Wolf's Journal

[miles]

Eat cheap-cuts of quality raw grain-finished beef, and get your fat from the same place?

[klowcarb]

You need to stick up for yourself or move out. My body comes first and yours should as well. I would eat a ton of grainfed beef raw with some grassfed Kerrygold--better than eating watermelon and sprouts.

[Wolf]

corn-fed at least tastes better than regular grain-fed.. I think I can get some decent corn-fed beef for somewhat cheap, and also the grass-fed ground beef isn't that bad of price, but last time I ate commercial raw grain-fed beef, it started to taste nasty after a few minutes once it started to turn a little brown.  Cooking it also makes it taste disgusting.  As far as fat, I haven't found anyplace that just has straight fat, but I'll have to ask around a bit more.  Even commercial grain-fed fat should taste good to me as long as I can warm it up a bit, although I'm not to sure about how healthy it might be for me, pumped full of grains and hormones.

And sticking up for myself doesn't work if the people think I am insane or will cause myself to become seriously ill or possibly die by eating raw meat.  And if I can't even afford to buy my own food, what makes you people think I can afford to move out?

[RawZi]

I would eat a ton of grainfed beef raw with some grassfed Kerrygold--better than eating watermelon and sprouts.

    You're lucky you can go for the Kerrygold.  That's pasteurized by me.  I'd have to go for the watermelon for my calories and hydration

    Yeah, a lean cut of wrongly fed beef shouldn't do you harm.  It isn't as nutritious.  Do your best.

    If you go early in the mornings to your local butcher, he might give you grass fed fat trimmings maybe even free.

[miles]

Much of the commercial mince in this country at least is laced with chemicals. Preservatives, or the stuff used to clean the mincer I don't know, but it is terrible. Maybe that was the problem with your commercial grain-fed beef, if it was mince. This stuff is only on mince though...

No raw beef would taste horrible though, no matter what it's fed, if it is just beef and no chemicals(like in some mince) and it is fresh or aged properly. There would be a different taste, but if it would actually taste horrible, then there was something else wrong with it. Raw grain-fed, corn-fed, grain-finished beef  and grass-finished would all taste nice, just different, and of course the grass-finished should be the best for you, and will probably taste the best too. But if the meat has been looked after properly, they will all taste nice, just in varying degrees... Best place for low-cost and well looked after meats would be a supermarket that has a butcher in store. Then you get it freshly cut there, there is a fast-turnover so the meat is fresher, the prices are good. I don't know if you get that in the USA though.

There are some other good suggestions here too though. Make your base first. Make sure you can always get all the meat you need, then whilst you're comfortably getting your meat that you can afford, try to get free or cheap fat(if you desire it).. trimmings or whatever. Once you are comfortable that you can always get your meat, and your fat, you can then work to improve. e.g. to get a higher proportion of grass-finished meat and fat from animals. Only if you're comfortably getting your meat/fat(fat from animal), then you can add some things which are not important, like your raw dairy, or fruits... But they are not important, so only even think about them once you are comfortable in getting the important stuff. Also you can add in organs at the same time as you are trying to increase proportion of grass-finished, as you may waste your money which you need for your staples (meat/fat) if you don't eat them all.

[KD]

here is my sincerest opinions:

People are totally right in their suggestions about more independence and other things, but of course, they don't understand your situation because they are not you.

If I was in your shoes (and I have been) I would.

1.) Scale back on your dietary goals. You clearly don't have all the tools and resources at your disposal to make this thing work 100% for you right now, so instead of any periodic compromises and thoughts of total failure or binging I would just lower the bar from the get go. right now its like instead of taking a plate out of the cupboard, you are taking out like 10 plates and balancing them on all your appendages. i.e. try to keep the variables down and move forward consistently and comfortably always knowing what at least the next week or so entails without questioning.

2.) Have a conversation with your dad about diet and how you believe it will help your issues. Don't cite anything about raw specifically or any other thing you think won't go over well on the first go round.

3.) Volunteer to take over all the shopping which will save him time and you will have at least slightly more to budget towards food. If he buys alot of prepared foods (cut fruits seem like a poor buy) volunteer to make healthy meals. meats, salads, vegetables etc... buy simple things like breads pastas as compliments (for him) etc..if you don't want to make other complicated things. Make it clear that you want to eat a non grain diet etc... but you'd like to both start eating better while staying within that budget by cutting down on some of the other crap you used to eat. All else fails bring home pizza.

4.) Scaling back on your ideal, and the above will already work towards this, but sooner or later if you don't do this and still choose to eat all raw, you are going to have to tell dad. the eating in your room/hiding shit will sooner or later raise a huge suspicion of an eating disorder, and it practically is.

5.) As much as I hate to agree, raw dairy is an economic nightmare for this diet, except butter which works out at least to be far cheaper per calorie than muscle meats, but certainly not fats like suet or even marrow if you can source it locally. If you are really die-hard about sticking to all raw in your situation and driving phobias, your choice seems to be delivery from US wellness or Northstar Bison. I think USW doesn't have much of a minimum. The diet should be very feasible on 8-20$ a day, unless you are well off and can afford wild blueberries at 6$ a pint or WF scallops at 20$ a lb!

-

hope this isn't too harsh but I'll give my well intentioned good luck to you.

[michaelwh]

I think that KD's advice is very good.

If you talk to your dad about diet, I suggest that you only explain cooked paleo, and don't mention raw at all. If he dismisses cooked paleo as "nonsense" or "fad diet", or tells you that "cavemen died in their 30-ies", then point him to the work of Loren Cordain (a respected scientist) (http://www.thepaleodiet.com/). Loren wrote a book specifically about curing acne with paleo diet. (http://www.dietaryacnecure.com/).

To reduce the cost of a paleo diet:

Talk to butchers, and ask for beef scraps/trimmings/organs, or old meat that's past it's sell-by date, for your "dog". If the beef isn't organic/natural/grassfed, then in my experience, heart and tongue and marrow taste OK, but liver and kidney are unpalatable. Tongue is a very good source of fat.

Don't buy expensive cuts like rib steak. Instead, buy cheap cuts with lots of fat, such as blade steak/roast and brisket. When I started raw paleo and didn't yet know any grassfed sources, I lived on brisket, ground beef, bone marrow, and organs, (from a conventional butcher), eggs, and a bit of fruit.

Buy cheap fruit such as bananas, instead of expensive fruit such as berries and watermelon. Also, see if you can find wild berry bushes, or apple trees, or other fruit near where you live. Eating a lot of fruit stimulates your appetite and makes you more hungry (as has been pointed out by Tyler). But eating no fruit at all (zero carb) dramatically increases your meat requirements, especially if you exercise. I think that 2-4 bananas a day (30-60 grams carbs) is a good middle ground.

[Wolf]

I haven't been able to find ANY actual butchers, let alone a butcher of grass-fed meat.  There's the "butcher" (if you could call them that) in the meat section of a few grocery stores, but they only have grain-fed commercial hormone-infested meat, nothing organic or grass-fed whatsoever.  And they don't get the whole cow or anything, so I can't exactly ask them for random odds and ends or scraps.  I'm pretty sure they only get what they can sell.

I don't know what you mean by mince.  Is that ground?  The only ground beef I eat raw is the 100% grass-fed.  A long time ago (before I even know this diet existed) I bought some regular beef (not ground) from the "butcher" section of our normal grocery store (stater brothers http://staterbros.com/Top-Menu/Departments/Meat.aspx?openMenu=cmslistmenu_UL_2 and the meat is regular grain-fed hormone-treated commercial meat I'm sure) and as soon as I got back to my car I started eating it.  It was good at first, but then after a minute or so of eating it the meat started to turn brown and get a nasty taste and I couldn't continue eating it.  It tasted rotten to me.  I mean, it could just have been getting slightly high and I was unable to handle the stronger taste back then, but it had the same bad taste as the meat gets when it's cooked, and I have never been able to eat cooked steak from the grocery store(no matter what grocery store it was), even though I absolutely LOVE steak, always have and it's always been my favourite food.  From restaurants.  But if it was steak from the grocery store, I couldn't eat it cooked.  If it was raw and fresh it tasted good, but as soon as it got a little brown it was gross.  I haven't tried eating the meat from the grocery store again after that, though.  I don't know if I could handle the taste of it better now that I'm more used to eating raw meat and such.  I do know that the corn-fed beef from fresh&easy which is claimed not to be treated with hormones (but it isn't certified organic or anything.) tastes good to me, so I can go back to buying that meat.. especially now that I have a cooler and can store the meat for longer.  And I don't think it was that expensive, and it's right across the street from my work.  The fat is what I've had a hard time finding, and is mostly why I had the dairy in my diet.  Marrow doesn't seem to be appetizing to me at all for some reason, I don't know why.  Maybe I could try marrow again, and just mix it into my ground beef or something though.. I don't know.  I think I'd rather get fat trimmings though, if I can find them.  I know at least grain-fed fat always tasted good to me no matter what, though when it was cooked.  I can at least warm it up a bit, like no more than 100 degrees F or something, but at least nice and warm.

KD, I don't know what you mean by scaling back on my dietary goals.. unless I either don't eat as much, or eat partly SAD, I don't see how I could scale back/lower the bar.  I don't get what you mean by that?

Telling my dad is something I'd rather avoid until I have SOME sort of proof of it being better.  I was going to try to wait until my acne cleared up, which would be the most noticeable and convincing proof for him, to tell him that I got rid of it by changing what I ate, and telling him then about what I eat.  Except maybe avoiding the raw meat part.  Or at least mostly telling him I did it by stopping eating bread/grains.  That would probably be the easiest way to get him to accept such a large change in my diet.  Possibly even convince him to follow it as well, I'm not sure.  The problem is, I need my acne to actually clear up, which it's been rather stubborn in doing so.  It's probably going to take a long while.

I had already planned to try to take over the shopping though, but it's been difficult because I've been rather busy lately, and I'm also starting school this week.  Good news is that I did just worked a bunch of hours yesterday and today at work, so that should help make up for all the 2 hour days I had.  Bad news is that it made me so busy I was unable to get to the store to buy myself any food, and ended up eating some pizza.  Luckily it hasn't caused me any stomach problems or too much adverse effects like it seems to do with most others on this raw diet who cheat, but unfortunately I am starting to get a little bit of a headache right now, and I think I gained some fat, and I'm hoping this doesn't poorly affect the muscles I've been building up.  Oh yeah and I ended up getting some pretty bad cramps while at work yesterday, and had to take some tylenol.  I'm really wanting to get back to eating raw as soon as possible though, and I'm hoping that tomorrow I can stop by the store before I get to school but I'm not sure how close on time I'm going to be, I'm supposed to get my brakes fixed tomorrow before class then I need to leave early enough to find my classes too, before class starts, and then have time to stop by the store and get food and eat, and it's already 2am and I don't know what time I'm going to wake up, and yeah, I don't know.  Maybe can get my brakes fixed tuesday, my only day off this week, but then I also want to try to convince my dad to let me go grocery shopping on tuesday, which won't work as well if he ends up going with me, but oh well.  I don't know, we'll see.

As far as an eating disorder suspicions, I don't see how that can come up much, I mostly only sneak my raw food eating when he's not home, and as long as I don't look like I've become anorexic or anything I should be fine.  If he thinks I'm not eating I could say I eat at work/school and such, and as long as I'm not bone-skinny, that should be easy to believe.

The raw butter did seem pretty cheap, but the butter I got was raw cultured butter, and wasn't very appetizing actually.  I was only able to eat it all by chewing it up in my mouth with a bit of cheese, which gave it a much better flavour and made it much easier to eat.  I don't know if the regular raw butter would taste any better plain than the cultured butter, and I'm afraid to buy it and have the same problem with eating it then have to end up buying cheese too just so I can get my butter down. 

Delivery won't work as far as my dad finding out that I'm eating raw meat.

Eggs and fruit I can get my dad to buy, so I don't have to worry as much about spending my money on those.  I just need to get him to buy more of it at once, because he'll only buy like a dozen eggs and then they only last me like 3 or 4 days, and he doesn't go shopping again for weeks.  I like eating fruit for hydration, especially if I'm going to cut out milk.  I've noticed these passed couple days that I haven't had much fruit and no milk I've felt very thirsty, even though I'm drinking water.  Water doesn't always seem to quite quench my thirst that thoroughly, and a bit of fruit everyday I think would help.  Bananas aren't very hydrating, and I can only eat them when they're fully yellow and with a bit of brown, no green whatsoever, and I don't think you can even buy bananas that aren't green, so I would have to wait forever for them to ripen before eating them.  Then, my dad would only buy like one bunch which would have only like 6 bananas on it, and then even if I only ate one a day it wouldn't last me a week, because he eats fruit too.  Better just to let him buy a whole bunch of different fruits, so it'll last longer.

[KD]

by scaling down, I meant eating a clean paleo/primal diet, no cheats, no medications, some raw foods, some clean foods you prepare yourself. This will be far more effective as a long term detox/transition to any starts and stops on a more 'pure' diet, and I can almost guarantee will be quicker healing to your acne. If the former is still not workable scale back even further to the popular 80/20 ie. 20% of the time maximum for non-paleo/primal foods, although my personal belief is that mixing raw meats with that is fairly problematic.

I'm still confused as to why any meat left in your fridge or delivered is automatically assumed eaten raw, particularly if its so easy to not account for what you are eating otherwise. Is there no stove or cookware in your house? I think the last thing people will assume when you get a box of meat is that you are going to open it up and eat it. Just my opinion. I think this is also why preparing/sharing some clean paleo meals with pops is probably a good idea.

cultured raw butter is the best in all aspects, they all taste like crap IMO, even from the absolute best Amish farms. I always find it ironic/not-believable when people say they find dairy addictive, as they certainly must mean milk or cheese. Butter has a harder taste than suet for me, its just physically easier to eat, can be bought unfrozen (making it very hydrating) and lasts longer in the fridge.

[Wolf]

I was already eating a 100% raw paleo/primal diet with no cheats whatsoever though?  I still don't know what you mean by scaling down.  Do you mean by adding cooked paleo foods?  Because that still would make no difference, I'd still have to pay the same amount of money, except for pasteurized dairy I could get my dad to buy but I'd rather have that raw.  I never take medications except for tylenol when I get menstrual cramps, but only because I get them so bad that they would leave me curled up in a ball unable to do anything except squirm in pain and cry, and I can't do anything else more natural to relieve the pain.  Heating pads and such are completely useless.  And even then I always wait to take the tylenol until the pain starts to become unbearable, hoping that maybe they won't get that bad.. which my mom always got angry at me about, saying I should take the tylenol as soon as I felt anything.  But I hate taking them, and I hate taking any medicines, I won't even take nyquil when I have a cold, the rare times I get one, let alone take anything that was stronger or prescription.  As far as mixing raw paleo and cooked/non-paleo foods, I don't mix them on the same day.

As far as meat in the fridge being eaten raw, my dad knows I WANT to eat my meat raw, because I have always wanted to eat my meat raw loooooong before I ever found out about this diet, have always drooled over raw meats whenever I saw them when I was younger, always gotten my steaks cooked as rare as my dad would let me.  If any meat disappears that he personally didn't see cooked, especially without any evidence of having been cooked such as dirty dishes, he'll know I ate it raw.  And he's already told me "NO RAW MEAT."  basically saying it's one of the rules of the house, aka I must follow it if I don't want to be kicked out.  I'm a horrible liar, too, so if I came under suspicion and he started asking me questions I wouldn't be able to lie very well.

and I'm actually surprised I disliked the taste of the raw cultured butter, because I have always liked the taste of butter, but then that was pasteurized and salted butter, or even sometimes maybe margarine, hard to tell sometimes.  Salt would probably help the taste a lot, but I don't want to have to add salt to be able to eat it.

[dsohei]

ok, so, this is gonna seem maybe off topic. your problems are spiritual, emotional, and mental in regards to the kinds of relationships you have with yourself and with others (your father, etc.).

it may seem weird or "too difficult" but that is psychic pressure and brainwashing from years of a certain kind of abuse. and yes, it is abuse and you have agreed to be abused in this way. why? perhaps out of fear of survival or not being loved, whatever. you know your own truths and reasons.
basically, your issues are NOT dietary or physical. they are more subtle and are causing this stress to manifest in the physical realm.

there are solutions, always. and ethical, compassionate ways of ending or transforming relationships. this starts with your self-relationship. discovering and exploring your personal values and boundaries and then communicating them honestly with others in ways that empower you.

its not about telling other people what to do or not do, but more about being at cause yourself and choosing better and better choices. this is a skill like any other and takes time and practice. it can be confusing and scary, but so is learning how to ride a bike at first.

there are lost of teachings to help you, byron katie, tony robbins, deepak chopra, non-violent communication, michael beckwith... download audiobooks from the net and immerse yourself in healing practices. the more you take care of yourself and your specific needs (spiritual, emotional, mental and physical needs) the better your life results will become.

[KD]

I was already eating a 100% raw paleo/primal diet with no cheats whatsoever though?  I still don't know what you mean by scaling down.

yeah, I think we have a different concept of what that means. I see raw steak (conservative estimate) as far as 2 week ago - a month and a mish-mash of confused eating habits, cravings, and cheats otherwise. Nothing particularly abnormal about that, but my suggestion is still to get some kind of stability in your approach until you have more financial and emotional independence. Assuming the circumstances stay the same, I'm thinking more like 1 year on grain free/processed-free diet sounds like the better goal. Particularly considering you were not on your death bed prior to initiating this 'diet', I disagree that this 'makes no difference'. My experience was that although yes indeed meat costs remain the same, most people waste tons of money on foods you could replace with healthier and cheaper options, granted ones that don't have much relevance by raw paleo standards, but an improvement for most folks. If he's happy with the arrangement, maybe you'd have more money left over to spend on meat, and you could keep your own funds going to any kinds of raw foods like organs, bones, and fats and such you know he will not eat and which are also really cheap. If you are that close to LA, certainly there should be a way to acquire really quality grass-fed materials easier than 95% of people on this site, which is again where stability and tackling any phobias or whatever will work alot better towards your long term goals than any short spurts on random raw you can scavenge. I don't think hiding some raw stuff from dad is bad, but I highly suspect this will become even less workable real soon.

I think people tend to put butter on stuff, which is why it has that appeal. I have to assume even salted pasteurized butter gets pretty gross housing a third to half a lb per day (or more) on its own. I find 1/4-1/3 lb palatable with raw red meats (buffalo, goat, beef) or fish, but impossible to eat a substantial amount with cooked meat ironically.

[Wolf]

dsohei, I don't get what you're trying to tell me.  Do you mean about telling my dad about eating raw?  Or what?  I'm sorry, I don't understand how anything you said has anything to do with my situation.  x.x;

KD, I never cheated on my 100% raw after I found raw dairy, until after I found out I had to pay for new brakes for my car and saw that I wasn't going to be able to afford buying myself food anymore a couple days ago, and then had nothing to eat.  I had some cravings, but I never acted on them.  I even stopped eating the "raw wild natural honey" that I had bought because I wasn't sure if it was unheated at all.  I was actually afraid almost the point of paranoia of eating anything that wasn't 100% raw for fear of breaking out more, after so much of my acne had been going away.  I still broke out anyways though, even on 100% raw.  What I was eating might have been a bit all over the place, but it was still at least 100% raw which should be better than the pizza and frozen tv dinners and processed overcooked sausages and high amounts of pasteurized dairy I had previously been consuming and which are mostly the only things to eat in this house.
L.A. I have actually never really been to, I have no idea how to get there, all I know is that it's probably about an hour or two away and would cost me a lot of gas to get there, and I'm also a little scared that I'll get shot up if I go there.  Also my car is tiny (like go-kart sized) and old (almost as old as I am) and doesn't do well on freeways, everytime I drive on the freeway something goes wrong with my car.  I don't have any phobias except of spiders.  And sometimes the dark, but only if I'm inside a house.  I don't see how tackling spiders would help me.  Unless I ate them which is impossible, uuugh I shudder just to think of saying it. 
But yeah, prior to starting this diet I spent $0 on food whatsoever.  zero.  zip.  nada.  zilch.  nothing at all.  not one single penny.  I got free pizza and free soda at work, my dad kept food in the fridge most of the time, though mostly breads, pastas, rice, and such, and if we did run out of food at home he'd bring home fast food.  I didn't have to spend anything at all on food.  If I'm going to spend my money on food, I don't want to spend it on only half-healthy foods.  and I can only get for free what I can convince my dad to buy.  If I eat just grain/processed-free, what am I going to eat?  I can't live off vegetables and fruit.  I'd just end up eating the same way I'm eating now.
and 1/3 to 1/2 pound of butter a day is a lot.  I bought a big tub of 1 lb of raw cultured butter, and only ate a couple spoonfuls a day with my cheese.  I wouldn't be able to eat 1/3 or 1/2 of the tub in one day!  plus that's too expensive to be eating THAT much butter, it wasn't that cheap.

--

I ate raw today, 4 cups of milk, 2 lbs of grapes, and 1 lb of ground beef.  Cost me $20.  Now my dad just brought me home fast food, ugh, but I feel bad for saying I don't want to eat it when he bought it for me.  and I'm hungry now, too.  I hate this.  Why can't eating raw meat be normal?

[sabertooth]

My raw diet cost about 10 dollars a day and its cheaper than the organic vegtable crap I used to eat. I buy in bulk 40 pounds of pasture beef 110 dollars last me 3 weeks, Then I top it off with little extras like a pack of marrow a week , a jar of coconut butter, lemons, and occasional sea food or road kill.
Don't get discoraged get resourceful you may have to tell your dad about you diet in order to save money buy finding bulk sources,

We are often enthusiastic in telling people the wonders of paleo but leave newbies lacking on some details, like how Paramount it is to get ultra clean high quality food which may be too expensive to obtain, don't get discoraged and by any means don't eat supermarket franken feed meat, go foraging find a hunter and take his scraps, scavenge if possible.

[miles]

Did you not read my post?

[KD]

ok, I think we just disagree on what will be the most healthy lifestyle. To me, this includes a balance of the micros with the macro rather than some kind of refinement of one a single micro. On the surface, yes eating less crap seems to be a huge improvement over tons of crap, and 100% raw would always be better than any other approach. If it were really that simple then everyone who started a RAF diet (or even restricted veganism and other such things) would certainly be in increasing health without any issues and focusing on perfection of their diet for the rest of their life. As for the butter thing, that is also fairly relative. I was really just speaking about how many people see it as a condiment so it appears more palatable. When eaten as a 'food' its fairly less appealing. At the same time 1/2 lb is 'only' 1600 cals, so for someone who otherwise has no animal fat at their disposal, is actually not a whole lot unfortunately.

hopefully you can get more advice from others towards your specific concerns if this still isn't helpful.

[klowcarb]

Grapes are super high in fructose. Why should you feel bad about not eating what someone bought you? It's not that person's body! I get offered food all the time, but I never eat anything not ZC, and then I never eat anything except at the times I eat. My body is my temple and my hobby. I wouldn't want to look like those offering me food and won't start eating like them either.

[Wolf]

My raw diet cost about 10 dollars a day and its cheaper than the organic vegtable crap I used to eat. I buy in bulk 40 pounds of pasture beef 110 dollars last me 3 weeks, Then I top it off with little extras like a pack of marrow a week , a jar of coconut butter, lemons, and occasional sea food or road kill.
Don't get discoraged get resourceful you may have to tell your dad about you diet in order to save money buy finding bulk sources,

We are often enthusiastic in telling people the wonders of paleo but leave newbies lacking on some details, like how Paramount it is to get ultra clean high quality food which may be too expensive to obtain, don't get discoraged and by any means don't eat supermarket franken feed meat, go foraging find a hunter and take his scraps, scavenge if possible.

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid supermarket meat, I won't be able to convince my dad to let me eat raw meat though, he doesn't even want to let me eat rare-cooked steaks and has already said NO RAW MEAT.  I also can't find any hunters, there isn't even much deer around here or anything, like I stated somewhere earlier in this thread, I've never even seen a deer in real life before, unless it was at a zoo or something.  Road kill I am afraid to scavenge, because all the roads around here are busy, and I think I'd draw too much attention if people are driving by watching me scrape a smushed rabbit off the road.  Plus I don't know if it's illegal or not here, I know in some places it's illegal to scavenge roadkill.  Plus I doubt the animals around here have that much better of a diet than the grain-fed supermarket cows.  There isn't much foliage in this area other than dead-grass yellow hills and fields that only turn green in the spring.

[Wolf]

Did you not read my post?

Yes, I read your post, this was my reply to you:

I don't know what you mean by mince.  Is that ground?  The only ground beef I eat raw is the 100% grass-fed.  A long time ago (before I even know this diet existed) I bought some regular beef (not ground) from the "butcher" section of our normal grocery store (stater brothers http://staterbros.com/Top-Menu/Departments/Meat.aspx?openMenu=cmslistmenu_UL_2 and the meat is regular grain-fed hormone-treated commercial meat I'm sure) and as soon as I got back to my car I started eating it.  It was good at first, but then after a minute or so of eating it the meat started to turn brown and get a nasty taste and I couldn't continue eating it.  It tasted rotten to me.  I mean, it could just have been getting slightly high and I was unable to handle the stronger taste back then, but it had the same bad taste as the meat gets when it's cooked, and I have never been able to eat cooked steak from the grocery store(no matter what grocery store it was), even though I absolutely LOVE steak, always have and it's always been my favourite food.  From restaurants.  But if it was steak from the grocery store, I couldn't eat it cooked.  If it was raw and fresh it tasted good, but as soon as it got a little brown it was gross.  I haven't tried eating the meat from the grocery store again after that, though.  I don't know if I could handle the taste of it better now that I'm more used to eating raw meat and such.  I do know that the corn-fed beef from fresh&easy which is claimed not to be treated with hormones (but it isn't certified organic or anything.) tastes good to me, so I can go back to buying that meat.. especially now that I have a cooler and can store the meat for longer.  And I don't think it was that expensive, and it's right across the street from my work.  The fat is what I've had a hard time finding, and is mostly why I had the dairy in my diet.  Marrow doesn't seem to be appetizing to me at all for some reason, I don't know why.  Maybe I could try marrow again, and just mix it into my ground beef or something though.. I don't know.  I think I'd rather get fat trimmings though, if I can find them.  I know at least grain-fed fat always tasted good to me no matter what, though when it was cooked.  I can at least warm it up a bit, like no more than 100 degrees F or something, but at least nice and warm.

Eggs and fruit I can get my dad to buy, so I don't have to worry as much about spending my money on those.

[Wolf]

ok, I think we just disagree on what will be the most healthy lifestyle. To me, this includes a balance of the micros with the macro rather than some kind of refinement of one a single micro. On the surface, yes eating less crap seems to be a huge improvement over tons of crap, and 100% raw would always be better than any other approach. If it were really that simple then everyone who started a RAF diet (or even restricted veganism and other such things) would certainly be in increasing health without any issues and focusing on perfection of their diet for the rest of their life. As for the butter thing, that is also fairly relative. I was really just speaking about how many people see it as a condiment so it appears more palatable. When eaten as a 'food' its fairly less appealing. At the same time 1/2 lb is 'only' 1600 cals, so for someone who otherwise has no animal fat at their disposal, is actually not a whole lot unfortunately.

hopefully you can get more advice from others towards your specific concerns if this still isn't helpful.

Well, I never had any major health issues other than my acne even when I was on a fully SAD diet, so even an unbalanced raw diet is helpful to me I think.  I had previously cut back on the amount of crap I was eating, such as stopping eating fast food, stopped drinking soda and started drinking vitamin waters or fruit juices instead (since I couldn't stand the taste of water, I needed something at least a little sweet, and since I rarely ate candies/chocolates/cakes/cookies/icecream/desserts/sweets if at all, I figured a little sugary drink was fine and better than eating candies and ice cream too, especially if there was vitamins in it.) and I was eating "healthier" though that included things like bread (I've only ever eaten whole wheat, the "healthier" bread, my whole life, I always HATED white bread) and rice and pasteurized milk(also only ever drank whole milk, which I felt was "healthier" and HATED skim/lowfat/nonfat).  But THAT change in diet had no effect whatsoever on how I felt as far as energy levels, my sleeping habits, or on my acne at all.  Whereas changing to 100% raw completely changed everything, even as unbalanced as I've been eating.
And yeah, I really need to find a good fat source, better than dairy.  Gonna check tomorrow at some stores.
Thanks for the suggestions.

[Wolf]

Grapes are super high in fructose. Why should you feel bad about not eating what someone bought you? It's not that person's body! I get offered food all the time, but I never eat anything not ZC, and then I never eat anything except at the times I eat. My body is my temple and my hobby. I wouldn't want to look like those offering me food and won't start eating like them either.

I find fruit to be delicious, and not very harmful when included to my diet.  I like them best to help with hydration, but they also help to add an extra meal in there to keep me from getting too hungry all day, even though fruit doesn't fill me up at all.  It's more like drinking water.  But it helps for now while I can't afford a lot of meat and I can't find any good or inexpensive sources of fat.  I'm going to work on trying to find a better fat source though, even if I have to get grain-fed fat trimmings from commercial meat at the supermarket.
And I feel bad because I've gotten mad at him before for not bringing me home food (when I used to eat SAD) and now I get mad at him for bringing me home food?  When he decided to be thoughtful and figured I was hungry and went and bought some food for me?  Yet I scorn his gift?  I felt really bad for doing that.
And as far as your body looks, judging from your pictures you and I have almost the same looking body except that I am perhaps not as muscular as you only because I do not work out as much as you, but if I worked out as much as you I could look like you even while eating a completely SAD diet.  So how if I looked the same as you want to look and yet here I was eating candy bars and bread and rice and steamed bean sprouts and toast with jam and other cooked non-zero carb foods and offered you some?  Lol.  Not everyone who offers me bad foods looks bad themselves, either.  Just saying, though.  I didn't eat the fast food my dad bought me, I just felt bad that he was thoughtful and spent the money to get it for me and I just scorned it.  I also hate to waste food as well as money, so not only did it feel bad personally, but it felt wasteful on top of that, too.

[Wolf]

Alright, went shopping with my dad today, yay.  Got 3 dozen (shoulda got 4 but oh well, I didn't want my dad to think I was crazy) organic free-range brown chicken eggs, and a whole bunch of fruit.  Gonna go to the stores tomorrow and ask about fat trimmings or other fat sources I can get.  Possibly going to buy some liver, too, even though it will be non-organic commercial grain-fed liver, but I really want the iron and nutrients from it.  Stupid health store still never got back to me about ordering the frozen organic liver.  
edit:  Also, while I was at the store, I suggested to my dad to try buying meat, but he said no.  So there, I tried!  but he won't get it.  I don't even like that meat anyways though.  But walking by all the raw meat always makes me hungry..

Spent $500 fricken dollars to get new brakes and new rotors or whatever.  Stupid brakes.  That's a lot of money, and more than I expected to pay even.  I'm really hoping this doesn't break me, and make me completely unable to afford buying myself any meat.  I want to stay raw!!

I'm also going to start cooking my egg whites.  I can't afford to just keep wasting them anymore.  I'll still eat the yolks raw, but I'm going to cook the whites at least just enough to barely solidify them (but still runny) and make them not quite so slimy anymore and able for me to eat them.  I'm hoping I can try to work myself up to eating whole eggs raw, though.  I know at least I HAVE been getting better control over my gag reflexes, so I might soon be able to eat my eggs completely raw, and that will help give me more food.  I don't really want to mix any cooked foods into this, but it will be the only thing I cook and it's only going to be very lightly cooked.

Right now I also seem to be needing to eat a pound of meat a day, and even then I still get hungry.  I'm hoping adding fat will help with keeping me full, but that's if I can find any.  Starting tomorrow though, only 2 raw egg yolks with cooked whites, 1lb raw ground beef, and some fruit.  Then checking the stores for fat and hopefully adding some fat to my diet as well as maaaaaaybe some liver.  Doesn't seem like much food though, I'll probably end up hungry.. gotta sleep now though.

[majormark]

I remember in the beginning I ate a lot of raw eggs mixed with butter, lemon and honey. If you blend them they digest very fast and people do not generally object about that.

Why don't you eat the whole eggs in this blend? Have you tried?

[Wolf]

I thought the proteins in eggs are very delicate, and blending could ruin them?  Just what I heard though, I'm not sure.  But I'm out of raw butter, and I don't have any lemons, and I have no idea if the honey I have is truly raw or not, and I haven't otherwise been able to find any raw honeycomb.  Plus I really love the taste of raw egg yolks, I don't really want to mix those with anything..

[klowcarb]

I'd be hungrier eating fruit than if I fasted. But if it doesn't affect you and you like it, keep on. I have no desire for fruit. I get plenty of water and tea for hydration.

I find carb eaters to be puffy and sick looking in general, even if thin/lean-ish. And I find it very unattractive now. I understand WHY you felt bad about the money being spent. But it is like a parent  telling a kid to clean his plate because of starving kids in Africa.  Overeating is not going  to help Africans, while eating crap is not going to make up for the money spent.