Saturday, July 11, 2009

Dipping My Toe In Carnivorous Country

Primarily for curiosity's sake, I am currently trialling a zero-carb, carnivore diet, to see how my body reacts. I'm not having any problems losing fat, so hopefully this trial will not hinder my progress (and most of my reading suggests just the opposite).

This means that it'll be a few days at least before any new recipes pop up here, so hopefully my most recent post regarding Primal Lasagna will tide you over until then!

What does this mean I'll be eating? Primarily, meat. And eggs. A little dairy, mainly just to keep things interesting. Not all that different to how I started off at the beginning of this year, before I started adding in the veggies.

Some resources that I've been consulting in order to understand how and why my body may react (if I notice any difference at all):

What Is Zero Carb? from Zeroing In On Health.

The Zero Carb Path - a great collection of 'chapters' exploring the physiological reactions to a meat-only diet (although some of the science is over-simplified).

Eat Fat & Grow Slim - a superb ebook of a site, deconstructing the old arguments against fat (primarily) and discussing why it is that people on high-fat diets do so well in all areas of health.

Here is the experience of a fellow blogger who has just completed his first year living as a carnivore - Things I've Learned.

And finally, here are two forums that I'll be dipping in and out of to read more personal experiences of those who live quite happily eating zero carb, and have some great recipes to share beyond 'wrap that bit of meat in bacon - super awesome!' which is about as fancy as I have gotten thus far :) The Magic Bus Trip & The Zero Carb Approach section of the Raw Paleo Forum. I won't be posting, just browsing for ideas. Work resumes on Monday, so I won't have much time to play!

So I started cutting my veggies (and my occasional fruit & nuts) yesterday. I enjoyed a quick post-noon breakfast:


Then I popped over to the bio-dynamic butcher's shop, to flesh out the remainder of my purchase from Organic Direct.


4 lamb chump chops
4 salmon fillets
2 beef sausages
2 lamb sausages
6 chicken drumsticks
1kg pork roast (cut in two by me)
1.7kg chicken

Not too shabby! And not too expensive considering that it's all hormone-free, grass-fed/pastured/free-range etc.

Now the contents of my freezer looks like this:



Plus we nipped off to the fresh fish market at Doncaster this afternoon, and grabbed some barramundi, oysters, and prawns.

Back to yesterday - for lunch I ate two of my new lamb chump chops - wow! So delicious. I'm horrified that I somehow neglected to photograph them...

Pork roast with scrambled eggs for dinner:


Then today, bacon for a late breakfast again - quite a bit, since we were off to the cinema and wouldn't have time for lunch:


And for dinner, a beef topside roast, served with fried eggs:


Feeling normal thus far!

6 comments:

Threshold Photograpy said...

Oo, yes. Now this is something I'm thinking of trying too, just to see how I feel and to see if I can cut some weight.

Keep posting! I want as much info as possible! :)

Linda said...

I want some of YOUR bacon! It looks totally different than the stuff we get here!

Jezwyn said...

Good ol' fatty middle bacon... No shortcuts for me!! Shame that I can't get free-range bacon in middle cuts though, so bacon remains my naughty hormone-ridden treat. :) Only a few times a month nowadays... I have free-range ham to fill the void. But I don't think I'll ever cut myself off altogether - juts gotta get on the organic pork farms and beg for the fatty cuts! :D

Mark said...

I curious how this goes for you. Charles Zeroing blog is very good - I've been reading it for a while.

Are you going to get into the pemmican-making business?

Jezwyn said...

I was tempted to try it, based on Mark Sisson's breakdown of how to make it, but while I was pondering where to get my hands on some beef fat, I noticed one of his closing lines - "it tasted a lot like bland dog food"... End interest. :)

Have you had a tastier experience, with a tatsier recipe? You could restore my faith that utilitarianism need not bore...

Mark said...

I think Mark Sisson mentioned that the taste grows on you but I could be wrong.

I bought some from US Wellness Meats a while back - it wasn't bad but I didn't fall in love with it. It wasn't too expensive - I think it was $4 a bar.

Anyway, there was a post on carnivorehealth.com on pemmican production that was pretty intriguing that got me wanting to make a huge batch of my own and see how I liked it by the end of it... I have an Excalibur Dehydrator coming any day now and a 2lb grassfed roast and some tallow from US Wellness meats in the freezer so I might give it a go for kicks.