Monthly Archives: July 2024

Help! I’ve Failed the Carnivore Diet!

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You ate pie? This cannot be tolerated! Mail in your Carnivore Club decoder ring immediately!

A person new to the carnivore way of eating was lamenting having fallen off the wagon after a number of days “strict carnivore”. My reply was this (edited a little):

Don’t count the days. You’re counting failures. Nobody can live like that. Instead, think of this as a path you’re on. You stepped in a little doo-doo today, or twisted your foot a little in a hole. But you’re still on the path. Stay. On. The. Path. I actually had a little bit of a slip on my path yesterday. I’ve been carnivore for 5+ years. I do not subtract the days that I ate something off-plan. I am still in the carnivore club, even if I ate something that is not meat, because Carnivore is the way I need to eat.

Friends, I stepped in a little doggie doo myself just yesterday! My kids and some friends were having strawberry and banana popsicles (homemade, just strawberries, bananas, and beef gelatin), and I was hot and thought that sounded like a neat idea, and I ate one! Right there in front of God and everybody!

While I wasn’t immediately sorry, and it tasted fine and cold, fruit of any kind will exacerbate some allergy symptoms for me, so this morning I was painfully reminded why I don’t usually indulge in such treats. When you get used to not having allergies, and suddenly you do again, you take notice!

Oh, dearie me. Now what will do? I can’t say I’m eating a carnivore diet now! My indulgence was a small one. Not even cake! I did not berate myself for it, and I wouldn’t even if it had been cake. I just got up this morning and ate my usual two hamburger patties and went on with my carnivore life. I scraped the dookie off my shoes and kept walking the path. That’s what you need to do now. Even if you’ve been absolutely wading in poo for days, or even weeks, every meal is a chance to do better for yourself.

You will never be able to build a new habit, or maintain an old one, if you are unable to face an imperfect day without beating yourself up. We all have stresses. We all have lapses. Heck, sometimes we just need to have a little fun! When we start going off the path more frequently, some thought might need to be applied as to why you keep doing that. But, thank God, changes can be made! You’re changing your neurology. Every cell in your body is being realigned to interact with food in a completely different way. That doesn’t just flip on and off like a switch. It’s going to take a lot of time.

If I eat a thing that’s not meat, I do not worry about it. I don’t consider myself to be less of a carnivore just because I occasionally like the little seaweed nori snacks. I include those in my carnivore diet sometimes because they do not appear to have any ill effect on me. Pickles, too. I could do it every day if I wanted to, and still consider this a carnivore diet. I don’t. It’s probably more like once a month. But who cares? Different people have different needs, and I do not need to avoid nori snacks. You might.

I do need to avoid strawberries and bananas. That fact is reinforced in my mind today every time I have to stop myself from rubbing my now-itchy eyes. I’m not going to forget this soon! You’re not going to forget your regret from the last mishap very soon, either. Just get up and go on with your healthy way of eating now. The trend is still in a positive direction! There is no reason to be angry with yourself. If anything, be resentful of the food. Learn to hate it for what it does to you.

Tell me, if you were on the standard American diet and you just happened to accidentally eat something that was good for you one day, would you feel like you were suddenly a health food fanatic? No, you would not. You would just think, “That was an unusual meal for me.” Do the same for your carnivore diet, friend. You had an unusual meal. You had a little misadventure, but you know that side-path you got onto won’t get you where you want to go. Just step back onto the right path!

And next time, look a little further ahead so you’ll be ready to dodge the doo-doo instead of stepping fully in it.

If you need help thinking about how to live a healthier life, I’d love to spend some time coaching you. It’s not just carnivore that I’m about. I can help you tweak your entire lifestyle to get to a better place. Just email me (cindy at get along home dot com) and we’ll get you scheduled. I’m not terribly busy this summer!

Smells are Free

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Did you ever read Ooka the Wise: Tales of Old Japan?

There was a story in that book about an impoverished young man who rented a room above a restaurant. He couldn’t afford the delightful fish that was served below, but he’d gotten into the habit of eating his plain bowl of rice while sitting near his open window, so that he could smell the flavorful food cooking, and thus add to his enjoyment of the rice. I won’t spoil the story by telling you the rest of it, but this is one of my favorite books, and I’ve replaced it each time our current copy has been read to death. If you can find it for a reasonable price, you should pick it up.

Anyhow, that story stuck with me especially poignantly, since for most of my life I couldn’t smell anything much due to inflammation in my sinuses. Since starting a carnivore diet, lo these 6 years ago, I can smell my food! I can also smell your food, and there was a time when the smell of cake or pizza would drive me crazy. How ironic, I thought, that I’m finally able to smell all that stuff, now that I can’t eat it. Dear Alanis, here’s an actual irony for you!

I’ve noticed something new in my life fairly recently. The smells of these forbidden foods, all by themselves, are very pleasant. Any time I have veered off my healthy path of eating to indulge beyond the point of smelling it, I have not enjoyed the taste as much as I thought I would. Carbs don’t taste nearly as good to me as I remember them to taste. In fact, the memory is pleasant enough that I don’t have to ruin it by trying to recreate it. I have, however, continued to enjoy the smells. After all, the sense of smell is the sense that most deeply stirs our memories. Think about how your mother’s perfume or shampoo used to smell. What the church hymnals smelled like. The root cellar where Grandma kept her potatoes. You will not only remember the smells, you will have some emotions that go along with it. Provided that Mother and Grandmother were the kind a person would want to remember, these are wonderful memories, invoked just by smelling something. Sometimes just by imagining smelling something!

These days, you’ll often find me standing over the dessert table at church functions, just leaning over it a little bit and blissfully inhaling the scent of chocolate or glazed donuts. I’m sure I look to others as if I’m desiring to eat the things in front of me. I’m sure the (often markedly unhealthy) people coming up behind me think that I’m just so deprived, and feel sorry for me. “Why in the world doesn’t she just eat the cake if she enjoys it that much?” they must wonder.

But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if I eat that stuff, there will be repercussions. I have no trouble not putting that stuff into my mouth! Boils, guys. I get boils. But smells can’t give me boils!

It’s OK for me to do that.

Now, if you are in the early days of fighting a carbohydrate addiction, I absolutely do not recommend doing this, any more than an alcoholic should feel free to sit at a bar drinking seltzer water while his old friends get tipsy. You’re going to screw yourself up. Just don’t walk over to the dessert table. Stick your face in some flowers or something to get that smell out of your face! This is not something I could have done four years ago, either! Now that I am well and truly not tempted to eat what doesn’t benefit my body, I have a little freedom to experience the pleasure of sweet-smelling food. Smells are free, and I come away having experienced as much risk-free enjoyment as possible out of the offerings, and with no ill-effects afterwards.

I’ve been reading into dopamine a little bit lately, and what I’ve found out is that the pay-off, the thing you think you want to do, is not what dopamine is responding to. Dopamine is actually what gives you the urge. So if I get a dopamine spike upon thinking about a chocolate chip cookie, it doesn’t matter much if I actually eat the cookie. It is equally helpful to either ignore it, thus reducing that dopaminic urge for cookies next time, or indulge it with some alternative that is risk-free. I have found that I can simply reach into my memory of what that cookie would have tasted like, and get the same relief, as if I had performed the truly harmful act of eating a cookie. Likewise, I can smell the dessert table, feel pleasure, and that is as far as I need to go. If you like scented candles, you know what I’m saying.

That doesn’t mean that you should do this.

If you’re fighting food addiction,–and I guess I was food addicted for the first couple of years of this way of eating–I would highly recommend you find something besides food to satisfy that want. Do something fun, dredge up a memory of a wonderful time you’ve had, hug your kids or your dog, sing a song, take a short walk, play the piano.

Do anything at all besides thinking about the food!

I have been too weak to be able to benefit from the delightful smells that emanate from highly processed carbohydrates. As I’ve related before, I have sat and just cried while everybody else ate pizza. But if you stay on this path long enough, those smells will cease to be associated in your mind with then putting something in your mouth. It will happen eventually. And when it does, you will have a new pleasure in your life.

Smells are free!

I don’t know if there’s another carnivore on the planet that does this, so I’ll leave the comments open on this one, in case somebody wants to say “Hey, I thought I was the only one!”

How’s All that Good Habit Stuff Going?

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I’m so glad you asked!

Remember when I told you I was going to be writing for five minutes a day, whether I like it or not? Well, I did that. I wrote for at least five minutes a day, every day, and hated everything I wrote so much that I never published it. I was bored with what came out of my own brain. I started thinking about why that is. I have lots of interesting (to me, so surely to somebody else) avenues of thought to explore. There’s something new just about every day that I think “wow, that would make a great blog post!” Which I promptly forget to write down, or worse, decide nobody really wants to read anyway.

This is no way to blog, y’all. What in the world could be getting in the way of all these captivating thoughts as soon as I went to put them where people could read them? Well, after a few weeks of careful observation (ha!), I have figured it out. You see, every time I’d sit down with these words that I really do think worth writing, instead of clicking on my wordpress dashboard, I was clicking on these little symbols in my bookmark toolbar instead. Social Galactic, Gab, Facebook, then I’d have to check email, read my RSS feed, then loop back to SG and start it all over again. Round and round I would go until I didn’t have any drive left to do what I’d actually set out to do. I would do the writing, but it never grew into something worth sharing.

This is a habit problem. An addiction, even. It’s very entertaining to talk to people, but social media has become my own 21st century version of 1 Timothy 5:13 “being idle and going about from house to house.” I’m just a hop, skip, and a jump from becoming verse 14, “not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to”. In fact, I might already be there. I hope it’s not as bad as it could be, but I can think of some things I probably ought not to have said.

So I’ve decided to knock that right off. 

Now, I can’t exit social media entirely. Where would I find my clients? And how would I promote those blog posts I must certainly be getting around to publishing soon? I do have some messages to spread that social media is fantastic for, and I do have some genuine friendships that I maintain on these sites. But social media needs to get in its box, and only be let out when I need to take it out.

The reasons I’m telling you about it, dear Reader, are fourfold:

I need accountability. I don’t really desire anybody to ask me, “Hey, GAHCindy, have you avoided the socials enough today?” You don’t have to mind me. But knowing that I told somebody, even people who never talk back or check in, will make me deeply ashamed if don’t stick to it. Shame is my friend.

This is a good example for you, my readers, in breaking a bad habit. I know you have some bad habits. Don’t lie. You might even have the same one I do. Let this post provide you some insight into how you can pinpoint where your failures are getting their foothold. Maybe you have a carb addiction to beat. Notice what it is that’s triggering you to procure and eat sweets every time you think today is the day you’re finally going to just eat wholesome, good-for-you meat and low-carb veggies. I noticed what was preventing me from performing my good habits, and I decided to stomp on that thing. You should do this, too!

It fulfills my daily writing obligation. Since this is what is on my mind, this is what you get. Come back tomorrow for something completely different.

So you won’t think I died or something. A sudden disappearance from social media, especially when you have a really nice little community like Social Galactic, can worry people. No worries! I have not been hit by a bus or anything. I’m just not able to do that stuff so much any more.

If you’ve got a bad habit to kill, you can’t just decide not to do it anymore. I’ve tried to simply avoid clicking the things until I have my work done, and it doesn’t work. The ruts in my brain are too deep to just jump out of! So I am taking some steps to prevent falling into the social hole again.

  • I have removed all of the bookmarks for social media from my browser. I have to type them in every time I want to go to a social website.
  • I also removed the apps from my phone, deleted all of the passwords from the manager so I have to type them in every time. I’m so lazy that that’s a huge hurdle to clear.
  • And finally, I am taking a near-complete fast from all social media for at least a month. I’ll probably check in every couple of days just to clear notifications. I’m already enjoying not just picking up the phone to check in on…what have I been checking in on? Nothing that I need to be checking on! Busy-bodying, is what I’ve been doing!

So anyhow, you guys share this around on your own social media so I don’t have to. See you (mostly on SG) after I’ve got my brain rearranged the way I like it!

 

 

 

Craving Sweets in the Heat?

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It’s hot outside. Not coincidentally, lately I’m seeing an uptick in questions from new carnivores about sweet cravings, especially in the afternoon. Please do not answer the siren call of the ice cream truck. You don’t need berries, honey, fruit, or cheesecake. You just need water!

Because an insulin spike will, in fact, cause your cells to pack away some water with the sugar that it lets in, your body will ask for sugar when you’re not giving it enough water and salt. It asks for sugar, but that doesn’t mean you have to give it sugar. It simply doesn’t know how to ask for salt through cravings. You, though, are a human, and smart, so you can figure this out for yourself! Salt and water will ease your sweet craving just as quickly, and much more beneficially.

A lot of people like to take a fancy electrolyte powder in their water, and I’m totally fine with that. In fact, I have a packet or two of them just about every day. Myoxcience has my favorite electrolyte powder, as they don’t use stevia in theirs. They even have an unflavored one for those of us who have to avoid all sweet tastes. A lot of people like LMNT, but for some reason (probably the stevia) that brand makes me wheeze.

Try these things if you like, but honestly, for most people, some good old pickle juice will do the trick. Pickles don’t cost near as much. Just make sure you find a pickle brand that doesn’t have polysorbates and food dyes in them. Mt. Olive has an organic one that fits the bill. I’m sure there are others.

Don’t let old habits and sudden cravings knock you off-plan just because it’s hot outside. Drink your water and salt!