Scott F.

3 Reasons to Consider Creatine on Carnivore and Animal-Based Diets Creatine is now NON-NEGOTIABLE. If You’ve Never Taken 20g of Creatine, Watch THIS Immediately Creatine may be the most studied performance enhancer ever. Some recent studies show it may not be the performance enhancer it was once thought but the doors for brain health and mental cognizance are wide open. There is some debate within the carnivore community that we get enough by the meats we eat. Probably true for some but I ate more meat prior to carnivore than I do now. Carnivore and the satiety of meat, especially red meat, has killed my appetite so I use creatine pretty much regularly. Scott

I use creatine daily. Forever it was a muscle building supplement but recent studies have shown it serves a far greater purpose for mental/brain health. The water weight is true but not all that meaningful. If I am a pro bodybuilder with a body fat percentage with a bodyfat count in the single digits the amount of water retained is impactful but for the average every day guy, not so much. Timing is not as important as once thought. I do two doses daily to get to 10-15 grams. Scott

Yes. I will go out on a limb and say that it helps everyone (well, most everyone) but based on a person's individual health the healing comes at different rates. Good luck. Scott

I also eat a lot of butter. I'm on a red meat only version of carnivore, some call the Lion's Diet right now. I sometimes purchase meats that are a bit lean and don't carry the fat content I am looking for so I use butter-and sometimes a lot of butter. I too will toss some in the pan to cook with and then eat a couple dabs off the butter tray while cooking. I think everyone has shifts in blood panels when the switch first occurs. At some point when your body becomes fat adapted and the adjustment period is over those numbers/that metabolic panel could be your new norm. I have blood work fairly often and have tracked different things up and down as I have been on the diet longer and longer. I expected my total cholesterol and LDL to go up but they went down. I didn't expect my immune numbers to drastically improve to the point I no longer take daily medication and have a high probability of no longer needing the six-month infusions. Good luck as you progress and welcome to the forum. Scott

Welcome. This is a great place to learn and chat and teach with your own experiences. We all can have some similar experiences, but we are individuals, and the carnivore effects are not cookie-cutter. What Bob said. LOL It is an adjustment. Most people have stool issues but in the beginning, it is no more 'going carnivore' or 'going anything else'. Most anytime there is a drastic change in diet the body reacts with some stomach issues of sorts. It is normal. I t can be a pain and hassle, but it is not long term. As Bob, said, you will get your new normal as you adjust. Once you adjust and dial in your fat to protein ratios to you, your new normal will form. I have found it I miss low on fats my stool stiffens and is not normal. If I miss high, eating much more fat than I need I can get loose. I think most have similar stories. Again, welcome. Scott

Yep. When others hunt here they do the same. It is a doubly win for me. We get some meat that does not cost much more than the time and the packaging paper. The second thing is the dogs get all kinds of guts and bones and goodies. I sort of eat free meat (but then someone has to pay taxes on the land whether the deer choose to live there or not, LOL) and I don't have to spend money feeding the dogs for a day or two. The deeper we dive I think the costs are somewhat the same across the board which places even more "value" on knowing where and how your food originates. Since I don't really hunt anymore but have a bunch of friends who do, I get leftovers/scraps for the dogs throughout much of the winter. It is good for them and if I do a deep dive it saves me some money and if I dive deeper, I can use those savings to buy the rib eye vs. the chuck steak and money wise it is all the same. LOL Scott

If you were eating the lean meat alone there would probably not be any sustainability issues but more than likely would not see the true benefits of going carnivore. I tried to morph the carnivore concept to another way of thinking and went with some leaner cuts and allowed the fat content to drop. (in my early stages of carnivore, I was only concerned with weight loss and only saw carnivore as a weight loss hack). I thought I could get into a calorie deficit by cutting the fats and still be eating carnivore. The weight loss stalled, and I actually gained some weight back. Once I adjusted the fat content back up, so the diet was higher fat/moderate protein, the weight began to fall again. The second thing I found, and this may just me personally, but when I am heavy on the lean proteins and don't 'add fat' the stools are still further between but going to the bathroom is a longer and can be somewhat constipated. The higher fat content for me helps keep me regular. If the venison is readily available, it is one of the better sources of meat protein. I would take advantage of that at every opportunity. One of the kicks/hacks I have been on lately since I switched to an all-red meat diet is that I melt butter and dip my meats, using the butter like a 'steak sauce'. In the case of venison, this would help bring the fat content up while eating lean protein. Babbling on. Good luck. Scott

1-How can I figure out how much food (and calories) I should eat to lose weight? The rule of thumb is to eat til you are comfortably full and then eat again when you are hungry, then repeat. For me, carnivore works best for me if my first meal is around noon. Some days I eat again at supper time but most of the time I eat again the following day. 2-Should I count calories or follow the eating-to-satiety model, even if it hasn't worked for fat loss? (not after the initial 100 days of the Carnivore diet). I don't count calories as far as a total daily intake goes. However, I have counted protein for the last several months. I'm 56 walk and resistance train regularly. I'm trying to offset normal muscle loss as we age plus the debilitating effects of an autoimmune disease. It is hard for me to eat 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. 3-How do I deal with hunger when eating a carnivore diet with the goal of fat loss? Eat. A lot of times if you are not eating enough your body will respond by storing for another day. You will stall in your weight loss. Snacking is not optimal as it moves your glucose and insulin up and down throughout the say. But if you must, make the snacks as carnivore as possible. A burger patty broken into four sections is four bite size snacks. 4-Would it be possible to lose 12-15 lbs by the end of this year without going hungry? I would say yes. If you are already doing resistance training and a little cardio here and there eating fattier meats should help in the weight loss. Carnivore is a higher fat and moderate protein approach to eating. Once the body becomes fat adapted normally the weight starts to drop with consistency. I added a protein shake to get to a protein mark, but the sugar added to my appetite, and I gained weight. I started carnivore with just weight loss in mind but stumbled upon several life changing positive effects to my health. Losing weight is positive and for most, it is the goal, but the other benefits are just as impactful. Good luck. Scott

I was in a hunting conversation once and I said there are not much savings in meat cost when hunting deer. The came at me like a lynch mob out for justice. Now if you own your land, you don't lease land, or pay for a club membership, don't buy a new gun every other year with the latest in optics, or feed a pack of hounds year around, and don't spend a boat load of money on the 'best ever dog box' and you can get around your annual tags/limits, there is probably some savings. If one were to factor in his passion for hunting and it is what he will be doing anyway, there is some value in that and knowing where your meat comes from most definitely carries value as well. Adding up all the money spent then do the math on the number of pounds in the freezer and for the average hunter it is much cheaper to go to the grocery store. As Geezy has said, that way of life is slowly eroding/being eroded, similar to the small farmers/ranchers. If they were giving sausage/pork chops/hams/bacon/pork bell/side meat/fat back/chitterlings/pig feet away at the store for free my father-in-law would much rather be at the pack house in sub-freezing temperature with the only warmth coming from a scalding box scraping hair knowing the food that was to come rather than take advantage of free meat at the grocery store. Not many like that left. Scott

Nice work. I will do my next one starting Friday. I am not sure if I will eat Thursday night going into a weekend of nights or eat Friday around lunch and start from there. "Game time decision" I guess. Hopefully you come out better than I do as this may be the only drawback I have with fasting. I just have not nailed down the 'coming off' part. Scott

Yep. Prices were up this week at the market. My brother-in-law carried 6 this past week. He said he did pretty good, all things considered. He is mostly just trying not to feed them this winter. It seems like it is high on whichever end we are on. LOL Scott

Congrats on the fast. Good job. 64 hours is a stretch. I have read there starts to be diminishing returns between 72 and 96. Good luck and great work. I'm really interested in how you come off the fast. I have not figured that out for myself. I have tried multiple different ways from what I eat to how much I eat, to using bone broth, etc. and I no matter I wind up really loose for a couple days. Interested. Scott

Dessicated liver is a great supplement. It is a true source of energy for most people. Big fan. When it was studied in the 60's they did a performance test on rats. One group were fed a normal rat diet, one group a performance enhanced rat diet and then the third group was fed a lot of dessicated liver. The rats were dropped in a bucket of water and were forced to swim for time (first group swam for X amount of minutes and finally gave in to exhaustion. The second group went further but eventually exhaustion got the better of the second group as well. The third group that was heavy on dessicated liver never stopped swimming even tripling the time of the first two groups and eventually they gave up on looking for a time. Dessicated liver had proven itself. (This could be seen as torture disguised as science but most of what we know stems from the death of something else) Scott

Chuck steaks and hamburger is usually the go-to's for me when saving a few dollars. I also hit the marked down red-meats whenever I see them. Most of the time I don't care which cut, just the reduction in price is the key. The fattier the cut the better but I can always add some bites of butter to get the fat content up. Around here pork and chicken are cheap in comparison to red meat and I stock up, especially leg thighs or quarters, whenever they go on sale. I also check out ads at different stores. I don't drive to three or four stores to catch their sales but if one has a particularly good sale, I will do the remainder of the shopping at that store. Sams's is also a good choice. The closest one to me is about 35 minutes away but on the way home from work. My wife and I seldom shop together there because is it does not make a lot of sense to drive 35 minutes (gas and time) to save (maybe even less) on food. (the time carrying most of the weight). I usually stop by there on the way home from night shift. It is convenient with that approach and sometimes convenience can carry some dollar value. Our chickens produce more eggs than we can eat but not enough to off-set the cost of feed and time. I feed the extras to the dogs so it sort of off-sets their expense some. This one the value is in knowing where they came from and what went into them being made. I can't tie it to a dollar amount but I feel like there is some 'value/savings' in just knowing. We used to do our own cows and pigs but have gotten away from it several years ago. Between my Mom's restaurant and another in town my feed cost for the pigs was just the gas and time. Just an opinion and never had the heart to do the math. We always seemed to need one or two more cows sold or butchered to break even. Every time it looked like we were going to be on the + side of the equation it would stop raining. A drought or semi-drought meant I had to buy hay and when people know you have to buy hay, that price goes up too. By no means did we have the Yellowstone, nor was it a large cattle operation, but by the time we did the math I always hoped we just could break even. My wife and I have talked about getting more and spacing their ages out, so we have one aged/grown enough each fall. Go from there. Great topic. Scott

Good luck. It is also important to know that it your health that is important not whether or not carnivore works for me. (if that makes any sense). Carnivore may or may not be for you for any number of reasons but hopefully you find a healthier path. Good luck on your next try. This is a good place to ask and learn and get yourself in a good position to make a m ore gradual shift in the way you eat. Best of luck. Scott

Ditto on Geezy's response. Welcome to the board. Sometimes going cold turkey/hard core with a diet can be a struggle. It may be an easier path if you ease into the diet. Some find it easier to go to a ketogenic diet first and then phase into a 'keto-vore' version and then maybe onto actually a carnivore lifestyle. If you do nothing more than ditch the processed foods and sugars it will be an improvement to most any diet. The clean the carbs up a bit and use only fresh/grown vegetables but let proteins be your staple. Use butter or tallow to increase the fat content. In time phase out/lessen the vegetable/carb intake. Bump up the fats and proteins. I would imagine any where you wind up on the way to carnivore will be better than the Standard American Diet. Best of luck, And welcome. Scott

Exact same boat. I started the diet as nothing more than a weight loss hack and it worked amazingly fast. I dropped 30-31 pounds in the first 31-32 days and down 85 pound by year one. I'm currently around 15 months or so at 95lbs lost I looked frail and some even thought I was sick again. I had been lifting regularly about a month or so into carnivore and walking around 3.5 miles three to four times per week. I tried to up the protein content to 1 gram of protein for every pound of lean muscle mass. I'm guessing my number is around 200lbs but I can't eat 200 grams of protein in a day. I'm just not hungry and in order to get to 160-180 grams of protein I feel like I am force feeding myself. I went the route of protein shakes to get in some extra grams of protein. I ran out and bought one of the store-bought pre-mixed protein drinks. It had 50 grams of protein, but it had 11-12 grams of sugar. As soon as I started those drinks my appetite went crazy. I was able to eat really close and sometimes over 190-200 grams of protein. This month I switched to an all-red meat diet (Lion Diet) and without the sugar the appetite is starting to fall off again. But the couple months I used the protein drinks my progress in the gym made big strides. As the young people say, "the plates don't lie". At 56 I'm stronger now than I was 20-25 years. Welcome. I'm sort of the same with the internet as well. I use this board and it took me forever to figure out how to participate in the Monday night round table discussions. Good luck. Scott

Three really nice looking birthday cakes. Scott

I tried eating the Lion Diet once before and I felt a difference as well. I guess the biggest reason I drifted back to "regular" carnivore was cooking two meats most every night gets inconvenient as my wife chooses not to do carnivore. This go around I coupled the red meat with night shift rotations and a week off so I have the time do to cook multiple meats if necessary. Again, congrats on your anniversary and more so on your progress(es). Similar paths, similar stories, and similar results has to be a successful 'study' in itself. LOL Scott

Congrats on four years and finding your way. Sort of in the same boat but at maybe 15 or so months. I've varied within the confines of carnivore and I'm maybe a month in on an all-red meat approach. So far so good. Congrats agains. Scott

This Electrolyte Drink Fixes Fatigue, Cramping, and Low Energy (Part 1) This sort of ties to the thread below. Scott

I'm not ure one is any better than the other. One is more convenient but costs more. The other is way cheaper but a little bit of a hassle. Youtube Terri Leist is a solid/basic mixture. I used that one for awhile. Then I got super lazy and dumped Himalayan Pink salt, Kosher sea salt. No Salt, and I forget the name of the magnesium, but dumped them all in a bowl. Now that is my table salt. I use it to cook with and if I do use table salt (eggs) that is my go to. I have found after fifteen months I don't use salt as much and sometimes I just add a pinch here and there if I am outside in the heat for the day. I am not sure I need it every time but the little extra beats cramping up with stuff to do. Scott

I was talking to a retired doctor at the gym on Sunday. I am a big fan of experience and knowledge and those being based on time. We were talking kids and doctors and prescriptions and the internet and some of everything. One of the older guys mentioned that doctors were once held in a much higher regard. And another mentioned pills seem to be the answer for everything. The retired doctor chimed in and I thought what he said was sort of enlightening. I was the youngest in the group at 56 so he was talking to my age group and older. In so many words.....there is only one generation that has been born in the internet age with any and all information at their finger tips. For the most part, anyone 30 and under was born with the same access to medical information as their doctors. We never had that. In the 70's and 80's we had a set of the 1978 World Book Encyclopedias, the school library and the public library. Our medicinal knowledge was limited to those resources. The person that went off to medical school had accesses we did not have and thus were on another level. When someone knows something you don't, and uses that knowledge to help you, especially in a time of need, they get to another level really quickly. Once the doctor gets to that next level his word is not only golden but it becomes the gospel. Then overtime Big Pharma and Big Insurance starts their version of "practicing medicine" and that money started to dictate patient care. When their world is the gospel and the newer method is to prescribe pills the unknowing went with what they have trusted. To refer to those people as 'sheep' is really an unfair criticism. Fast forward to the groups (around age 40's and up) who have internet access for a large portion of their lives there is the movements away from the norm (carnivore being one). Doctors in turn trained new doctors, kids trusted their parents/grandparents and in most cases learned to trust the people (doctors) that their parents trusted. It was almost the perfect storm. As the internet becomes more and more of a factor in everyday life there is a break from the norms and people are challenging doctors and medicine because they now have access to the very same information as everyone else. Taht has not always been the case. The playing field is more level now than ever and people can now arm themselves with knowledge and information that actually rivals that of their doctors. It was an interesting conversation. Sort of a new perspective. Scott

LMNT is a good product. )Personally I could not find one that I liked the taste). On youtube there are several videos on how to make your own. Much cheaper. Bob is spot on with his advice. I made the hydration and electrolytes when I first got started. I went from electrolyte in my water, to using the mixture as 'my table salt' and now I use salt every so often. It took 14+ months to work thru all that and I have read where some get there sooner than others. The best thing is that you are listening to your body. Most of time the body will tell/show you most everything we need to know. Congrats on two months/good luck as you continue. Welcome. Scott

Almost a pound of beef bacon and part of a T-Bone steak. I buy beef bacon from a local farm guy and I would eat it every day but at $9 it adds up. Tastes awesome though. Scott