What if anything, might I be lacking, on a carnivore diet?

[surfsteve]

Seems to me like it would be better to treat them like sprouts for 48 hours, only soaking them for half a day and then rinsing them every 12 hours. To be honest they tasted better the first hour of soaking and now I can taste the rancidity. Oh well. If I throw them away, I throw them away!

[van]

I think the idea is that heating them, to what temp?, dries them out, so that they crack easier..   But the biggest problem is that once cracked, especially walnuts, they go rancid.    This is nut season, so one can go online and buy them in shell in bulk.   I did that when eating nuts..  Huge difference when soaking for two days, rinsing often. 

[thehadezb]

What are you trying to eat nuts? Most nuts are seasonal and if you are planning to eat some its better to eat just a few handfuls during a short period of time.

There is always a possibility to obtain animal fats. Butter, suet, marrow, muscle fat, egg yolks, pork fat, etc. I don't suggest any vegetable oil or fat for nutritional reasons because they are poorly absorbed and can cause GI issues.

I recommend you to maintain your potassium and magnesium supplements. The reason is that in the past animals where more active and vigorous, so their muscles needed more potassium to maintain their level of activity. In that case human beings were able to obtain their needed amount of potassium too. The same thing is with soil and water.

Best potassium supplement is potassium citrate powder. Best magnesium supplement is magnesium malate, not powder. potassium citrate is the natural form of potassium in nature. Magnesium malate is easily absorbed by the body. We need potassium to produce the right amount of acid in our stomachs.

You don't need organ meats too often. Just do a refeed every month or so. Liver is enough. But you need omega-3. Grass-fed fat has it, but also so eat fish or brain just to avoid deficiency.

[surfsteve]

Van: It sounds like you don't eat nuts anymore. May I ask why? I soaked mine till I went to bed. Then I rinsed them in a colander and left them there. This morning I transferred them to a tupper dish and put them in the refrigerator. They taste fine this way and I think I will try rinsing them like sprouts every twelve hours in the colander for an additional day or two with some fresh whole nuts next time but I don't want to press my luck with these broken pieces.

To thehadezb: I totally agree with you on needing additional magnesium and potassium. The salt I soaked my nuts in and use on everything else is actually not salt at all but rather 3 parts Celtic sea salt, 2 parts potassium chloride and 1 part magnesium gluconate.

For some reason the nuts taste like they've been cooked. I think this is because the soaking process has removed all the toxins present in raw nuts, similar to the way cooking does. Only difference I hope, is that none of the other detriments associated with cooking have been affected. In fact the vitamin and nutritional content has probably been improved similar to sprouting.

For some reason the rancid taste is now gone. Could be that I just don't notice it or maybe (unlikely) it has been rinsed away or consumed by other microbes?

I like the idea of treating nuts as if they were sprouts. I can taste that they've also absorbed some of the minerals I soaked them in. If I were sprouting I would be trying that with my sprouts. I wonder how much salt mixture I could soak them in and still get them to grow?

These nuts really hit the spot. I'd probably get sick of the if I had to eat them every day but I think I'll keep them in my diet for now. Funny. I never cared for raw nuts before I tried soaking them. I always considered cooked nuts to be junk food. Not much better than potato chips! I think this is a step in the right direction.

I also think that I am going to eat whatever I want as long as it's healthy; but only as much as I want. I'm no longer going to force myself to eat something I don't want just because it's good for me! Looking back that is probably a sign of my body telling me to cool it! 

So here I am on a carnivore based diet of 50 to 75% organ meats: Bending all the rules! Supplementing with sea salt, potassium and magnesium. Eating as many vegetables as I want; along with soaked nuts and a little fruit, the kind that stimulates the production of bile. I'm also eating no more than a can of beets per day and drinking the juice from the can because it tastes good. I'm sure it would be better to cook fresh beets but I've grown lazy since I stopped cooking and it's so easy to just open a pop top and start eating them and they only cost 50 cents a can. If I had to cook them I'd probably just eat something else. I also drink a little cinnamon tea and no more than one cup of black coffee a day. You can nit pick me because most of the meat I eat comes out of a blender; but I think I'm following my instincts. I feel vibrant, healthy, happy and look many decades younger than my actual age. If I knew how to do better with the resources available I would; but I'm doing the best that I can!

[van]

simply experimenting with pure carnivore. My desire taste wise stopped also. Yes, where the broken edges are, that's where the highest concentration of rancidity is.

[surfsteve]

I didn't know you were also  still experimenting with carnivore. How do you like it? How long has it been? Do you feel like you are lacking anything?

If I had to sum up where I'm at it's: treat meat as food and vegetables as medicine. Not sure where nuts are yet; whether they should be eaten liberally as food or sparingly as medicine...

[van]

Been pretty close to Carnivore for some years.  but now, maybe nine months.  Too early to really tell.  Playing with ketone levels, amounts of food eaten, meal timing, meal frequency, organs, need for minerals if at all, types of water to drink..   One has to find their own way, it's so easy to hear of someone doing amazingly well and think, That's it!    Ask me a year or two.   

[surfsteve]

Do you do any intermittent fasting? Being near carnivore has curbed my hunger and I naturally want to only eat once or twice a day. Although the first few days I was ravenous wanting to eat everything in sight it quickly subsided.

I ate an entire pound of soaked nuts yesterday. This morning I had a mild back ache in the kidney area like I used to do normally that quickly went away within a few minutes after I peed. I had zero back pain for the past few days prior eating mostly organ meats.

All I have left is some slivered almonds that I soaked yesterday. They are nasty. Will throw them away once I buy some fresh nuts. Nuts are extremely affordable costing just a tad more than conventional meat per pound but after they are soaked they nearly double in weight. Once I started eating them yesterday I was really craving them. Probably the most nuts I ever ate in my entire life. I can't wait to buy some fresh ones. Got a feeling that I will get tired of them and only eat them occasionally in the future. Time will tell. Thanks Tyler for suggesting them! I had no idea they would taste so good. Much, much better than conventional nuts.

I also ate a lot of wheatgrass juice powder yesterday. I got near the end of a bag and instead of using a spoon I just dumped it in. Oops! Could also be the reason I had a kidney back ache this morning. I also noticed a diminished strength at the gym yesterday. Not sure why. Could be totally unrelated. Wheatgrass juice normally gives me an increase in strength. I feel strong this morning so if anything it was probably all the nuts I ate. My body definitely isn't used to them. My gut definitely appreciates the fiber though!

[thehadezb]

Have you think about trying coconut? I've seen that is one of the less problematic vegetable fat. I mean whole coconut, not oil. You can juice it if the fiber is being problematic. It also can be sprouted.
I'm still saying that is better to source animal fats.

[van]

you can shred whole coconut and suck the juice out.  A fair bit of carbs though.  And by extracting the juice with your mouth it's interesting to see how quickly one's taste for it diminishes,,, as opposed to juicing it and throwing it down the hatch.

[surfsteve]

I feel regular from the fiber in the nuts but I've definitely noticed a decrease in strength lately and feel it's due to them. I also started getting a cold and have been taking lots of monolaurin which seems to have kept it from manifesting. I felt better on a meat only diet with wheatgrass juice. I noticed since I been eating lots of nuts I haven't wanted organ meats nearly as much.

My pain in my heel and tight hamstrings went away. I don't know if it's from adding potassium and magnesium or maybe the fact that I got some athletic supports in my shoes. Could even be coincidence. One thing that seems to be consistent is mostly organ meats with a little wheatgrass juice seems to do me right. I think adding potassium and magnesium to my salt is also good and using plenty of it on my meats, though I don't care for it on raw meat; only when I slightly cook it. Will probably use up all the nuts I bought and stop taking them. Also nix the canned beets and go back to a carnivore, mostly organ meats, supplementing with wheatgrass juice diet. I think I only perhaps need a miner tweak to that diet and feel like I've instead taken a sledgehammer to it!

[norawnofun]

Nuts can be very different. If I were you I would try pecan and macadamia instead of any other nuts. When I did my research about nuts I found that these 2 seemed to be the best. Pecan is moderate in phytic acid but high in fats, in this study it also had the lowest amount of fungal presence https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4444134/ Macadamia is very low in phytic (you should only soak them for very short time like 2 hours not to spoil the oils), low in PUFA and very high in fats, plus macadamia has omega 7. Both seem to be good for the brain, and have a good nutritional profile. When you look at almonds the world´s main place of production is california in the states. I once saw a video how they treat that huge piece of land where they grow their almonds. They pesticide the shit out of it, killing the bees along the way. Watch the documentary "More than honey", it´s VERY interesting and mainly about bees, but they also show how the almond production works. So you will understand that you should buy them organic only. Furthermore both macadamia and pecans are very soft, when you grind them the oils come out nicely, so due to that softness I found they were easier to digest than other nuts on low HCI in my glorious plant based days... and you could try chestnuts or tigernuts as well, the latter is a tuber and high in minerals, the first is high in carbs but can aid digestion a lot.

[surfsteve]

I been mainly doing walnuts and pecans. I think I like them soaked longer, like a day or two. Turns them dark brown and gives them a good flavor. I ordered some organic sproutable almonds. The ones from the grocery store wouldn't sprout. Soaking them didn't make them taste good at all. They should arrive tomorrow. Enjoying a beef heart smoothie while writing this. Just finished a liver one before.

The six organ meats I eat are

liver
thymus
balls
tripe
heart
and
kidney.

My least favorite is kidney. I just started eating kidney and heart again. Heart is really a muscle meat and I like the taste of steak and hamburger better but I think it's a lot more nutritious. Has ten times the coQ10 whatever that does. I used to make heart jerky but I don't think it's as healthy that way so I stopped eating it.

[norawnofun]

Im 4 months into a cooked/raw carnivore now and some days ago I did a blood test. Total cholesterol was a bit higher, HDL was way above the norm and LDL slightly higher, but it seems thats not bad. I found this video specifically interesting regarding LDL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj7ldyKQnRA&fbclid=IwAR2rfjL3gX8zsfeIx-q-3FCZpdkA9kQnPe_4_gx4h7tKtQXyE4wGvapuLRg. One blood marker went up a bit but that might have other reasons. So it all looks good it seems, considering I don´t touch fruits nor veggies, except maybe 5 cheat meals consisting of potatoes and some other things which are in sauces. My main food now is beef and chicken, previously lamb as soft as possible. For some reason I am put off by fish. Since I am doing well, except digestion takes energy as I think I lack the probiotics, I don´t think I am lacking anything on carnivore. After all its the best diet of all the ones I tried. I do sometimes think of other foods, but greens are definetely not one of them. I don´t want to mess up things again. It´s incredible what this diet, even the cooked meat version, did to my low HCI. Before I had huge problems digesting meat, now my HCI went way up. You might try having no veggies, nor juices at all. Pure animal products. Your HCI might then get back to normal without your HCI tablets.

[surfsteve]

I've got a whole bunch of nuts I've been soaking and I'm debating on whether to eat them or just throw them away and go back to strict carnivore ASAP. I feel very similar to the way I did when I was eating lots of vegetables and sprouts. Only fish I regularly eat is salmon. Low mood, low attitude and a slight cold that would be a lot worse if I weren't supplementing with monolaurin.

I like canned sardines and herring if I'm going to cheat or some pickled herring that has sugar in it once in a while.

As soon as I get back to my regular diet I am going to make micro changes only to it. Perhaps add back lemons. Or maybe supplement with minerals and play around with some herbs I used to take in the form of tea or  used to add to my smoothies.

[surfsteve]

One thing I've noticed going back to 99% carnivore is that I make ten times less shit. It seems like this is not enough to account for the vegetable matter alone and that the nuts and vegetables were not only passing through undigested but that they were possibly preventing the meat I was consuming from being digested as well. I've also noticed that I have a much better mood and feel better physically too.

The main thing I'm concerned about is my body handling all the uric acid it produces from all the organ meats I eat. One solution would be to eat less f them, especially the ones like thymus sweetbreads that are known for producing uric acid but sweetbreads also contain a ton of vitamins like vitamin C. I've started eating more heart which resembles muscle meat more than it does organ meat, so that will help.

I've always believed that vegetables helped get rid of the toxins that were in meat but I been watching a lot of videos suggesting this may be the other way around and that it is the vegetables that contain toxins in an attempt to keep them from being eaten. Looking back I suspect that the phytic acid, even though it was reduced by soaking nuts, may have been preventing me from absorbing all the nutrients in the food I had been eating with them.

As far as lacking anything I'm not convinced that a carnivore diet is lacking in vitamins, I've seen a lot of videos that suggest that the vitamins not listed in the nutritional profiles is often not because they are not in there but because they are not tested for, but it is probably lacking in minerals. I like salt and I love the idea of adding extra minerals like magnesium and potassium to it. When you think about it these are salts anyway. Yesterday I tried sipping a cup of "salt water tea" in hopes that it would curb my craving for cooked meats. For some reason I only like cooked meats salted and do not care for salt in my raw meat smoothies. I also think it might be a good idea to lightly salt the water I drink during work outs. Salt is the original electrolyte. Perhaps I should be taking advantage of that. Us people that work out also sweat out a lot more minerals than the average person so if anything, by eating only meat I'm probably lacking in minerals and electrolytes. Though the same could be said about a plant based diet as well. I imagine that when early man lived by the sea he got plenty of minerals but as he moved further and further away he got less and less of them.   

So. Could a carnivore diet be lacking in electrolytes? I imagine vitamins too if you are eating only muscle meats.

[surfsteve]

One thing that concerns me about consuming so many organ meats is all the warnings about gout.

Looking back I think that my heel and hamstring pain were more likely caused by too little potassium and magnesium than anything gout related such as too many organ meats. Gout is usually a severe pain and mine was only a slight annoyance. It also could have been caused by not wearing the athletic shoe inserts that I usually wore and weren't wearing at the time. I'm going to continue my insanely high consumption of organ meats with caution. I feel their benefit outweighs the risk. If anything I had drastically cut down my consumption of magnesium and potassium by going raw and not eating cooked foods and the salts I normally consume with them. The depression and lack of energy I experienced from eating more nuts and vegetables was far worse than the minor cramps I had while on a mostly organ meat, carnivore diet. Going to see how I feel increasing my salt and mineral content and see if it does the trick on a carnivore diet while continuing to cut out all other supplements...

Wish me luck!

[norawnofun]

Preventing the meat to be digested is the key word I think. That is one of the reasons why I wanted to give the carnivore diet a try. In my own experience alkaline veggies and acidic meats do not go together well in one meal, provided you have digestion problems. I used to eat like that and I could never properly digest my meats, and I used to drink a lot of freshly squeezed vegetable juice aside of that. When eating way too many plant foods my stomach acid became so weak that the only way out of that was to eat strictly carnivore to get back what the plant foods took away.

I am regularly on the world carnivore tribe fb forum and all the time the questions you have pop up there. Which are lack of Vitamin C, Magnesium deficiency, Electrolytes and Salt intake on a carnivore diet. When you go through the articles and opinions readers post there, it is concluded that the Body does not need much Vitamin C on the Carnivore diet, since the whole metabolism chances. There are quite some people that take magnesium and electrolytes as supplements, and the general consent is that salt is vital if you eat cooked foods, otherwise things like cramps (as you mentioned) and heart palpitations can occcur. And most of the people there eat cooked, there are some raw carnivores as well but it generally seems that you need more salt if you eat cooked meats. I mean there are people there which eat strictly cooked beef, salt and water. Nothing else, and they healed all their health issues. I think the microbiome is changed in such a way that it can heal whatever made you sick, but the only downside is that whenever these people do cheat, the consequences can be very heavy.

I eat plenty of Salt, drink big amounts of raw dairy, quite a lot of water since I cook my meats, have mainly beef, so I don´t think I´m lacking any of the things above, the only thing that I am almost certain by now is that I am lacking certain bacteria to digest the food. I lost too many for various reasons, so that´s why I am currently experimenting with probiotics supplements and prebiotics such as inulin. The more dairy, honey and fats (in form of lard which has no lectins) I eat the more energy I have, the better digestion works, the better sleep I have and the faster I gain weight. If I don´t eat any raw dairy I can´t digest anything. Bacteria is everything. If you don´t have them get them back in there. Focus on the gut first, that´s at least my opinion after all I read and experienced.

[surfsteve]

Yes. I think the nuts and vegetables I was eating were preventing me from absorbing the nutrients in meat.

I just got through watching a video that said vegans have significantly smaller brains. The study was done in modern times but the video also noted that modern man's brain size is also a lot smaller than early humans dating all the way back to Neanderthals. Since the advent of modern agriculture our brains have been shrinking! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCZ9z0xLBE

My high consumption of organ meats gives me plenty of vitamin C. Just a little over half a pound of sweetbreads provides 100% of the RDV, more than any other cut of meat, and since I consume them raw I get 100% of that, not 50% which is what is left after cooking. Still concerned that I'm not getting enough magnesium or potassium on such a diet. Yesterday I supplemented heavy with salt electrolytes, putting them in my drinking water. For some reason I slept 12 hours. Extremely long! Could it be the magnesium? Also skipped going to the gym. Didn't feel like working out. Woke up feeling good though. No back pain in the kidney area like I've been having lately. My current theory is that it was lack of minerals, especially magnesium and potassium that's been causing my ankle and leg cramps and that it has nothing to do with the purines from eating too many organ meats so I'm going to try going with that theory and see how it pans out. I've also read that eating organ meats can put stress on the kidneys but my experience tells me the opposite is true and it seems the more organ meats I eat the better my back seems to feel. Who do you believe?

[norawnofun]

I am pretty sure the magnesium helped you sleep. I know that some people take mag sprays in order to calm down during the night and have a restful sleep. You can also apply that spray topically for any muscle cramps, spasms and what not. And the indication for your cramps is very common when you lack these minerals. 12 hours seems a lot, last time i slept that long is when i got totally smashed Also goat milk seems to help when it comes to back pain. But I guess dairy is out for you. I don´t have much experience with organ meats, except bad ones. Digestion was a disaster when I ate sweetbreads and liver, raw and cooked. I am certain it´s because of the connective tissue. It was too hard for my low HCI to break that tissue down. So I stay away from organ meats. High liver might work though, in one of sv3rige´s videos I saw it became very creamy.

[surfsteve]

I agree that the magnesium probably helped me sleep better but I wonder if instead of adding more if the idea of cutting out salt instead would eliminate the need for it. I imagine it's more complicated then that. Hmm I wonder if topical magnesium like you suggest would do the trick. I've also hear vitamin D can be applied that way.

Been doing good on strictly carnivore. Gave up coffee and adding any salt to my food since mentioning it a few days ago and it's been pretty easy so far though it hasn't been that long.

Was craving a cooked steak or maybe a can of sardines this morning but after I had my first raw organ meat smoothie, which was liver, the craving was gone. I had a few other kinds of organ meat smoothies after that and I feel like they made the craving for something cooked worse.

The day of my last post I had a night time craving for something cooked and gave in with cheese and pepperoni.  The next morning, (yesterday) my back hurt. Several hours before the cheese and pepperoni I ate a can of sardines which seemed to set off even worse cravings. When I awoke Yesterday my leg cramps were back. I ate no cooked food what so ever yesterday and experimented supplementing with magnesium and potassium before bed time. It got rid of the cramps but I felt kind of sick to my stomach afterward. I felt great this morning except for the cravings for cooked food I had. I wonder if maybe the supplements I took had anything to do with them but I suspect it was more to do with the cooked food I had the day before yesterday.

It almost seems like the more I give into cravings, the stronger the cravings get.

[Grey-Cup]

Surfsteve I seem to have high uric acid levels and related symptoms, I was eating a fair bit of thymus and pancreases before last test, these have highest level of purines. What are your levels like?

[surfsteve]

I've moved past nuts, both raw and soaked. They do not seem to agree with me on a diet of optimal health. I've been eating at least 95% carnivore with 50% of that being raw organ meat, 25% grass fed or wild caught. My only concern is the 25% rib eye and New York steaks, cooked blue, often still cold in the middle, that I buy for way less than grass fed hamburger or lamb burger. The other day a store had grass fed lamb chops for 5$ a pound. I bought all they had. Went back the next day for more to fill up my freezer only to find out it was a one day sale. Had I known I'd have gotten a rain check!

I been feeling fantastic. Not only working out to the max but working like crazy at my job and knock on wood, still holding everything together!

Almost forgot. Been ditching olive oil and coconut oil for butter. Can't afford grass fed. Why I had been using virgin olive and coconut oils in the past...

[surfsteve]

I'm still undecided.  Which do you guys think is better? Regular butter or the olive and coconut oils? Sorry the fat from nuts didn't work out. I just didn't feel right on them...

[thehadezb]

I told you nuts are not good fat sources and that coconut would be best if you will otherwise consume nuts.
Regular butter, olive oil and coconut oil are not optimal but if I would have to chose one I'll go for extra virgin coconut oil.
Olive oil is not optimal for regular consumption and regular butter is probably full of toxins and anti-nutrients for the feed and other bullshit that is given to the cows.