(untitled)

Motivation Love you, lain. You all have given me comforting company in some of my most miserable lifetimes, so I think it's only fair of me to make an effort at giving something of substance back. Many of you apparently suffer from varied mental illness. I've had at least low-grade depression and compulsions, resulting in escapism and social isolation, for my entire life. Last year, it got particularly bad. I dropped a few letter grades in terms of academic performance, spent my free time daydreaming about somewhere else, and slept for the majority of every day. I'd tried lots of things to help my mood over the years, so this time, I decided to try something new. On a whim, I decided to try a carnivorous diet, after it was mentioned to me off-hand by a friend. That is, a diet consisting of exclusively ruminant animal meats and fats. Within a few months, I was completely cured of these lifelong mental conditions. I sleep a normal amount, and don't feel compelled to sleep the day away. My brain works much faster, to the point where caffeine only affects me negatively. I have much more energy throughout the entire day, where before I could only muster up the energy for one activity per day (finish this assignment, work on this programming project, etc.) I don't believe that my approach may help everybody, or help everybody as drastically, but it helped me very much and it will probably help you too, it's the single best decision I've made in my entire life. As such, I've compiled some thoughts and resources about this way of eating. I do not have the time to prove definitely that it is the best human diet, but I do have the time to give you some food for thought, and answer some common concerns. Concerns are marked in bold. Mechanisms of Action for Brain Health "Mental Health" seriously has to be one of the most unfortunate misnomers of the modern era - the diseases contained are not principally mental - they are often more about brain metabolism [1]. The brain, being by far the most energy-hungry organ in the body by mass (consuming some %20 of energy at 3% of weight), is generally sensitive to body metabolic dysfunction. The particular mental illness that results from brain metabolic dysfunction comes down to the areas of greatest weakness in the brain, individually - diseases of excitation paradoxically feel like an excess of energy, but this could be explained by the dysfunction of regulatory structures, like GABA-neurons. I have mental illness as a result of trauma. Would I benefit from a metabolic intervention like this one? In my unprofessional opinion, probably at least a little bit. The working scientific theory on trauma posits that its effects in the body are quite physical, including metabolic. As such, wouldn't it make sense that a metabolic intervention might help? Here are a few mechanisms of action I've identified for the effects on brain health: 1. Ketosis. Eating exclusively protein and fat will put you into ketosis, a condition of metabolism where your body operates on ketone bodies, produced from fat, instead of glucose. Ketone bodies can supply energy to insulin-resistant cells, where glucose fails. (Insulin resistance is the condition of your body not using glucose very well) Isn't glucose required for human metabolism? Yes, a small amount of glucose is required for human metabolism and a few brain structures. However, this amount can be produced by the body itself, endogenously, through the process of gluconeogenesis - producing glucose from proteins. 2. Resolving brain-relevant nutrient deficiencies. Red muscle and organ meat contain high amounts of B vitamins, creatine, iron, and so on. These nutrients are all brain-relevant, if you happen to be deficient, and in more bioavailable forms - consider, for instance, that gluten is technically a protein, and is often marked as such on bread nutritional values. But not all protein is created equal - your body cannot use it effectively. The same is true of plant irons and heme-iron, found in red meat. Iron, curiously, is also required for the production of dopamine. As such, consuming plenty of bioavailable iron, in my unprofessional opinion, is a good way to treat "dopaminergic addictions", insofar as those actually exist. 3. Reducing toxic load from plants This is probably going to sound insane to those who aren't aware, but all plants contain chemical defense mechanisms which try to prevent you from faring well if you eat them. This is best explained by [2]. Okay - but aren't ketones an alternative fuel, one that we're not meant to run on all the time? The body preferentially consumes glucose first, before ketones. You know what the body likes to consume even before glucose? Alcohol, and its metabolic products, such as acetate. As an aside, this is one of the reasons why alcoholics are the way they are - acetate can also fuel brain cells starved of energy in place of glucose. The point is - metabolic "preference" may not mean what you think it does. Indeed, the body may consume glucose first so as to keep it down. Other concerns Aren't the most long-lived peoples in the world vegetarian, or close to it? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2 In my opinion, probably not. I would not be surprised if this was propaganda pushed by the world's very wealthy agricultural industries. It would also be very surprising to me that a diet highly inconsistent with human evolution would result in optimal health. Isn't this way of eating very expensive? Not necessarily, at least in America. It's certainly far more expensive than cyberpunk soyfood, or beans and rice, but it's a false economy. A diet like that will probably cost you much more in the long run, especially if you require extensive medication, doctor's visits, dentist's visits, and so on. It's about comparable in price to a standard american diet, containing takeout, junk foods, and the like. It can also be made cheaper by dealing with farmers directly, if you can manage it. If I want to switch to this diet, won't I suffer greatly by cutting off the fuel source my body is most accustomed to? Yes. This is called "keto flu" and is normal - digestive abnormalities may also occur, and are usually temporary. Over time, these effects (seem to) fade. What about Vitamin C? Meat cooked rare contains some vitamin C. Further, on a diet like this one, your vitamin C requirement will drop substantially. Vitamin C competes with glucose for absorption - no exogenous glucose in the gut, and vitamin c in rare meat is more bioavailable. What about fiber? Fiber is not an essential nutrient. It solves some problems caused by carbohydrate, plant-laden diets. Will I get heart disease from so much fat, and cholesterol? I encourage you to investigate this question yourself at the bleeding edge of research. The answer is, probably not. [3] Will I get colon cancer? As above. The most severe measured effects of red meat (in any study, at all) are far eclipsed by other foodstuffs anyways. Resources Here, I dump interesting links and link compilations. [1]. https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=39EB7B519179642C2AC3025A31DD73B3 [2]. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=j1cqNDDG4aA [3]. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=rdgS3PuSuyg https://yewtu.be/watch?v=muAvJ1y64PA https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BUtwr_6sFw4 https://zerocarbzen.com/ https://justmeat.co/ https://www.mostly-fat.com/ Closing This stuff seems to work for me and many other people, and is relatively decentralized to boot. Maybe it could help you too. I may engage with some questions, if they're any good. Love, lain

Tried it. Started to black out three weeks in or so, got back to eating some carbs (I still eat tons of read meat) and it was resolved within 1 day. Well, everybody's different I guess.

>>35622 As a Type 1 Diabetic I just wanna say thank you, it’s really great to hear normal people talk about things like insulin resistance and ketosis. I’m doing a variation of your diet, I just only eat meat and raw vegetables. I find that the vegetables also help my body when they’re included in my diet so that’s my own choice tho :p

Carnivore literally saved my life. My father had schizophrenia and so I am likely to be predisposed to develop it and at lowet in my life I think I had the first symptoms of it developing. I also had constant stomach pain since primary school. I was fat due to stuffing myself with food just to soothe the pain for a moment. Tried going to doctors and their pills did help a bit but just for a moment. Removing gluten definitely helped but then it still was pretty bad compared to normal people. Going on carnivore diet completely resolved all the issues. In a week I was feeling like a normal person. I've tried reintroducing in a controlled honey/fruit/vegetables/rice/raw goat dairy or fats like coconut oil/cocoa butter but beside maple syrup which for some reason is completely fine, all the others end up worsening my symptoms. As I'm training intensely the maple syrup is a big help and I feel much better when I can recover my glycogen stores in a straightforward manner. Other than that I'm still on carnivore and seemingly each change would be for worse. So yeah. carnivore is totally worth trying for brain health.

nice that this post is here i do IF for the longest time and i noticed that i am eating like 70% carbs in my diet which is bad because i also workout like a truck... I switched to something that I in the start called "low carb diet" which took the healthy effect of your body burning the fat when fasting and i supply it even more with fats from my diet (almonds, cottage cheese and a little bit of red meat) and eat a lot of meat (300gr chicken breast and 100gr red meat a day) it was going well but the first thing that i noticed was just how much i miss vegetables and fruits. they are so fun to eat and dont drag my energies down and a super sweet and nice... plus i am fearing that not eating enough veggies will make me miss on vitamins and minerals and stuff... so i decided to add fruit and vegetable to my diet as my sole place of getting carbs from :) don't forget guys that what works for some doesnt work for everyone. the most important part of diet is looking and your plate and thinking if you really want the food that it in it to be inside you. the second most important point is that you need to think about a meal the day before you actually eat it. for example i need to prepare my lunch the day before or atleast plan what im gonna eat the day before. that way you will not think too much about straying from your diet. good luck and may we all be healthy :)

A question: What would you recommend in the event someone struggled to metabolize fat (a pancreatitis sufferer, for example)? I understand that trying to use protein as a primary energy source makes people ill - would simply upping meat intake be enough to see benefits?

>>37526 >using protein as a primary energy source makes people ill No, not really. It has nothing to do with too much protein, but rather a lack of fat. Fat and protein are the two macronutrients which you need. You can absolutely get by consuming lean meat, however you will need SOME fat for bare minimum health. 85/15 beef would probably be enough to satisfy this if consumed in adequate amount.

>>37526 >>37527 The "meat only" people rot their meat in a special manner because fresh meat only leads to vitamin deficiency. The rotting process is bacteria metabolizing the meat and that sets vitamins free you cant get from fresh meat. There is a documentary where one guy who got a rare disease and can only eat meat talks about it including struggles to get over disgust eating rotten meat and having to pay attention to not get bad bacteria in the rotting process that can make you ill. So only take it as a hint that information exists but please dont make any yolo attempt eating rotten things blindly.

>>37541 >because fresh meat only leads to vitamin deficiency If you mean muscle meat only, sure, you may lack copper, folate and calcium for example, but if you consume liver regularly and eat bone or egg shell for calcium, you will have 0 deficiencies. I know, since I exclusively eat raw meat. I do occasionally eat meat that is old, but I have never had any problems/ been sick from it for the nearly 6 years I have been doing it. I don't need to be careful at all. Typically I eat 1lb or more of liver each week, which supplies me with a good amount of copper and folate, and I eat crushed egg shell powder for calcium. I get most of my calories from ruminant animal fat and butter, the rest is muscle meat/other various organs and raw egg yolks(because when I eat the raw egg whites, I develop a biotin deficiency which causes my cuticles to get fuarrrked up).

>>37542 Appreciate correction. Maybe i misunderstood and the sick guy had to rot it for vitamins due his diseases cause he couldn't digest himself. Thought what he was doing was how you had to do meat only in general.

>>37542 and here is the breakdown of a sample day I might have, totaling 2100 calories I will say that prior to including regular liver, I didn't feel as good, however, even eating plain muscle meat felt much better/healthier than anything I had done before. Liver is usually not eaten daily since folate, retinol/vitamin a, and copper are don't seem to get excreted quickly. High amounts of vitamin C and E of course, are unnecessary since I don't consume sugar/carbs and eat minimal unsaturated fats. Thiamine is also very difficult to get in high amounts, but it is my understanding that a diet high in carbohydrates also increases the need for thiamine, so on a low carb diet I figure your needs are much lower.

I have noticed that even small amounts of carbs from any sources will make me feel terrible. I would say there is about a 50gram limit or so before I feel like death, and even then I feel better the less carbs I eat. However, I can eat unlimited amounts of meat and still feel healthy and in good shape. At this point I don't even understand how people maintain a carb based diet, I would genuinely rather die than try to live eating off eating grains, nuts, sugar, fruit, etc.

>>37600 That's interesting because there is a lot of people in carnivore sphere which recently switched from zerocarb to animal based with some low antinutrient carbs and have had significant improvements. I'm one of those. Adding 70g daily or more just makes me so much more energetic and productive. Seems like predisposition to fat/carb based metabolism can vary widely just as in case of inuit who can't get into ketosis. Have you tried some purified carb soruces like honey/maple syrup/white sugar/juices and it's all the same? Maybe it's some intolerance to the carb source not the carbs themself >>37544 There is a ton of B1 in pork chops or pork tenderloin if you worry about pufa. The only deficiency which I've felt was potassium but adding KCL salt fixed that. I've always eaten a lot of organs so that probably loaded me up with all the rest.

>>37542 >Typically I eat 1lb or more of liver each week retinol poisoning. eating that way is a thousand times more dangerous than eating nothing but muscle meat

>>37610 For me it is all the same, I feel horribly sick from even small amounts of carbohydrates, whether it is raw unfiltered unheated honey, fruit, juice, rice, or any carb you can think of. I have omitted them all from my diet and have no intention of ever including carbs besides the incidental ones from eggs, liver, etc. I have never felt that I have a potassium deficiency, however, my diet is low in sodium so I think it may have to do with that.

>>37610 >>37635 Also I am 99% sure most of those "carnivore" people going back to eating carbs are part of some big psyop.

>>37636 Actually, it's pretty funny that you mention that. I'm the OP, checking in on my thread after months. Since posting this I've continued to explore the effects of nutrition on mental well-being and found that I do well, better even, with fruits, oranges in particular. Worth noting that I still can't deal with starch well, though. Sure, both are "carbs" in a chemical sense, but the biology of how they are processed is meaningfully different, such that one could cause problems but not the other. Glycemic index, and all that. I still think spending some time without any carbs was /really/ good for me. It showed me that by just controlling my diet, I could achieve shocking improvements in mood and function, and I still understand that ketones have uniquely beneficial effects in recovery from brain/mood/mental problems. The development of structure, and now, its expression. Yeah, I basically follow the guidelines of one Ray Peat now. https://wiki.chadnet.org/ray-peat Which comes down to consuming a lot of milk (I found one organic A2 brand which I actually tolerate extremely well! An excellent natural soylent), orange juice, then red meat, and gelatin. I haven't found organ meats to be highly necessary for my vitality so I haven't gone out of my way to get them but they should probably be included despite. I don't eat any grains, starches, nuts, beans, seeds, PUFA (including PUFA-laden animals like chicken, pork). Moving from a ketotic state to a glycotic state, I observed that I had more creativity and yet more energy from the carnivorous state. No more heart palpitations and better sleep too. I think there's a cognitive shift from a more primitive survival mentality to a more creative one. But this is just my experience. As ray puts it, the only correct protocol is "Perceive, Think, Act". In his world-view, there are two kinds of metabolism -- redox metabolism, and stress metabolism. In his model, carnivory highly increases the stress metabolism, which can lead to improvements in functioning, but is not ultimately sustainable. At the same time, I think that a carnivorous state can promote changes in mitochondrial distribution and function which mean greater energy expression under a higher carbohydrate load. Be well.

>>37637 I have heard of the ray peat diet, but it definitely does not work for me. Milk(goat, cow, A2, raw, pasteurized, doesn't matter), fruit, honey, sugar, starch, etc is poison to my body as far as I have experienced, so definitely not decreasing my stress metabolism in any way, and definitely not sustainable. However, eating only meat, I feel a sense of peace that I never felt prior to eating this way. I definitely do not feel any kind of stress from this. The only reason I could see a carnivore diet being stressful is if you are cooking your meat, in which case it is losing nutrients and turning into inflammatory sludge. A raw carnivore diet is very healthy.

>>37638 Yes, I used to eat raw meat too. The whole shebang. It made me energetic, but it also made me disinterested in life. Perhaps this is the peace you describe, but I want a drive to doing things, making things.

>>37639 Peace as in "not feeling miserable", which carbs cause for me.

>>35622 Eating exclusively meat is not good for the body. We are not wild animals, we are human beings.

>>37678 maybe, but it definitly doesnt kill you and doesn't preclude you from being fit muscular and vivacious, at least if you have the right genetics. Clearly people can also do quite well as vegetarians. Diet is a funny thing....

I've just started this diet a week ago and the only difference so far is my sex drive has gone through the roof when I'm usually a low libido guy.

>>37678 ...also, there are lots of wild animals that don't eat meat at all...

>>35622 Jordan Peterson is retarded and so are you

>>37697 It is possible both to believe that jordan peterson is retarded and that insulin resistance and blood sugar levels could play a role in your mental health.

>>37700 Sure but the carnivore diet is obviously just recent fad and is not a healthy diet or based in anything besides broscience. Some lains even shared their personal bad experience with this roganite bullshit already. The part where OP basically said "I can't prove it, and this runs contrary to all existing data, but my intuition says that vegetarians don't actually live longer" should be where everylain stopped taking this thread seriously.

>>37702 I'm OP. I've learned much more since I wrote the post. >obviously just recent fad It's a recent fad, but not /just/ a recent fad, not even close. Dr. Salisbury of Salisbury steak fame, just for a start, recognized the value of a meat-based diet working in the american civil war. >not a healthy diet or based in anything besides broscience. I trust my personal experience above scientific dogmatism. Maybe that sentence will just solidify who I am to you, make you turn your brain off, and so will this very sentence. It's REALLY not far out of the question to think that glucose metabolism is implicated in mental illness. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.951376/full Indeed, the ketogenic diet was first medically studied for its very effective treatment of epilepsy, in that particular case for around a century. There is a real sense in which thought like this is /cutting edge/ science. >Some lains even shared their personal bad experience with this roganite bullshit already. ...What about the several great experiences listed, like my own, and >Carnivore literally saved my life. >As a Type 1 Diabetic I just wanna say thank you, It's clear that you're being one-sided, using ad-hominem because you don't like the aesthetic implications. >"I can't prove it, and this runs contrary to all existing data, but my intuition says that vegetarians don't actually live longer" I still stand by this, although I concede that protein requirements fall off drastically with aging.

>>37705 Eat the scales off this love dragon. The diet is pretty simple. Banana peppers and robocough pellets for a healthy brain without harmining a single animal.

>>37678 and human beings are naturally carnivorous/scavengers

>>37681 and there are creatures like cows which subsist largely on caloric sources that humans simply can't digest. Different animals are different, plenty of carne/omnivorous creatures out there, and even most animals thought of as vegetarian will eat meat and insects from time to time, or by 'accident' while eating their normal fare. Meat eating is normal among animals and regardless of that is plainly normal among humans. That said meat only diets seem for humans a bit strange, but still I'd sooner expect a carnivorous baby to be healthy than a vegan one.

>>37713 >but still I'd sooner expect a carnivorous baby to be healthy than a vegan one. Yeah, that sounds plausible, but I think both would be pretty unhealthy.

>>37714 Makes no sense. You get less nutrients you need eating both plants and animals than you would eating just animals, assuming equal calorie intake

>>37717 You get way way more nutrients from human breastmilk than from either of those sources. Babies can't really digest a lot of meats either. I'm also dubious that you get "more nutrients you need" by eating only meat.

>>37718 (me) "Meats" should be replaced with "foods" in that sentence.

>>37718 babies could digest raw meats just fine if they were ground up nicely, it's that they tend not to have very many teeth. meat, if you eat more than just the muscle, contains everything a human would ever need.

If you eat death, you'll become death. I can't think of a single diet that would contribute to becoming more spiritually shut off than the carnivore diet. Not to mention all the fear and suffering that you're taking into your body, that energy can't contribute to anything worthwhile. Plus the land use and destruction of the Earth, the planet hates you and you'll pay the toll eventually.

>>37754 If you eat vegetables, you become a vegetable.

It wasn't any fad diet that fixed people making them look that beasts. it was steroids. It won't cure your mental illness just look at Jordan Peterson crying compilation and dying from apple cider.

>>37757 >fad diet Cannot take people who say stuff like this seriously. It's just how humans are meant to eat. It is pretty clear that people are not meant to eat a lot of dietary carbohydrates, since they make people sick, give them cavities, etc. If you try to feed an animal that is meant to eat mostly meat a diet of grain and potatoes, they will lose their health. It is not a "fad", it is just a basic principle of human health.

>>37758 By every measure, a diet of beans, mushrooms, and vegetables is far healthier than one of steaks, bacon, and milk. But please, continue eating whatever makes you feel temporarily good and post-hoc rationalizing it with evo psych bullshit. Heart attack yourself right out of the gene pool.

>>37759 >believing in science lel, the irony I bet you got jabbed.

>>37759 >By every measure, a diet of beans, mushrooms, and vegetables is far healthier No. That diet would break me down and make me constantly miserable in the process. I don't consume milk or bacon, and I only eat raw meat, not cooked. Cooked meat with salt is absolutely not good for you, but the meat of raw ruminant mammals is the best food for humans. Not sure why you think this will give me a heart attack since I have great blood work and blood pressure on the low end of health. I will just assume it is a religious thing.

>>37760 you say it like that's """""irrational""""", but someone willingly getting vaccinated is reason to ignore any and everything they say. there is nothing wrong with that.

>>37763 >I only consume raw meat I bet your poop smells great. >>37764 It is stupid, but there's nothing wrong with being stupid.

>>37765 Is the implication meant to be that you enjoy the smell of soykaf, so long as it isn't produced from meat? That makes sense, since you seem like the type to spend his time in male asses.

>>37766 The implication is that poop from people with the "paleo" diet smells like death.

>>37767 I trust you. I'm sure you have a large sample size of varying soykaf scents tucked away in your mind.

>>37768 Like most living things, I have smelled the soykaf of others, in particular people I've lived with. I realise that you're trying to imply only a glitterboy would smell another person's poop but that says more about you, in my opinion.

>>37769 You are a cock-gargling soykaf sniffing phaggot, plain and simple.

reading soykaf like this makes it really hard to take anything on the site seriously..which is kind of sad because I've seen a lot of cool and useful stuff here over the years, maybe its because I rarely checked /hum/

>>37718 I'm sure breastmilk is better, but point is contrast between two extremes. If you have to raise your baby a carnivore or a vegan, Im pretty sure carnivore is the better option. Anyone here want to do the test ahahaha? Bonus points if you have twins. >>38171 cool story, bro. IDK even if you're a science trusting faggit or a bloody faced raw meat larper but I'm sure you're welcome here.

>>38171 Articulate your problem with the post in words.

Ok, I was wrong about fruit. been trying small amounts of raw fruit and berries along with raw meat as the base for my diet. I feel much better, especially using fruit as a morning pickmeup. I am still not eating a lot of carbs, but they make up about 10-20% of my macronutrient ratio(50 fats, 30-40 protein, 10-20carbs) I find this to be a nice sweet spot that keep my mood elevated.

>>38231 I'm pleased to hear that. I think that your exogenous glucose tolerance might change with time. That seems to be what happened to me. Likely has something to do with "insulin sensitivity".

>>38231 Humans have a long digestive tract not at all suitable for eating raw meat. Carnivorous animals usually have short digestive tracts.

>>38243 I do best with raw meat, digest it perfectly, far better than cooked meat and i am healthier, so I will trust my own real experience over your conjecture. thanks though. also I quit eating even small bits fruit/honey again, fuarrrked me up big time and I regret trying it again. raw meat is best for me never going back to anythign else

>>38774 get some gelatinous meat in there as well at least.

>>37697 Hitler ate bread. >>37710 How much do you lift? >>37767 Weirdest title for a metal album.

>>38243 we're a lot different though than like gorillas or cows in terms of digestive prowess.