the gripe I have with NG on this is that, although on PD it is possible to maintain a low protein level while maintaining total energy needs through pure animal fats, marrow, or possibly high fat raw dairy, these things are fairly absent from her diet of high vegetation, cooked muscle meat and limited amounts of pasteurized dairy. In a nutshell, I tried to work this out with someone on another board, and its physically impossible to eat a diet within her parameters at such low protein that is NOT severely calorie restricted. As additional nuts/eggs or any other non-pure fat source garner more protein, so I have a hard time taking such low protein recommendations/ceiling from her.

Nice post - it'd be nice if you started a journal so we could track your progress easier. Also, Yuri has recently had some success with butter as it seems to be one of the easier fats to digest and could be a good choice for those with impaired digestion.

I just noticed something about all the younger guys that I talked about earlier in the thread that have problems with VLC/ZC. They all had severe deficiencies with HCL.

What more symptoms does excess blood protein give ? Does it make one sensitive to heat or more anxious ? Increased heart rate ?

One point, just as an exercise in creating even more bizarre possibilities, that I'd like to mention is that by eating lots of fat you could actually be getting your body to run even more exclusively on carbs. This sounds counterintuitive and I can easily argue against it, but the glyceride molecule in all of the fats that you are eating can be easily converted to carbs and a wide number of sources put this at around 10% of each fat molecule. This would not add up to all that much even if you are eating 300+ grams of fats a day but I think its worth mentioning. If you really want to send your body into ketosis then you should no doubt get there by completely fasting for a week.

But, of more importance, and you ignored this question before, is..

Why not buy strips to measure ketone levels?

You are spending all this money on excess calorie consumption why not spend $10 to measure ketones that could give you some valuable information.

I wouldn't ever depend on commercial tallow as an energy source. It's possible you could have much more success with raw animal fats or at the very least homemade tallow where you can minimize damage to the fat.
I run counter to this argument. 28 year-old male with, I'd estimate, roughly 8% bodyfat (eyeballing based on where I was at 4% a couple years ago). I'm also moderately to highly active depending on the time of the year. All I eat most days is ~1/2 pound of grass-finished fat a day as well as 1-2 pounds of grass-finished beef chuck. I have maintained a plateau around 170 pounds without muscle mass loss.
I do drink at least a half gallon of water a day, sometimes as much as a gallon, and add a tiny bit of aqueous electrolytes to the water. I upped my water intake a couple months ago and definitely noticed a beneficial effect, most noticeably the disappearance of my hypostatic orthotension.

Personally, I've experimented with different combinations of meat, fat and organs, missing days of animal protein altogether, and time and time again, I had the dark shadows and edema of kidney stress (as well as very yellow bubble factory).

KD, I hope I didn't try and sound like I knew exactly what your bubbles meant. I was speculating and have seen some sites associate bubbles in urine with excess nitrogen or even protein (less likely), so I was merely giving you an idea of what might be happening. It might be something completely different.

I don't think protein in excess would necessarily cause low energy by itself and do not consider this as one of the main reasons why I feel so tired. Protein is slowly converted to glucose (slow enough where insulin can work without overworking the cells of the metabolically challenged) and so people with bad glucose tolerance should easily be able to handle the glucose load. ZC'ers are have extremely stable blood sugar and probably show the best hunger control out of any diet group there is.

I think the problem with low energy has to do with assimilating nutrients properly. One can be very tolerant to glucose, but at the same time have a malfunctioning liver/gall bladder/leaky-gut that is constantly disturbing the body. This is the best idea I can come up with right now that explains my symptoms. I don't think glucose is a problem for me and I might tolerate I high cooked starch diet much better than the one I'm on right now.

Can you give me an idea of how you are testing for this or where your sources are coming from?

My energy is pretty crappy, and I also have extremely bubbly urine, but energy wise it isn't worse off than it was prior to VLC so I'm assuming their are other underlying issues. In my history I've probably not done more than 1 lb of meat with some eggs in the last 2 years, prior to that having no animal protein for more than 3. I've been assuming I AM in ketosis (and that in itself being a possible cause of fatigue, in general or due to any specific issues I have), because if I was just burning small amounts of glucose, I would think my energy would be even worse than when I tried going back on carbs and meats. Is it possible the bubbly urine is something else?