First off you are an inspiration to us all! I am hoping I will heal myself the way you have on the RPD. I've been eating raw for a few months really solid. I've seen many benefits. But I always intended to try RZC. I started RZC two days ago. I feel OK. Energy down a little.
I’m always amused when someone does something for a few days and then says their energy is down or up or whatever. My energy follows my mood. If I’m bored my energy is down, if I’m excited, my energy is up. Energy is almost always due to my mental state and has little or nothing to do with what I just ate – unless I hated the food and then we're back to a mental condition.
I think organs will be important on RZC but I find them mostly unpalatable. I ate 1/3 pound of raw beef kidney yesterday and I couldn't stomach more than a few bites today.
I don’t care much for organ meats plain either. I expect that if that was all there was to eat I’d soon learn to love them, but I’m spoiled and choose to camouflage my organ meats behind some plain ground muscle meat. I still get some flavor of the organ meats but I’m never faced with a lump of something that makes me want to gag.
I put in an order to slankers of mostly pet food to get the nutrients from organs in a hopefully more acceptable form (taste wise).
In the beginning I tried eating slankers pet food plain but that was too much for me to handle so I started mixing it with muscle meat. First I mixed 6 to 1, then 4 to 1 and now somewhere between 2 and 3 to 1. I now find plain ground meat has no flavor and is very boring so I’ve come to enjoy the flavor of the organ meats, but I still prefer them well diluted.
I was wondering are you still eating the slankers pet food?
Yes, I still eat slanker pet food but they now have a “Primal Ground Meat” mix that has some organ meats added and it has been properly inspected and sold for human consumption. I may give this a try and see how I like it on my next order.
If so what is your current mix? And how much do you eat?
I use a 2 or 3 to 1 mix as explained above(the larger number being plain ground meat), but I also add enough fat (either fresh or rendered) to bring the fat content up to about 70% of calories from fat. I eat between 1 ½ and 2 lbs a day on most days. Some days a little less, and if I’m working hard maybe half again more. Remember, I’m 60 and my energy needs are small in comparison to someone, say in their 20s or 30s. Someone who is very active and in their 20s may need double what I eat. I remember reading the Journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was a real revelation to find that the crew members that were rowing the boat upstream often ate 9 lbs of fresh meat per day.
How long did it take you to like the taste?
On some things I still don’t like the taste or the consistency, and I imagine that has a lot to do with how I was brought up. It took a couple of years before I actually preferred the taste of my organ mix to plain ground meat. I still don’t like the pet food plain. I much prefer it diluted with some muscle meat.
I do what I have to do to be able to stick to this way of eating. If I were forced to eat raw kidneys, liver, spleen or tripe by themselves, I’d be eating Big Macs today as I just wouldn’t have been able to stick with it. Nothing is more difficult than going well out of your way to eat something you intensely dislike every day when there is such wonderful and tasty junk food more easily available.
There is no perfect diet, or if there is, no one knows what it is. There is also no magic in Zero Carb. I'm not even convinced that light cooking is all that bad. I choose to eat raw on principal rather than on any hard evidence that all cooking is bad. No other animal cooks its food so I decided there was no reason that the human animal needed to cook its food. People eat cooked food all the time and live well into their 90s - often in relatively good health. I'm more convinced that there are foods we should avoid that we never evolved to eat and this is more important to me than the cooking vs raw debate, or the full zero carb debate. To me it is much better to eat lightly cooked meat rather than raw grains.
I do believe that there are better choices when it comes to our health than today’s SAD or especially junk food. If you eat mostly red meat and fat, even if it is lightly cooked, and maybe a small green salad and/or a small serving of fruit each day, and cut out the beans, grains, dairy, and refined carbs you’d probably get 95% of the benefit of what I’m doing and maybe even 100%. One thing’s for sure, you’d be way ahead of the folks eating Big Macs, Fries, and guzzling soft drinks by the gallon.
What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to be a zealot when it comes to your diet. You'll benefit much if you just stop eating manufactured foods and foods that humans are not designed to eat at all. Unless you are suffering from some major disease, I doubt that lightly cooking the good foods you do eat would be much of a problem. You'll also find it much easier to get along socially which can be very important if you are young.
What I did when I first went paleo (the lightly cooked version) 7 or 8 years ago, I just told people that I was diabetic and allergic to grains and dairy and so my diet was pretty much limited to meat, green vegetables, and some fruit. Rather than get funny looks, everyone sympathized and went out of their way to accomodate my unfortunate health conditions.
Had I told them that grains and dairy were evil and that I must eat only raw meat, the respone would be that I'm a total nut case (which is probably true, but I'm a nice nut). Yes, I did choose raw ZC but then I did that because I had severe health conditions that drove me to give this a try. To be honest, I have no idea if raw ZC has had any significant benefit over what I would have gotten had I just stuck to my orginial lightly cooked paleo version. I do know that I got some improvement, but it was very minor and it might have been just time that did the trick and not the conversion to Raw ZC. I only stick with it because it has been fairly successful for me and now I find it simple and convenient. Also, at my age I don't have to fit in socially, though when on the rare occasions I must eat at someone else's house, I eat small amounts of whatever they serve (even if it is pasta) and never complain or lecture them.
Hope this helps, and sorry I didn't answer sooner. I've been so busy with other things in my life that I just forgot to check my journal. For me diet is about feeling good enough to do the things I want to do, not obsessing over things that probably don't matter anyway.
Lex
