Hey guys,
Posted about this on the Facebook group but figured it would be nice to document it here. So for May I’ve decided to set myself a little challenge. I’m going to try and eat exclusively carnivore whilst cycling 72 hour fasts. Primary goals are weight loss and general mood improvement. I’ve made it to the end of the first cycle and I’ll eat my second meal of the month today then begin the second fast of the month.
I’ll check in at least every couple of days for accountability.
Wow. Hell of a challenge! I look forward to seeing how it unfolds…how you feel…what you eat. Best of luck with it!
Look forward to reading about your experience with this experiment. Good luck!
Eight days in now and still sticking with it. The first day after the meal between about 24 hours and 36 hours into the fast seem to be the biggest struggle which I’m hoping is the same because I’m struggling a bit today.
Carnivore is a very enjoyable way to eat thus far though so I’ll keep pushing on. I’m still confident I can make it to the end.
I’m curious about the carnivore and how your weight loss results will be. May I ask how much you intend to lose & how much you are losing if you know, on a daily basis.
In the Dr Fung book he talks very briefly about high protein low fat and low carb. I seem to recall something about it being twice as hard to burn fat eating high protein over a high fat diet and you don’t get the benefit of fat adapting so its more suited to doing as a diet than lifestyle. Plus it doesnt satisfy your appetite the way high fat does.
But…and a big but though…I’m trying to frame my thinking in the context of currently eating one meal per day. I have experienced 2 days where my fat wasn’t high enough and I had to eat twice.
I dabbled in carnivore but didnt know enough and had limited success. I would eat a steak for lunch, 400 calories, ravenous the next day and sometimes lose weight. Sometimes not. Plus I was using a lot of sweetener. It did not feel sustainable at all. But, I might give it a 1 or 2 week try at some point but eat at least 2 times per day and no sweetener of course. It does intrigue me. Are you tracking your ketone lvl? I’d be curious how deep you are. I use a meter and on ketone lifestyle very consistently 3.2-3.3 level.
The other option I’m considering versus basically no carb carnivore is bacon & eggs omad every day. It can keep me at 10 carb level daily indefinitely. I could see myself able to do that for 30 days.
Options, options😃
Okay I’ll try to answer everything as best I can but feel free to ask for any clarification. As far as weight loss goes I’d like to lose around 30 then see where I’m at. I could definitely lose more but that would give me a strong place to re-evaluate. As of the morning of day nine of this month which has been cycling carnivore refeeds with 72 hour fasts I’m down 13.8 pounds. On refeed days though I’m eating at or a little over maintenance calories and I’m at between 60/40 and 65/35 spilt for fat to protein by calories. Ideally fat would be higher but it’s the highest fat minced beef available at the moment.
I don’t measure ketones I’m afraid but the usual tell tale signs of keto breath and tongue gunk are present. I’d certainly say if you’re going to go omad to not go as low as 400 calories. I’d probably go like 1500-1800 at least until I found my sweet spot for fat and fast length.
That’s great to see David. The challenge I see for me in giving this some more thought & calculation is it would be pretty expensive for me. I don’t know what all you are eating but if I really went carnivore & say my current 900 to 1100 calories over at least 2 meals per day, its pretty expensive by my calculation. My feeds would basically consist of beef, chicken and bacon products. It might be fairly short term thing on the other hand that might help me get to my target weight faster and then I could switch to a more higher fat keto. They really are 2 different sides to the same keto coin. Your weight loss results certainly look good. I have about 34 lb to get to a target weight I would be thrilled with.
I plan to water fast starting in about 1 week and i’ll do some homework on this then.
Just another update. Passed the halfway point now. Still going strong. Broke the rules a little last night and had some alcohol during a zoom quiz with friends. Suffering for it today and don’t imagine it’ll impact my results too much.
Back into another two day fast now and I’ll next eat on Tuesday. I’ve been craving chicken lately so that’ll be the next meal. I’ll need to add significant fat to it but I’ll be interested to see how it compares to beef in terms of ease of fasting and results in general.
Nice to read of another approach. Thanks for your posts as its not an approach I would take but I love to being informed.
Another wee update. Still going strong. Tomorrow is the next eating day and the beginning of the final week of my experiment. The mental side has certainly been a little tougher this week but not unbearable. Excited by the results so far and excited to see the final numbers at the end of this.
Update time I’ve made it to the final fast. Final mental struggle so I hope I manage to hold out especially since it’s the longest fast of the month but I’m nearly halfway through the 96 hour fast.
I’ll post my weight and measurement results on Monday.
Awesome. Nice to see that you are sticking with your plan.
My results from the month
