Hey everyone 

I tried carnivore diet for a couple weeks and it gave my stomach a muffin top. It’s never been muffin top in my whole life until carnivore. It’s scary. I lost a few pounds but gained a muffin top.

my goal was to get a flat stomach and I got an ugly muffin top now.

 
I am confused about what protein and fat ratios to eat. I’ve spent hours trying to calculate meals with 75% fat. It seems un natural to eat 75% fat because no meats have that much fat.

I’ve watched countless online videos about carnivore diet and I don’t understand the fat to protein ratio. they say we need to eat 75-80% fat in all meals but that would mean I would need to eat 1.5 sticks of butter daily? Is that right?

The videos online are also contradictory about how much protein I need to consume daily. this should not be so confusing.

my current weight is 212 pounds

my goal weight is 184 pounds

i am type 1 diabetic too so that’s not a big help

how much protein should I eat daily?

how much butter do I eat daily?

How much is too much?

 

my goal is weight loss as in fat loss and especially getting rid of this muffin top that appeared unexpectedly

 

everyone else is having such great results but I got a muffin top it’s so depressing looking.

everyone else just eats whatever and does not measure everything, and many videos say they eat 75% fats but never add any butter? It makes no sense to me.

i had keto fatigue and added Redmon sea salt and maybe it helped but I don’t like the taste of salt. I’ve never salted my food until carnivore diet flu.

 

I’m scared to continue carnivore because it gave me a muffin top even though I lost a few pounds my body looks worse 

I’ve already addressed these concerns on the other posts you made but I’ll repeat myself here. 

I don’t think you quite understand the 80% fat  idea. 

The foundation of the carnivore plan is to start with a 70/30 fat to protein ratio but that’s measured in the calories. Now I’m not a calorie guy but that’s averaged is how the ratio is calculated. So that means you should be getting 70% of your calories from fat and 30% from your protein. 

There are more calories in one gram of fat than there is protein. So that breaks down to fat has 9 calories per gram and protein has 4 calories per gram. Do you aren’t eating as much fat physically as you think. 

So to get an idea of how that might look in a piece of meat let’s look at the ribeye. A 16 oz ribeye with a good amount of fat on it will have about a 69-31% fat to protein ratio. That’s one of the reasons we love ribeye so much is because it’s already the perfect ratio for us. 

The only time you need to add butter is if your meat is lean. I go through a lot of butter because I eat a lot of venison and venison is very lean.  Burgers will often render out most of their fat regardless of the fat to meat ratio so I add butter to my burgers. 

Quite often if you just eat fatty meat, cooked in animal fats you will get plenty of fat. 

 

The conventional way to calculate your protein needs is one should aim for approximately 1 gram to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. Lean body mass being your goal weight.  

Protein requirements may vary based on factors such as age, activity level, and individual metabolic health.

You did not get the way you are overnight and you won’t fix it overnight. 

Carnivore is not a magic bullet. Carnivore is not a diet. Carnivore is a way of eating which enables your body to undo years of metabolic damage, abuse from calorie restricted diets, and metabolic disregulation. Carnivore is primarily about health and healing.

Yes- it is true that the weight will come off. But! It will do it when it wants to. For some people it happens fast, for others slow because we are all different. 

None of this makes any sense. It’s too complicated.

What am I supposed to eat exactly?

how can I measure 1 meal exactly 

how do I lose belly fat? Am I eating too much fat or too much protein? Which one is it

You’ve stated the carnivore diet isn’t a diet? That makes no sense

Edited February 10Feb 10 by Idunno

This meal 

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons of butter

= 470 calories 

43 grams fat

19 grams protein

^^ This is only 56% fat. That makes no sense. This is an ultra fatty meal yet it’s only 56% fat, and we are supposed to calculate meals at 75-80% fat.

are we supposed to eat a full stick of butter at every meal?? It makes no sense 

Another example

a pack of bacon is

500 calories 

35 grams of fat

50 grams of protein 

^^ this is 70% fat. But if you added eggs then you are losing fat and would need to add MORE butter!? how can that even be possible? Bacon is the fattiest meat there is.

what people are saying about how they eat 80% fat meals and they rarely add butter, it makes no sense.

Here’s another meal

2 tins of sardines in olive oil 

2 tablespoons of butter

= 600 calories 

50 grams fat

38 grams protein 

^^ this is 76% fat. But it requires 2 tablespoons of butter to bring the fat into range. The sardines are already full of olive oil. It makes no sense. The bulk of this meal is butter and oil.

if your meals are 75% fat you’re having to eat a 1/2 stick of butter at every meal. That’s not a carnivore diet, it’s a Butter Diet. Something doesn’t add up right

The carnivore diet is an elimination diet more so than it is anything else. You can choose either of the two scenarios and go with it and you will see results over time. Why? Not because the calculator says the math is right, or the ratio calculation says fat or protein percentages are a few numbers off. The percentages given are just guides. There are no calculations or absolutes that work for both me and you. We are different. 

The idea of the diet is to remove the carbs and sugars more than it is to add the proteins and the fats. Elimination being the operative word.

And if we go into the theories of calories in and calories out or calorie deficits and maintenance plans and the math that goes into all of that.....in reality you can just about toss all that out the window. Until you get down to less that 5-6-7% bodyfat you can't really be in a calorie deficit. There is always enough body fat to supply your body with energy, in the beginning of carnivore maybe not to thrive, but definitely enough to survive. 

I am only 9 months deep into carnivore, so I don't climb up on the pedestal and start preaching. (doubt I ever get there but, for sure, not there today). I have learned more from other people's experiences than Google or Youtube or substantiated scientific studies so with that, here is my spiel....

Last May I weighed 306 pounds. I was on prednisone and Gabapentin for an auto-immune disease. I had never heard of carnivore until my son gave it a try. It seemed an easy way to shed a few pounds and that was the only angle I had when I started. I started off every day with a Mountain Dew, a Little Debbie cake, two breakfast sandwiches from what ever fast food or local convenience store grill in our area. I crappy lunch and then a somewhat healthy, balanced meal at night. The basic trash Western-diet. 

After a month or so in I was finding myself not needing my medications for pain nor inflammation. Only thing changed was my diet. So for me, if I hadn't dropped a pound by being on carnivore and no longer needed medicine that alone was worth way more than the price of admission.

When I ate my body basically said, here comes some protein and we will use that to recover from muscle work over the last few days. Here comes some fat, and we could use that for energy but we know a boat load of carbs and sugars are on the way so the fat can go lay over there in the corner (belly/muffin top, etc.) The carbs and sugars come, and they are the primary source of energy and what is left over gets to hang out with the fat over in the corner. Over time the weight can go up a differing weight and the body composition will change at differing rates. That is based on lifestyle and life choices. 

When I switched there was a period in there where my body was really confused about what I was doing (adjustment period). Although I didn't have sugar cravings my body was reacting to the lack of sugar/carbs/fillers and only having proteins and fats available. I had some loose stool issues along the way, I had some energy level issues at times, I had some sleep issues at times and sometimes I simply felt great. The weight was coming off but there were a lot of days where the scale said I was the same or even gained a pound, but I had to tighten my belt by one notch. This took time.

Now, my body is more accustomed to meat, salt and water. I can still dial one or the other up or down for a purpose and sometimes my body tells me to make an adjustment because I am not totally hung up on a fat percentage or a calculator to tell me what I need. I am not sure that will work for anyone, but I am not up on that pedestal. The food comes in now and the body basically says, Mr. Protein you will be used for rebuilding, and some will be converted to sugar and used for energy, but you are playing 2nd fiddle to Mr. Fat. Since the initial adjustment, incoming fat and my current body fat becomes my primary source for energy. If my daily routing, lifestyle or life choices, require more fat than I need my body tells me that in a couple ways. One, the positive, I lose some body fat, or I have a change in body composition, and two, the negative, I can go to the bathroom and blow thru screen wire. Then I have to make an adjustment.

Again, I don't know enough to give advice but what worked for me thus far is some patience and some time. I got out of dive school in '90 at 185 pounds, got out of the service in '93 at 215 pounds and then spent the next thirty years eating a trash diet and choosing a trash lifestyle and "worked" myself into a 320+ pound guy. In nine months, I have dropped 90 pounds to get down to 216 pounds and still have quite a bit to go. 

Best of luck and hopefully the plan you come up with works for you. I think your body can tell you more than the calculator. And if you miss on percentages your body will tell you that as well, but it will do so because it does not have spent all its time figuring out what to do with carbs and sugars. It is all about elimination.

Scott

Here’s another one that makes no sense

A 1 pound filet of salmon

(you would think it’s loaded with fat but it’s not)

1 pound filet salmon 

=640 calories 

28 grams fat

92 grams protein 

so to make this filet of salmon around 75% fat you need to add 8 Tablespoons of butter!!! Eight Tablespoons!!

8 Tablespoons butter

=800 calories 

96 grams fat

0 grams protein.

 

literally a full stick of butter is needed just to balance the fat ratio to 75% area

 

This makes no sense

Edited February 10Feb 10 by Idunno

You are overthinking this whole thing. It’s not the least bit complicated. 
First off you still are not unite fat ratios. It’s not about how much the fat weighs. It’s about how many calories ar in the fat. So I gram of fat will have about 9 calories and protein about 4 calories so that if you eat 1 gram of fat to 1 gram of protein you will be getting the approximately correct ratio of fat to protein. 
The 70/30 or 80/20 is not in weight but in calories. 
One of the beautiful things about the carnivore lifestyle is that you don’t need to count or measure anything unless it’s just your nature to be analytical. 
All you need to do is eat fatty meat cooked in animal fats until you are full. Eat only when you are hungry and just make sure that everything you eat is centered around animal fats, animal proteins, salt and water. 
So try not to overcomplicate this way of eating. 
To get a better understanding of what this is all about I’d like to suggest that you read Dr. Shawn Bakers book The Carnivore Diet. It’s available on Amazon and on audio from Audible. It’s really good about explaining every aspect of this way of eating. 
 

11 hours ago, Idunno said:

You’ve stated the carnivore diet isn’t a diet? That makes no sense

In the traditional sense of diet it’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle of eating. 
yes, a diet can be what you eat but most people think of a diet as something you do to lose weight and when they reach their goal then they can quit the diet and go back to the way they were. Diets always fail. 
This is why we like to refer to this as a lifestyle and not a diet. This is how we will eat for the rest of our lives if we want to stay metabolically healthy for the rest of our lives. 

14 hours ago, Idunno said:

This meal 

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons of butter

= 470 calories 

43 grams fat

19 grams protein

^^ This is only 56% fat.

That is 81 % fat in calories.

On 2/9/2025 at 9:56 PM, Geezy said:

I’ve already addressed these concerns on the other posts you made but I’ll repeat myself here. 

I don’t think you quite understand the 80% fat  idea. 

The foundation of the carnivore plan is to start with a 70/30 fat to protein ratio but that’s measured in the calories. Now I’m not a calorie guy but that’s averaged is how the ratio is calculated. So that means you should be getting 70% of your calories from fat and 30% from your protein. 

There are more calories in one gram of fat than there is protein. So that breaks down to fat has 9 calories per gram and protein has 4 calories per gram. Do you aren’t eating as much fat physically as you think. 

So to get an idea of how that might look in a piece of meat let’s look at the ribeye. A 16 oz ribeye with a good amount of fat on it will have about a 69-31% fat to protein ratio. That’s one of the reasons we love ribeye so much is because it’s already the perfect ratio for us. 

The only time you need to add butter is if your meat is lean. I go through a lot of butter because I eat a lot of venison and venison is very lean.  Burgers will often render out most of their fat regardless of the fat to meat ratio so I add butter to my burgers. 

Quite often if you just eat fatty meat, cooked in animal fats you will get plenty of fat. 

 

The conventional way to calculate your protein needs is one should aim for approximately 1 gram to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. Lean body mass being your goal weight.  

Protein requirements may vary based on factors such as age, activity level, and individual metabolic health.

You did not get the way you are overnight and you won’t fix it overnight. 

Carnivore is not a magic bullet. Carnivore is not a diet. Carnivore is a way of eating which enables your body to undo years of metabolic damage, abuse from calorie restricted diets, and metabolic disregulation. Carnivore is primarily about health and healing.

Yes- it is true that the weight will come off. But! It will do it when it wants to. For some people it happens fast, for others slow because we are all different. 

The calculations are terribly confusing. There must be a mathematical formula to make it easier to calculate how much fat to add. I can’t afford ribeyes every day.

 

the main meats I get are 1 pound of ground beef packages, or packages with two pork chops, or a pound of wild shrimp. I use the nutritional labels to try calculating everything, and I must add too much butter because I am losing weight and gaining fat!!! That’s why I’m freaking out. I don’t want MORE fat around the waste.

So what should I do? less butter? More ribeye?

also I noticed fatigue on carnivore. I learned to add sea salt in big amounts even though I don’t like salt. I’ve never liked adding salt to food.

then… then I fell off the wagon sorta hard for two days: I drank a bunch of alcohol then a pint of ice cream, cookies, and like 4 packages of Ramon noodles. I lost it. Then wound up at this message board all muffin topped

On 2/10/2025 at 9:34 AM, Scott F. said:

The carnivore diet is an elimination diet more so than it is anything else. You can choose either of the two scenarios and go with it and you will see results over time. Why? Not because the calculator says the math is right, or the ratio calculation says fat or protein percentages are a few numbers off. The percentages given are just guides. There are no calculations or absolutes that work for both me and you. We are different. 

The idea of the diet is to remove the carbs and sugars more than it is to add the proteins and the fats. Elimination being the operative word.

And if we go into the theories of calories in and calories out or calorie deficits and maintenance plans and the math that goes into all of that.....in reality you can just about toss all that out the window. Until you get down to less that 5-6-7% bodyfat you can't really be in a calorie deficit. There is always enough body fat to supply your body with energy, in the beginning of carnivore maybe not to thrive, but definitely enough to survive. 

I am only 9 months deep into carnivore, so I don't climb up on the pedestal and start preaching. (doubt I ever get there but, for sure, not there today). I have learned more from other people's experiences than Google or Youtube or substantiated scientific studies so with that, here is my spiel....

Last May I weighed 306 pounds. I was on prednisone and Gabapentin for an auto-immune disease. I had never heard of carnivore until my son gave it a try. It seemed an easy way to shed a few pounds and that was the only angle I had when I started. I started off every day with a Mountain Dew, a Little Debbie cake, two breakfast sandwiches from what ever fast food or local convenience store grill in our area. I crappy lunch and then a somewhat healthy, balanced meal at night. The basic trash Western-diet. 

After a month or so in I was finding myself not needing my medications for pain nor inflammation. Only thing changed was my diet. So for me, if I hadn't dropped a pound by being on carnivore and no longer needed medicine that alone was worth way more than the price of admission.

When I ate my body basically said, here comes some protein and we will use that to recover from muscle work over the last few days. Here comes some fat, and we could use that for energy but we know a boat load of carbs and sugars are on the way so the fat can go lay over there in the corner (belly/muffin top, etc.) The carbs and sugars come, and they are the primary source of energy and what is left over gets to hang out with the fat over in the corner. Over time the weight can go up a differing weight and the body composition will change at differing rates. That is based on lifestyle and life choices. 

When I switched there was a period in there where my body was really confused about what I was doing (adjustment period). Although I didn't have sugar cravings my body was reacting to the lack of sugar/carbs/fillers and only having proteins and fats available. I had some loose stool issues along the way, I had some energy level issues at times, I had some sleep issues at times and sometimes I simply felt great. The weight was coming off but there were a lot of days where the scale said I was the same or even gained a pound, but I had to tighten my belt by one notch. This took time.

Now, my body is more accustomed to meat, salt and water. I can still dial one or the other up or down for a purpose and sometimes my body tells me to make an adjustment because I am not totally hung up on a fat percentage or a calculator to tell me what I need. I am not sure that will work for anyone, but I am not up on that pedestal. The food comes in now and the body basically says, Mr. Protein you will be used for rebuilding, and some will be converted to sugar and used for energy, but you are playing 2nd fiddle to Mr. Fat. Since the initial adjustment, incoming fat and my current body fat becomes my primary source for energy. If my daily routing, lifestyle or life choices, require more fat than I need my body tells me that in a couple ways. One, the positive, I lose some body fat, or I have a change in body composition, and two, the negative, I can go to the bathroom and blow thru screen wire. Then I have to make an adjustment.

Again, I don't know enough to give advice but what worked for me thus far is some patience and some time. I got out of dive school in '90 at 185 pounds, got out of the service in '93 at 215 pounds and then spent the next thirty years eating a trash diet and choosing a trash lifestyle and "worked" myself into a 320+ pound guy. In nine months, I have dropped 90 pounds to get down to 216 pounds and still have quite a bit to go. 

Best of luck and hopefully the plan you come up with works for you. I think your body can tell you more than the calculator. And if you miss on percentages your body will tell you that as well, but it will do so because it does not have spent all its time figuring out what to do with carbs and sugars. It is all about elimination.

Scott

Thanks, it is good hearing from you.

Im still confused. If I eat a half pound of ground beef how much butter do I add?

I want to lose fat from my body not gain fat. I’d like to have a flat stomach not a muffin top.

it seems things are working backwards for me

On 2/10/2025 at 12:32 PM, Geezy said:

You are overthinking this whole thing. It’s not the least bit complicated. 
First off you still are not unite fat ratios. It’s not about how much the fat weighs. It’s about how many calories ar in the fat. So I gram of fat will have about 9 calories and protein about 4 calories so that if you eat 1 gram of fat to 1 gram of protein you will be getting the approximately correct ratio of fat to protein. 
The 70/30 or 80/20 is not in weight but in calories. 
One of the beautiful things about the carnivore lifestyle is that you don’t need to count or measure anything unless it’s just your nature to be analytical. 
All you need to do is eat fatty meat cooked in animal fats until you are full. Eat only when you are hungry and just make sure that everything you eat is centered around animal fats, animal proteins, salt and water. 
So try not to overcomplicate this way of eating. 
To get a better understanding of what this is all about I’d like to suggest that you read Dr. Shawn Bakers book The Carnivore Diet. It’s available on Amazon and on audio from Audible. It’s really good about explaining every aspect of this way of eating. 
 

In the traditional sense of diet it’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle of eating. 
yes, a diet can be what you eat but most people think of a diet as something you do to lose weight and when they reach their goal then they can quit the diet and go back to the way they were. Diets always fail. 
This is why we like to refer to this as a lifestyle and not a diet. This is how we will eat for the rest of our lives if we want to stay metabolically healthy for the rest of our lives. 

I honestly don’t understand how much fat to add. I’ve done the calculations and I must have done it all wrong.

if I eat 4 eggs, how much butter do I add?

if I eat a pound of ground beef, how much butter is added?

ground beef has 15% fat, so it’s like you have to add a full stick of butter 1 pound of ground beef just to make it the right ratio… it makes nonsense

On 2/10/2025 at 2:56 PM, Carburetor said:

That is 81 % fat in calories.

Is that what the diet requires?

it really makes no sense. An egg should have a balanced amount of fat and protein.

cavemen didn’t have sticks of butter

Something about meal measurements makes no sense 

14 minutes ago, Idunno said:

The calculations are terribly confusing. There must be a mathematical formula to make it easier to calculate how much fat to add. I can’t afford ribeyes every day.

I gave you the best formula I know of and that to eat equal amounts of fat to protein in 1 gram of fat to 1 gram of protein. With 1 gram of fat equaling 9 calories and 1 gram of protein equaling 4 calories then a one to one ratio would give you that appropriate fat to protein ratio. 
I guess I’m just very good at explaining it to you and I apologize for that. Hopefully Bob will come along and explain it to you better than I can. He much better at it than I am. 
I wouldn’t worry about eating fat because I promise you, eating fat will not make you fat. 
Eating fat increases your metabolic rate of energy consumption. Because eating fat does not increase insulin,stored fat is free to leave adipose storage to be used as fuel. On carnivore it will be used as fuel because by restricting carbs it’s the only fuel available.

I got to thinking about your muffin top and looked at myself and realized that I have a spare tire. Women get muffin tops and men get spare tires. My spare tire is mostly loose skin from losing so much weight. It’s not fat but skin. I’m hoping that with intermittent fasting autophagy may help with that. 
 

I still think you need to just eat plenty of animal fats and protein and don’t try to be so analytical about it. Eat only when hungry and eat until comfortably full. 
If you are not eating any carbohydrates you will be in ketosis and you will not get fat. You will burn fat for fuel. 
The fatigue you are experiencing is normal in the beginning because you are still in the transitional stage of your body adjusting from using glucose for fuel to using fat for fuel. 
 

Just hang in there. Try to be patient. Nothing happens overnight. 

On 2/10/2025 at 12:24 AM, Idunno said:

None of this makes any sense. It’s too complicated.

What am I supposed to eat exactly?

how can I measure 1 meal exactly 

how do I lose belly fat? Am I eating too much fat or too much protein? Which one is it

You’ve stated the carnivore diet isn’t a diet? That makes no sense

Track your meals on a calorie tracker. Be somewhat in the neighborhood of 70% fat or so. It's not that important. Since you're a diabetic watch your protein. Fat is not a concern for you.