Category Archives: Carnivore

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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Print Recipe

Dairy-free Cloud Bread

A light bread substitute for the carb-conscious
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time15 minutes
Servings: 8

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

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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

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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.

Print Recipe

Carnivore Pizza Crust

An easy, convincing substitute for pizza crust
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, keto, low carb
Servings: 4

Equipment

  • parchment paper or silicone mats
  • 1 plastic food prep glove

Ingredients

  • 6 oz pork rinds
  • 6 eggs
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder optional
  • 1/2 tsp rosemary optional
  • 2 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated optional

Instructions

  • Heat oven to 325℉
  • Crush the pork rinds in a blender (or by hand, if that's how you roll).
  • Add baking powder and other (optional) ingredients.
  • Whisk the eggs together in a separate bowl, then mix thoroughly into the pork rinds.
  • Set aside for 3 minutes to soak.
  • Spread the pork rind mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. A silicone mat will work, as well.
  • Bake for about 15 minutes, or until beginning to turn golden brown around the edges.
  • Remove crust from oven, then top with desired toppings.
  • Heat oven to 425℉
  • Place pizza back into oven for 5 minutes, or until cheese has melted and toppings are warm.

Notes

  • To increase the number of servings, use one ounce of pork rinds for every egg, and adjust for whatever size crowd you're trying to feed.
  • I find that a plastic-gloved (like these) hand pats the dough out more easily than trying to spread it with a spatula, but a spatula will do in a pinch.

You can top this any way you want. To keep it strictly carnivore and keto, I made a super-simple alfredo sauce by warming up a cup of heavy whipping cream and maybe 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese. You can add seasonings like basil, garlic, and onion to make it a little more zesty. The meat on top of this one is canned chicken, nothing fancy, and little balls of fresh mozzarella.

Of course, I’ve made this for the whole family with non-meat toppings and tomato pizza sauce. Everybody enjoys it!

Yes, that’s pineapple, and I’m not even ashamed of myself!

How bready is it? Pretty bready. I love it.

You could just make the bread and put a little extra cheese on top, dip it in garlic butter, and you have a delicious garlic bread. No toppings required. And if you want to put the batter about an inch deep into some greased muffin tins, the pork rind and egg mixture would make a fine “biscuit” for biscuits and sausage gravy (which I am totally doing for Sunday breakfast this weekend). This batter/dough is really versatile.

So if you’re thinking you can’t cut the carbs because you’d miss bread too much, try this. You don’t even have to be a cook.

Update:

I found this marvelous stuff at Wal-Mart (I know, I hate them, too).

You can use this instead of having to crush your own pork rinds. It’s 10.5 oz, so if you use the whole can, you’ll need 11 eggs and 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder. It comes out to two medium-sized pizzas. And it costs less to buy it this way than to buy whole bags and crush them yourself. Yay!

 

Carnbread Dressing

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This diet just gets weirder and weirder.

I showed you earlier how to make a cornbread simulation I like to call Carnbread. Now let’s turn that oddly bread-like loaf into a stuffing for your Thanksgiving turkey! Or maybe your Thursday night chicken dinner, since this is January.

Carnbread stuffing is made in a similar manner to cornbread stuffing.

Print Recipe

Carnbread Dressing

A meaty alternative to cornbread stuffing
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time30 minutes
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, dairy free, keto
Servings: 10

Ingredients

  • 2 loaves carnbread
  • 2 tbsp dried sage
  • 2 tbsp dried minced onions a teaspoon of onion powder could also be used
  • 2 tbsp paprika
  • 2 tbsp dried parsley
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp rosemary
  • 1 tsp celery seed
  • 2 tsp thyme
  • 1/4 tsp white pepper
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions

  • Prepare one recipe of Carnivore Cornbread.
  • Optional, but helpful for a better texture: Freeze the bread overnight or longer, wrapped in plastic wrap or zipper bags, then allow to thaw before continuing.
  • Heat oven to 300 °F
  • Cut Carnbread into 1-inch cubes, and toss in a large bowl with all other ingredients.
  • Spread the cubes in a single layer onto two (or more) baking sheets
  • Bake in the oven until they are crunchy and turn golden brown.
  • Stir occasionally, and taste-test to see if they're as done as you like.
  • Now you have croutons! Stop here if you just want to snack on some croutons, or eat them with egg drop soup or something.
  • To make the dressing, mix the now-crispy croutons with two cups of warm poultry stock.

Stuffing (or dressing, I guess, since I never put it inside the bird) is my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal. It was, anyway, before I figured out what all that delicious food was doing to my body. Good news, carnivores: we don’t have to miss out on the stuffing experience! This stuff is so close to bread stuffing that I think I could have served it without explanation on Thanksgiving and nobody would have figured out that it’s not made of bread. They wouldn’t have thought it was normal bread, to be sure. The texture isn’t exactly right, so maybe they’d have guessed it was one of those Ezekiel breads or gluten-free breads.

As with any carnivore recipe, you can and should leave out any and all spices that you don’t eat. On special occasions, I go ahead and use the spices I normally skip. I served this dish right alongside my bread stuffing. Guess which one people preferred? This dressing is really good! I don’t know if I would actually put it inside a turkey and bake it. That would probably be soggy and eggy-tasting. Let me know if you decide to try it. I’m not that brave.

Carnivore Cornbread

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AKA Carnbread

Recipe first. We’ll talk later.

Print Recipe

Carnivore Cornbread

A fairly bready substitute for cornbread
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time40 minutes
Servings: 10

Equipment

  • 2 loaf pans
  • 1 blender

Ingredients

  • butter, bacon grease, or lard for greasing pans
  • 3 12.5 oz cans canned, cooked chicken, well-drained Sub your own pre-cooked chicken if you like.
  • 14 large eggs
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp salt I use Redmond's Real salt. If you use regular table salt, you may want to halve the amount.
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1/2 tsp crushed dried rosemary (Optional, helps with the eggy flavor)
  • or 2 Tbsp Lakanto monkfruit or other keto-friendly sweetener (Optional, for a sweet version. Omit rosemary if choosing this option.)

Instructions

  • Heat oven to 350°F.
  • Grease the two loaf pans. If the pans are cast iron, put them into the pre-heating oven to warm up.
  • Blend the drained chicken and eggs in a blender until thoroughly mixed.
  • Divide the batter into the loaf pans.
  • Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the "bread" has completely set.
  • Turn out immediately onto a cooling rack to cool.

I don’t do a lot of food substitutes. If I can’t eat a thing, I don’t often try to make something similar to fill that niche in my diet. However, there are occasions–Thanksgiving, Christmas, days-ending-in-y-when-I’m-tired-of-the-same-old-same-old–when a little bready substance seems like it would hit the spot. This recipe evolved from several carnivore recipes I’ve found online that weren’t big enough–or tasty enough, frankly–to feed my large family. I used this recipe recently to make croutons which then became a carnivore “stuffing” to go with our Thanksgiving turkey. The recipe for that is coming soon. Everybody said that my version was just as good as the gluten-free bread version I made for the normal people, and it disappeared just as fast, so I guess they were telling the truth!

A word of warning for the unwary: a slice of real bread has nothing like the nutrient profile of a slice of this fake bread bread simulation. So when you’re eating carnbread (as I just decided to rename it), it is not going to serve the same function as cornbread. You’ll fill up very quickly on this loaf. I ate a few slices last night as my main course, simply buttered and dipped in a delicious meat stock. It was a very satisfying meal.

I’ve poured the batter into individual-size casserole dishes that made loaves just the right size for a hamburger bun, and that works beautifully for a cookout where you’d like to be able to eat a sandwich just like everybody else. Goes great with my homemade clean mayo. You might not be able to eat the whole sandwich, though. It is a lot of food.

You could also use a couple of well-greased muffin tins to make cornbread muffins. Just watch the cooking times as you change the shape and size.

I haven’t actually tried sweetening the bread for a dessert-like treat yet, but I have it in my head to do a maple and vanilla flavored one sometime. Since it doesn’t taste very chickeny, but is a little eggy, I think it will be pretty tasty. I’ll report back on that if I ever do it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Let me know via Gab, MeWe, or SG if you try it. Or if you refuse to try it. Whatever, just come talk to me!

 

 

 

What I Eat in a Day

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A carnivore diet is the easiest thing in the world to plan, but some people still have trouble envisioning what their plates should look like without a side of taters and a dessert. Probably the hardest thing to get used to is thinking of meat (and eggs and dairy, if you add those) as a whole meal all by itself.

I hope you’ll see that my food is not completely boring, that I don’t have to be perfect to get great results, and above all, that it is OK to pile your plate right up to the heavens if that’s how much food you need today. It’s also OK to skip a meal you don’t feel you need it. I’m not suggesting that everyone should eat the same amount or things that I do. This is just meant to give ideas to those who maybe have none. If you’re more interested in keto than carnivore, just imagine a few asparagus on the side of my plates. Sometimes–very occasionally–I even put a few of those on my plate. It’s a way of eating, not a religion.

Anyway, here’s what I ate Saturday, September 3 (yes, this was a month ago. I’m a little behind on everything rn):

First meal: Ground beef “salad”. Cold, leftover plain ground beef, smoked salt, cubed butter, and cubed feta goat cheese. Not pictured are the two slices of bacon I ate before I thought to write this post. This was about 1/2 a pound of meat, I reckon, and an ounce each of butter and cheese. I don’t always eat breakfast, but it’s usually something left over from a previous meal if I do.

Lunch: steak and deviled eggs (there’s a little pickle in the eggs):

Snack, cute little caterpillar. I did not eat the leaf:

I’m kidding, of course. I do not eat bugs, but I suppose that would still be carnivore.

And finally, a small snack in the afternoon after a late workout, cottage cheese with a few cherries, which are not meat. I cannot resist cherries or pears when they are perfect and in-season. That only happens for about 2 weeks every summer, so this is a self-limiting indulgence. They taste just awful the rest of the year.:

I’m sure there are carnivores who would light their hair on fire and read me out of the tribe for that last meal. It’s got fructose! But I’m metabolically quite healthy, and not addicted to sweets in a way that will make me spiral out-of-control just because I had a bite. I’d worked out pretty hard in the afternoon and wanted to close my eating window by four o’clock, and this is the food that presented itself.

You may recall from earlier posts that I do have some problems with dairy. It does cause some inflammation and anxiety, so I limit it. But I also find that including dairy helps me build muscle in a way that meat and eggs don’t seem to do. Dairy is designed to make things grow, after all. It’s a trade-off I’m sometimes willing to make for a few weeks of body-building, but not permanently. At the first sign of an auto-immune flare-up, the dairy is out again. HS is not something I like to fool around with. I’d probably be better off in some ways if I never did that, but after a lot of experimentation, I think I’ve found an acceptable amount of dairy that works for my goals.

So that was a fairly normal day last month. The cherries are an outlier, but I wouldn’t want to lie ye. I’ll try to remember to do a few more of these so the curious can see what other days look like, and hopefully be inspired to make healthier choices for themselves. Any carnivores in the house? What are you having today?

Some Food Discoveries

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Happy food, sad food.

We had a birthday in the family last week, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a piece of my Cake Simulator, this time as a spice cake with peach butter cream frosting (recipes to follow shortly). I veered off my happy carnivore trail for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure it tastes good, because I haven’t had this version of the Simulation.

Secondly, I accidently bought another round of Nutrisense CGM monitoring, so I had a chance to make absolutely sure this cake doesn’t spike the glucose. I did it for you. I did it for science. I did it because I’m an idiot. Don’t forget to pause your subscription, guys. It auto-renews. Since I didn’t get to do any experimenting at all during the weeks I was intending to, due to an illness, I’m not terribly sorry I have another month to play around with my sugars, though I can’t say I feel good about the expense.

And thirdly, I wanted to see if the oxalate content of tiger-nut flour is enough to trigger my bladder problems. I hadn’t had any in a while, so I couldn’t remember if that was an effect I thought I’d observed or not.

Well, the results are in.

Taste: The thing you’re most concerned with, I’m sure, since that was what I was most concerned with, is how does it taste? I’m pleased to report that it was very, very tasty. A little bit of a bitterness in the mouth afterwards due to the stevia, but while eating it, it’s the best thing ever. Just don’t drink coffee with it, because it increases that aftertaste to a disgusting degree. I can’t understand how anybody “sweetens” coffee with stevia. Blech.

Glucose acceptability:

The farthest red dot to the left is the point at which I ate the cake. I’d been fasting until that point. You can see no spike from this, so I’m pretty confident in saying you can probably have at least one (1/16 of the cake) serving without losing your keto badge for the day. The little “spike” after it was exercise-induced. Your mileage may vary, of course. I’ve seen my glucose spike from “low-carb” foods that didn’t affect Get Along Husband in the slightest, so you want to do your own testing to be sure.

And thirdly, the oxalates. Because I have a lot of scar-tissue around my bladder after all the c-sections (I think this is why, anyway), foods high in oxalate cause me to have a hard time emptying my bladder, usually first thing in the morning. I can’t drink teas or eat spinach (like anybody would want to eat spinach anyway), and many other things cause these problems. And, sadly, tiger-nut flour must have enough oxalate to trigger this dysfunction for me. I was very uncomfortable when I woke up this morning, and took a few hours to finally be back to normal. If you have oxalate troubles, skip this food.

Better be laying in them beans and rice, ammiright? Besides the cake discovery, I’ve also found a very unexpected problem for my children. Over the last few years, I’ve heavily restricted grains and seeds from my children’s diets. We will very occasionally allow organic corn products. I believe grains are detrimental when taken with any regularity. But, because prepping has been on my mind, and rice is shelf-stable for a long time, I thought I’d try re-introducing some rice to my children’s diets, to see if they tolerate it. They enjoyed it, to be sure. Very tasty stuff.

But there was a detriment. Three times I gave them rice, each time a couple of weeks to a month apart. Three times, two of my smaller children got nosebleeds that same night. Nosebleeds? Rice?

So I guess we’ll be relying on some other starchy food for calories in the event we can’t get enough animal-based foods.

One final discovery that I’m sure you’ll be interested in:

Berries are keto food, right? And apple sauce is a no-no, right? Isn’t that what the gurus all say? Well, here you go:

There are a couple of things going on here that confounded this result that you ought to be aware of before you just write off blueberries forever and start eating apple sauce. First of all, obviously, apple sauce is not conducive to ketosis. But it is a 7 on the nutrisense scale, which is better than the blueberries’ 4. These were not particularly sweet blueberries, either. Some of them were still faintly green, and I didn’t enjoy them very much. I hadn’t fasted for very long before either of these tests, but I did throw some protein in with the apple sauce, and I’m sure that blunted the spike quite a bit. I’d have probably gotten closer to the blueberries’ score without the meat sticks. (I love Nick’s Sticks, btw. Not an affiliate link. Just wanted to share.)

The point is, blueberries might not be a great keto food after all. Of course, if you’re not primarily a fat-burner for the last several years, you’re likely going to have different results. Better or worse, I cannot say.

Again, test for yourself. You can get $25 off your first month by using my referral link. I’m not giving you any medical advice, ever. I’m just showing you what happens to a 5-year keto/carnivore when she does this stuff. I’ll have a bunch of exercise-related graphs to show you soon. I may even try a few more plant foods, but the longer I’m carnivore, the less I really care to even find out. I might not bother.

And now, I have a date with my butcher to pick up another whole beef. I can’t believe how much meat these children go through, and if there are going to be food shortages, rice is clearly not an option.

Can I feed this rice to the chickens? Will they explode?

Want to discuss? Meet me on MeWe, Gab, or SG.