Tag Archives: zero carb

April 2, 2012

What’s Been Going In My Hole

By Unleash The Beef

All meat is over. This will dismay some readers, but it is what it is. I consumed absolutely nothing but animals and water for three years. It restored my health from the throes of vege/fruitarianism and was the most effortless way of eating I’ve experienced. It was begrudgingly that I decided to experiment with anything non-carnivorous, but the driving factor behind this decision was body temperature.

I had low body temperature before I went all meat. However, it wasn’t until two-plus years into all meat that I started to realize it’s not normal for one’s teeth to chatter any time the temperature is below 75 degrees. While all meat resolved many health issues for me, body temperature was something that never improved. The more I communicated with others eating all meat, particularly active men in their 20’s and 30’s, I discovered nearly all of them were experiencing low body temperature, seemingly brought on by low or zero carbohydrate intake. So while meat didn’t create this problem for me, it was creating it for others, and considering both their experience and my own, it didn’t seem like all meat was going to solve it. Around the three-year mark, my body temperature grew noticeably worse – to the point where I would become painfully cold. While activity level and frequency of eating were factors, it got to the point where it actually felt dangerous to be that cold. So after enough research on the anti-thyroid effect of zero carb intake, and enough time living as a vibrating human icicle, I decided to mix things back up and see what the results were.

While I believe I still have lifelong gut health issues to address, reintroducing other foods in combination with more frequent eating has had a positive effect on my body temperature and metabolism. I’m still not the heat machine I’d like to be, but I feel like I’ve at least gotten my broken down thyroid out of the garage. It’s not ready for the interstate, but at least I’m back on the surface streets with a little wind in my face and Warrant coming through the stereo.

So what have I actually added back into my diet? Not a whole hell of a lot, really. Primarily yams and juice. I have some fermented veggies on occasion – sauerkraut or cultured carrots – and I’ve been using coconut oil and salt quite liberally. Animal products are still the backbone of what I eat, but with the addition of other foods, I’ve obviously scaled my 100% beef intake back vastly. I’m essentially in a holding pattern, doing an unmotivated version of Danny Roddy with my average daily menu consisting of eggs, yams, and orange juice. Beef, fish, chicken, etc all cycle through, I’ll consume any organic coconut product there is, and grass-fed butter is still on par with disease-free vagina in terms of unrivaled bliss, but eggs / yams / OJ are baseline as of late.

So where do I stand on carnivorous eating? Hell if I know. Plenty of people are thriving on it years in, now, and if it’s working for them, I certainly ain’t going to slag it. If anything, I’m envious, because I’d truly prefer to continue eating that way. But my body temperature will not be reconciled via all meat, so for now I will pile yams down my throat and be happy that I can actually feel my extremities again. I don’t know if the apparent thyroid-suppressing nature of carnivory will catch up to those that maintain it, but again, if their metabolism keeps firing on all cylinders, there’s no reason to stop. If I’m ever able to stay warm eating only meat, I’ll drop everything else like a sack of yams. I said before that if carnivorous eating ever stopped working, I’d move on. That’s what I’ve done. No way of eating should become a religious faith.

The bottom line is that I don’t know shit. Some things work better than others, and the whole nutrition game seems destined to be a permanent work in progress. Which is fine. While I loved the notion that all meat was it and I’d never have to burn a mental calorie worrying about this shit again, on I go.

As for the site, my nutritional habits have never been more than a backdrop, so nothing changes. The primary purpose here was and always will be to provide myself an outlet to rant like a grandiloquent prick. Most nutrition-related content consisted of lambasting the asinine shit that I witness or that comes through mainstream information outlets. This, too, will not change. While I don’t have all the right answers, I know plenty of wrong ones, and they’ll be mocked accordingly.

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April 18, 2010

Some People Actually Get It

By Unleash The Beef

Let’s face it; few women are worth paying attention to. Outside of Ayn Rand, Lierre Keith, and Karen DeCoster, I struggle to name a female that’s ever had anything interesting or relevant to say. Oops, did I leave Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton off the list? Good. Once in a while, though, a lass turns up and really “gets it.” Today, I’d like to spotlight one such fine lady.

Margot is a 44 year old mother of three, and – GASP! – a stay at home mom. This means she has somehow resisted the allure of spending forty hours a week in a pants-suit pretending not to ovulate, and instead chosen to rear her own offspring as though she were meant to do such a thing – apparently believing that a Guatemalan nanny, soy formula, and resistance to all maternal instinct isn’t the recipe for a child’s success. Weird. She’s also Canadian, which I mention only because I have an affection for Canadians based on almost nothing other than Holmes On Homes, one of the only watchable shows on television. Anywho, Margot is a fixture at Zeroing In On Health, and is an example of someone who took their well-being into their own hands, figured out what’s best for themselves and their family, and said “to hell” with the rest of it.

The following is a post from Margot on the ZIOH Forum that I consider to be not only a proper unleashing of beef, but a fine example of what it’s like being relatively sane in a completely insane world. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Included are before and after pictures of both Margot and her husband – continued evidence of the terrible evils of a carnivorous diet. Margot’s entire carnivorous journey has been chronicled on ZIOH and can be found here.

Pre-carnivorous vs Carnivorous. Surely this can't be...

 This is what my in-laws do not get.

They are all fat and getting fatter. Sick and getting sicker. Every. Single. One of them.

It is obvious to me what the problem is, and hearing my mother-in-law say things like “we all have to die sometime” does not make it any easier for me to swallow.

To see her sneaking food to my kids behind my back despite what our wishes are, makes me so mad I cannot see straight. To hear her say things like ‘it is just a rash, what is the big deal?’ makes me even madder.

Then to hear them ALL say that my hubby is too skinny or looking anorexic is the icing on the cake.

She refuses to acknowledge my research and my personal history as well as my own family’s personal history. She rolls her eyes when I am reading the labels on the food she serves my kids and is constantly asking “well what CAN I feed them?” and then her husband is chiming in behind her saying “those kids need to eat!” as he nurses his gout with fruit juice and his constipation with bran cereal and mindlessly scratches his scar from his heart valve transplant he had 7 years ago.

My mother-in-law has to shop BEFORE eating out, and then has to race home or find the nearest bathroom before she shits herself.

My niece and nephew are tyrants… sugar addicted hellions. They are constantly in search of their next sugar laden fix, yet it is MY KIDS with the problem because they are not hungry all day long and manage to be perfectly healthy and adjusted and happy on their food. And when they DO eat her crap, they feel like crap… and it is MY FAULT because they are deprived. My mother-in-law her very own SELF got to eat ice cream once a week when she was a kid, and is still alive to tell about it. How about THAT folks? Imagine that huh?

They think it is an “issue.” Well, for ME it is, and I am damn well going to do everything in my power so my kids do not grow up with those “issues” either.

Given the choice, what lady wouldn't go with Exhibit A?

 My sister-in-law cannot eat onions. Apparently they make her gassy and give her diarrhea. So when there is a family gathering and she is there, everything is prepared to avoid her having those “issues.” All Chinese food is ordered without onions and there will always be a pizza ordered without sauce for her. I suppose in some worlds, having gas is far, far worse than having chronic diseases, depression, bad skin and excessive fat. She was told to stop eating the “whites.” She told me this to my face after she stuffed the third donut down her pie hole, after eating only a “teeny” bit of mashed potatoes with her dinner… along with a side of rice, because she was told rice was the best choice.

We sat there through dinner the other day, with one of the newest members of the family, an 18 month old daughter of a cousin. This poor little girl’s whole face was covered in eczema, yet there was NO holding back, whatever she wanted to have on her plate she got. The soy/high-fructose-corn-syrup-filled buns, the gravy on the potatoes, the mushroom soup on the broccoli and rice, the fruit juice mixed with ginger ale served by the jug full, the angel food cake, ice cream and canned fruit cocktail for dessert. I did not see her eat one bite of meat.

And right there beside her is my two year old daughter. Who has never even tasted any of that crap… who is a perfect specimen of health. Drinking her goat’s milk out of a cup and eating standing rib roast like it is going out of style and speaking in complete, coherent sentences like a 4 year old. Yet my father-in-law is more worried about what she is NOT eating, than anyone is about this poor little girl who is obviously suffering. I thought my mother-in-law was going to cry right there when my daughter spat out some raw carrot she was given.

Then my mother-in-law feels compelled to sneak her chunks of cake, because it did not have milk in it.

We can only sit by in silence and be the people we need them to see. Hopefully, some day they will wake up out of their carb-addicted comas and see what they are all refusing to see now.

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August 5, 2009

They’re All Gonna Laugh At You

By Unleash The Beef

The greatest difficulty faced by the average person considering a carnivorous / zero-carb diet is overcoming acculturation – the mental block that goes up when we hear something that we presume to be untrue or impossible, not because of it actually being untrue or impossible, but because it contradicts what we’ve been programmed to believe by our parents and culture. The greatest inhibitor to personal progress is often the conscious mind and its insecurities and rationalizations. We live in crippling fear of the judgment of others who are inconsequential to our lives. This post is about eating carnivorously, but let me begin elsewhere:

In the buildup to the 2008 presidential election, a quaint elder by the name of Ron Paul rose to a surprising level of recognition as a candidate in the Republican Party. He stood out amongst candidates from both major parties as he, unlike any other “major candidate,” provided a consistent, principled, honest message and platform. While I typically avoid “election” conversation – especially with people that think their vote is meaningful – I was amazed at how often I heard comments like, “I agree with everything Ron Paul says. I’d vote for him if he had any chance of winning.”

Okay, wait. So here’s a guy with whom you agree 100% of the time, but since conventional wisdom says only those deemed worthy by the Republican and Democratic National Committees are worth voting for, against all better judgment, rationale, and principle, you’ll accept this, march to the polls, and vote for “the lesser of two evils”? Really? And this thinking will effect change how? If you, and millions like you, could only tune out the system, you’d act on what’s actually best for you instead of choosing between dissatisfactory options that only do you harm.

In case it’s not obvious where I’m going with this analogy, Ron Paul is a big, fat, juicy steak and Obama and McCain represent your government-recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables. Not only do you want that steak… crave that steak – you actually need that steak. But the only reason you feel compelled to swallow fruits and vegetables is because your government (along with the innumerable independent experts that also want to control you) tells you to. So you – dutiful citizen that you are – do your part by eating your veggies and voting for your favorite puppet politician, never comprehending that both of these things are indigestible and, ultimately, contribute to the ruin of mankind. All the while, you never take seriously the notion of a Ron Paul presidency or an all-meat diet because the talking heads – the “experts” – tell you it’s impossible and, once again, you miss the opportunity to be set free.

So a chosen few, lacking any actual knowledge, set standards and we follow them because, hell, we don’t know anything either. Not only don’t we know anything – we are terrified at the prospect of actually learning something! Why? Because learning the truth forces us to face the lies we live, and we’ve become so comfortable with our insecurities that the prospect of security in truth is terrifying. Why? Well, because… what if the truth makes us change? Change is scary. Change may require effort and cause others to question why we pursue truth and personal betterment when it’s so much easier to order Chinese, sit on the couch, and perpetuate mediocrity. But hey, tonight’s the chow mein special and Paris Hilton’s New BFF is on at 8:00, so I understand.

People. Stop being sheep. Stop fearing truth. Stop fearing being different. Above all, stop fearing yourself. If you want to stop fearing yourself, trust only yourself. In other words, stop listening to the “experts” and “authorities.” Don’t believe it until you experience it. And go experience it! If you find this carnivorous path intriguing, then try it! Don’t email me with “what about eating at someone else’s house” or “what about eating at restaurants” or “what is it like when you first tell people that you only eat meat?”

Who cares?

Overcome this paralyzing fear of yourself and the world around you. Snap out of it. You don’t owe anybody anything, especially an explanation. If you want to eat nothing but meat, then do it! Anyone that objects has personal issues. Don’t hold yourself hostage to the ignorance of cowards. Isn’t one of our earliest lessons that “everyone does it” is a poor reason to do it? Well why do we eat vegetables? Because everyone eats vegetables. Well fuck everyone and fuck vegetables. You’d like to go carnivorous but you’re afraid you’ll offend your office coworker when she and her husband have you over for dinner if you don’t eat her green beans? Are you insane? Your dislike of green beans is not a calculated act of malice. You dislike them because they suck. And if your fat, diabetic, medicated friend and her husband with kankles and a drinking problem can’t deal with that fact, then I suggest you find a new fat friend. You can even mention to her that if she doesn’t want to be fat anymore, she should eliminate carbohydrate from her diet and live on animal flesh.

This path is a chance to eliminate the acculturated, self-defeating mindset that permeates so much of our thinking. That’s why I refer to it as a path and not a diet. Diet is one aspect of this path. In embracing a carnivorous diet, you’re presented an opportunity to embrace the truth and stand up in the face of mountains of misinformation and serve as an example to anyone interested that “common knowledge” is horseshit and that you must learn to think independently. Stop being a prisoner of other’s stupidity and do what’s best for you. Break free from the herd of the status quo mindfuck. Sure, it’s easier to plod along with the rest of the sheep, but it’s antithetical to the human spirit. You don’t have to shout from the rooftops and suffocate uninterested people with your life choices – but if you believe in it – act on it. Don’t vote for the lesser of two evils. Don’t vote knowing nothing about the candidates. And most of all, don’t be the assjacket walking around with an “I voted” sticker on your shirt – the scarlet letter of self-important douchebaggery. I will commit vehicular homicide on you if I see you wearing one of those. Decide on principle, act on principle, and let the cards fall where they may. Eat your meat, skip the veggies, and invite those that slag your decisions to kindly go fist themselves.

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July 17, 2009

I Eat Meat. Period.

By Unleash The Beef

My original plan for the dietary aspect of the site was to chronicle my experiences seeking truth in nutrition over the last few years blow for blow, beginning with my initial awakening and the ensuing dietary clean-up, my eventual move to organic/raw, the fruitarian nightmare that followed, and finally arriving at carnivory. But the site’s hardly been up a week and I’m already receiving emails along the lines of

Hey, are you serious about eating nothing but meat or is that just a joke? That’s not even possible, is it? You obviously eat some fruits and vegetables and stuff like that, right? Wouldn’t you die if you just ate meat? Where do you get your carbohydrates? What about all that fat?

To anyone stumbling in here that may be the least bit interested in or intrigued by the truth about nutrition, I offer the following advice:  Forget everything you’ve ever been told and assume that everything you think you know is wrong. I mean that. If you want to learn anything, the first step is to forget everything. You must step outside the box of “common knowledge,” “accepted science,” and “experts” of any ilk. Truth does not contain itself within the parameters of anyone’s particular comfort zone. Forget “faith” – faith is nothing but a phobic resistance to reality. Forget your ethics, forget what your mom said, forget what society thinks. Society is a disease and your mother never loved you, anyway.

That being said: Yes, I live exclusively on meat and water.

But you take supplements, right? I mean, after all, nothing but meat… NO.

You must drink something besides water, though, how could you… NO.

Well at some point you eat a vegetable or fruit, because it’s imposs… NO.

Aren’t you worried about not getting important vitam… NO.

You must be concerned that all that fat will clog… NO.

Unless your question is “Do you live exclusively on meat and water because this is the only diet that allows for optimal human health?” then the answer is no. What I’m doing is not unique, revolutionary, or unprecedented. It may be shocking to modern sensibilities, but modern sensibilities are shockingly ignorant. You can do this too, if you’re able to overcome the poisoned state of mind resulting from the collective wisdom of modern man. You should do this if you’d prefer health and happiness to death and decay.

I am not sales-pitching carnivory as the ultimate diet for triathletes, stay-at-home moms, power lifters, yoga instructors, deep sea fisherman, speed walkers, dog walkers, or registered sex offenders. I’m simply suggesting, based on both the history of civilization and personal experience, that carnivory is the optimal diet for achieving optimal health.

There are no secrets behind this, no hidden agenda. I did not arrive at this conclusion by rationalizing my lust for meat to the point that I felt justified living on it exclusively. In fact, the day I began eating carnivorously, there was nothing I desired less than the flesh of an animal. Not that I had any ethical qualms with meat consumption – I hadn’t reached that degree of dementia – but I’d been living entirely on fruit for the last half year and believed meat to putrefy, constipate, and create a dangerously acidic environment in the body. If, at that point, I had to choose one single food item to subsist on, it would have been dried figs, not ribeye steak. After six months on fruit, my addiction to sugar made Perez Hilton’s addiction to male genitalia seem mild by comparison.

But after seeing myself wither physically, feeling my teeth rot, and attending the funerals of both my athletic ability and sex drive, reality came knocking. And when I answered the door, it kicked me in the shin and called me a pussy, then said, “Do something about it,” only I couldn’t, because my testosterone had been replaced by fruit sugar and I had the fight response of an oven-warmed marshmallow. Sure, living on fruit heightened my senses, but the ability to smell an unkempt snatch from 200 yards away only gets you so far – usually about another 200 yards until the odor fades. Reality: 1 Me: 0

Fortunately, I was turned on to the experience of a long-term carnivore that had a lot to say and made a lot of sense. It was a far cry from where I was mentally and nutritionally, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the truth. You can’t learn it if you don’t experience it. Once you’ve experienced it, it becomes difficult to live a lie. Sitting around all day citing theories from scientific journals may impress dullards on internet message boards, but you’re only fooling yourself as you type between bites from a roll of cookie dough and sips from a “World of Warcraft Game Fuel Horde Red” Mountain Dew. The drink of choice for serious gamers and pederasts.

All of that is to say this – Nothing is more meaningful than experience in the pursuit of truth. Now that I have a little, I’m happy to share it. I’ve put myself on the line and experienced the effects of a variety of ways of eating. There has been no attempt to prove or disprove any preconceived notions about what’s good and what’s bad or what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve arrived here through self-interest. I want to be healthy. Not “healthy for a young male” or “healthy for an obese, diabetic senior citizen” – actually fucking healthy. If that means living on elephant shit and cat urine, that’s what I’ll do. I’m uninterested in opinions and projections. I seek information from those with experience and follow through by experiencing things for myself. I’m not going to present scientific minutia and explain why the carnivorous diet is effective on a cellular level. I’m not smart enough to do so, and I plan to keep this simple enough that even the mongoloids visiting this site have a chance of comprehending it (that is, when they’re not locked up in their cages). I will point you to others far more effective than myself at detailing the intricacies of a carnivorous diet. I want only to make it clear, in simple, expletive-laced language, why this path is un-fucking-beatable day to day.

If you feel your dietary beliefs are challenged by what I say, good. Why not take the challenge? Just don’t piss and moan to me about it because you’re afraid to try. I don’t owe you anything. I’m not here to prove anything to anyone. The only person I feel compelled to prove anything to is me. Don’t take my word for anything. Trust nothing but your own experience. But experience something, would you? Stop speculating and prove or disprove it to yourself. If you’ve had a tremendous experience as a vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, alcoholic, or lesbian, that’s great – but it doesn’t justify writing off or talking down carnivory if you haven’t actually experienced it.

But, really, what do I know? Here I am chirping about experience when I’m just some jerk in his twenties with a website and too much time on his hands. Carrying on about meat and water and how living this way can simplify your life and bring you great health. Maybe it just hasn’t caught up with me yet, and I’ll rue the day I ever posted this when my arteries clog up and my heart stops beating from all that toxic animal fat. I guess I should act my age, put on an Ed Hardy t-shirt, start drinking Red Bull, and forget about all of this.

Resources for those that aren’t too lazy and scared to better themselves:

• The Bear. Where it all started for me. Legendary thread detailing his half-century of carnivory. (Click here for Bear’s posts only.)

• Charles Washington’s Zeroing In On Health Forum and Blog. The godfather and resident go-to-man of the meat movement. Takes all the science and information and makes it accessible to the average dolt. The forum has a wealth of information and experience from every day people healing themselves with a carnivorous diet. I strongly recommend reading everything there. Note his recommended books and articles. You can also check out all of my posts on the forum, my handle is ChrisNorton (registration required).

• Lex Rooker at RawPaleoForum.com. The master of objective science, research, experience, and practicality. I’m incapable of doing him justice in words so just go study him.

• Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Documents the history of misinformation that has led us to our fat phobia and mistaken dietary beliefs. If you do nothing else, go to your nearest bookstore and read the epilogue to this work.

• Not By Bread Alone (aka The Fat of The Land) by Viljamur Stefansson. Available free online. The work responsible for The Bear and Charles Washington’s awakenings.

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