Hi,

I hope somebody can help me out. I've been eating ground chuck beef with 10%, 20% and 30% added beef fat, pork belly and eggs for the past two months. In total I eat between 2500 and 3000 calories a day. I have also varied the amount of salt I eat per day, I've tried electrolytes and I drink between 2 and 4 liters of water a day, but in stead of feeling better I keep feeling worse. I'm extremely tired all day long, the brain fog is worse than before I started and I'm very irritable.  

I started carnivore because of my psoriasis, I don't need to lose weight. For the psoriasis it's working great up til now.

Edited August 7, 20242 yr by Rob Kroos
Forgot something

The diet can be very individualistic. For me, my fatigue and the run-down feeling did not last very long. I jumped right in and didn't do anything to prep for the electrolyte demands nor did I have any understanding of fat content.

I grind some of my own burgers. I up the fat content to either 60/40 or even 50/50. I made a homemade (you tube) electrolyte mix and now use that to salt my food. 

Once I made those two corrections the energy not only returned but I felt more energetic than before I started.

I will assume it is the fat content but I can tell the difference between red meat and eating pork or chicken. When I eat pork or chicken the following day is not the same. Not really bad, but I can feel the difference., especially after the gym.

Best of luck. Hope you can figure out what works for you.

Scott

 

 

As Scott said it is very individualistic. Great post btw Scott.
At two months in you could still be transitioning so hang in there. You may need to keep a daily journal and start experimenting. Try upping your fat to protein ratio. I don’t know what yours is presently but I would go to getting 80% of my calories from fat and only 20% from protein. Eat that way for at least 2 or three weeks and see how you feel. If that isn’t working the change up the ratio to a 70/30 or even a 60/40 and see what happens. Just make sure you keep track of what your eating in your journal for reference and make sure you give each stage enough time to show results. If your not seeing any change then do the same thing with your sodium and electrolytes. Keep track of your adjustments and give each one time to show results. At least a couple of weeks each time.
Then start tracking the foods you eat. Cut one out for several weeks or even a month and see what happens. Some people don’t do well on pork or chicken. Some meats, even though the may be from ruminants may affect you adversely such as ground beef. It can have histamines that you may be sensitive to. Some people may not do as well on lamb or goat as others do.
Then again you may just need to give it more time.
So find what works for you and document each stage and definitely give each one enough time to show results before moving on to the next one. Oh, and only make one change at a time.
Good d luck to you.


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On 8/7/2024 at 1:58 PM, Rob Kroos said:

I've been eating ground chuck beef with 10%, 20% and 30% added beef fat, pork belly and eggs for the past two months. In total I eat between 2500 and 3000 calories a day. I have also varied the amount of salt I eat per day, I've tried electrolytes and I drink between 2 and 4 liters of water a day, but in stead of feeling better I keep feeling worse. I'm extremely tired all day long, the brain fog is worse than before I started and I'm very irritable.  

Sounds like you are getting enough electrolytes, but to be sure you could get an electrolyte panel just to make sure. If you are in the USA, OwnYourLabs.com can get you all sorts of labs (through Labcorp) for bargain prices.

A couple other thoughts that come to mind include 1) transitioning. Yes, some can adapt to a keto-carnivore diet and start using fat and ketones for energy within days. Most people it takes a few weeks. But there are some with whom it takes months, especially if they were very carb-heavy beforehand. Your cells might be saying "I want my glucose, I don't want these darn ketones" lol, but eventually you will adapt and they will prefer to use fat for energy instead of glucose.

2) Have you tried isolating those foods? You mentioned ground beef with various amounts of fat, added beef fat, pork belly, and eggs. You could have a sensitivity to one of these. Try eating just the ground beef for a few days or a week and see how you feel. If you feel an improvement, then add back in the eggs for a week and see how you feel. Then add in the pork belly for a week, etc. Maybe you have a sensitivity to egg whites, or pork, both of which are usually due to the grains these animals are fed. You could even have a histamine-intolerance to the beef. Very rare, but if that's the case, we can deal with that as well. So I would rotate your food, just eating one at a time,  just to rule one of them out as a potential issue.

Three months in and the irritability is overwhelming. Also work at a stressful job, but I've always been good at managing stress. Other than that, carnivore has been wonderful for me and at 60 years old, I'm feeling better than I have in a decade (and down 10lbs)! Any tips on managing the irritability?

At three months in I would think there is still a lot of healing out in front of you. The irritability could be from any number of things and possibly changes to eating carnivore. I'm not irritable but I have managed to turn one of the more normal positives of carnivore into a negative.

Another part of the individualistic parts of carnivore I suppose.

I am a life-long rotating shift worker. I worked normal dayshift for maybe two weeks just after I got out of the service in the early 90's. From 17 to 56 I have been swinging shifts in any number of rotations/schedules. My sleep patterns have been crapped for as long as I can remember. I sleep really good in the daytime when working nights and struggle to sleep at night when working days or off.

I have not found the brain clarity with carnivore a lot of people talk about. The closest thing is that when I wake up, I am immediately ready to go. No dragging out of the bed, no slow to get going, just eyes open and the feet hit the floor.

That has translated to tonight. I have been off for a week, and my sleep has been less and less with each passing day. I woke up last night a 1AM, up til I got paged into work and then came home dragging last night. I stayed up as late as I possible could and was in bed by 8:30 and again tonight up at 1AM.

The negative since carnivore is there is no going back to sleep once I am up. So now I will be up all day and will try to figure out how to rest/sleep before returning to night shift tonight. Prior to carnivore I could go back to sleep.

Babbling, and I don't think I am irritable, but I can see me getting there with an erratic sleep pattern, especially around those times when it swings to times off and I am on a normal people schedule.

I would look into rest/sleep/relaxation as much as I would 'carnivore', but again, totally individualistic.

Scott

On 9/18/2025 at 11:39 AM, jsquared24 said:

Any tips on managing the irritability?

This is hard to say because it sounds like you have everything covered. But for the sake of review, irritability is often the result of withdrawal symptoms and hormone changes that occur with diet. Ways to combat irritability include....

1) Eat enough food. It's easy to feel satiated with this way of eating, so make sure you are eating enough. This is where counting "calories" may actually be of some use. Many carnivores discourage calorie counting, but the truth is that calorie counting can be a metric used to gauge just how much you are eating per day.

Also, don't fear fat. Make sure you are getting adequate fat and not eating too lean of protein. Aim for a 1:1 fat to protein ratio (gram for gram). Keep in mind that the fat in ground beef or other meats can render out. Try to include the rendered fat when you eat, and don't drain it out after cooking.

2) Drink more fluids to make up for lost fluids. However, this is closely related to the next point also...

3) You may need more electrolytes. Excessive drinking may cause you to excrete some of these electrolytes which will then need replenished.

4) Exercise to the point of working up a sweat. This helps with electrolyte balance as well, and also allows you to sweat out toxins.

5) If you are in the north or don't go outside much, consider some vitamin D. My vitamin D levels used to be crazy low, in part due to my kidney disease. I supplement pretty heavily every day. Start small and work your way up though, and get your vitamin D levels checked periodically to make sure you are not above toxic levels.

6) Include some organ meat in your diet once in a while to get any potential missing nutrients.

7) Check your thyroid hormones and iodine levels in case these need supplementing. Hormonal changes are often tied to thyroid function.

8) Focus on the positive. You are benefitting from this lifestyle. Keep that in mind. Also consider what you may have done prior to eating this way to manage stress. Did you have any habits you fell back on, like eating, snacking, having candy, smoking, having a drink, biting your finger nails, punching someone's lights out, lol? Maybe you're just in the middle of learning how to cope with stresses differently than you had before.