No matter how natural and healthy is meat only diet, I would NEVER be able to survive on it. I love vegetables and fruits very much, and while I do enjoy animal protein and fat: meat, poultry, fish, I must have low GI vegetables and some berries daily. I understand concept of eating only something that can be eaten raw and hence suitavble for paleo ppl. I can wrap my brain about paleo man eating meat and animal fat only. But I think paleo women ate some berries, leaves, nuts and roots whatever they could stomach raw. To begin with, I doubt that women had chance to feast on animal protein, they mostly got bones, scraps, etc. whatever men could spare. So if the hunting was not too successfull, they got very little if any meat. Another theory of mine, that male needs more meat and fat to maintain good testosteron level but women need certain % of body fat to be able to reproduce, and this is not possible on meat/fat only diet. This is how women evolved eating and liking carbs. Not all modern men enjoys meat only diet either, like my DH - never will. We both love, love, love vegetables and fruits but can live without grains, starches and sweets.JMHO

I can certainly appreciate that for most people surviving on sustenance made entirely of meat would be a severe challenge.

On the other hand, for those who dislike the taste of veggies (not just a few, but ALL veggies on the planet) as much as I do, then this all-meat eating thing would be quite easy to follow—I dislike them all equally. From my earliest memories, I’ve always liked meat and would never tire of eating it. For example, I can eat steak everyday for the rest of my life and never get bored or tire of its taste. It is only when I introduce veggies where my enjoyment of food is greatly diminished.

Why? I don’t know. Maybe my ancestors would have walked right pass those berries focusing on prey instead of vegetation. I surely would have.

Instead of having a veggie or salad, I’ll have a side of fish with my ribeye steak. That’s so awesome! Instead of having salad as a side dish, I can have fish, lobster, shrimp, oxtail, foie gras, or whatever kind of exotic meat.

I read the 3 part article "Adventures in Diet that was posted. WOW!! That blew my mind to think the eskimos were eating only fish and water, and sometimes only frozen fish!! I guess we live in a bubble. We think the world was always the way it is. When i stop and think about it, it really makes me rethink some things and makes me see how sugar and prepackaged, refined, garbage on the supermarket shelves really isnt food! Yes, its "convenient", but it has caused an epidemic of obese people, diabetics and diseases. Bear I am thankful that you have come here to shed some light and truth. I really don't know if i could ever go all meat and dairy for years, but i know that i am going to walk alot closer to that direction than i ever thought possible. I know that i became addicted to sugar and carbs something fierce and it ruined my life for far too many years. Only 2 weeks on Atkins induction and already i am less hungry and NOT having cravings anymore for all that crap!! That says something powerful to me!! Just like alcohol is poison to an alcoholic i have come to the realization that alot of foods are poison for ME!! I have really enjoyed this conversation and all the information given. Thanks for the links and i hope there are more! I will continue my research, and test by my experiences!

I have followed my dietary path for 47 years, it is as natural as breathing now (but it wasn't always). Be sure to eat plenty of fat.

No one is born with a 'taste' for any kind of food- everything is learned, so if you 'crave' veggies or fruit, it is your social *mind* at work, your *body* does not 'crave' non-meat foods.

What is this 'induction' thing?

Thaw? I would never, ever freeze raw meat! Or buy it already frozen. Why bother, since it will keep at 2C literally for weeks. If bought in bulk, cryovac'd, it will keep for months- it gets ever more tender as it ages (enzymatic action).

Sausages can be frozen with little obvious damage. Some fish do not suffer much, others are destroyed- but chicken and all red meat is badly damaged by cell fracture by freezing- the texture and taste goes off. Cooked food can be frozen without much drama. I will drive for two or three hours if necessary just to buy fresh, never frozen fish and chicken. I think it is best to keep freezing restricted to ice cream.

By rest I mean, normal tasks are ok, but no running or lifting. If you are on a zero carb diet, your body runs on the same mix all the time anyway, so eat if you feel like it. Perhaps if you are heavy into gaining mass, you might want to rush out scarf food after you finished the workout- just be sure to allow enough time for the pump to subside and the body to cool down- eating diverts the blood to the intestines, away from the muscles- I don't know, but that may not be the best thing to do right away.

Don't follow ANYTHING you read in the bodybuilding mags concerning food and supplements, it is all a load of rubbish. Even the oft-repeated suggestion you need lots of different exercises to 'properly' build mass in each body part- it is just a way of getting you to read the magazine so you can 'learn how the pro's do it'. I can tell you exactly how the pros do it- take lots of anabolic steroids. The real 'genetic' champs actually just have a good genetic resistance to the various kinds of problems high doses of these drugs cause the body. Choose an exercise you like for each part and change it if you feel like it like from time to time, but it will not increase your progress to do so, just give you something different to do in the gym. Of course, you must learn the correct form and strictly follow it for any exercise you do. I prefer free weights, which I have at home (a complete well-built and equipped gym, in fact), and when home I rarely use my own machines, but when in a commercial gym, I may try various things out for a change of pace, while still confining myself to just one exercise per part.

Fat is very filling, don't worry, you won't eat too much.

I'm not so sure that my cravings for sugar and white flour products weren't physical cravings, Bear. Atleast i have assumed they were physical and thats why when you go on induction and get them OUT of your body, the cravings cease. I am sure it is PART *mind*, but i think there is something physical to it as well.

Atkins induction is the first phase of ATkins 4 phase diet. Induction is to be done for a minimum of two weeks, but the Atkins book says you can safely stay on it for up to 6 mos. (Though you would probably disagree and say you can safely stay on it for life). Atkins induction in a nutshell is this: up to 4 ozs of cheese per day, no more than 3 cups of veggie per day, 3 TB of cream allowed per day, also meat, fish, poultry, seafood, butter, mayo, olive oil and other good oils are all allowed as much as you want to feel full! (no fruit, no breads, no pasta, no potatoes, no beans, no nuts, no sugar etc). Also in induction you have to stay under 20 carbs a day, and that includes your cheese and eggs carbs too! This is the plan i am currently on and as i said i haven't been eating much veggie..between 0-2 cups per day, i never eat 3.

I have a question for you Bear. How are your teeth? How often do you go to the dentist? When is the last time you had a cavity? Do you ever get headaches? ( I'm asking obviously because of what i read in "Adventures in Dieting") Thanks.

No headaches normally- perhaps with a cold or flu, but I have not suffered from either in many years, even after what must have been severe damage to my immune system from the cancer therapy. I highly recommend getting a yearly flu shot.

Atkins sucks. I said that 30 years ago when his book first appeared. He modified the real truth,(assuming he ever knew it) so his diet would be acceptable to normal, veggie-habituated people. In a small number of cases it sort of works, after a fashion- for a while.

3 cups of vegetables? Really? What nonsense!

Avoid all veggie oils, none of them except palm, coconut and small amounts of macadamia are 'good'. Olive and the rest are really really BAD. Avoid commercial mayo, all of which is made with either sunflower, safflower or canola, and is very salty. Eat as much animal fat as you like, plus as much as you like of any and all kinds of meat, fish and poultry. heavy cream has some carbs, so go easy. You should try to reach and stay at 5 gm carbs/day for optimum results. The only physical bit concerning eating sugar and flour is a weird kind of addiction to the insulin 'rush' which apparently is something like the rush that a junky or meth freak gets on taking their drug. I wager you fall asleep after such indulgence. In other words, you are addicted to the result of eating the carbs not to the carbs themselves. You eat things because you were taught as a baby to do so. It is mental, not physical (except as noted).

My teeth, yes. I have all my teeth, basically including the 'wisdoms'. One first molar broke in half a few years ago, perhaps after one of my inlays came loose and a dentist replaced it without properly removing all the old cement. That one was replaced with a crown on an implant. All the rest are fine. I have had no caries at all since 1957. My teeth have very little wear, and are still so sharp I can still make my cheek or tongue bleed every so often when I manage to bite myself.

Before age 23, I managed to get cavities in all my molars (bread), including my wisdoms. I suffered from chronic mercury poisoning from the el cheapo amalgam fillings put in my mouth as a kid until I had all of them removed in the '70's and replaced with gold inlays. Bad restorations in amalgam have led to a couple of root canals. I do not expect to ever have any teeth lost. I refused to have my teeth removed for radiation therapy, in spite if dread warnings of the consequences of caries- I just laughed, since I don't HAVE any caries and will never have any. In any event, even with no saliva my teeth are maintaining themselves perfectly. I brush once a day, at night.

My current very excellent dentist likes to see me every few months since the radiation, but there has been no change at all. Before that I only went in when I had an event, like an inlay coming adrift. My amalgam replacement 30 years ago was done by an old timer, old fashioned restorational dentist, a regular 'tooth artist', who did everything himself, but he used the old style cement, which is slowly coming loose, necessitating the occasional refitting.

Bear,

What were your symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning? I too have silver amalgams (mercury city) in all my molars (vegetarianism! in my early 20s), and have seriously considered replacing them.

You mentioned not freezing meat. Other than changing the texture and taste, does it really degrade the nutrition in the meat? So many people freeze their meat. Every hunter I know does. The meat processors always freeze meat before you pick it up. Hunters freeze meat (fish especially) to kill parasites. Is this really damaging the meat (from a nutrient standpoint)?

Bear, I have to say that I find your comments about Dr Atkins to be downright offensive.

Maybe you should look around this board a little more, for example at the Success stories, and you will see that we have many members who have successfully lost large amounts of weight following Dr Atkins' plan.

If your opinion is that eating vegetables is nonsense, that's fine, but there are many of us here who know full well that our general health is improved dramatically by eating vegetables. Not high carb, starchy ones, but all the very healthy low carb ones. Who knows, but maybe you might improve your immune system by eating some.

Rosebud

See you put together a really good argument, and then blow it all by saying something really stupid like this:



This is YOUR oppinion. I know PLENTY of people who have made Atkins and other LOW carb plans their way of life, and they have stuck with it since the 60's when it was first discovered that it helped people lose weight!

You have come here, to a LOW CARB board, and then act like a lost prophet....trying to 'save' us all!!

So you have your opinion, but I don't think it nessesitates slamming every other plan out there that people are doing well on. Someone could be doing perfectly well on a low carb plan, read this thread and then de-rail themselves because they believe what you are saying, and to be frank, you might have very genuine tested theories on this, you're obviously living it and it's working for you, but please be mindful that you are the minority here. Please don't be so concieted that you treat us all like morons!!

I'm not saying your theory isn't correct, or that you don't have a point, but please take care when talking about other low carb plans.....you are on a low carb board after all!

Well, this is one instance where you, Dean Ornish, and the USDA Food Pyramidiots would actually agree!!!

Bear,
i think there is another way to look at this! Atkins has changed alot of peoples thinking and has helped people to see that low fat, low calorie diets are not as good as they first appeared. Lets face it, his induction plan is pretty much the way you eat, except he allows 3 cups of veggies a day! Isn't that a big improvement from eating low fat cardboard crap??? Let's give the man credit where credit is due, shall we? He started all this low carb dieting, and it has become so popular that you can find tons of LC plans and books and forums nowadays! It works, and people lose weight and are able to keep it off. Even after losing the weight he teaches you to stay low carb for life. I know you disagree with the vegetable eating, but its sure is a heck of a lot better than eating all the sugar, corn syrup, breads, pastas, white flour products that most people eat nowadays...is it not???

Sorry, I did not mean to step on your belief system.

My dietary path is truly 'low carb', in fact it is as low as I can take it. Some don't need that, which is fine by me. Some do.

I have not 'slammed every other plan out there' (odd turn of phrase), I simply and honestly stated my opinion on Atkins- no one else. I think it is perhaps stretching things a bit to claim that going even lower in carbs could 'derail' anyone. In truth it would only enhance their progress. I never said I expected anyone to adapt my path, in fact, any who try to do so will succeed only because of great will power.

Why would anyone whose dietary plan is doing exactly what they wanted, need to change anything? I am here because plans like Atkins promoted emphatically did not work for me and I thought others might benefit from my real life experiences.

I have had lots of correspondents who have written to me and told me they tried Atkins and it did not work. Some said it worked for a while then stopped.

Other sources I have read have substantiated that only a few select people can benefit from following his rather high recommended carb intakes (up to 100 gm/day). My opinion is just that he crafted his diet to appeal to the wider population of people who were habituated to eating vegetation, and a simple comparison of his earliest book (which I read with great anticipation on its appearance) and the latest one bears up this analysis- the later one goes into veggies even further.

After al the time which has passed, I am used to being accused of stepping on sacred cows so far as diet and nutrition are concerned. If any of you are in love with Atkins, and do well on it, that's great, and I respect that, but I still personally think his approach is flawed. I do not look at diet and dietary gurus as special or sacrosanct.

I can only attest to what does and does not work for me and verify that I have never ever had my path fail any person who took it up and stuck to it, no matter how obese they were, nor what kind of failures they experienced on other regimes.

I cannot find any evidence that vegetables, any vegetables- have anything 'good' about them. Certainly the salient thing they all do have is the ability to put a load on your body to deal with them. There are NO nutrients missing from a meat diet- provided the meat is not cooked much.

Get all that mercury out, asap. You will be completely amazed how your health, mental attitude and memory will improve, and quickly too. Expect to have the dentist find new damage beneath the amalgam, which is porous and allows bacteria to penetrate under it. Amalgam is 50-52% mercury, about 35% silver and 15% tin. The mercury slowly evaporates and is slightly soluble. It forms organic compounds which are truly toxic.

I do not know of any meat processors who freeze any of their meat other than liver, which the USDA and similar authorities require to be frozen before sale. Most organ meat is frozen due to the small market for it. A good supplier can get the fresh. It is not necessary to freeze meat unless there is no other way to keep it and it will not be used for six months or more. Meat once frozen is damaged in quality, taste and texture, it leaks fluid, and is unctuous. As to damage to nutrition, I don't know, but I do know unless cooked into a flavoured gruel such as chilli con carne, it tastes so strongly I can tell in a mouthful that it has been frozen. Even in appearance, you can tell. It takes on a weird kind of translucence. Chicken loses its succulent tasty softness and gets toughened up.

The only US fish which have parasites (broad fish tapeworm) are the fresh water fish in the Great Lakes region- it is common in parts of Europe. There are only a few fish in salt water which harbour parasite which can effect humans- the wild salmon of the pacific coast can carry the larvae of a seal-specific parasite which, if eaten raw may cause what is called the 'sushi-worm syndrome', it will not colonise us, but chews on the stomach a bit and eventually dies- I have had it, very uncomfortable (I made sashimi from fresh salmon I caught- qualified Japanese sushi chefs are trained to find and remove it from the fish). But- even light cooking will destroy any fish-borne parasite. You have to eat it raw to have a problem.

Could it be those 3 cups of veggies that gave you 11 pounds?

No stretching required. If you were to spend a little time looking through the rest of the forum, you would see over and over again where people who are stalled recommence losing once they increase their vegie intake.
And just saying you don't believe it doesn't make it so.

Rosebud

I guess echinacea is a vegetable, after all- that is one seems to help one's immune system. But I don't think you should eat it in dietary quantities. All the great medicines and psychic activators come from vegetables of one kind or another. That is the great gift to mankind from the plant kingdom. Medicines and shamanic sacraments...Not food.

"...increase their veggie intake." Truly amazing. I don't understand this of course, it sounds like water running up hill to me. I wonder what other changes were involved, both before and after getting 'stalled'.

I have only had 47 years of interest and experience in low carb diet regimes and their results, in this relatively short time span I may have missed something important about vegetables.

With respect, Bear, your experience has been with no carb diets, not low.

And as I am not telling lies, I do not appreciate your insinuations.

Rosebud

He consumes dairy so he is NOT no carb per say. Just extremely LOW carb. I would call my diet low carb even though my average net carbs per day are usually 1-3. I do not do veggies. I do 1 oz pecans a day. I sometimes do 1 shake a day outta laziness. I see no more insinuations in his post then I have seen in other peoples posts directed at him....

Well, bonking = glycogen tanks empty (both muscle and liver). <- Sorry Lisa, thats BS. I've been a runner my entire life (as an adult, thats 30+ years), usually 4 - 10 miles distances, sometimes much more, and frequently 4 or more times a week. I've never heard the term 'bonking' until a few days ago reading this forum about over-weight bicycle riders. Additionally, in all my time running, I've never been a big 'carb' eater and have 'NEVER' bonked. After about 20-30 mins of running, a conditioned runner's body will automatically switch to burning FAT for more endurance.

I've been running for a very long time as well.

When I first switched over to low-carb, I never "bonked" but did experience more strain when completing my runs. It simply wasn't as comfortable.

Now, carb intake--or lack thereof--has no effect on my running. As a matter of fact, I can run faster and longer now on LC than I ever could when I was eating high carb.

Now, I don't run marathons, of course.

Barry Groves, of Eat Fat, Get Thin fame, has written a very interesting article with regard to The Correct Nutrition for Athletic Performance ~ definitely worth a read, and IMO quite pertinent in fact to this thread.

Thanks Demi. That is a very interesting Article. Keep them coming people...

I know this far too well. I think it had taken me 3 months to finally acclimate to primarily using fat as my fuel.

Reading this, I'm looking forward to see how my weight training will progress this year on a no-carb eating regimen.

I knew this WOE was for you! Watch out for your "fat fast" though!

I will try this to see how I fare. Not trying to lose weight at all -- just want to become more healthy, have less cravings, more energy, etc. Maybe my skin will clear up once and for all.

Yesterday all I ate was eggs, lots of chicken with fat, and coffee with heavy cream (and some sucralose added in). I am feeling good

Hahaha...yes, unfortunately, I'd have to give up my "fat-fast" which has served me so well through the years.

On the other hand, for me to give up veggies would be a walk in the park.

Good to see you Serre!

The only time I felt I needed to eat a "variety" of things is when I've been eating carbs. I've been eating nothing but london broils, cheese and eggs for the last week and I haven't felt like I needed to mix things up. The only thing I noticed is that I went a couple days without eating eggs over the weekend and on Monday I had a huge craving to eat eggs, so I made a chedder omelette. But then again, it's only been a week-but right now I have no problem looking forward to my London Broil at lunch.

I've been eating 2 meals a day, sometimes one is bigger than the other, but that seems to do the trick. I usually eat dinner and then alternate eating in the morning or afternoon, depending on how I feel.

Oh yeah, and I lost another 4 pounds. I can not believe how quick it's falling off with no carbs. Four days ago my pants were still sliding down my fat roll making it look like I had a load in my pants (like it has been for the last 3-4 months-a major part of my "bottoming out" in February), now I can wear my pants properly up on my waist.

Good to see you too Fred.

BTW, I'm a non taster (took that test from link given by Nancy toward the beginning of this thread), which probably explains why I'm not a picky eater, can't tell the difference between diet vs regular soda, and I like my veggies! But it's interesting how the number of papillae on your tongue can dictate what you can taste. Here, I thought you were conditioned in your childhood to absolutely detest veggies when actually it could be your tongue that's making you feel that way! Now I don't see you THAT crazy after all haha.

Congrats Rob. You are doing great!!