Another failed Carnivore Attempt

[Sol^Sa]

Wanted to share my experience. Have tried to go carnivore again, did it for 3 weeks. First two weeks were alright energy wise. No more cracking joints like last time because I drank as much as I wanted, last time I restricted according to AVs suggestion. Like during the last failed attempt I developed some kind of "brown" plaque on my teeth, even on just fruits my teeth don't look so "stained" like on meat only, hmm. Disgusting taste in the mouth especially at night or after waking up. Terrible, very strong odour from the mouth or rather stomach/intestines. Reduced saliva, as I said my saliva/mouth tasted disgusting and it was kinda viscous. During week three additionally weakness, blurry vision?, terrible brain fog, constipation too. I repeat 3 weeks on meat and water only, some salt to taste not a single carb or even egg. I just have a lot of different guesses no definite answer. I had to stop it, blurry vision was a new one what the hell. Even though I had some liver. Currently doing better on grass-fed raw milk plus fruits. Most symptoms are disappearing. Especially the foul breath and brown plaque on teeth, disgusting saliva.

[sabertooth]

It can be problematic to entirely shift microbial and metabolic system cold turkey. I shifted into low carb and then into very low carb over a much longer period of time.

If you were carb tolerant before and consuming foods such as dairy then such a drastic change can put the body into shock. Dairy especially can be highly addictive, and it can take over three weeks to completely ride the gut from the effects of milk proteins and sugars.

[TylerDurden]

Here is my own experience:- after being raw-omnivore raw, palaeolithic for   5 years or so, I tried 3 100% raw animal food  diet experiments(in my case, of course, minus raw dairy products, plus raw organ-meats and high-meats). I would never last more than 5-6 weeks. For the 1st 2 weeks, I would experience a heightened state of mental alertness, well, compared to before. But, within a week of the RZC experiment, I would soon end up with poor stamina with lifting weights/anaerobic  activity. After c. 2 weeks on RZC, I would start getting severe mental fog, poor concentration, massive hunger-pangs which never disappeared no matter how much raw animal food I ate, my teeth, after being strong for years(post-RPD diet-start) started rapidly loosening, and so on and on. I would feel so ill, that,  between weeks 3 and 6, I would quit and switch back to raw, omnivorous raw, palaeolithic diet. Given that I had the same sort of mysterious hunger-pangs while on raw vegan./fruitarian/sproutarian diets, I knew my body was missing raw plant foods, so this was a natural choice. However, switching back, as opposed to switching to RZC diets, caused a lot of problems with my digestion, presumably because my gut bacteria were not of the right variety. It took some weeks for the gut bacteria to change over until my digestion was OK.

My points:-

1)the Inuit have very large livers, designed to process/properly digest all the vast amount of animal protein in their diet. Most of the rest of Mankind do not. This explains why so many RVAFers do not do well, long-term, on RZC diets.

2) I may have made some mistakes when trying RZC. I took care to ensure that I ate a very high percentage of raw animal fat as my diet BUT I think I ate too much in general, thus ingesting too much excess protein.So, I would assume that any RZCer needs to eat much less food, overall. With all that raw animal fat in the diet, anyway, it is likely not necessary to eat so much.

3) After cutting out all raw dairy from my RVAF diet, early on in the diet,  it took c.4 months for significant health-gains to occur. I did notice a tiny boost to my health on every single day of those 4 months, though, thank God, which helped me continue the diet.

[Sol^Sa]

@Sabertooth

Are you sure that this metabolic system-shifting is that hard? Some people go even cooked keto and in a week or so are "adapted". If I had to guess what my problem is, I would say it is micro-nutrient deficiency. And I think meat, especially muscle meat is not that high in some of those nutrients. Especially if the animal had a deficient diet, pasture. For example my blurry vision disappeared literally after 1-2 days on an omnivorous diet.

@TylerDurden
Is it possible that the Inuit simply had all the micro-nutrients-stores to adequately process all those foods? I mean they have been eating back then wild sea mammals since birth without any pollution. Certain chemicals, minerals in our current environment compete with other nutrients in our body be it chlorine, high calcium water supply just to name some. Certain minerals/micros are needed to process the macros if these external modern factors deplete these nutrients in the body you might not be able to eat like the Inuit? That's my current reason why I want to avoid salt again, not because it is a "rock" which is a stupid argument imo. If you think about it that way Aajonus Vonderplanitz's recommendations could make some sense.
Also I find it funny how vets and pet owners know/care more about their animals nutrition/health than their own. Vets here also use less aggressive medicine, more herbal stuff. I bet there is some kind of organic dog food out there that is more nutritious than what the average person eats on his standard diet.

Edit: I currently eat for example local grass-fed raw milk smoothies with local organic bee pollen for the micronutrients, actually beebread might be even better. Since I can't buy a whole high quality animal. Raw milk, fertile eggs and stuff like beepollen are the closest I can get to complete nutrition.

[TylerDurden]

Seems unlikely. The larger liver is a more plausible hypothesis. What I mean is that plenty of non-Inuit have tried a RZC Inuit-like diet and not succeeded long-term. I am sure that their gut bacteria was of the right variety by the time they started having long-term issues(many having them only after 2-3 years or so). Other than the right gut bacteria and a larger liver, I cannot think of anything else that could enhance the digestion/absorption of a RZC diet, per se. Well, unless much larger intake of vitamin B12 or whatever is required to do RZC long-term without issues?

[sabertooth]

Yeah I haven't been able to to make my diet feel optimal without doing the whole animal approach...and will go so far as to say that without a regular supply of fresh raw blood marrow, guts and organs, I wouldn't be able to make this diet work. I still also use a little coconut butter every day, and believe the medium chain fatty acids and small amount of carbs and fiber do help in some way.

Also going into the diet I had liver issues where my liver would be congested and hurt. Even eating small amounts of protein or carbs would spike my blood sugar....so perhaps my liver and metabolic system were in such a unusual state that switching over to high fat and protein works for me in a way that it wouldn't work for others?

[Sol^Sa]

@TylerDurden

I agree with you that a lot of people most likely will do not so good on a "meat-only" diet especially musclemeat. I have tried it quite often now with varying meats (likes fish) mainly muscle and little organs and I always did even worse than on regular keto, I was "ketogenic" for one and a half years before going more primal my style with raw milk being my main source of nutrition that was last year and I felt very good. I haven't seen any plausible evidence for the large-liver-adaptation or any adaptation of the inuits so I think there might be other factors at play but you could also be right.

Yeah I haven't been able to to make my diet feel optimal without doing the whole animal approach...and will go so far as to say that without a regular supply of fresh raw blood marrow, guts and organs, I wouldn't be able to make this diet work. I still also use a little coconut butter every day, and believe the medium chain fatty acids and small amount of carbs and fiber do help in some way.

Also going into the diet I had liver issues where my liver would be congested and hurt. Even eating small amounts of protein or carbs would spike my blood sugar....so perhaps my liver and metabolic system were in such a unusual state that switching over to high fat and protein works for me in a way that it wouldn't work for others?

I had liver pain too, am not too sure though might be the stomach too somewhere around that area though. From my experience and observing people close to me who are diabetic/obese I would say diabetes is mainly a nutrient/mineral deficiency. Also other people I know who have fatty-liver but less or no problems with blood-sugar have usually good mineral stores even though obese.

I think eating the whole animal makes the diet so much more nutritious especially if high quality animal. Also most carnivores do eat/consume/use more things than just musclemeat and tapwater. There is afaik. no animal/carnivore out there that just eats random-meat and drinks (tap-)water. We are often ignorant about details which could make a significant difference. For me personally, currently just random-meat and water is not an effective healing diet and I wouldn't recommend it. It might "work" for others but people often get used to a certain state which they then conclude is normal or feel a little better and think they are healthy.

[Mucklor]

Yeah I haven't been able to to make my diet feel optimal without doing the whole animal approach...and will go so far as to say that without a regular supply of fresh raw blood marrow, guts and organs, I wouldn't be able to make this diet work.

My diet is mostly meat and liver with some vegetables, and eventually I ran out of liver, leaving me with only muscle meat for about 2 weeks. After about one week I felt super tired and had kinda puffy eyes. That went away pretty much immediately after getting liver back in (only 30-50 g per day). Don’t know why so many carnivore advocates think that muscle meat alone is sufficient, when it’s obviously nutritionally inadequate.