned when I read the macros on Wright's bacon, which is the thick cut, smoked awesomeness. Ingredients read, "Sugar"..... but when I read the Carbs, it started "0", zero. I assume "0" because it is less than 1 gram. I'm not going to loose sleep over it and continuing buying Wright's wonderfulness.

Yes, I have an accountability partner. Without my wife doing Carnivore with me, I would not be successful.

Today is Day#5, and cramping is increasing and not fun. There is a particular cramp that starts in my groin, from knee to crotch and when it really tightens up, I nearly drop to the floor in pain as it spreads to my lower back. I also get the foot and hand cramps. I use to think by guzzling water quickly would help, but by doing that, I am just diluting the electrolytes in my body, potentially making it worse. We now live out of town on our own well water (which has tested awesome and tastes awesome), but when we were living in town, drinking the horrible municipal water, I would distilled a gallon at a time and add essential minerals to the water. Yesterday, I found a bottle of this stuff in my medicine cabinet. That being said, when I had a double groin cramp this morning right after waking up, I rushed to the kitchen, added 10 drops to a little water and drank, then I added a 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a little water and drank. It was miraculous!!!! I flippin kid you not, the cramps released and quit within 15 seconds... just disappeared and have not returned in the past 2 hours. I want to think that I need to start supplimenting with electrolytes, but I honestly don't know how much to ingest. This is the stuff I took this morning.

Geoff, lot of good thoughts there and honestly, I can say what I will do in three months, but until I get there, I am not sure.

That has been my cycle for years. Sure, I had great success at times. Two decades ago, I lost 65lbs on Adkins, only to return to carbs and Bourbon and shoot back up to 280lbs. Then three times the past 8 years I have done Keto, was strict and lost a lot of weight... only to fall back off the wagon. My problem was short-term goals. Short-term being defined as something around 3-4 months. I was strict and lost a ton of weight leading up to my daughters wedding. I was strict and lost a ton of weight leading up to an Enduro Motorcycle Race. I was strict and lost a ton of weight prior to my wedding anniversary and a trip to Europe. Once those events happened, I was straight back to sugar, carbs and Bourbon. I am only a few days in, but this time is different. This year I turn 57 years old and I am highly motivated to straighten up and live a life the next 30 years of health and activity. I am DONE with making awesome plans to go skiing or hiking or camping or over-landing or motorcycle riding..... only to get off work on Thursday afternoon and go straight to a bottle of Bourbon. Then I wake up Friday morning with a massive hangover and from there my weekend is shot. DONE WITH THAT!

Right now, the burning goal I have is to complete 90 days on Carnivore. My goals are not weight loss or better health.... I am fixated on crossing the finish line at 90 days. I don't plan for pure, strict Carnivore to be my long term nutrition plan. After 90 days the wife and I plan to adjust to a Keto Diet, where we have 25 grams of carbs to enjoy a day. Some might ask... if you get through 3 months of Carnivore, why in the heck would you slide off? Well, the #1 reason is my garden. Eventually, I want to eat my home grown vegetables and the wife probably loves a great salad as much as anything, right after a prime grade Rib-eye. Reason #2 is my raising.... I was born and raised on the Mexican Border and there are no circumstances where I will permanently give up Enchiladas and Chili Rellenos. #3 will be controversial to many of you, but we will return to a very nice glass of wine once or twice a week. (I am forever done with liquor.) In the long term, I know that many stay with Carnivore and just do a "cheat day" once a week or on occasion. Joe Rogan was clear that he cheats one day a week and he liberally enjoys Bourbon and Pasta. (Although he admits it makes him sick.) At the end of the day, I suppose everyone has to find their path.

Yep, part of my plan. I'm skilled in the art of smoked meats. I flippin love jerky and I am soon to have a big ole baggie of snacks. Always the tough time for me is about 7pm till I go to sleep. I have built a habit of snacking before in bed and while in bed before I go to sleep. I have two beef roasts that have thawed the last 24 hours and today I am going to carve them up today, brine in only salt water, give a light smoke over Mesquite and then into the dehydrator for 4 hours. yummmm good, pure carnivore snacks.

So last week, the wife and I just hit the wall, fed up with our life, health and nutrition. Me... I am a sugar addict and love carbs and protein. OH... I can also drink a half gallon of Whisky a week and have done so for several years. The wife.... well, she can do without sugar and most carbs, but LOVES chips.... She is also an alcoholic, easily drinking 10-15 bottles of wine a week. Our health has just deteriorated and I have shown signs of Diabetes, not to mention high blood pressure and 3-4 other things with my body that are upsetting, like my joints hurting and probably being about 75lbs over-weight. The wife... well, she is in a stressful job and her blood pressure has been on the rise the past year and she has gained about 25lbs. So... we are done. After reading for about a week and watching YouTubes about the Carnivore Diet, we dropped everything, cold Turkey and started Thursday morning. This is Saturday evening and we have successfully done zero carb, 100% meat for three days now. Thankfully, no headaches, but we are dealing with low energy, some muscle cramps on occasion and waking up at 3:30-4am every morning very hungry. But WOW.... we feel so dang good already. Of course it helps to not wake up with a hangover. If I can find the right place on this forum, I might start an accountability thread where I tell our story over time. But we are 100% committed and it is nice to have a spouse doing the exact same thing, with the same goals. Hello from Western Colorado. John