Vinegar Cravings and Legs Cramps on Carnivore

[Guest Outrider]

I've been doing carnivore for about 6 weeks now. I have had about 2-3 meals during this period where I ate just a few veggies, like mushrooms and onions. Over the past few days, I have had muscle twitches and calf cramps at night. Around the same time, I started having cravings for yellow mustard, which I am guessing is for the vinegar. I have tried adding more sodium, potassium and magnesium (drinking unflavored LMNT and adding more salt to food) and drinking more water without relief. I am wondering if I am craving mustard to increase the acidity of my stomach, so that I can better digest the food that I eat (almost entirely beef and butter with some cheese). Yesterday and today, I ended up eating mustard with my beef. Just a little yesterday, but today, I seem to want spoonfuls by itself. Is this normal?

My guess is that I am simply dehydrated due to not fully being adapted and having diarrhea for weeks. I notice that my lips feel dry most of the time. Should I cut back on fats? Or should I keep piling on the salt and water until I am fully adapted? Aside from the possible stomach acid change, I can't seem to find much on vinegar cravings.

[Bob]

42 minutes ago, Guest Outrider said:

Over the past few days, I have had muscle twitches and calf cramps at night. Around the same time, I started having cravings for yellow mustard, which I am guessing is for the vinegar.

It could be that you simply love the taste, and after several weeks of just meat and salt you're taste buds are delighted to have something different, and zesty nonetheless. However, since the timing of these cravings is paired with the sudden onset of leg cramps, I would lean towards mineral and electrolyte deficiency. I struggle with leg cramps too because I have Chronic Kidney Disease - I spill magnesium like crazy and the diet is low in magnesium to begin with, unless you can hork down 3-4 pounds of red meat a day, which I cannot. Therefore, I have to supplement.

If the craving is for mustard, then you might be low in Calcium, Thiamine, Manganese, Selenium, or Potassium. If the craving is for vinegar, the deficiency might be in Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, or Iron (not likely on carnivore). Most of these you can check with a blood test.

Ironically, an at-home remedy for leg cramps is to drink pickle juice for fast relief - which points us towards vinegar also.

42 minutes ago, Guest Outrider said:

I have tried adding more sodium, potassium and magnesium (drinking unflavored LMNT and adding more salt to food) and drinking more water without relief.

How much LMNT per day? A single packet contains 200mg of potassium and 60mg of magnesium. That's not a lot in the way of supplementation if you are only drinking one a day. If you bumped that up to 5 packets a day, I would hope you would notice a difference, as that would give you 1000mg potassium and 300mg of magnesium a day. Do note that there is plenty of potassium in meat, especially chicken and pork (both sausage and bacon). Usually, magnesium is the issue and not potassium.

By way of comparison, I take a magnesium supplement in pill form that is 80mg per pill. I was taking 5 a day (400mg), one with my first meal, one with my second meal, and three at bedtime. I recently tested my magnesium, and it was a bit too high (kidneys, remember) so I backed it down to 3 a day (240mg) - one with each meal and one a bedtime. After 3 weeks, I am starting to have little twitches and cramps again, so I think 4 pills (320mg) is going to be the sweet spot.

42 minutes ago, Guest Outrider said:

My guess is that I am simply dehydrated due to not fully being adapted and having diarrhea for weeks... Should I cut back on fats?

Depends on how much fat you are taking in each day. Do you track your macros?

Keto Chow Daily Minerals is a great product that would probably help you more than LMNT....

https://www.ketochow.xyz/products/daily-minerals

Be warned the liquid form tastes terrible, and you should divide the serving up into 3 smaller servings and dilute it in another beverage a few times per day. If you try and take it like a shot of whiskey you will want a whiskey to get rid of the taste, lol. They also have a pill form they just came out with.

At the same time, you can enjoy your mustard, your vinegar, and your pickles. These are all harmless.

Hope this helps!

 

[Guest Outrider]

21 minutes ago, Bob said:

How much LMNT per day?

I take around 2-3 packets per day. I can add more magnesium. I have Magnesium Malate in powder form. I'll bump it up slowly so that I don't make the diarrhea worse.

25 minutes ago, Bob said:

so I think 4 pills (320mg) is going to be the sweet spot.

Ah. Magnesium is probably the problem for me too, then.

26 minutes ago, Bob said:

Do you track your macros?

I do not. I usually add fat to everything I eat. Beef tallow for cooking, butter on top of a hamburger or steak, maybe some cheese on the side. I usually get the cheaper cuts of beef, which tend to be leaner.

28 minutes ago, Bob said:

Keto Chow Daily Minerals is a great product that would probably help you more than LMNT

I'll have to take a look!

28 minutes ago, Bob said:

At the same time, you can enjoy your mustard, your vinegar, and your pickles. These are all harmless.

Hope this helps!

Yes, it helps a lot. Thanks!

[Bob]

9 hours ago, Guest Outrider said:

I take around 2-3 packets per day. I can add more magnesium. I have Magnesium Malate in powder form. I'll bump it up slowly so that I don't make the diarrhea worse.

I believe Magnesium Malate is one of the ones you absorb well. I take this product here...

https://www.amazon.com/Zentastic-Triple-Magnesium-Relaxation-Absorption/dp/B0BC84FL5C/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?

I looked hard for one that did not contain the types of magnesium that isn't very absorbable and are thus notorious for diarrhea. 

9 hours ago, Guest Outrider said:

I do not. I usually add fat to everything I eat. Beef tallow for cooking, butter on top of a hamburger or steak, maybe some cheese on the side. I usually get the cheaper cuts of beef, which tend to be leaner.

Sounds fine on the surface. Hopefully you are still in your transition phase, but at 6 weeks you should be seeing the end of it soon. 

I've been doing this since May of last year, and there is a balance to be had. At one time I cut out cheese, skimped on the butter, cut off the fat and gave it to my dog, and I was zero carb, high protein, low fat, and I got diarrhea. But when I started eating the fat, being more generous with my butter, and reintroduced cheese, I got better (I've heard cheese is a natural "constipator"). But the conventional wisdom is to scale it back if you have diarrhea because too much fat will also go right through you if you don't have enough bile in your gall bladder to break it down.

Most people are fine at a 1:1 ratio of fat to protein, gram for gram, which ends up being 70% calories from fat and 30% calories from protein. This is easy to achieve with just fatty cuts of beef alone.