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Business as usual over the past several days?

The diet is going just fine and seems to be continuing to get better and better. I’ve even been able to exercise at fairly normal levels, going for several short jogs over the past three days, as well as do some brief resistance exercise.

I must confess however, that I did consume something not of animal origin. Yes, I know, I’m an evil plant killer, what can I say.

My excuse is that I’m moving from Hawaii back to the motherland of Carbondale, CO in just 9 short days. That means that everybody who knows me wants to hang out and watch me have a drink or two, and well, that’s exactly what I did on the evening of day 23.

I had one glass of white wine, and one glass of red ? both derived from grapes. Now it is true that the word ?apes? is in ?grapes?, and apes are of animal origin, but unfortunately this turns out to be just a random coincidence. Grapes and apes don’t have much to do with each other. No backpedaling out of that one. Looks like I’ve slaughtered some of Michael Pollan’s beloved plants. Say it ain’t so!

But let’s not call this some failure because this just so happened to be an outstanding opportunity to witness and track the changes that 23 days of an all-meat diet could provide. Earlier in this FUMPcapade, upregulation was discussed as it pertains to addictive substances. Well, it was obvious that I was in an upregulated state, because when I had that alcohol before dinner on an empty stomach? Whoa!

Within 20 minutes I was having a tremendous time speaking. Never before have I jumbled words so badly. One glass of white wine at that point and that was all!

Another factor in this scenario is that glucose is in limited supply on a zero-carb diet. It is provided by glucose from protein, of which there is little extra of after any meal. Alcohol has the ability to shut the glucose valves off in the brain somewhat, so I could have been really low in brain glucose in the early stages ? contributing specifically to brain dysfunction.

Anyway, alcohol hit me harder than I can ever remember in such a miniscule quantity. This should be expected having had simple sugar only twice since September and then switching to a totally carb-free diet.

But this detail is extremely important. Depression, addiction, and emotional instability are thought to be a result of downregulation ? or the closing of receptor sites so that feel-good brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and beta-endorphin cannot enter the system. Again, this is because the body has mechanisms to insure that equilibrium is maintained at all times. Thus, when a hormone or neurotransmitter gets raised above normal, that triggers a closure of receptor sites so that flooding doesn’t occur.

The higher the spike, and the more frequent the rise above normal, the more receptor sites close down to maintain balance. The result is that more of a substance is required to get a high (be it Pepsi, alcohol, caffeine, or any psychoactive substance). More importantly, is that you must ingest that substance to get your biochemical levels high enough for your active levels to hit normal. That’s because so many receptor sites have shut down. This is huge because when your biochemicals are at normal levels, you are getting less than enough in your system, and you feel terrible. The receptor sites won’t let the juice in.

Enter the addictive cycle.

People think that things give them a ?boost? or ?high,? but the irony is that those substances cause them to feel worse when they don’t have stimulating substances coursing through their veins. With too little active serotonin (due to receptor site closure, not inadequate levels of the chemical itself), you feel cranky, edgy, irritable, and anything but happy. With low levels of circulating dopamine, you feel fuzzy-headed, can’t think straight, and have brain fog in addition to being negative and cranky. With low levels of beta-endorphin you feel excessive physical pain and more.

Of course caffeine, alcohol, and sugar all trigger a surge in those substances and a closure of receptor sites, of which some people seem to be far more prone to than others ? leading to stronger addiction. In other words, and this is huge, sugarholics don’t binge on sugar because they have wide mood swings, they have wide mood swings because they eat sugar. Alcoholics don’t drink because they are negative, depressed, and otherwise miserable ? they are negative, depressed, and otherwise miserable because they drink. Likewise, coffee zombies need coffee to think straight, keep from having physical pain, and otherwise function normally ? precisely because they drink coffee. Without it, they’d wake up energized, clear-headed, positive, and feeling good like every single other creature of every species on the planet. Just observe a dog when it wakes up in the morning to see what mornings are supposed to feel like.

But if you could upregulate, opening up all of those closed receptor sites, then you would essentially be healed of depression, mood swings, brain fog, physical pain, addictive eating patterns and behaviors, and more. Strangely enough, the best way to upregulate and thus feel normal with normal biochemical levels instead of god-awful with normal levels, is to keep your biochemical levels low for an extended period of time. That allows receptor sites to turn back on.

Is an all-meat diet the best way to do precisely that? My answer, after monitoring my body, moods, energy levels, physical pain, and hearing from others following the same diet is? Probably.

Any diet devoid of addictive substances can achieve this, but I doubt any are as powerful as this. Plus, with benefits such as improved skin health, weight loss, reduction of inflammation in the digestive tract, healing of tooth sensitivity (worked wonders), and more ? this diet has real health improvement potential.

Over the past 3 days I’ve eaten?

4 pounds chuck steak (rare)
1 stick butter
2 bowls pig face stock
15 medium shrimp
6 eggs (3 scrambled, 3 overeasy)
2T macadamia nut oil
7 ounce ground beef patty (well) with 1 ounce cheese and 2 slices bacon
8 ounces heavy whipping cream (in one hit)