Scott F.

@Meathead Yep. me the same. Like I knew the 'rules' but they didn't apply to me. I started off every day for years and years with two bacon, egg and cheese on white bread with two Little Debbie oatmeal cakes with a 20oz. Mountain Dew. Then multiple Mountain Dews throughout the day and then enough beer and liquor to float a boat. Just before I got out of the service I was 195-205 and could run just about around the world (or that is how I felt). Within two years I ate and drank myself into the 250's and within 8-10 years I was well over 300. I think maybe it is worse when you know better but choose not to do better. LOL Scott

Agreed. In a sense we all got to our unhealthy selves by following the rules set by others, 'food pyramid', 'eat all your vegetable', 'cholesterol kills', 'eat four to five times per day', ' seed oils are healthier than animal fats', 'statins are the better alternative to a rise in LDL'......the list goes on an and on. For me, I'm using the carnivore way of eating as a guideline, maybe even as a platform, but at the same time dialing it up for me as an individual. I feel like I do better on just red meats so I supplement red meats with bacon and eggs and chicken and pork, but red meat is my staple. I'm also on the plus side of the 70:30 ratio between fats and proteins. I purposely added salt for a long time, even eating a pinch or two throughout the day. As of late I have found salt does not taste good anymore and about the only thing it tastes good on is eggs. I do go sort of heavy on the salt with eggs. I have just about nailed down my fasting routine to one 72 hour stint and one 72-96 hour stint per month. This is where I am at right now but it feels like it is ever changing. For the first time in probably forever, my body is driving the bus. Scott

Anytime. Strict carnivore is working for me but I believe the operative words are 'working for me' not carnivore. The object is to find what is working and build from there. If it is carnivore great, if it is a modified version, then so be it. Our health should be the goalpost (and we all know in life the goalposts constantly change). Scott

I find it hard to say "you should try this or try that" but it is a bit easier to say "these are the positives I experienced". (if that makes any sense at all?) So far, and maybe it has been 7 or 8, but I have had only positive experiences from fasting. If added up all the fasts the weight loss was minimal but it was still some weight loss. The first couple three probably made more change in body composition than how I tipped the scale that week. The energy levels were crazy. I still struggle to wrap my head around how 'no food equals more energy'. I can say all the scientific words I learned getting my Batchelor's by Google and my Master's by You Tube but the first fifty years I was dispositioned that food equaled energy and had to be a part of that equation. This has been a pleasant surprise. I feel like it has given my immune system a boost, maybe even say making carnivore all the more effective. I wish I could do blood tests the day before and the day after each fast and then lay those numbers over top of one another. Fasting is not like the magic pill, no more so than carnivore, but the two of them together, with the gym tossed in the mix, has improved my health by leaps and bounds in the last 14 months. The most recent one did surprise me because of the drop in weight which goes unexplained as the fasts have all been pretty similar. I went six days and it was so much easier than "six days' sounds. I have seen the time when six hours without eating would have bene a real challenge. it is most definitely worth a try. Scott

It can be. I use fat, meat salt and water as my daily prescriptions. Only 14 months deep but it has been working for me. Best of luck going forward. Scott

Happy Birthday to our great nation. Much respect and much appreciation for those who ensured the birthdays of the past, the present and the future. Scott

My son cooked chicken thighs on the smoker last night. He puts them in a pan with a little of his homemade sauce and then cuts up a couple sticks of butter. Once done, he pulled the chicken from the bones and made a pulled chicken BBQ dish. I ate that for breakfast this morning at work. It actually looked better than the rib eyes I made last night for lunch today. Go figure. Scott

Congrats on fighting the good fight. Scott

Congrats on the progress. It is hard to be at bacon and eggs. I went that route yesterday as well. I had a ribeye last night. A new meat market opened in the town over from us and they had some pretty good specials. Rib eye steaks were $9.99/lb and they were just about giving the chicken away. Like said in another post this meat market is my nee pharmacy. LOL Scott

No experience in that area. Do what you think is best for you and work to get better from there. I don't know if it has to be one or the other but I would think if you went carnivore and started to heal, the medicine may drive you past the good place and get you to an even worse place. That is how it plays out in my mind. I could be wrong. Good luck with your decision. Scott

Me too. Make the decision that best fits you. Hopefully it proves you live a much longer and prosperous life. Hopefully we can argue the finer points many years from now. Good luck. Scott

The surgeon general has already stated that smoking is bad for your health. Just saying. Scott

When people say carnivore/think carnivore it is always meat first. That can give the allusion that it is a high protein diet when it truth it is higher fats/moderate protein. I would think those studies are probably spot on when the protein content is high/really high. Your body only needs X amount fo sugar but it will make and store XX amounts if it is fed that way. If high protein leads to a regular state of gluconeogenesis I can see where sugars would be higher followed by higher need for insulin and in time becoming insulin resistant. Attaching a high protein diet to the carnivore community can be a tad bit misleading. Scott

I tried two hard boiled eggs once and I still had move quickly when the urge hit. It might just be me. Maybe the benefit is I can't 'over-eat' per se coming out of the fast. I have read some people eat a ton of food after the fast so the total amount of food is basically the same over three-four five days, just with a break in the middle. The object would be to fast and then resume regular eating habits. No make-up eating. So far so good. I'm at work so I have built my schedule close to the office tonight. I should be good. LOL Hopefully your steak was as good as it looked. Scott

Mine semi-ended around 112-114 or so. I was going to break the fast tonight at work around 8PM for five full days. As the beef bacon is cooking, the regular bacon and sausage laying in wait with a 1/2 dozen eggs there was a partial stick of butter. I ate somewhere between a 1/4 and 1/3 of what was left of that stick. I guess technically the fast is broken. LOL My plan was not to break the fast at work because I have not nailed down part of the equation. After breaking the fast I wind up with some bathroom issues. I have tried different things to eat, lessened the amounts and it seems I end up with some fast walks to the can regardless. I'm trying breakfast foods tonight to see if that lands any softer. @Terry That is a nice way to break a fast. Looks amazing. That would be my tonight meal and my after the gym meal tomorrow all rolled into one. Scott

Welcome. Sometimes sticking to carnivore is all about your WHY? and you have a pretty good reason. Another bonus is that you already know the positive effects of the carnivore way of eating. Turning a negative into a positive is well within your reach because you have already identified your shortcomings. Addictions, of any kind, are real. Maybe your advantage is you already know the benefits of beating the addictions as well as the pitfalls of giving in to the cravings. I'm only 13 months or so in and I am still learning. I am not sure how much advice I can give other than to say I have Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder, an autoimmune disease that parallels Multiple Sclerosis. In maybe six weeks or so on a strict carnivore diet I stopped with my daily medications for pain and inflammation. I have been medicine-free since June of last year. As you get started back it is probably important to pre-arm yourself against the pending cravings. I will refrain from "you should" and use "I would", so I would pre-cook some fatty cuts of meats and cut them into snack size bites. I call them snacks, but I end up eating them in a single serving, but I cook beef fat in a deep fryer for about twenty minutes. The bite size chunks taste amazing, and they can be bagged up to be readily available. I don't have cravings, but I use the this as another method to up my fat content. As much as I like butter the fat cubes taste even better. I would have bite size fat/meat snacks readily available within reach, in convenient reach, at pretty much all times. Although snacking will change the rise and fall of blood sugar, changes insulin resistance, and helps triggers more cravings, at least these type snacks are what we were meant to eat since the dawn of time. "I would" also try to fight the cravings for as long as possible between each but use them when necessary. In time the cravings will space themselves further and further apart but like most addictions, they could always be there and treated as such. Good luck. And this is a really good place to ask questions and bounce your ideas and experiences off others. Although it is a very individualistic journey most of us have a lot of similar experiences. I have learned tons when others share their personal adventures. Scroll down to Bob's post about the Monday night podcast/video/conversation via youtube. Tons of good and solid information is shared during that time. Good luck. Welcome. Scott

The same. No daily medicine since June of last year which was about 6 or so weeks after starting carnivore. I still take the six-month infusions but my blood panels are really close to indicating my immune system has returned to normal. I'm with you, fat and meat are my new drugs of choice. I guess now (except for fasting) I medicate with fat, meat, water and salt every day. Scott

I was going to wait until tomorrow to check my numbers but on the ride home this morning I had the ketone breath. My mouth tasted like metal so I decided to do the checks. My blood ketone level is 3.7 so I am pretty deep into ketosis after over a hundred hours of fasting. My blood glucose was a bit higher than expected at 85. Later in the morning/early afternoon I would expect it to drop a bit. My weight held at 10, maybe 11 pounds if I round up. Energy levels remain high. I just finished the fifth 12 hour night shift in a row and I have 1 or 2 more. Scott

Good to know. I was just reading an article and it pretty much said broccoli was about the worst thing a person with an autoimmune disease could eat. Its breakdown looks similar to protein and often the body will attack protein around the myelin thinking it is the inflammation causing plant matter. This can be the basis for some lesions. Funny how often and for how long we were told otherwise. Scott

Thanks. For me, fasting is much easier than it sounds. I guess being brain-washed with the 'food for energy', food pyramid. multiple meals per day (grazing) for so many years it makes it still really hard to understand the energy levels while not eating. I have experienced it multiple times, so I know it is real, but struggle with the total disconnect between the two. The only thing that makes sense of it is the fact the millions upon millions of dollars generated for Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Teck when we graze on the grains and sugars. Beating the dead horse but it always seems to land right around the root cause. Scott

Hopefully all is going well. I dropped a lot of weight this time and not sure exactly why. I'm going to dry fast 2nd week/mid-July, maybe 24-36-48 hours. It is pushing 100, with humidity at 100% and the index well over 100. This puts an entirely different spin of dry fasting. LOL Good luck with yours. Scott

Looks good. For me it is just water and salt again today. Scott

If I haven't learned anything else in my 13 months, I have most definitely learned nothing is carved in stone with this way of eating. It is as individualistic as anything I have ever experienced and within the individual things can change from day to day. I'm about 96 hours deep into my latest fast. I'm not all that concerned with the weight loss/weight loss potential. My fasting is all about healing and reversing my autoimmune disease now. My first attempts at fasting and the actual fasts I was really looking for the weight loss. I didn't experience near the weight loss I had imagined with not eating for 72-96 hours. I ate Wednesday night at about 8PM and weighed 223lbs that morning. I hit the gym pretty hard Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings. I went heavier on the cardio Friday morning and ramped up the weight and volume on the next two mornings. I'm on 12-hour night shifts since Wednesday. When I woke up this afternoon, I hit the scale at 213. I dropped ten pounds since Wednesday morning. Energy levels are high. I have not been hungry. This time I have not checked my blood sugar nor the blood ketones. I probably will in the morning. Each fast has been different in regard to weight loss. I feel like the activity level and gym work has been close to the same. I'm at 10lbs with another day to go. (maybe 2) At 13 months I'm still learning and still don't feel comfortable giving out advice or, 'this is what someone needs to do', but fasting is a really powerful tool. I think coupled with carnivore is like the bonus plan. The first few hours the body does not have a ton of crap to work thru and getting to fat/ketones probably happens a little quicker and maybe even a tad deeper into ketosis. I'm still amazed (maybe even dumbfounded) by the energy levels while not eating. I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns but right now at 96 hours I am still fully energetic. I have not decided how far I plan to go. I may stop at 6 days or maybe stretch it to 7. All depends on how the next two-night shifts go. Scott

It feels like we are closer to 175F than 75. Heat index in the 110's all week. The humidity that punches you in the stomach when you open the front door. I will 'hunt and kill' on Monday night I guess. LOL About to test my will power. Stopping by my god-son's house to wish him a Happy Birthday. The pig has been on the grill since early this morning. Gut meat and the tongue will be calling my name but I'm planning to pass. Hoping I settle out for a to-go plate. Scott

I'm leaning toward trying the dry fast early to mid-July. Time will tell. This fast I'm going at it a tad bit different. I watched a video with Dr. Attia and he incorporates his fasting and working out. I think I missed the window for the total effect but maybe next time. The idea is to start your fast and some ~12 hours later do a somewhat intense cardio/semi-anaerobic workout to speed up the dumping of glycogen from the liver and the muscles. He does a simple drawing on a white board showing the glycogen dumping, followed by the body switching from glucose to fats and the fat conversion to ketones. The fat that moves into the blood is in the form a triglycerides and when the three 'arms' of the 'tri-glyceride' break off into the blood they become ketones and the brain starts to thrive. He does not mention it in this video but this is where the cholesterol numbers can creep up when becoming fat adapted (carnivore-ish). If a person is carnivore and already fat adapted compared to a person who has a moderate to high intake of carbs/sugars it stands to reason the glycogen levels/blood sugar levels being lower the switch to ketones would be a faster process. I have not read where this is actually what happens, but it sort of seems to make sense. I read this after I was about 24 hours deep and had a pretty good workout this morning which was about 36 hours into the fast. Plenty of energy and wish I had the time to extend the workout longer. Coming off night shift and needing to check on my mom sort of ate up my morning. If there is a drawback to carnivore it is that when I wake up, I am up. After a 12 hour shift I slept from 10AM to 1PM and now I am up to the next shift starts at 7PM. Feel good, feel rested but being up the rest of the day and the rest of the night looms. LOL And to get back on target of the actual post...................water again today. Scott