Today I had meat and lots of it. I roasted up a 7-pound slab of choice ribeye, totally untrimmed, bone-in, with a layer of fat on it thicker than my skull (if one could imagine such thickness).
All-meat action is going well still, although I’ve got two new things to report.
The first is that I was getting a little daydreamy about carbs today. I checked out a collection of Youtube videos compliments of the vegan front. Joel Fuhman, Doug Graham, and John Robbins didn’t let me down. They went on and on about the amazing merits of veganism despite defying all logic, departing completely from human dietetic history, and worst of all, being emaciated while speaking in front of crowds of emaciated people.
Don’t get me wrong. Diets like some of these superheroes recommend can be very therapeutic. A diet consisting of exclusively vitamin and mineral-rich vegetables and fruits, in their raw state (Graham), with a side of nuts and avocado? Of course such a diet is purifying, nourishing, and healing. I actually have more respect for their point of view than you can imagine, particularly Graham who claims that 16 out of his 20 weekly meals consists of only fruit ? and then he turns around and runs marathons. Now THAT, is impressive. I had trouble rolling over to keep my tan even from front to back when I was eating like that.
So yeah, I’ve been thinking about what my diet is going to be like once my 30 days is up. I’ll probably throw in lots of veggies but keep the carbs way down to further monitor how I feel on a prolonged VLCD, despite killing some of Mike Pollan’s sacred leafy friends.
Revelation number 2, is well, about number 2.
Digestion is still great in terms of how the stomach feels. No signs of indigestion whatsoever ? any diet consisting of just one food group can probably produce this result (with the exception of beans). No gas, no bloating, no discomfort. Perfection ? the digestion most people dream of having.
My bowels have slowed down a little though. It’s really the opposite of what I anticipated. One would think that as you first start out on a diet like this that the bowels would come to screeching halt and then take some time to figure out what is going on, get things moving again, and return to normal ? only smaller. In my case, it seems like Mr. Hanky is getting increasingly stickier. There is no pain, or straining, or legitimate constipation, but it’s not like a nice refreshing feeling when I hit the W.C. It’s like pushing dry clay through Play-Doh tube. We’ll see what happens between now and day 30, if anything, to help reveal whether it’s getting better or worse as I bump along.
How are other carnivores responding over the long run to this?
Today’s menu:
Prime rib, rare, with lots of fat for every meal (about 12 ounces each meal)
Hey Matt – I just wanted to jump in and tell ya that I’m really enjoying your blog. You explain things beautifully and in a language most lay people can understand, especially in relationship to the technical aspect of up and down-regulating.
I am ramping down on carb consumption towards a January 2nd date of starting my own 30day Zero Carb experiment and wanted to know if you minded me using your “FUMP” designation? I think it’s priceless and so appropriate! :D
You can check out my blogs. I have two. One discusses “stuff” regarding diet and health and the other is my food journal with piccys.
http://www.weightytalk.blogspot.com
http://www.todayiatea.blogspot.com
Let me know if I can use your acronym and hope to see ya around sometime! Keep up the excellent work.
p.s. I will make it my Duty to check up on how your Doody is doin, ok? ;) We call that Doody Duty. :)
Why would you add veggies after 30 days if this diet is treating you so well?
I’m on month 4 of my zero carb diet and things couldn’t be better with my current health status. I’m seeing all the benefits you’ve seen plus more. I don’t ever see myself going back to carbs, they are just a waste of time.
I was zero carb for roughly 6 months earlier this year. I felt OK, not much better or worse than I had before, certainly not the glowing story of health that you describe. It’s possibly the result of not having eaten a very high fat previously as you had. I kept waiting around for the burst of energy that was supposed to occur when I finally keto-adapted. I gave up, added some plants and carbs back in and feel a bit better.
Pooti, I would be honored to have FUMP live on over at your sites (which I’ll check out today some time). And I wish you well with your Doodie Duty Pooti.
I plan on being lax (no pun intended) about adding plants back to the diet. If someone gives me some ceviche, I don’t want to pick the fish out of a sea of onions, cucumbers, and cilantro. I don’t think a little lemon juice on some fish will kill me either. I’m not talking mounds of veg, just not strict meganism (new term).
Plus, I’ve done lots of diets that made me feel and/or look better. A megan diet, ironically, is very similar to a more raw vegan oriented diet in terms of what it yields physically. That’s probably true of any diet consisting of just one food – digestion is amazing and there are many benefits (plus I believe there are 2 routes to reducing insulin – remove almost all carbs or remove almost all protein, although clearly one is more logical than the other – our muscles, organs, and bones are made of protein). The difference here is that mentally I’m more stable and am not losing muscle mass. I was emaciated within 2 weeks of vegan dieting as well as doing low-calorie food combining (Donna Gates).
love the new pic mattie doo’s
what a stud !!!!
xxxx
The problem with veganism is that it is not based solely on concerns about the optimal diet from a nutrition/digestion standpoint. Instead, concerns about morality creep into the debate. Whatever the merits of those concerns, this provides an additional factor that may, and almost certainly does, complicate the search for an optimal diet from the standpoint of human health.
Obviously, the meagan diet (“megan” could be confused for a girl’s name) does not suffer from such distractions. It is a diet that, whether sound or not, is motivated solely by the belief that it is ideal for human health. This is a critical difference that ought not be overlooked.
The apparent slowdown in your bowel function is interesting. I believe that a lot of responses to a dietary change will not manifest themselves for quite sometime. The body has amazing storage abilities and the effects of a deficient or less-than ideal diet may not manifest themselves for quite some time. This is especially true of vegetarian/vegan diets.
The human body is an odd thing. Ideally, the brain runs off glucose, we have amylase (the starch-digesting enzyme) in our saliva, and have mostly flat teeth to grind plants. And yet carbohydrates were probably among the rarest of macronutrient available in the wild, except for fruits. Of course, with so many humans suffering from fructose malabsorption, one has to question the wisdom a high-fruit diet for modern individuals.
More and more, I think there is tremendous merit to dietary individuality. Those of European descent seem to be especially susceptible to Celiacs Disease and fructose malabsorption. In other words, those whose ancestors lived in the cold parts of Europe where plants were in short supply, may do best on a very low carb/high meat diet.
On the other hand, those from the warmer regions–Africa, the Middle East, and the tropical islands–can probably get away with increased plant consumption. And I’m sure that there is a parallel between digestive difficult and hormone effects. In other words, those whose digestive systems are not well-adapted to plants, probably suffer from negative hormonal effects on a high-plant diet as well.
Curious about your ancestry, Matt. I myself, am kind of fucked, since my dad is Iranian and my mom is Irish.
Good points Ben.
I do think that the human body, in its healthy state, is wildly adaptable.
We are omnivorous, and can eat a wide variety of diets.
Even McCarrison fed the same diet to monkeys, pigeons, guinea pigs, and other lab animals — and the result was always perfect health as long as each ‘vitaminic’ component was present in adequate supply (i.e. no refined foods).
On deficient, refined diets, the animals of every species were damaged irreperably from a digestive standpoint.
Now the rules of the game for many are: eat what you can digest properly, and you’ll feel much healthier. The more the diet excludes food groups, the better digestion is. Hence food combining diets, vegan diets, low carb, and Flegan diets (new term, as in flesh).
Your ancestry should leave you in good shape. Ireland and Iran start with the same two letters, meaning basically that the dietary roots probably stem from a similar origin point. Hey, makes sense to me man. You see different, I see same.