Weight loss

I know people have 10 years doing carnivore diet they still look pretty good ... that is why I have decided to try it ...

Carnivore can definitely help you lose weight, but it was never really meant to be a long term diet. If you like vegetables at all, it can also be hard to sustain.

Best diet is a carnivorous diet just meats and all products come from animal no carbs no sugars no fruits or vegetables
Being doing for a yeas I never felt so healthy...

Lately I have gotten very good at getting more than enough protein daily. If need be, a couple of my go-to snacks would be a handful of wasabi-soy almonds or string cheese to bump my protein. I've also added more dairy in the form of plain Skyr type yogurt or low-fat cottage cheese with berries. I can add 100% Stevia extract to sweeten most things without adding carbs or anything artificial.

The thing I sometimes have trouble getting enough of is fiber. On days where I have a sandwich I use a low-carb wrap that has a days worth of fiber (30g). They are only 3g net carbs/wrap, so can fit into a <20g of carbs day. They are considered "processed" though, so there is that. I've been trying to substitute some of my animal protein with vegetable protein, which also tends to add fiber but can boost carbs.

What I have gotten pretty good at is an "Eat this, not that" substitution approach. For example, we are loaded with zuchinni from our garden, so one option is zuchinni bread. My wife will make me a loaf using almond flour instead of regular flour. That gives me more protein and fiber and still remains low-carb. Top that with some 100% Stevia extract sweetened Skyr yogurt, nuts and fresh raspberries and it's a guiltless high protein sweet snack with some fiber.

I'm finding high protein diets tend to be very satiating while helping to keep calories in a range that enables weight loss with some moderate exercise. Also, weaning oneself off of processed carbs seems to make you crave them less over time.

FWIW - In the event anyone made it this far, lots of things say "Stevia extract", but if you look at the ingredient list and it says anythng other than "Stevia" as an ingredient, it is likely artificial. Picked one up the other day to check the label and the first ingredient was erythritol.

Someonescoming - I eat on a similar schedule. First meal is between noon to 1 pm and I call that lunch vs breakfast and again between 6 to 7 pm as dinner.

While I have noticed that if I string 3-4 days together keeping my carbs around 50g or less per day that I will lose weight. it is not something I can sustain without feeling that I'm missing out. I'm within a couple pounds of the upper end of what is considered a healthy weight for me. and I otherwise don't seem to suffer the ill effects you do from eating certain foods.

As the saying goes, I can have my cake and eat it too, though I'm not a big fan of cake ;-) For me, it's simply maintaining a balance that allows me to stay at a healthy weight and enjoy life's culinary pleasures, within reason.

Someonescoming - I have also found that what is considered common knowledge and what actually works for you can be two different things. One thing that is common knowledge is that your body doesn't only burn carbs until they are depleted. For most, a higher % of energy comes from burning carbs, but there is always a % that comes from burning fat as well unless one was on an extremely low-fat diet.

Supposedly after years of mostly doing 16:8 intermittant fasting and a low-carb diet (<100g) daily, my body has adapted to getting most of it's energy from burning fat. If true, that is not the norm for most. If you're keeping your carbs at 20g or less daily, that is far lower than me. At some point, the weight loss through calorie deficit alone does seem to stop working. This goes against common knowledge.

Whatever one decides to do to break the plateau either through diet or exercise, if it's not sustainable it won't really help in the long run. Weight loss should have an end game, and that should be to get to and maintain a healthy weight. Once there, IMHO it's good to occasionally enjoy some of the foods that you may actually like that you tend to avoid because one is constantly in weight loss mode.

It's different if you feel like crap after eating those foods but I do not feel like crap after eating say, ice cream, so I allow things like that occasionally. You already have a huge health advantage over most by viewing food primarily as a fuel source, but it's also OK to view it as source of pleasure once in a while too ;-)

@mahem: I snack a good bit. But it's been effective mostly snack sticks from rural king and pickled eggs.

marioncountycouple7688 - Are you snacking in place of meals or did you really mean "not snacking"? I snack as well, but those calories can add up.

I'm hoping the combination of the appetite suppression and snacking all day will shrink my stomach enough to help keep the weight off.

FWIW - I find coffee or tea can be used to curb appetite somewhat. One might argue that this is just one drug (caffeine) used in place of another, though I find herbal tea can also work. In my individual case, a goal is to not require any prescription meds, so this is acceptable to me either way. YMMV.

Each chooses their own form of battle with weight loss, or not. Some choose not to battle at all, so I commend those that at least try. The first step to getting healthier is to at least want to be healthier enough to actually do something about it. Many simply cannot or will not help themselves.

If using ozempic I hear you really need to be building muscle as you will likely use some and the older we get, the less of that we can afford.

The problem with Ozempic is that it's not unusual for the weight to come back after you stop taking it. From a drug companies point of view that's ideal, but I don't think it was meant to be taken for life.

Individually, time will tell it's effects if/when someone stops taking it. The carnivore diet in and of itself should drop the weight and keep it off so long as you can sustain that, or even better would likely be keto or Mediterranean. One of Ozempic's effects is to curb appetite, so there will be that to deal with among other things if/when you stop taking it.

Ozempic has worked great for me. In conjunction with the carnivore diet, I'm down 25# in 8 weeks.

SexyStrongD - That's incredible. Care to share how?

Dina here (Female half) I lost 140lbs in 2.5 yrs??

I had an interesting phenomenon that happened with weight loss for me. When I added a full fast day once a week to break past a 210 lb weight plateau and got down near 200 lbs, a couple people mentioned that I looked scrawny. I was doing the full fast day for about 3-4 months at that point as I recall.

I felt that I was going backwards (i.e. muscle loss?) based on my exercise routine. I stopped doing the full fast day and my weight returned to right around that plateau of 210 lbs. I didn't notice any difference in strength or energy level at that point from gaining that weight back.

Speculating that I may have lost strength due to lost muscle and looking at what my protein intake should be to maintain my muscle based on my parameters (age, weight, activity level), I attempted to break past that plateau again using a high protein diet. I was of course also doing about a 500 cal/day calorie deficit, but I was doing that all along.

I am now back to being closer to 200 lbs again and nobody has commented on me looking "scrawny". I did also add creatine to my daily supplements, but even before that I noticed that my strength feels like it mostly returned and I apparently look more muscular at the same weight people told me I looked scrawny at.

FWIW - The big change in all of this was ensuring that I was consuming enough protein to maintain and potentially gain muscle. I target 0.7g or protein/lb of body weight. As always, YMMV if trying to do the same.

I used to do a full fast day that actually wound up being around 40 hours because I did it on top of my regular 16:8 fasting. After a couple months of doing a full fast day once a week I felt like I was getting a little weaker when doing my normal workout. Now I just do the 16:8.

Part of this could just be I'm getting older, but it felt like the risk of sarcopenia wasn't worth the gains of the longer fasting periods. Supposedly, at around 60 and beyond, sarcopenia (loss of muscle) accelerates. Studies show that people in their 80's, 90's and beyond can still potentially gain muscle, but it is a lot harder than when in your 20s or 30s and probably a lot easier to lose those gains, so longer fasts become more of a risk I'd think.

To one of your points, I recently did my first fast. Went 5 days.
My wife is vegan has been working on fasting, starting with a 3 day, and slowly working up to 5.
I just jumped in with both feet (as I am want to do) and literally never got hungry. I kept drinking water, but never experienced any real hunger pangs or discomfort. It was shockingly easy.
For my vegan wife, it’s close to hell lol.

So there’s something to what you’ve posted for sure.

I asked ChatGPT what the long term effects are from my doing low carbs and intermittant fasting for the last 2+ years and got -

Metabolic Adaptations Over Time

1. Fat Adaptation (a.k.a. Keto-Adaptation)

Your body has become more efficient at:

• Mobilizing stored fat from adipose tissue

• Breaking down fat into fatty acids and ketones

• Using ketones and fat for fuel, especially during fasts or moderate activity

Result: You can go longer without food and experience fewer blood sugar crashes.

1. Improved Insulin Sensitivity

• Low carb + fasting reduces insulin levels over time.

• Your muscles become more responsive to insulin, making the carbs you do eat go further.

• Less glucose is converted to fat, and glycogen stores are refilled more efficiently.

1. Gluconeogenesis Efficiency

• Your liver gets better at making glucose from protein (and some fat parts).

This helps maintain blood sugar without needing dietary carbs, though it's slower and more energy-intensive.

1. Protein Sparing Effect (to a Point)

As your body learns to rely on fat and ketones, it spares muscle protein from being used as fuel. However, if protein intake is ever too low (especially during fasts + workouts), muscle breakdown can still occur.

1. More Mitochondrial Efficiency

• Fasting + fat adaptation may increase the number and efficiency of mitochondria, your energy "engines."

This helps with endurance and sustained energy.

Same here

That matches what I’ve experienced.

Probably most of us have heard that quick changes in weight are due to water weight, but this tidbit from ChatGPT really helped me get a better understanding of this. It also helped me understand how carbs can have such a drastic effect on weight -

Every gram of stored carbohydrate (glycogen) binds to about 3–4 grams of water.

On higher-carb days, your muscles and liver store more glycogen, pulling in water, which causes:

• A temporary increase in weight.

• Slower fat loss "on the scale" even if you're still burning fat.

On low-carb days (like ~50g or less), you deplete glycogen, release that water, and see:

• Quick weight drops.

• Flatter stomach/lighter scale, often overnight.

Our current go to for sweet, protein and antioxidants is low or nonfat greek yogurt, splenda and frozen blueberries. The berries actually firm up the yogurt and as they melt permeate the yogurt. The missus had a flavored std yogurt at her Moms and gagged on it LOL

This morning I saw my scale hit the 200 lb mark. Granted, it was 200.8, but still nice to see. The things I've been doing other than keeping my net calories aroung 1800 is trying to keep my protein around 140g's/day and, if I want to lose weight, try to keep my carbs around 50g's/day.

In order to do this I do have to suppliement with collagen powder so that my fat intake stays below my protein intake. Either that, or eat nothing but skinless chicken breast. I do eat a lot of chicken regardless. That, and I still do intermittant fasting, which is just basically skipping breakfast.

For my height, 189 - 204 lbs is considered a healthy weight range, so I cannot say I'm overweight at this point, not that I really looked like it with 10 or so more lbs on me.

One other challenge is trying to get around 30gs of fiber. On days where I have a wrap sandwich, the Mission whole wheat low-carb wraps have 30g of fiber, which that alone fulfills that fiber requirement for the day.

IMHO, I think the key to success is that I enjoy the type and quantity of food I eat so that what I'm doing is very sustainable. It also allows for splurging once in a while, like last night. I had a 1/2 pint of Talente Cold Brew gelato and TWO mini cheese cannolis with chocolate chips. Most nights though I'm good with either Skyr yogurt or cottage cheese with fruit/nuts.

We have had some slippage we are blaming on the family! A trip to see her parents and then having the grandkids for a week. I am sure that 2 day hotel takeover had NOTHING to do with it LOL.

Mayhem on the cottage cheese and eggs, we get chicken sausage that is fully cooked, brown it and then add the cottage cheese to the hot pan. Give it a good stir/mix and about a minute later add the scrambled eggs to cook. During the cooking it all goes together nicely though you have to cook off some water. We also season savory ie garlic and onion powder, S&P. When its close to firm we add some hand grated cheddar and its packing tons of protein and is delish!