I’ve become KOCI!
I haven’t posted for quite a while. The reason is that I don’t feel like there’s much variety in what I’m eating at this stage. I’ve actually gone mostly carnivore! For someone who use to prioritise my bok choy, Chinese broccoli and Chinese cabbage and a-choy, this is a bit of a weird place to be. I still have a fondness for my veges and the other day at my Mum’s I was happily eating the lettuce (yep water veges!) and cucumber (also minimal impact!) she served up. But my fondness isn’t that great that I crave it or as seemingly need. I don’t think most of the veges I like actually do any harm but it does make for more hassle to prepare from the washing through to the cooking. Meat really is easier!
So pretty much since Easter 2020 and taking advantage of lock down I thought I’d do a steak (beef) and eggs diet and that morphed into a carnivore centric diet. I’m not dogmatic about it and will eat keto friendly foods especially since I don’t want to do another pantry clean out like I did when I transitioned to keto! I’m also not wanting to have to explain to too many others and justify the move so I’m considering myself keto on the outside and carnivore on the inside. And when I say “inside” it’s not an internalisation or anything like that but rather when at home or by myself or with close friends I’m happy to just eat carnivore/animal based foods.
Strangely enough once you go meat based or carnivore it’s harder to post Asian related keto posts! Well that’s what I’m thinking right now although I have had roast duck, roast pork and cook with Asian condiments. But mostly it’s a repeat of what I have posted in the past! I’ll have to see if there is anything new that I have made that I haven’t already posted about. Like steamed eggs or my roast pork?
So for those of you who are wondering what I’m doing for “carnivore”:
The main thing I do is eat protein being meat and eggs and organ meats. The types of meat are mainly beef, chicken, pork, lamb and duck. Organ meats include tendon, marrow, brains, intestines, but I do love 牛什 (beef offal) and I have some kidney in the freezer I still need to deal with! Oh and I have some salmon although I’m not that keen on the wild stuff as it’s not as fatty! and the farmed stuff I’m a bit horrified how it’s produced as it takes up more protein to feed the fish than it produces! How inefficient.
A typical day is something like this:
- Morning – black coffee or green tea or herbal tea.
- Lunch (around noon or 1 or 2pm) – meat in the air fryer and/or bone broth. Fried egg/s if I’m still ‘hungry’.
- Dinner (before 7pm) – steak. Followed by some L. reuteri yoghurt with black sesame seed powder. (I recently bought a single serve ice cream maker so I have had a couple of serves of frozen yoghurt!)
A major change since I’ve have been working from home, is that I’m having dinner earlier and having a smaller eating window as a result.
What are the benefits? Well the key one is that I feel that I’m losing fat! I initially lost some actual weight and I’m still down 2kg thank goodness but the scale hasn’t continued to come down but my jeans are definitely feeling looser. I’ve also been able to do some body weight exercises more easily since I invested in a pull up bar.
The best benefit is that I feel I have better control of my eating. With keto (like many have reported in the past!) I would have a lot more keto treats and nuts or berries and cream. With a more carnivore based diet I feel that the prioritisation of protein and fat has just made things easier so I don’t end up eating lots of what I’m ‘allowed’ to eat. I still had a couple of bouts but nothing too serious – and it was on 90%+ chocolate or macadamia nuts – so nothing that was meant to be eaten on a carnivore diet anyway! I have eaten a LOT of food in one sitting (e.g. anyone eat 1/2 a duck in a meal??) but still don’t get too bloated etc. My worse run in was definitely the meat broth histamine or glutamate reaction (you can read more about my incident here). But other than that it’s been smooth sailing. Even when I had eaten the macadamia nuts or the chocolate there wasn’t any negative reaction.
Some of the non carnivore foods I’ve eaten since I started my carnivore centric diet (btw I was pretty strict beef and eggs for the first 3 weeks):
- Coffee/Tea/Green tea/Herbal tea
- I started with many a butter coffees or Bulletproof coffees (yes with BP MCT oil and butter) – but have since just settled on black coffee
- 90%+ Lindt dark chocolate (I have some 90% and some 95%). I think I also finished off whatever 85% ALDI chocolate I had too.
- Macadamia nuts (I started and finished a big bag but haven’t bought any more)
- Pic’s Peanut Butter (Crunchy of course!) – max 1 tablespoon – which I found my body seemed to ‘want’ one day and was happy to stop at 1 tablespoon!!
- MCT Oil (powder and liquid forms) – mainly when I was doing my Bulletproof type coffees
- Perfect Keto Base (I only had a smidgen of this in a drink once)
- Homemade L. Reuteri yoghurt (one batch of coconut cream based one but mainly milk powder versions) – this has been a regular as I figured the milk version is pretty carnivore-esque!
- Cacao and hot chocolate type drinks (keto friendly ones only – being unsweetened cocoa/cacao mixes or the Avalanche branded hot chocolate) – not regularly
- Collagen coffee – again not regularly but something I bought to try out
- Papaya – I bought one on a whim and have been eating a small slice on the days I feel like it
- Grapefruit – my mum gave me one. So I ate it over 3 days.
- Avocado – I have eaten 1/2 of one in the last 2 and a bit months
- Mushrooms – I bought a punnet
- Onions – I put some in a short rib ‘stew’ but it made me burp a lot so I ended up throwing out the onions!
- Lettuce and Cucumber – I had this at my Mum’s
- Watercress and Chinese Turnip/Radish – also courtesy of my Mum’s bone broths 🙂
- Carrot – also as part of my stew and my Mum’s broths.
- Spring onions and coriander/cilantro – I have some fresh herbs growing so I have snipped some to add to various meals.
- Various spices – I sometimes use this for my meat but more and more have found salt is pretty good! Boring I know! I do use Montreal Steak Seasoning often as well as my “Tasty Salt and Pepper” powder.
- Salt – I have some Pink Himalayan Salt as well as some Lite Salt (which has some potassium as well as sodium)
I’m unsure if I would be better off just having meat and Asian green vegetables (what I consider “strict keto”). I don’t think it would harm me and I think the main thing I’ve found from this is my ‘intuition’ in eating. Which I never felt that I had. I always wondered if pregnant with cravings somehow have a magical intuition switch that turns on. I think my removing all the different flavours and options (such as nuts etc).
Generally I feel very good on this way of eating. I don’t like having to count calories or restrict eating so an “all you can eat” diet of meat and eggs works out pretty good! So for now I’ll stay KOCI. It makes life easier for when I do need to go out and will keep me on eating ‘cleanly’ as much as possible. And it’s definitely not hard to do especially since I don’t seem to react badly to most foods although now I’m very wary of glutamate!
