I am with you and I´d like to share my experience after being on the carnivore since July.
I eat cooked lamb shanks, beef ribs in water and lately chicken drum sticks and chicken legs. Lamb and beef I soak in salt water for a couple of hours to get the minerals out of the bones (dunno if that works but I don´t want to use any plant substances such as vinegar or lemon juice) and boil them for 3-4 hours in water. Then I eat the whole meat broth with no added spices whatsoever, only the already added salt. Chicken I put in the oven for 1-2 hours on 180 degrees celcius to make them soft. I eat that with salt and sometimes commercial mustard. I found these 3 meats to be the best for me. Turkey would be better in terms of fat content but the feed is worse so I stay with chicken. Pork, even though soaked in vinegar or salt to remove the lectins causes issues. Fish my body doesn´t crave. I sometimes do eat beef tartare with beef, egg yolk and salt. With every meal I eat I have a lot of raw goat cheese and raw milk, either goat or sheep.
In the 4 months I eat carnivore I had around 5 cheat meals which consisted of button mushrooms, veggies in sauces such as garlic, onion, potatoes and some herbs and once I had ice cream. I do drink green tea daily and sometimes have raw greek honey, but I´m still uncertain regarding that. My blood pressure is very good. Blood test pending.
There is something else that I would suggest doing if you want to know the conditions of your organs. Follow the instructions of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyTgkGPNxks when you will do the excercises at the end (circling the area), lying on your belly, you will feel a sensation at the organs that are in trouble. Sensation meaning when you touch them you get very sensitive and you might need to stop. That can be around the kindeys, bowels, liver, gallbladder or solar plexus. I find this excercise to be very precise and very effective. First time I did it I had an enormous emotional reaction. So the less you feel there the better off your organs are, at least in my experience and opinion.
I don´t eat plant foods after carnivore, I do experiment with alcohols such as red wine, sherry, fernet branca, swedish bitters and other alcohols to increase my HCI, but so far I don´t think any of those really works except red wine. As far as I know alcohol increases HCI and it always works for me. I tried for the 3rd time to have HCI tablets but it makes me fell ill in the stomach and blocks digestion so I stopped. I remember AV saying that HCI supplements arent´t good. He might have been right here. In one of his interviews he noted:
https://soundcloud.com/oneradionetwork/062311_vonderplanitz_aajonus_primal_diet_one"HCI supplement is bad as its not complete, and it can inhibit certain bacteria to digest food and not assimilate it properly. So u may have poorly digested proteins."
I tried HCI supplements with different intervals. Before food, with food, 15 min after food, 30 min after food and 45 min after food. All failed. Therefore I still believe that the best way to heal the body is by NOT taking any helpers whatsoever. The body is supposed to learn to digest the foods you eat, especially if you have eaten plant based before. Even if HCI is supposed to help. I used to eat a LOT of plant based foods which brought me into this low HCI mess, now I don´t eat any and I think that´s the best way to go to naturally increase it, which after carnivore it did. I do however think that herbs and mushrooms are in a differnt category, and by now I strongly believe that these can heal rather than harm. I still need to do more research about that, especially about mushrooms which are fascinating, since they are in the same category as humans and meats.
But when summarizing these 4 months of carnivore I can say that this is the best way of eating I ever did. Out of my personal experience I would recommend not to eat any plant based foods, and I think you would heal much faster. Doing zero carb might be even better, but that would mean no dairy and no eggs, for sure not honey or bee pollen. Only meat, water and salt. But that is too hardcore for me and I think that some people might need these carbs. So if I were you surfsteve, I´d try going full carnivore, with no plant based foods whatsoever, and see how it goes. And when it comes to body odor I wouldn´t worry. Since eating carnivore I have zero smell, zero farts and by now I sweat less (you will sweat more in the beginning). One thing you might realize though, you will need to drink a lot more water, unless you eat plenty of raw meats and drink a lot of raw dairy.
