Lex's Journal

[Hanna]

I’ve had great success eating raw red meat and fat as my primary food and all the research that I’ve been able to find seems to point to this being our paleo ancestor’s primary dietary protocol for several hundreds of thousands of years

To which research do you refer? Didn´t (and don´t) the hunters and gatherers eat mainly plant food, including roots, tubers etc.?

[miles]

banana/kumquat

<lol'd

[Cinna]

I’ve found my greatest challenge is to unlearn all the garbage that I was taught and try to rediscover what it means to be human.

I, too, Lex. Thank you!

[a87.pal]

Hi Lex,

After reading more of your posts, I am taking to your philosophy (at least how I read it) on eating to be active, and not spending all of one's time thinking and planning/preparing a "perfect" diet. So I can understand why use tallow and frozen meat and occasionally the microwave.

Realizing this, I am a bit curious why you would spend extra time to mix in slankers ground beef into the pet food. Adding in the ground beef seems to be unnecessary when you have access to tallow, unless you are trying to reduce the percentage of organs in your diet.

If you are trying to reduce this percentage, I am curious to know how you decided on the particular ratios.

[lex_rooker]

After reading more of your posts, I am taking to your philosophy (at least how I read it) on eating to be active, and not spending all of one's time thinking and planning/preparing a "perfect" diet.

Bravo!  Living rich full and interesting lives is what it’s all about.  Eating is just a small but necessary part of this.  Think of your life as a journey.  Like taking a journey in your car, you must stop occasionally for fuel, but fuel stops are not the point of the trip.  So many of us become so obsessed with fueling the vehicle that we totally miss the joys of the journey.

Realizing this, I am a bit curious why you would spend extra time to mix in slankers ground beef into the pet food. Adding in the ground beef seems to be unnecessary when you have access to tallow, unless you are trying to reduce the percentage of organs in your diet. If you are trying to reduce this percentage, I am curious to know how you decided on the particular ratios.

Unlike many on this forum, I don’t believe that our diet consisted of just organ meats and that we killed animals to eat the liver and let everything else rot.  Makes no sense.  Way too much effort expended for the small gain.  I pretty much believe that like the pig processor, we ate everything but the squeal.

I started mixing the pet food into the ground muscle meat because the taste of the pet food was more than I could tolerate at the time.  Now I enjoy it but still feel that we should eat a wide variety of animal parts rather in the proportions that they exist in the animal.  I have no idea if this is right or wrong, good or bad, but mixing the pet food with plain ground meat and then adding more fat has worked so well over the last 5 years or so that I have no inclination to change.

I spend very little time preparing my meals.  Once every 2 weeks I thaw enough ground meat and pet food to last 2 weeks or so and once mixed I repackage into single servings (one serving per day) in very cheap ZipLoc sandwich bags.  This whole process takes about 1 hour.  I then refreeze and pull out one package each day to thaw for my afternoon meal.  When it’s time to eat I add in extra fat depending on how I feel that day.  One day I may raise the fat content to 60% of calories, another day I’ll make it 85% of calories – or anywhere in between.  It all depends on what I’m doing, and how much fat I’m craving.  If I’m working in the garden taking out overgrown plants with a pick and shovel, I’ll want far more fat than if I spend the day lying on the couch reading a book.  My daily meal prep takes about 10 min and then I spend about 20 min. eating.

Counting my initial prep time, daily prep time, and the time to eat the meals, I spend maybe a maximum of 35 - 40 min a day fussing with food.  

Lex

[ThatWasJustYourLife84]

Gluconeogenesis only occurs in two instances:
1) when reducing carbs all the while keeping protein high enough (and not eating enough dietary fat) such that cells in the body can still get all the glucose they need from dietary protein. The body will never break down bodily protein in such a situation. If insufficient dietary protein is eaten for glucose needs, then ketones begin to form. 
2) in starvation, when body fat reserves are used up and protein needs to be broken down to provide glucose to critical systems allowing us to stay alive for somewhat longer.

Since you are in ketosis, I believe that BG increase is due to glycerol conversion to glucose. You do not have sufficient protein to provide glucose. BG rises for several hours after your meal because of glucose needs, perhaps increased after a meal so more glycerol is converted to glucose. That's all. 

This is flat out incorrect, and I'm living proof.

At 250 grams of fat daily, and about 80-85 grams of protein my glucose levels rose too high, and fell way too low at 5 hours post-prandial just like it used to on a high carb diet.

Just not quite as dramatically.

I'm experimenting with the same level of protein and a lower level of fat ironically. I'm theorizing that I was actually eating too much fat, but have no way to qualify that. Not sure what too much fat would do.

I do know that I've gained quite a bit of weight eating the 250 grams of fat and 80-85g of protein, which completely annihilates the theory that you can eat as much fat as you want on a low/zero carb diet as well.

[PaleoPhil]

Unlike many on this forum, I don’t believe that our diet consisted of just organ meats and that we killed animals to eat the liver and let everything else rot. .....

Who believes that? This is the first I've heard of someone advocating a liver-only or organ-only or even organ-and-fat-only diet. I get the feeling that you didn't write quite what you meant. Otherwise I'm puzzled.

[lex_rooker]

Who believes that? This is the first I've heard of someone advocating a liver-only or organ-only or even organ-and-fat-only diet. I get the feeling that you didn't write quite what you meant. Otherwise I'm puzzled.

More people than you might think believe this.  It's been discussed on this forum several times in the past.  One of the main tenants of the believers is that we depleted the large game population because we would bring down large animals just to get the organs and leave the rest of the animal to the scavengers.  This meant that early humans were killing numbers of animals far in excess of other carnivores as we were only consuming select parts of each animal rather than the whole.

I've never believed this but others insist that there is incontrovertible evidence of it.  To me it makes no sense that we would spend hours/days/weeks on bringing down an animal only to rob a few select parts and let the rest of our hard work be consumed by the buzzards.  Besides, just look around you, humans will eat anything…..

Lex

[klowcarb]

I'm with Lex. Everytime I mention ZC on any other forum, all I hear is that ZC can only be healthy if "you eat tons of organ meat." I enjoy gizzards and hearts but HATE liver. I do eat a lot of eggs. But I mostly eat grassfed muscle meat and eggs and butter, and I've never been more energetic and had the best body composition in my life. Would that be a sign of illness? When I look at my Fitday micronutrients, I hit just about everything, including Vitamin A, copper, iron, etc. without organs. I suspect that hunter-gatherers ate them because they didn't waste food in general, not that they had special properties.

[Sully]

More people than you might think believe this.  It's been discussed on this forum several times in the past.  One of the main tenants of the believers is that we depleted the large game population because we would bring down large animals just to get the organs and leave the rest of the animal to the scavengers.  This meant that early humans were killing numbers of animals far in excess of other carnivores as we were only consuming select parts of each animal rather than the whole.

I've never believed this but others insist that there is incontrovertible evidence of it.  To me it makes no sense that we would spend hours/days/weeks on bringing down an animal only to rob a few select parts and let the rest of our hard work be consumed by the buzzards.  Besides, just look around you, humans will eat anything…..

Lex

I would guess they ate everything pretty much. Unless it was toxic like polar bear liver. They prob ate some prized organs first fresh, but most of their protein likely came from muscle meat. Followed by organs.
I can eat muscle meat everyday to my fill with fat, can't do that with organs like heart and liver on a daily basis. They taste good, but my body has a very very clear STOP signal.

As far as hunting making mammoths extinct.
Climate might have made it hard for woolly mammoths. Why aren't elephants extinct in Africa too then? I am guessing because climate didn't change as much near the equator.

Interesting topic.

[Viola]

Sully!
 You are very athletic, you're agile like a monkey 

[yuli]

I can eat muscle meat everyday to my fill with fat, can't do that with organs like heart and liver on a daily basis. They taste good, but my body has a very very clear STOP signal.

I feel similar, raw liver to me is like the cake of meats (by the way I never liked cooked liver yuk)...when I eat the raw liver there is a point where I get almost drunk/high off of it and thats my stop signal. However when I don't have my liver when I want some I am grumpy-wumpy!

klowcarb - have you tried raw liver as a pose to cooked (they are like night and day)? I have to say though raw liver is VERY sweet to me (sweeter then some fruits I eat) so if you are 100% ZC perhaps thats why you don't like it...your tastebuds have completely unlearned the tolerance for any sweet taste (not that its bad just saying   )
 

[PaleoPhil]

More people than you might think believe this.  It's been discussed on this forum several times in the past.  One of the main tenants of the believers is that we depleted the large game population because we would bring down large animals just to get the organs and leave the rest of the animal to the scavengers.  This meant that early humans were killing numbers of animals far in excess of other carnivores as we were only consuming select parts of each animal rather than the whole.

I've never believed this but others insist that there is incontrovertible evidence of it.  To me it makes no sense that we would spend hours/days/weeks on bringing down an animal only to rob a few select parts and let the rest of our hard work be consumed by the buzzards.  Besides, just look around you, humans will eat anything…..

I wasn't aware that any took that view to quite that extreme of arguing that Stone Agers and/or proto-humans ate just the organs, but I'll take your word for it, as you have been a credible source. I think my uneducated guess lies in-between that view and yours. I think that humans may have preferentially selected both fats and organs, like wolves and some other carnivores, at least during the time of megafauna plenty and competitor scarcity known as the Carnivore Guild--though the extent of this practice may have varied between Neanderthals and H. sapiens and between different H. sapien groups. It's merely speculation on my part--I do not consider any of the hypotheses re: animal extinction or past diets to have incontrovertible evidence--based in part on the fact that even today hunter gatherers all around the world apparently prefer fat and organs to lean meats and multiple Paleo and ZC dieters (though certainly not all) have reported coming to like fat and organs more (as well as lighter-cooked meats), the more they eat flesh. As always, I'm open to all credible evidence from any angle on the subject.

I see these scientific controversies as more questions than answers, fun puzzles to try to solve, rather than platforms to build debating artillery upon. One question that occurs to me is whether, like wolves, the prime hunter-warriors of Stone Age societies got first dibs on a carcass and selected the fat and organs, and whether they had the most mates and thus the most offspring, and whether this could have influenced genetic and epigenetic human preference for these parts at all.

[Sully]

@ Viola, thanks

Should this be created into a new topic?
Perhaps we can call it "organs or muscle"

[klowcarb]

Yuli, the only way I ever ate liver was to cut up raw beef liver into tiny slivers and soak in lemon juice and bolt. So unenjoyable to me. Eggs have tons of Vitamin A, and that was the only reason I was incorporating liver at all.

[lex_rooker]

Sully!
 You are very athletic, you're agile like a monkey 

Ah to be young.  Enjoy it while you can Sully.  I assure you that things will start to sag a bit by the time you are 60 - an age which doesn't even exist for you yet.  The sad part is, that though you can't yet comprehend 60, (no one in their 20's can), when you get there, the best you will be able to do is fondly remember what it was to be 20.

Lex

[Sully]

Ah to be young.  Enjoy it while you can Sully.  I assure you that things will start to sag a bit by the time you are 60 - an age which doesn't even exist for you yet.  The sad part is, that though you can't yet comprehend 60, (no one in their 20's can), when you get there, the best you will be able to do is fondly remember what it was to be 20.

Lex

The journey of life... With age comes wisdom and understanding, even though the body isn't once what it was.
 age 47 Randy Couture A better fighter now than when he was 20.
http://mmajunkie.com/dyn/images/fighters/randy-couture-12.jpg

You can still grow and learn even at the ripest of ages

[lex_rooker]

The journey of life... With age comes wisdom and understanding, even though the body isn't once what it was.
 age 47 Randy Couture A better fighter now than when he was 20.
http://mmajunkie.com/dyn/images/fighters/randy-couture-12.jpg

You can still grow and learn even at the ripest of ages

Sully, you never cease to amaze me - wise beyond your years.....

Lex

[Sully]

Sully, you never cease to amaze me - wise beyond your years.....

Lex

Thanks, but I am lucky, very lucky. I could have been a different person than I am today. Amazing how things can turn out.

Edit: I am excited about the years to come. Many good things will happen. I can just feel it.

[klowcarb]

I assure you that things will start to sag a bit by the time you are 60 - an age which doesn't even exist for you yet.  The sad part is, that though you can't yet comprehend 60, (no one in their 20's can), when you get there, the best you will be able to do is fondly remember what it was to be 20.

Most of our experience of aging comes from viewing SAD eaters. I cannot imagine someone who is raw paleo or raw/raw ZC, eating not junk foods and doing strength-training (not endless cardio) will really deteriorate excepting injury.

[lex_rooker]

Most of our experience of aging comes from viewing SAD eaters. I cannot imagine someone who is raw paleo or raw/raw ZC, eating not junk foods and doing strength-training (not endless cardio) will really deteriorate excepting injury.

Hmmm, did you ever look around you.  There is no lifeform that doesn't deteriorate with age.  With the billions and billions of people that have inhabited this planet over the eons, all of them eating different and varied diets of every description, not one has escaped the slow inexorable deterioration of age.  However, I suppose that no one has eaten exactly the same way as you and you may indeed have hit the sweet spot and will never age. But, based on my real world experience, I'll be placing my bets to the contrary.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

I started mixing the pet food into the ground muscle meat because the taste of the pet food was more than I could tolerate at the time.  Now I enjoy it but still feel that we should eat a wide variety of animal parts rather in the proportions that they exist in the animal.  I have no idea if this is right or wrong, good or bad, but mixing the pet food with plain ground meat and then adding more fat has worked so well over the last 5 years or so that I have no inclination to change. ....

I follow you on the organs, Lex, but regarding fat, don't you eat a higher proportion of fat than that found in the whole carcass of a land mammal, perhaps even a mammoth? Do you view fats as an exception to your whole-carcass-proportions rule?

[lex_rooker]

I follow you on the organs, Lex, but regarding fat, don't you eat a higher proportion of fat than that found in the whole carcass of a land mammal, perhaps even a mammoth? Do you view fats as an exception to your whole-carcass-proportions rule?

Not at all.  I consider being able to consistently eat 80% of calories from fat as a pure luxury which might only have been available to our paleo ancestors in the late summer or early fall when the animals were fattened for the coming winter.  My own guess is that we probably do fine on 50% of calories from fat and maybe even 40%.  I know several weight lifters that are at the 50% level and have been so for many months and they are doing just fine.

50% of calories from fat represents ground meat with fat at 9.5% by weight
40% of calories from fat represents ground meat with fat at 7% by weight

Rabbits (from whence the term rabbit starvation comes) can have fat less than 4% in the winter months which is getting total calories from fat down in the 20% range.

From my perspective, I live like a king, eating rich foods all year ‘round.  This too, may have its problems as our fat and calorie intake would certainly be cyclical in a natural environment.  It could well be that the human animal does best when fat and calories vary by the seasons.  Maybe we need a bit of calorie deprivation (starvation?) in the late winter to clean things up so to speak. 

Lex

[Josh]

If they were scavengers as well as hunters and food was abundant, then could they not have eaten whatever they wanted by moving on to another carcass?

Not that I'm saying they could always get what they wanted, but the idea of using the whole carcass implies scarcity. Do you think the winters were a problem?

[PaleoPhil]

Not at all.  I consider being able to consistently eat 80% of calories from fat as a pure luxury which might only have been available to our paleo ancestors in the late summer or early fall when the animals were fattened for the coming winter.  My own guess is that we probably do fine on 50% of calories from fat and maybe even 40%.  I know several weight lifters that are at the 50% level and have been so for many months and they are doing just fine.

Lex, what are you including in your assumption that 40-50% calories as fat might be fine in the way of rough proportions of proteins and/or carbs (recognizing that you aren't claiming one specific ideal ratio)?

Yes Josh, thanks for the reminder re: scavenging. Adding scavenging to hunting raises the overall fat proportion of the diet, because sometimes the carcasses would have been defleshed but still provided brains and marrow.

Bearslayer reported an interesting experiment at the Dirty Carnivore forum http://forum.dirtycarnivore.com/index.php/topic,823.msg34910.html#msg34910 where he ate nothing but rabbit, including the organs and brain (kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, blood, tongue, eyes and brain), and didn't develop rabbit starvation, though he did lose body fat, so it's possible he could have developed rabbit starvation if he kept at it.

Fitday shows that even a domestically raised cottontail rabbit has a very low fat, high protein profile:
  
Calories      
584
      
Fat  
11.8 g
      
Protein  
111.5 g

He wrote: "it seems that rabbit provides about 75-80% calories from protein and 20-25% from fat. And we don't know if organs are calculated in or not. I suspect not."

And at the end of the experiment he wrote: "I officially ended my rabbit starvation experiment.  I decided not to kill any more rabbits and keep the rest of them for breeding. This experiment certainly brought a different light in my understanding of zero carb diet.
 
I have lost 7 lb in 8 days. Current weight 172.2 lb

My body fat dropped from 12.5% to 9.2% (from 7.5 mm to 4 mm). If I was 1 year younger the same measurement would mean 8.1%, if I was 10 years younger it would be 6%, so who knows..

My lean body mass stayed the same 156 (approx.) lb and my total BF mass went from 22.38 lb to 15.82 lb. It appears that all of the lost weight was body fat. I feel it and I see it. My definition is sharper and my lower abs are finally coming out. My jeans are looser, my stomach feels tighter.

I felt low on energy only first 2-3 days. I was hungrier during experiment. I ate 2.51 lb of cooked rabbit meat per day on average. According to http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/lamb-veal-and-game-products/4647/2 that equals to 2,245 calories, 61% of which are protein calories and 39% are fat calories (approximately). My daily protein consumption was about 340g. I did not notice any muscle gain or loss. I drank water and coffee, no cream or half-half. My activity level was low to moderate. I did not note any discomfort or any negative symptoms. I believe that body utilized its own fat reserves along with dietary protein whenever dietary fat is not available in needed amounts to cover its energy needs. I am certain that at some point the body would stop burning its fat reserves and it would use dietary protein only for as long as there is enough of it supplied. To confirm that, I would have to continue until this happens. I liked the diet and I did not have cravings for fat. I did not note any other pros or cons. I believe I could continue for much longer would I had enough rabbits. I wanted to eat skinless home raised chicken for a few days but wasting its skin just isn’t me. I also killed a goat but its meat turned out to be very fat and cannot be compared with lean rabbit meat . I plan on stocking the rabbits for a few months to generate enough supply to repeat rabbit-only diet for 3-4 weeks.  

Based on what I have observed on my very own body I believe that by lowering dietary fat I proactively lower my own body fat. Individual results may obviously vary. At this point I am not sure if I want to believe in rabbit starvation. Longer experiment would tell. But for now, let the summer begin."