Keto/Carnivore works great so far (UPD: day 10)

[Vladimir]

My first attempt to start Keto/Carnivore was about 2-3 weeks ago. I was already on a pretty low-carb diet, avoiding sugar and sweet things.

I cut out all carbs and tried eating only steaks—it worked great for a day. But the next day, I started craving something different, so I added eggs, then butter. That worked more or less but by the evening, I craved sweets so badly that I couldn’t resist anymore and ended up eating a lot of milk and cookies.

I tried again a couple more times, but the same pattern repeated. What I noticed was that each time I ate "bad stuff" like cookies and milk, I felt worse than I did when I ate the same things before starting this experiment.

Five days ago, after another evening of milk and cookies, I decided to start over again. I felt cravings right after breakfast (eggs and butter), so I tried eating a cucumber instead—and it worked! I ate cucumbers every time I started feeling cravings, and each time, it helped. By day 4, all of my cravings had disappeared. I then gradually removed cucumbers from my diet as they gave me some bloating and intestinal dicsomfort (but I will probably continue to eat it occasionally anyway).

I also had some discomfort on my right side, which I figured was my gallbladder struggling to process all the extra fat I was eating. To address this, I started taking 1000 mg of milk thistle with every meal, and it quickly resolved the issue. The only other supplements I’m taking are 5000 IU of D3 with K2 and 10 mg of zinc.

Today is my 6th day, and I’m eating only eggs, butter, steaks, and coffee—with zero cravings for unhealthy food. I feel better every day, and I’m sleeping better every night. Almost all of my joint pain has disappeared, and my digestion feels great—no bloating, and my stomach feels tight and healthy.

I really hope these improvements will last.

I’d be happy to share more about my experience and answer any questions!

 

[Vladimir]

Completely forgot that I also take potassium citrate powder - about 10 grams per day, plus magnesium glycinate -360mg twice per day.

I also noticed that taking extra 15mg of Zinc some time between meals gives almost an instantaneous energy boost.

 

[Mouse girl]

interesting! that's great!

now that I can tolerate more foods and have such a hard time getting out and cooking, I don't know if I have the motivation to try some of this carnivore trend going on that some have had great luck with. In the past, in the early decades of being sick, I was soooo strict, tried so much and I did find help but eating flesh, and veggies. and some veggies I was sensitive to but some were fine. I also ate brown rice. it helped get out from the darkest times for sure. I always craved sugar and found very dark chocolate helped. flesh was the most important thing though, eating lost of flesh and I did well with high fat and I was not gaining weight at all. I should really try to get much more flesh in my diet again. hard to make all the food now.

really glad you are having some good results.

 

[Vladimir]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I never had any cravings while I was on low-carb diet, my best dessert was rice or buckwheat crisp with butter and black coffee.

For some reason, any carb intake gives me at least some bloating... Even peeled cucumbers, which I consider the most neutral and safest food. Although, cucumbers always give me such a great feeling of calmness in my stomach and work extremely well to tune down any cravings to zero, so I will definitely keep it in my diet list.

One of the great things among others about this diet is that it's so simple to cook - you just mix eggs with bread, or throw a steak on a pan or into a air fryer

 

[Mouse girl]

Standing there while cooking steak or eggs and the clean up is hard for me, though. Alll the prep work of standing and cooking and the worst, having to stand there and watch the food (NOTHING more boring than watching food cook, in my opinion, lol, but I always had that even when healthy...haha...) but standing for any length of time kills me.

I also have always had the salt issue and now severe electrolyte issue which is wny I must crazve sugar. I do better with sugar now, couldn't take it in the past except dark chocolate, bjujt now, it does help me sleep better. no food is right for everyone, so not surprised that cucumbers don't work for you especially if you are sensitive to chemicals or something else. there are some veggies that make me horrifically sick, brain fog, can't think of function right away, like spinach or Kayle. corn is a no go and I LOVE corn but haven't risked checking that out in some time. I did handle pop corn which is odd lately but it isn't great. food has been so difficult since I got sick, sometimes just eating something with preservatives in it would make me not function at all, make me soooo sick, turn me green and worse...

 

[Wishful]

NOTHING more boring than watching food cook

Yes, and going to do something else "for just a few minutes" results in something burning, sticking to the pan/pot bottom, or other culinary disasters. Yet that keeps happening, because watching food cook is so boring.

I did handle pop corn which is odd lately but it isn't great.

Meanwhile I can tolerate canned corn and masa flour, but not popcorn. I'm pretty sure it's something in the germ. Such a frustrating disease.

 

[Vladimir]

So, it's day 10 and the results are stable. My sleep is getting better every day, I now feel sleepy by 7-8pm even if I get an espresso.

Zero cravings for carbs/sugars, I crave for steaks more and more and enjoy them every time.

 

[light24bulbs]

Hi there, I am doing the same thing. I am on around day 7. I'm enjoying having a lot more mental clarity. It feels pretty good and the other benefits that nobody talks about like a heightened sense of taste are really cool.

I have heard others remark on this forum that the positive effects kind of wear off after a few weeks. It's been almost a month since you checked in, so I was wondering if you experienced that?

 

[Vladimir]

Hi there, I am doing the same thing. I am on around day 7. I'm enjoying having a lot more mental clarity. It feels pretty good and the other benefits that nobody talks about like a heightened sense of taste are really cool.

I have heard others remark on this forum that the positive effects kind of wear off after a few weeks. It's been almost a month since you checked in, so I was wondering if you experienced that?

Yes, the positives are still there. I sleep better, discomfort and pain slowly but noticeably go away.

However, what I have found so far is that it is extremely important to stick to the list of products that makes you feel better (or does not make you feel worse).

When I switched from Kerry Gold butter to Vital Farm I felt it immediately - bloated stomach, excessive hunger, worse sleep etc. I took me some time to figure out the reason.

Strangely, even local US ghee makes me feel worse and only Kerry Gold butter is fine.

I do feel cold in the mornings still and not sure how to fix that. That is the biggest downside of this diet now.

Also, I introduced a small amount of tomatoes and buckwheat crips back into the diet (around 200kkal from carbs in total) - it makes my digestion much better while still keeping me in ketosis (my ketones around 1-2.5 throughout the day).

I also added peppermint oil capsules - 200-300mg per meal which help fat digestion, and drink a lot of peppermint tea as my main beverage.

 

[light24bulbs]

That is really cool, glad to hear it is still working for you a month later. I actually decided to go off it because I realized it was really exacerbating my POTS. I almost never get POTS but I happen to be in the middle of a big flare-up when I went on to ketosis and I didn't seem to be able to get out of it until I stopped. Sure enough subsided within a day of stopping. Pretty odd but others on the forum have mentioned it. I'll try again when I'm not in the middle of POTS!

Good to know about the butter response. You're burning the fat much more directly in ketosis so maybe there's actually something bad in those butters and you're the only one to know about it!

 

[Vladimir]

That is really cool, glad to hear it is still working for you a month later. I actually decided to go off it because I realized it was really exacerbating my POTS. I almost never get POTS but I happen to be in the middle of a big flare-up when I went on to ketosis and I didn't seem to be able to get out of it until I stopped. Sure enough subsided within a day of stopping. Pretty odd but others on the forum have mentioned it. I'll try again when I'm not in the middle of POTS!

Good to know about the butter response. You're burning the fat much more directly in ketosis so maybe there's actually something bad in those butters and you're the only one to know about it!

I've never had POTS as a prominent symptom. I believe I had some years ago but my guess is that it was more related to the neck and upper back muscle spasms which contributed to the bad brain flow from and to the brain. I almost don't have any spasms in that area and no POTS too.

While on this diet, I think I started to feel more clearly how a certain food affects my condition. Since it's just a small bunch of different options I can track the bad stuff more easily and much faster.

Beef - steaks, patties, ground - is the best food in this sense. I literally feel better every time I eat it. Although, it never gives me 100% satiety no matter how much I get - I always have quite a lot of butter with each meal - about 30-40 mg.

 

[Wayne]

Today is my 6th day, and I’m eating only eggs, butter, steaks, and coffee—with zero cravings for unhealthy food. I feel better every day, and I’m sleeping better every night. Almost all of my joint pain has disappeared, and my digestion feels great—no bloating, and my stomach feels tight and healthy.

Hi @Vladimir -- Congratulations on your truly astounding results, and thanks for letting us know. I've long felt the foods we eat affect us much more than we often realize. I think when we eat foods we're not compabible with, our bodies go into stress mode, and then likely into some degree of "digestive PEM".

In other words, the digestive system needs to rest to recover from stressful food choices, but never gets a chance to do so because we keep eating the same foods. When we finally break that cycle, anything can happen. As your experience shows. I think the same applies for some people who experiment with intermittent fasting.

Again, congratulations!

 

[Vladimir]

A small update.

After 4-5 days of returning carbs into the diet, I realized that anxiety is coming back - first, my sleep got gradually worse, and now I have those hints of irrational anxiety feelings and thoughts which I had before starting the zero carb carnivore diet.

I've already stopped all carbs and focusing on meat and eggs again.

 

[light24bulbs]

Yeah the mood benefits of keto are serious. Seems to completely counteract my long covid anxiety and also the anxiety I get from LDN. I loved it, honestly. I'm pretty excited to do it again when I'm not having POTS.

Not telling you how to live your life but I think that if I were you and I was trying to introduce things, I'd introduce non-carby vegetables like broccoli and see how that goes. You can eat quite a bit more than animal products and still be keto. Might be no different for you, physiologically!

 

[Vladimir]

Yeah the mood benefits of keto are serious. Seems to completely counteract my long covid anxiety and also the anxiety I get from LDN. I loved it, honestly. I'm pretty excited to do it again when I'm not having POTS.

Not telling you how to live your life but I think that if I were you and I was trying to introduce things, I'd introduce non-carby vegetables like broccoli and see how that goes. You can eat quite a bit more than animal products and still be keto. Might be no different for you, physiologically!

The thing is that I am and was in Keto all those days - I do measure ketones everyday. So, I guess it's not so much about the ketosis state itself but the carbs and, as I suspect, some kind of bacteria of fungi that feeds on them.

During the carnivore experiment, I also tried to introduce psyllium husk to help digestion and got the same negative effects on the same day - horrible sleep issues. They say psyllium is not fermentable and cannot be eaten by intestinal bacteria but I don't think this is 100% true...

 

[light24bulbs]

Then again psyllium husk is a pretty weird thing to eat compared to broccoli

And you can take yourself out of ketosis much faster than it shows up on the breath meter. That works by measuring acetone in your breath and acetone takes a while to work its way out of your system from ketosis. Introducing carbs almost immediately takes you out of ketosis. You can feel it and if you look it up it says the same thing. So I would guess you weren't staying in ketosis.

 

[Vladimir]

Then again psyllium husk is a pretty weird thing to eat compared to broccoli

And you can take yourself out of ketosis much faster than it shows up on the breath meter. That works by measuring acetone in your breath and acetone takes a while to work its way out of your system from ketosis. Introducing carbs almost immediately takes you out of ketosis. You can feel it and if you look it up it says the same thing. So I would guess you weren't staying in ketosis.

I use blood meter and do 5-7 measurements throughout the day, so I know 100% that I was in ketosis.

Broccoli keto profile is pretty much the same as tomato, but anyway there is not a single chance I will start broccoli voluntary

 

[light24bulbs]

My mistake, you are seriously into it!

Lol on the broccoli. I think it's a great vehicle for cheese but that's just me.

 

[Vladimir]

So, I completely replaced butter with MCT oil since and so far it works a lot better - I don't feel cold after breakfast anymore and there is almost zero stomach discomfort after I get my MCT coffee or even two.

 

[Wishful]

Something to think about: a ketogenic diet doesn't change only mitochondrial usage of glucose vs fats, so a different mechanism might be at play. A ketogenic diet might also have reduced fermentable fiber, so SCFA production in the colon would be reduced, affecting the immune cells there. It would also shift the microbiome populations. There are probably many other changes that occur. So, if your responses to a diet don't make sense from the ideal ketogenic theory, it might make sense with a different theory.