Monday, November 15, 2021

carnivore: the path forward

I am thoroughly impressed with the results of last week's dive into the carnivore diet. Three kilos lost in six days? That's nothing to sneeze at; it's about a pound a day. (Granted, I gained some weight back thanks to yesterday's cheat day, which involved a pizza, but I'll be behaving myself for two weeks until Thanksgiving.) During the week, I consciously avoided counting or tracking total calories, but I did enter all my food, as usual, into my MyFitnessPal app, and I did watch my macros (i.e., carbs, fat, protein); I didn't restrict myself from eating at any time of day, i.e., I sometimes ate at night; I also allowed myself to indulge in diet drinks like Coke Zero, and I started drinking Kanu/Maxwell coffee, which starts off black and unsweetened, but to which I add heavy cream (which is keto) and sucralose (Splenda). Despite these indulgences, plus a bit of cheese here and there and a handful or two of nuts when I was going crazy from eating nothing but meat, I still lost all that weight.

This makes me think that I may have finally found my metabolic sweet spot, and carnivore defines the way forward for me. As I said before, I'll do carnivore Monday through Saturday but eat regular keto on Sunday so I can have some veggies. If I want to eat, for example, my sugar-free chocolate pudding (which nevertheless has some carbs), I'll do it only on a keto day or a cheat day. Sugar-free fruit Jell-O is another matter: I'm not going to go hog-wild with it, but I'll permit myself to eat Jell-O on carnivore days because it has zero grams of carbs. Also, I'm no longer all that worried about the cephalic reaction: if I can lose six kilos a week despite the diet soda and artificially sweetened coffee, then I ought to be fine.

This week, I'm going to fast on Tuesday and Thursday to see how that affects matters. If I lose another six kilos, then I'll finally be in the 90-some-kilo range, and if I continue carnivore through the end of December, there's a chance I might hit a flat 90 kg before 2022. I ate a plateful of smoked duck for lunch today, so I'm off to a good start (actually, see below).

Everybody is metabolically different. I'm wired in such a way that my body takes advantage of every little scrap of sugar you give it, so cutting myself off almost totally from sugar is my only way forward. Carnivore allows me to do that without feeling hungry all the time because I can eat as much meat as I want. Maybe I was a lion or a tiger in a previous life. Whatever the case may be, carnivore and I appear to be made for each other, so I'm sticking with this regime. Vegans, you have been warned.

ADDENDUM: to my shock, I discovered that smoked duck is apparently very carby. Today's complement, after I ate 400 grams of duck, was 32 grams of carbs. I'll have to remember that: go easy on the duck because it's not like bacon.



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