Carnivore Popcorn

Posted on April 2, 2024 by GAHCindy

Somebody asked me a while back what they could do for popcorn. My friend, I have found it!

You’re going to have to do a little footwork to procure the materials if you don’t buy your beef in bulk the way I do. If you do, tell your butcher you want the trim fat. And the suet and the marrow bones, and the organs! Don’t waste food! But this is about the trimmings. If you don’t buy your animals in bulk, you can probably go to any butcher and ask for fat trimmings. I promise, they will not think you’re crazy. Just march right up to that counter and ask!

When I got my first big ugly bag of fat with a bunch of red meat still stuck to it, I momentarily thought “What in the world am I going to do with this? Why did I ask for this?” I like suet for rendering, as it gets you a nice clean tallow, but this? This has a lot of meat still on it!

Um, hey…Carnivore person? It’s A BUNCH OF FAT WITH A LITTLE BIT OF MEAT ON IT! Isn’t that what you prefer to eat?

So I diced it up into about 1/4 inch pieces

And I fried it and ate it with my pitifully lean steak. (If you are one of those blessed people who have an air fryer, this would be a good use for it!)

You don’t need to eat this stuff as a side. It would make a marvelous small meal (aka, a snack).

You will never miss popcorn again, I promise. Just try it.

Why Carnivore Didn’t Work For You, Part 6: You Didn’t Know Your Reason

Posted on March 16, 2024 by GAHCindy

Why are you doing this, anyway?

I will occasionally come across somebody online who says that they tried carnivore, even though they didn’t have any particular reason to do so. By that person’s estimate, she had already been in perfect health and everything she was doing was working just fine. But she wanted to see if the carnivore way of eating would improve anything. And she usually finds that, in fact, she had been a lot less healthy than she thought she was. Her libido roars back to life, or the joint pain that she thought was due to “getting older” goes away, or the ringing in her ears stopped. All sorts of unanticipated pleasant things happen to people who eliminate plants from their diets. It’s almost magical!

But there are, for the first few weeks of shifting to a carnivorous diet, often some unpleasant things to be gotten through. Most of these difficulties can be mitigated by reading the rest of this series: Why Carnivore Didn’t Work For You, and taking that advice. If you hadn’t read these posts of mine, though, or gotten advice from someone else who has been there, you might have jumped into the carnivore diet feet first, with no idea why, except that the Meat Life™ sounds like a pretty cool bandwagon, and you didn’t want to miss out.

So you got a few days or weeks in, and stuff started to happen.

You felt lethargic and depressed. You started to feel like you were hypoglycemic. You got explosive diarrhea, or stopped going to the bathroom altogether. It got so bad you just gave up and had the spaghetti one day, et voila, you felt better. Back to your old self. Man, you missed that bread! I mean, the tinnitus came back, and you’re looking a little puffy again, but at least you feel happy!

My friend, carnivore works, even for you. It really does. But because you didn’t have a very strong reason to stick through and troubleshoot whatever was going wrong, you didn’t get to a place where you could experience that. I truly believe that there is nobody whose health or mood is so good that carnivore couldn’t make it better. But without something driving you to eat better, all of the potential pitfalls of the adaptation phase–sugar cravings, social needs, bowel upheavals, or doubts about the medical safety of it–you will quit.

If you’re making a change so drastic as this with no good idea why, it’s going to be, for all but the most stubborn of people, an unsustainable change. If you want to give the carnivore diet a go, know why you’re doing it first. Maybe it is something as simple as “better overall health”. But if you don’t name the result you’re looking for, you’ll likely lose sight of your progress when faced with difficulties. Go ahead and let your reason be “just” tinnitus. But hold on to your reason, friend. You’re going to need it when you’re at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and your family is chowing down on muffins and waffles, while you’re stuck with the bacon and eggs.

It won’t be enough that you’re just trying out a new way of eating. You will need sweet reason to get you through. After a while, you’ll start to notice other little reasons that you can add to the list. Your psoriasis went away. You’re no longer anxious. You made it through a menstrual cycle without anybody having to call the cops on you. Write all that stuff down. Add every small victory to your list of reasons to stick with it.

And stick with it, friend. Carnivore works.

You Have to Stop Doing Carnivore

Posted on January 29, 2024 by GAHCindy

You’ll waste away!

Every time I see somebody I haven’t seen in a while, they tell me how great I look. Well, that’s nice of them, isn’t it? It also happens to be true. I look about as good as I am capable of looking. Not gonna be winning any beauty contests, sadly, but I’m doing OK! And then, at least half the time, that same someone will say with concern–or, I’m not above suspecting, envy–something to the effect that one can take this thing too far, and I should really reincorporate something sweet into my meals at some point.

There was a time when it would have been a fair observation that I was becoming too skinny. Back when I was doing keto and there were a bunch of vegetables taking up space I should have been using for protein and fat, I was getting to be a little bit on the stringy side. I got down to just 100 lbs, and I hated the way I looked. I still hadn’t lost all the visible fat in my belly, but everything just hung off of me. I was wasting muscle, not just fat. I knew I couldn’t go back to the way of eating that had made me sick to begin with, but I certainly couldn’t continue with keto. All of my research convinced me that removing even more kinds of foods from my diet, rather than adding anything else back, was the best way to make myself truly healthy, and not just not fat.

When I went carnivore, I put back on fifteen pounds or so, and most of that was muscle and bone. I wish I’d had a before and after dexa scan to prove it, but common sense and a good look in the mirror are really enough. I’m definitely bigger than I was, and I’m definitely not fat.

Now, most of the time, when somebody tells me I’m going to get sick from all this meat, I just show my skeptic a nice, firm bicep, or tell them how fast I can run or how much weight I can lift these days. I am well-built at this point, with a healthy layer of muscle everywhere it ought to be. I even get comments about my good build from strangers in public. Nobody thinks I’m skinny. Feels good, man!

I do still have a little bit of mommy-belly, an inch or so of dangly skin that’s pretty easily hidden under my clothes. I’ve carried eight babies and had 5 c-sections. It’s not perfect, and I don’t know if it ever will be. But that’s ok, because a perfect little tummy is not what I’m going for. It would be nice, but it’s not my goal. That’s what I really want you to understand: I’m not doing this diet so I can look small. I want to be appropriately sized, strong and fast enough to do anything I need to do, and sharp and quick enough to stay alive in an increasingly tricky world. (Have you seen the traffic around here lately?)

I can’t do this if I’m eating the way 98% of the people around me are eating. Sorry. It just won’t work. It’s not working for you, either, friend.

Beauty is a sign of health, and health is what I’m chasing. I won’t say I don’t care how I look, because I’m as vain as any woman. I like to look just as good as I can. Happily, when I chase health, I’m bound to catch a little beauty, as well! I can’t lose eating this way!

Carnivore is not a weight loss diet. If you are fat, you will lose weight on carnivore. Your body will no longer be receiving the signal from your food to store extra fat. But if you are too skinny, you can fix that with carnivore, too! Doesn’t that just blow your mind? How is that even possible? But it’s true. You can stimulate muscle and put on healthy fat with this diet. I did it myself, and I haven’t dropped below 115 pounds in a few years. In fact, I’m still slowly gaining a little muscle. It ain’t easy to gain at 40-something, but if you lift consistently, and eat enough MEAT, it is doable.

I never have to eat more than I want to, but I do get to eat until I’m full. And then I can stop eating until I’m hungry again. Now, my concerned friend, does that sound like an eating disorder to you?

People actually heal their eating disorders and get back to a healthy weight by eating only meat. The carnivore way of eating will recompose your body to its best advantage. It does not simply force weight loss until you die. It is not anorexia. It is not a weird cultish fear of food. It is not something people do just to shock the current culture and stick a finger in the globalist all-seeing eye. (Although I do see that last as an upside.)

Carnivore is simply optimal.

For everybody, though? Well, like I’ve said before, I don’t think everybody has to go carnivore. Most people who think they’re doing ok would see improvements in problems they never even thought were food-related, if they’d just give it 30 days. I do think absolutely everybody can thrive on it. There is nobody who absolutely has to have plants. They are non-essential. Plants, especially grains, are survival food, hibernation food, slave food. As long as I have a choice, I want to thrive, not just survive.

There are sometimes some bumps in the road for some as they become accustomed to the Meat Life™, but all of the difficulties I’ve coached people through are caused not by eating meat, but by the severe damage they’ve already done to their bodies with standard American fare. See my “Why Carnivore Didn’t Work For You” series, for a few ways things can go wrong. If you need any help getting through the transition to a diet (not necessarily carnivore) that will work best for you, get in touch with me by email (cindy at getalonghome dot com) or on social media. I’d love to help!

Dear friends and family, I cannot possibly take this lifestyle too far, because it is not weight loss that I’m pursuing. It is health that I am after, and I’m getting better all the time. Join me!

Want to chat? Catch me on Gab, MeWe, or Social Galactic.

Why Carnivore Didn’t Work for You, Part 5: You Went Too Fast

Posted on October 31, 2023 by GAHCindy

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

So you heard about this awesome, extreme way of eating. You saw the news that people were reversing diabetes, healing auto-immune diseases, lowering blood pressure, losing weight, getting ripped, and feeling incredible. You decided to jump into the lifestyle, went straight to the pantry, and threw out everything that never had a face. You went from eating all the things, to eating only beef, salt, and water on the first day.

And good for you! You knew what you needed to do, and you decided to just rip that band-aid right off and get on with it. That works beautifully sometimes! Probably about half of the people I’ve talked to personally about carnivore make this transition smoothly, with no trouble at all. Other times, unfortunately, a person will meet with so many trials in that first few weeks that they will give up. One of the things we carnivores often forget to mention is that we usually have a slower introduction to the Meat Life than this. Probably 95% of the successful Carnivorists started their search for health with keto, paleo, or something else a little off the beaten path, and only eventually pared it down to the bare necessities.

I was on a ketogenic diet for about 6 months before I decided to try it without plants. Because I transitioned slowly to this way of eating, I avoided all of the potential pitfalls of rushing right in.

I changed my relationship with food slowly.

I did not intentionally transition slowly to carnivore, as I had never even considered carnivore until about a day before I started it. As with many carnivores, it just sorta happened. I fell out of love with carbs. For me, there was no traumatic divorce from my Standard American Diet. Food is an emotional thing for most people. You have a relationship with it, even if you’re not a carb addict. It’s there for you when you feel bad or bored. It’s part of the social atmosphere, especially at holidays. You can’t just quit eating, so every meal is fraught with the stress of choice-making. So rather than changing everything about your food all at once, you need to change the way you relate to food first.

My only goal at first was to lose weight, so I started with a “dirty” ketogenic diet. The thinking behind it made sense–cut carbs, eat more fat–so that’s what I did. I did the keto desserts, the butter in my coffee, the intermittent fasting to get my ketones up. I baked all kinds of keto treats and made fat bombs. I even ate Atkins and Quest bars. Those things do not provide adequate nutrition. They’re junk food! But I think they’re also just fine while starting out. While I was weaning off of the real granola bars and candies, they provided a crutch so that all of the rest of my eating could be good, low-carb, whole foods. They are still worlds better than the carbohydrate-full kind! I began to feel better and lose weight immediately.

After a few months of getting used to running on fat instead of sugar, I cut out all sweet treats and bread substitutes, keeping the vegetables and berries and low-carb dairy. I did that because I knew that the sweet treats were still giving me more total carbs than I was able to handle. My weight loss had stalled.

I then moved to a “clean” ketogenic diet, and I lost more weight. Most of the problems that I had had with my skin, my mental health, my asthma all went away with a clean, unprocessed ketogenic diet. But I still had milder problems at times. One day, I was talking with a friend about veganism, and I said without thinking much about it “I’d rather give up all plants than all meat.” And the idea was born. I had not yet realized that you don’t have to have plants to be healthy, but I had made the connection between plants and many of my symptoms. It was a couple of days later that I happened upon some carnivore on YouTube (probably Shawn Baker or Paul Saladino), and only after looking into it more deeply, to see if this actually makes sense, did I decide to eliminate plants entirely.

Changing my relationship with food wasn’t enough. I also had to change my gut flora. The gut micro-biome is one of most-studied and least-understood aspects of human health, so a lot of what I’m about to say is conjecture. The more we study it the less we seem to know, and I am absolutely not going to claim any expertise. Even the experts have no real idea what they’re doing, according to the experts themselves! But what I do know, and have seen many times, is that changing your food too quickly can lead to some awful symptoms.

Anybody who has brought a new puppy home knows that you have to mix some of their old type of food with the new food over several days to allow their microbiome to adapt. I had to do the same with my dog when I switched him to an appropriate diet (aka: meat) for dogs. The kibble you get in the stores is not the right food for an animal. We went too fast with our daughter’s new dog, due to only having a handful of his old food to work with, and he had a horrible diarrhea requiring veterinarian care. The very same thing happens when humans change their diets too quickly.

You might not be in love with carbs anymore, but I guarantee you some of your critters still are! In addition to the gastrointestinal distress of the bacteria die-off and replacement, I often see people anywhere from two to six weeks into a no-sugar diet–whether carnivore, keto, or just lower carb–begin to have depression, brain fog, and lack of willpower to resist carbs, even though they were doing fine for the first few weeks. I have a theory, completely untested by Science™, that when certain microbes and parasites are being fed, namely those that thrive on carbohydrates, they send soporific signals to your brain, letting you know that all is right with their world. And when they’re not being fed? Look out. They get mad, and mean, and start to beg for sugar. Like a rampaging toddler who wants his toy NOW, they will make you unhappy until they get what they want.

AI rendering of “angry toddler who wants his toy”

That’s just my theory, for what it’s worth. What is not just a theory, because I’ve seen it happen time and time again, is that if you power through these difficult times, get back on the diet no matter how many times you fall off, you will get past this!

Moving more slowly in weaning off of the plant matter will help you succeed. Don’t add back sugar when you feel like you’re not going to be able to stick to this way of eating. Just add back some green vegetables or some low-carb berries. These kinds of foods will help calm that urge to really hurt yourself on the sweet stuff, and you will be able to move on into carnivore bliss in a few days.

Why Carnivore Didn’t Work for You, Part 4: You Weren’t Eating Enough

Posted on October 2, 2023 by GAHCindy

Load up that plate. Don’t be shy!

I’m a small person, but fairly solidly built. I’m five feet tall, and hovering around 115 lbs.. That sounds like a heavy weigh for my height. I’ve known a lot of women my height who think they’re fat at 100, but after a few years of lifting heavy weights, I’ve gained a lot of muscle. In fact, I had gotten down to 100 lbs. doing keto, and despite still having a little more fat than I wanted to have, I was looking downright stringy. I had plenty of food coming in, but the protein macro was lacking.

It took moving to a fully carnivorous diet to get back up to the weight I am now. I have a lot more muscle now, and the fat is still on its way out. It goes slow, y’all. I expect to maintain nearly this same weight, even as my fat percentage goes down, as I don’t think I’ve reached the top of my potential muscle mass yet. This way of eating isn’t just about fat loss. It’s about muscle preservation and, ideally, muscle gain. Even more importantly, it’s about feeling well and healthy. “Hangry” is not a word in the carnivore vocabulary.

You can’t get good results if you don’t eat enough.

It takes more food than many might expect to maintain good energy and muscle mass while still losing fat. While you think you’re trying to lose weight, my friend, you really are not. You may lose weight. That’s fine, if it happens. But you can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and that sometimes means that not much changes on the scale. Whether you see changes on the scale or not, getting healthy means eating enough food. Enough protein, especially. (We already talked about fat, remember?) When I was doing keto, my fat percentage was good, but I was adding a lot of vegetables, bringing my protein intake too low. When I switched to carnivore, that problem went away entirely, as I simply used more protein to fill up the space on my plate and in my tummy where useless fiber had gone before.

This worked for me the first time I tried it for one reason, and one reason only: I never controlled my portions. I just ate until my body and brain told me I was done.

I know a man who tried first keto and then carnivore and gave both up for a lost cause because, he said, he was always hungry. After watching him load his plate one day, and comparing what he thought he should eat to what was on my plate at the same meal, it was clear to me that he just didn’t have a good idea how much he should be eating. I had twice as much food on my plate, and he weighs ideally 70-80 pounds more than I do. He probably should have eaten three times as much!

It was easy to see why carnivore wasn’t “working” for him. He had chosen two hamburger patties to my four, plus a hotdog, no butter, no trip back for seconds when he realized that wouldn’t cut it. My friend had a dieting mindset of self-denial. Being a big fella already, and struggling with a food addiction/compulsion as well, I suspect that he was also just plain embarrassed to be seen putting a pound and a half of meat on his plate. Not only that, but memories of binging probably tamped down his enthusiasm about piling up his plate. To eat that much food at one time would be greedy, in his mind. He had the false idea that calorie restriction and portion control are a necessary part of losing fat. He also had the false idea that it is greedy to eat an appropriate amount of food for your appetite.

There is no struggle with the appetite in this diet. If you’re trying to lose weight on a low-fat diet, it is true that you will have to watch your calories and stop eating before you’re satisfied. But you’re not on a low-fat diet. You’re on a protein and fat diet. That means eating until you are satisfied. Provided that you’re eating fatty meat and eggs, and you don’t have any weird goals like getting ripped for a body-building competition, you should never need to weigh, count, or otherwise measure your food again.

This is my lunch today. I already ate one burger before I thought to take the picture. I’m also about to go get some butter. I had a small breakfast, and I may have a snack later, but this is the big meal:

The nerf darts are a condiment.

Am I going to eat all that? I don’t know! I’ll let you know at the end of this post, as I’m having my meal while I write it. I cooked enough so I don’t have to worry about running out before I’m finished. I can save the rest for leftovers. Or doggies.

Carnivore, you need to just eat. Eat like it’s your job. Do not just eat until you think you’ve had a socially acceptable number of calories, or until you’ve had the recommended daily allowance of protein, or until you’re just a little hungry. Eat until you no longer interested in eating even a single bite of food. Then stop.

But that’s too much protein! No, it really isn’t. First of all, the RDA for protein is a sick joke that has been played on us by “scientists” who were trying to figure out the minimum amount of protein a person needs to keep from starving. It’s the floor, not the ceiling. And while there are plenty of quacks (you might be one yourself) going around saying that protein is toxic, ruins your kidneys and digestion, or makes your blood acidic, there is not one shred of evidence to that effect. It’s a bunch of hooey. (Go ahead and try to find the studies. Bring them to me. Good luck!)

We’re all going to have to get over what we’ve been taught about protein and calories, because it just ain’t so!

Earlier, I was comparing my plate with someone else’s. Don’t you do that, Dear Reader. Do not go by my plate to decide what should be on yours, and absolutely do not go by Michelle Obama’s idiotic My Plate. Go by your own appetite, which you are going to get to know intimately over the next few weeks or months. If you’re worried somebody will judge you for eating a ribeye and three eggs, and a can of sardines, and two tablespoons of butter (why yes, that is what I had for lunch yesterday), well…sorry to be harsh, but grow up. Get over that middle school mentality that what other people think or do matters a hill of beans to you. You’re not being greedy. You’re nourishing your body.

What your plate contains or has left on it when you are finished will depend on what your body needs that day. It’s OK to clean your plate, go back for seconds, or leave some food behind. Make a bunch of food. If you find it wasn’t enough, make some more. Your job is to eat until your body has everything it needs. Don’t be a slacker. Do your job.

So, did I finish the plate? Nope. I’ve got two burgers left. I’m sure the kids or dogs will be along shortly to help keep food waste down.

Why Carnivore Didn’t Work for You, Part 3: You Ate Too Lean

Posted on September 18, 2023 by GAHCindy

Be Jack Spratt’s wife.

Remember this nursery rhyme?

Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean

So betwixt them both, they licked the platter clean.

Now, in spite of being a lovely pean to teamwork, not wasting food, and the eternal attraction that opposites hold for one another, there was very little nutritional advice in this poem. It never said whether Jack and his wife were thin or fat, healthy or sickly, plant-eaters or carnivores, so we’re left to interpret what this meant for their long-term health. Every illustration I ever saw to this poem, though, had Jack Sprat as thin as a rail, and his wife very fat.

For a long time I thought that made sense, since eating fat will make you fat. Everybody knows that! Then I found out that eating fat makes you skinny, unless you’re eating the fat with a bunch of sugar. So then I thought that Jack and his wife were being depicted backwards: Jack should be the fatso, while his wife should be just perfectly proportioned. But that was wrong, too. I finally figured it out.

Poor Jack is dying of rabbit starvation! And if you were trying to live on chicken breasts and pork chops while taking a carnivore approach to life, so, my lean-eating friend, were you! Also, clearly, Jack’s wife has an addiction to those little fat-free 100-calorie cookie packets.

Fat does not make you fat. Fat does not clog your arteries. Fat does not give you pimples. All of the things you’ve heard about fat your whole life are a lie, propaganda produced by those who desire you to be cheap to feed, docile, and easily fooled. The standard American diet is slave food. Lean meat is slave food.

You, a free person who needs enough vigor to remain smart, sassy, and free need fat. If you have few or no carbohydrates in your diet, you really need fat.

We have all been taught that the lean meat is the virtuous meat. I don’t blame you for falling for it. I did, too, for a long time. You take the skin off your chicken breast, eat turkey bacon instead of pork bacon or (oh, happy thought) beef bacon, and only have a ribeye once a year because it’s so bad for you.

Lean meat is slave food. Eat your beef bacon.

We’ve been trained by what can only be intentional propaganda to reject the fuel on which our bodies run best: fat. In fact, we’ve learned to hate the very mouth-feel and taste of fat, and to seek out the dry cuts of meat. Truthfully, we don’t like those lean bits as much as we think we do. Just look at the way we have to cook them! Their lack of fat and flavor can only be remedied by the myriad addicting sugary and starchy sauces I used to take such pride in concocting.

If you’re choosing the lean cuts of meat, you will feel awful!

You will not lose weight. You will be very tired. You will think about food all the time. Unless you are a super-human in the willpower department, you will soon break down and eat the wrong food when you finally give in to the completely natural urge to eat some energy.

I know what you’re thinking: I thought I was supposed to be burning my own fat, not eating more of it. Well, yes, you will be burning some of your own stored fuel on a ketogenic/carnivore diet. But your body can only liberate so much fat per day, and it will never amount to enough to fuel even a sedentary life. Even very fat-adapted athletes are only able to liberate something like 900 calories of fat energy from their own cells per day. (I read a study. Pardon me if I don’t go find it for you.) You need a lot more than your own cells can provide if you’re going to make it, friend!

If you’re trying to survive on lean cuts of meat and low-carb vegetables, you are going to feel like you’re dying. You’re going to be tired, depressed, hungry, and moody. And then you are going to pig out on carbs. Failure is inevitable. So don’t do that!

But fat is gross!

I hear you, friend! You’re in a psychological bind. Because you’ve spent your whole life virtuously draining off every bit of grease, using sauces to make bland, fatless meat more appealing, trimming every ribeye (quel horreur!) or ordering the filet mignon instead of the ribeye, you are simply unaccustomed to the experience of chewing and swallowing fat. What’s more, you’ve always felt good about it, because that was what you’re supposed to do to be healthy! You were being a good little citizen!

Well, you’re just going to have to practice, picky eaters. You don’t have to like it. You just have to eat it. Eating the fat is just a matter of manning up and doing the needful, if unpleasant, thing until you get used to it. Don’t be a child about it. I promise that you will get used to it, and in fact learn to crave the fat. As soon as your body starts getting the nutrients it needs, you will begin to associate that formerly unpleasant-tasting food with the very pleasant feeling of heath. You will soon find yourself wondering how you could have ever thought fat was unpleasant to eat. It’s actually delicious!

Pork tenderloin and chicken breasts are dog food. Your big, brilliant human brain requires fat. If you’re feeling brain-foggy, depressed, and without energy on your carnivore diet, chances and good that it’s because you’re not eating enough fat. Even if you think you’re already having plenty of fat, you may need to increase it somewhat, at least for a while.

What are you waiting for? Go pick out the fattiest ribeye in the freezer and practice on it right now!

Why Carnivore Didn’t Work for You, Part 2: Electrolytes

Posted on September 13, 2023 by GAHCindy

Salt up, sweetie!

By far the most common complaints I hear from someone when they begin carnivore or keto are these:

cramping
dizziness
tiredness
flu-like muscle aches
heart pounding or flutters

These are all symptoms of electrolyte loss, which is thankfully very easy to fix!

When you switch to a low-carb or zero-carb way of eating, you no longer retain fluid the way you do when you’re a sweet-eater. The first thing you notice when you finally get into ketosis is that you pee. A LOT. In fact, that first heady weight-loss success of 10-15 pounds in two weeks is mostly just water! I’m sorry to break it to you, but the fat loss doesn’t come immediately. It’s water loss that has you all excited. And rightly so! You shouldn’t have been holding on to all that water. It’s making you puffy and not benefitting you at all, locked away like that.

Carbohydrates cause your body to lock water away in your cells, and with it, salts and minerals. As you begin to burn more fat than sugar, the retained water flushes out of your system, taking with it (mainly) your sodium, magnesium, and potassium. Your body has been used to doing one thing, and now it has to learn to do another. This comes with symptoms, unless you do something about it. Attention should be paid in the first several weeks of your new way of eating to getting enough salt (mainly), and very likely a magnesium and potassium supplement as well.

But salt is bad for you!

Well…no. Cutting back on salt is one of the worst ideas modern medicine has pushed. While there are apparently a small number of people for whom a very large amount of salt really does cause high blood pressure, most people need more salt, not less. Even those salt-sensitive people will probably be able to use normal amounts of salt when they cut out the sugar. It is that other white crystal we love to consume that is causing the outrageous epidemic of high blood pressure: sugar. Cut your sugar, and your “high” salt intake will be perfectly benign. Beneficial, even! James DiNicolantonio’s book, The Salt Fix, is a very good primer on the subject:

How much salt, though? Well, all I can say for sure is: be liberal about it. Salt your food to taste. Put a pinch of salt in your water when you drink. Drink clean electrolyte drinks like LMNT or Myoxcience’s Stix. If you have symptoms, have even more salt. If you have too much salt, you will simply feel thirsty and drink more water.

I like to buy electrolyte powders for hot days, or when I’m doing a lot of hard physical activity, but most of the time, they’re a treat, rather than a necessity. They can get a little bit expensive. You don’t have to spend that kind of money. Just put some salt, and maybe some no-salt into your water. Add a daily magnesium for a few weeks, as well, at least until the symptoms are long gone. After you’re “fat adapted”, you may never need to take further measures, and you’ll just instinctively eat the amount of salt you need. Some people find after a while that they need to eat no salt at all, while others, like me, are still salt-fiends. For now, though, assume you need more salt.

Can I have too much salt? There’s very little risk of overdose, unless you’re being ridiculous. You’re not going to be ridiculous are you? Remember the woman who drank too much water too fast and died? You can overdose on anything. But if you’re being sensible and not eating a tablespoon of salt at a time, ten times a day, you are not going to hurt yourself.

Just be a little bit, maybe a lot, more deliberately salty, and you’ll be fine. Don’t let “keto flu”, which is temporary, if unpleasant, stop you from getting healthy! Salt up!

Dairy-Free Cloud Bread

Posted on April 26, 2023 by GAHCindy

Every low carb eater has a cloud-bread recipe. I don’t claim any originality or superiority for this one. They all turn out basically the same, to be honest. This recipe makes a bigger batch for a bigger family (or just a bigger appetite). Most people use cream cheese, but we have to work around dairy sensitivities, so this a dairy-free version.

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Dairy-free Cloud Bread

A light bread substitute for the carb-conscious

Prep Time5

Cook Time15

Servings:

Equipment

hand mixer
parchment or silicone mats

Ingredients

8 eggs separated
8 Tbs mayonnaise
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 pinch salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder (optional)

Instructions

Heat the oven to 325°
Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar in a large bowl until stiff. It is important to use clean beaters. The whites won't stiffen if you contaminate them with other ingredients, so don't neglect to do this step first.
Mix the rest of the ingredients in a separate large bowl.
Spoon about 1/4 of the egg white foam into the yolk mixture, then gently fold (do not beat!) in until the mixture is homogenous. Repeat until all of the white is blended with the yolk.
Drop 1/4 cup dollops of the batter onto cookie sheets, lined with parchment paper. I usually need three pans for this amount of batter.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until set and golden brown.

I sometimes miss sandwiches, and find that this bread does a pretty good job filling in for the bread. It’s not 100% carnivore, but I make occasional allowances for avocado or coconut oils. If you do carnivore with dairy, substitute cream cheese for the mayo, and you can stay purely carnivore. If you do it without dairy, I’d bet bacon grease would do the trick. Omit the salt if you’re going to do that. I may try this and get back to you.

I recently made egg breakfast sandwiches with mayonnaise. Egg and mayo on egg and mayo. It works, okay?

Picnic!

Plain Food

Posted on April 24, 2023 by GAHCindy

Healthy kids.

One of my teenagers recently told me of a conversation with his coworker. He was talking about our family’s food habits, and told her that I often serve plain, crumbled ground beef with no seasonings.

“That’s child abuse!”

Now, first of all, it’s not like I’m forbidding my children the use of all seasonings. Salt and butter they have in abundance, and they can usually have salsa, sour cream, worcestershire sauce, or several other condiments they like. But we do eat a fair amount of undressed, un-sauced food, and I do this very intentionally. It is not out of laziness, or meanness, or even because I’m a bad cook. I serve most of our food unadorned out of a sincere belief that this will teach my children to have a healthy relationship with food.

When I first started eating a ketogenic diet, I went into it with the mindset that this diet was just for me, because of my particular health problems. I was still stuck in my old way of thinking, brought on by frequent contact with Western medicine, that my problems were genetic, irreversible, and unique to me, so I didn’t feel that there was a need to drag my perfectly healthy (or so I thought) children along for the ride. I was just trying to keep my blood sugar under control, not change the world.

I continued to make the family’s usual “healthy” foods and just made a little something different for myself. But as I delved more into the topic, and especially as I began to go fully carnivore, the realization set in that sugar wasn’t even the main reason I shouldn’t be eating plants. I began to understand that the principles I was applying to my own health could and should be applied to the health of every human being. I had thought at first that keto/carnivore was going to be just a me thing, but I saw after several months that I didn’t just look better. Not only did I have better blood-glucose levels, but all kinds of health problems had become faint memories, rather than daily realities.

Joint pain, brain fog, anxiety, social phobia, trichotillomania, hidradenitis supprativa, asthma, eczema, seasonal allergies, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve just plain forgotten were all GONE. (I still sneeze a little during ragweed season.)

Having realized that, I began to accept that my children were also having some of the same problems I was, and likely for the same reasons. Were they really doing fine, as I’d thought? One of my children had the trifecta of allergies, asthma, and eczema, as well as the disturbing beginnings of an OCD (brought on by a viral infection). Another had been showing symptoms of IBS for at least a year. We had already discovered long ago that still another child loses all symptoms and behaviors of autism as long as we don’t include grains and dairy in that child’s diet. What else might I be able to do for them with an appropriate diet?

Seeing all of this, I couldn’t any longer keep my children on even a “healthy” normal diet. While I didn’t take them all fully carnivore, I did begin to make all of their meals heavily meat-based. I allow them no more than two servings a day of either fruit or a starchy vegetable. They can have some leafy greens, though not kale or spinach. I eliminated grains, seed oils, and all refined carbohydrates completely, allowing for seeds and nuts or beans once a week, and only for the children who tolerate them well. For the two with the most obvious problems, we went 100% carnivore for a time. Both of those children are able to incorporate only small amounts of some “safer” plants, though still not daily.

It’s pretty restrictive, and we’re fine with that.

Now, I know (or hope, at least) that my son’s coworker was joking when she proclaimed our plain fare to be actual child abuse. But let me tell you what looks a lot more like child abuse to me:

8 year-olds who weigh 150 pounds
teenagers with Type II diabetes
children who can’t go more than an hour without begging for a snack
children who can’t behave themselves because of food colorings, sugar highs, malabsorption of nutrients, and proteins that are incompatible with the human gut

That, and not thoughtful application of dietary principles, is child abuse. I am certainly not accusing parents themselves (most of them, anyway) of abuse, but our overall food culture is abusive. Because of dishonest science, hatred of self-discipline, and the greed of big food corporations, nobody knows how to eat, or even that food has an impact on all areas of health. That is an absolute shame, and we have to put an end to it. Now, once a person knows he should do something, and doesn’t do it, we might begin to put the blame on that person. It might become abuse, or at least neglect, if a bad situation is allowed to continue.

The foods that I used to serve my children were very tasty. I took a lot of pride in being a good cook. In fact, I inadvertently did to my children with my “healthy home cooking” the exact same thing that wicked big food corporations are still trying to do to all of us. By introducing the biggest and best flavors I could manage–every day, nearly every meal–I was spoiling their palates and their health, and (much worse) setting them up for food addictions later in life.

Hyper-palatability is that quality of sweetness, saltiness, and fat that processed (even home-processed) foods possess. When we eat these foods, that powerful combination of flavor and mouthfeel bypass all hunger and satiety signals that our hormones send when we are hungry or full, causing us to both overeat, and eat the wrong food. Food corporations spend millions, maybe billions, on research finding the best ways to keep customers eating long past the point of satiety, and to keep us coming back for more. Even though the body’s nutritional needs are not being met by these foods, our entire bodies wantonly crave them, and reject plain food in favor of that dopamine high. There’s a word for this. It’s called addiction. My constant attempts to please the palates of my family were creating raging addicts in my home. I had to face that fact and do a hard thing.

I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. They actually acted like a bunch of little addicts when I stopped letting them have the candy and gold fish crackers! They were somewhat depressed, unhappy with everything I fed them for a while, and though they are typically well-behaved, there were a some bad attitudes for a while. Thankfully, it didn’t take them long to adapt. They are children, after all, and very impressionable. After a few months of eating real food, not too fancy, they learned to reject (for the most part) foods that do not nourish them. Kids do want to do what is good for them, but we have to enable them to do it by removing the stumbling blocks in their way.

Don’t we ever have fun with our food? Sure! Our family does still occasionally have food that can be considered hyper-palatable, like this keto or carnivore pizza or carnivore waffles. But I keep these things mostly to special occasions. There’s nothing wrong with having a treat every now and then, but to expect every meal to hit all of those pleasure buttons in our brains is gluttony. Dare I use such a harsh word to describe probably most of the people who are reading this blog? Yes, I do.

American, you’re most likely enjoying your food a little too much, and a little too often. That is gluttony.

Do your children a favor, moms and dads: Give them plain food 95% of the time. Salt it, of course! We actually need salt. But use sauces and seasonings less frequently, and get the processed foods out of your house entirely. It is a hard lesson to learn, but teach your children to be content with meat that just tastes like meat, fruit that just tastes like fruit, and veggies that just taste like veggies. I can promise that if you do this, you will be improving not only your children’s overall health, but their behavior and moods, and even their emotional connection with you and each other. Far too many children who appear healthy but have behavioral issues are struggling because they just don’t have the energy to fully engage.

Help them.

You might fear a mutiny if you do what I did, but you are the parent. They can’t drive themselves to the store and override your decisions. (Well, a couple of mine could have, actually.) If you do not give in to the addictions that you have created, it won’t be long before the crying is over, and your children accept that this is just how it is for your family. I know you love your children. I know how much I loved mine when I was feeding them the exact same way! Now put as much thought and effort into their nutrition as you do into every other aspect of their lives.

If you find that you need help with a transition to a healthier (not necessarily carnivore) diet for your family, get in touch with me on SG or MeWe and I’ll send you a link to my diet coaching page. Or just shoot me your questions and I’ll get to them directly if at all possible.

Carnivore Pizza

Posted on March 23, 2023 by GAHCindy

Mmmmm, bready!

I’m a simple woman. I’m happy to just grill up a steak or some burgers and call it a meal. No need to get fussy making messes in the kitchen.

Get Along Husband, however, likes his comfort foods, and so do the kids. One thing they all miss like crazy since we changed our eating habits is pizza with a bread crust. People make something called meatza all the time using ground meats and cheese, but it’s not very bready, and not worth the effort, in my opinion. This stuff passes for bread, though, and is so easy to do that I can make it happen even on a weeknight.

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