YEA! July 2 is my 1 year zerocarb anniversary! I've also realized that I don't need to add extra fat to my diet and even though I don't keep track, I'm probably around 60% fat also. I can't wait for the LA meetup in October, see you there!

Hi, nice site. This is the first time i'm chiming in! 40% protein is way too much. Have you ever wondered to think about how much of that protein is being used up to manufacture glucose? As soon as you reprogram your body to be insulin sensitive, you can easily tolerate up to 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrate a day. Why suffer the waste products of protein conversion to glucose when you can have a clean fuel in some type of complex carbohydrate, preferably a non gluten source, low fructose source, that is fermented, or striped of its absorption inhibiting skin (like every healthy culture on earth)

take a look at this site: http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/

just look at how low kitavan insulin levels are (as measured throughout the day)-- and they consume a paleo diet of around 70 percent carbs!

keep polyunsaturates low
keep vitamin d high
make sure to consume micronutrients such as vitamin k2 through animal fats or supplementation
keep fructose consumption low
eat fermented foods
be wary of foods with a lot of antinutrients
avoid most grains, gluten, dairy on a daily basis

even with low triglycerides, you are flooding your blood with fat after a high fat meal-- but you also happen to clear that fat faster if your on a low carb diet-- this also hampers your ability to process glucose which is way people on ketogenic diets show elevated glucose in the blood alot of the time (on blood tests)

this is not a sermon-- just tips!!

Danny,

That is great! Congrats on your one year anniversary.

Thanks to you, I learned how to make pemmican with your link to Lex. I am starting my second batch as I type. The first one came out nicely, but did not look as smooth as yours. Mine was lighter in color and did not look like a paste. Maybe I'll try mixing it a bit more the next time. (I'm thinking of using my wife's Kitchen Aid mixer, which she used to use to make dough. Maybe it will be good for mixing the tallow and powdered jerky). In my first batch, I used 50% suet tallow and 50% ground up jerky by weight. I'm thinking of putting just a little more tallow with my second batch.

In any case, forget the carb thing suggested by one of the commenters. I like your response. You're not trying to see how much carb you can get away with eating. I'm like you. I don't eat carbs because I have no desire to eat it. I'm fully satisfied and excited about eating lean and fat only. That's the thing that many people do not understand. They probably think that we are denying ourselves all those "wonderful" carbs. But that is not the case. ZC is not about denial. It is the opposite. ZC is about the recognition of the way of eating that is proper to a human. In my opinion, the denial is in those who do not recognize that fact.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. The Kitavan's actually eat most of there carbs as easily digestible carbohydrates --- in the form of tubers. Just about every healthly civilization ferments or strips the carbohydrates they consume to lower the nutrient inhibitor parts (leading to a highly processed absorbable carb). Healthy cultures went out of there way to process carbs that might have contained phytic acid.

Most of the benefits that people feel when using protein as there main source of carbohydrate (as yourself) is that glucagon is rasied during protein ingestion-- countering the negative effects of insulin. But once your body is balanced-- you can handle some carbs to do exactly the same thing without the longevity consequences of a high protein diet. Just do a search for methionine restricted diets or think about the inherent negative byproducts of protein digestion.

I'm curious that you state that your testosterone level is higher than ever. Without a doubt, the scientific literature shows that ingestion of carbohydrate (not overboard) allows for a lower state of SHBG than on a ketogenic diet. This leads to higher available testosterone levels. You still gotta have to have a certain level of fat ingestion to make this optimal (gotta be at least around 27%). For info on this do a search for Lyle Mcdonald, he's just one of the many people on the net to discuss the effects of macronutrients on hormone levels.

And lastly, would you be willing to share your fasting glucose level-- I'd be interested to know if its higher than 90. Most people who are on the diet I suggested before would start to show glucose levels in the 70s. Ketogenic diets seem to make this number start creeping up-- probably because utilizing mostly fat for fuel would cause a body to not be able to handle glucose metabolism as well. And your body always has to handle glucose in some form -- either through protein or carbohydrate.

Have a great 4th!

Danny, check out a book titled Body by Science. I believe your answer will lie in muscular hypertrophy through brief, intense, infrequent, and safe exercise- not slightly altering your fat/protein intake.

When I mentioned "suet" tallow, I was trying to distinguish it from tallow that is made with a blend of kidney fat and the fat that is around the muscles. I have bought kidney fat from grass-fed farmers and used that to make my tallow, which I then use to make the pemmican. (Maybe I was wrong in calling it "suet" tallow?) I love how it has turned out, but I haven't made pemmican with any tallow rendered from muscle fat, so I don't know which would be better tasting. As you know, a few people on ZIOH have used a blend of kidney and muscle fats to make their pemmican. I believe some have said the one with the muscle fat tastes better.

I enjoy your site, from which I have gained a lot of info. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Yes, my rendered suet (from the fat around the kidney) is nice and firm at room temperature. I sometimes bring my pemmican to work when I don't bring leftover steak or brisket, etc., but I do not eat it often. I'm not doing an all-pemmican WOE, so I'm making a bunch of batches mainly in anticipation of various business trips (I do a lot of traveling in the month of September). I look forward to having my pemmican so I will not be at the mercy of foods that happen to be available throughout Europe. I'll even have my trusty pemmican with me in Paris in case I can't find anything decent to eat :-)

"...without the longevity consequences of a high protein diet."

And what would those be? Inuit lived into their 90s on meat and fat. Do Kitavans live longer than that? Not to my knowledge.

I don't believe that anyone has ever demonstrated that a so-called "high-protein" diet has adverse effects on human longevity. And you are misinformed if you think any fasting glucose above 70 is "elevated." Anywhere from 65-99 is normal. A 99 on a ketogenic diet would not mean "hampered ability to process glucose", it simply means that the body is using fat for fuel and leaving the glucose for the RBCs and brain, as it should, producing an even course of energy.

Similarly, I don't believe anyone has ever demonstrated that high carbohdyrate intake promotes longevity in humans. You can't rely on animal studies. Imagine trying high carbohydrate diets in cats -- surely they would live shorter lives than if given their evolutionarily adapted protein-fat diet. Similarly, if I high carb diet enables rats to live longer, this tells us nothing about humans, who are clearly carnivores.

"Just do a search for methionine restricted diets or think about the inherent negative byproducts of protein digestion."

I don't know of any research that has demonstrated that restricting methionine or protein extends lifespan. If you have it, provide it. To my knowledge, the only two proven ways to extend lifespan in animals are 1) caloric restriction and 2) intermittent fasting (not necessarily calorically restricted). Kitavans have relatively good health on a high carb diet simply because it is calorically restricted due to reliance on local foods only. The interesting thing is that the ketogenic diet produces a metabolic state indistinguishable from fasting. Caloric restriction also increased ketone formation (more fat burning). So if intermittent fasting promotes longevity, we have reason to expect a ketogenic diet to do the same.

Just found your blog a couple of days ago and am really getting a lot out of it, thank you! The comments are great too, I really appreciate the last one here by Don Matesz. In support of his ideas, have you seen the latest article by Barry Groves?

Should all animals eat a high-fat, low-carb diet?

It demonstrates that although herbivores, such as the western lowland gorilla, have diets exclusively of leaves which may look like very low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, they are actually high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diets.

Sorry, I never got around to continuing the conversation on here. I take a very lazy slant on internet related posting!

First off, I wonder why people frequency mention the inuit as such a perfect culture in terms of longevity. If anything, there are so few inuit to study, its hard to rule out a genetic cause for any type of longevity (just like the gene in certain jewish population groups that leads to fluffy large LDL). Besides that, most pictures i've seen seem to show advanced winkling at an early age. No doubt, this is probably caused by 3 things: large protein intake, high polyunsaturated fat intake, low vitamin c intake (though i know they get some). Even Viljalmhur Steffanson himself wrote that the inuit seem to age at an increased rate-- even if there diet wasn't hurting them in terms of the usual diseases out there.

While there are other studies, here is a summary of a study on methionine restriction:

[Effect of restricting amino acids except methionine on mitochondrial oxidative stress.]
[Article in Spanish]

Caro P, Gómez J, Sánchez I, López-Torres M, Barja G.

Departamento de Fisiología Animal II, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España.

INTRODUCTION: Protein or methionine restriction in the diet is known to decrease reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and mitochondrial oxidative stress and to increase maximum longevity in rodents, which could explain how these changes also take place in dietary restriction. However, it is not known whether restriction of other amino acids is also involved. To clarify this question, we studied the effect of restricting all the amino acids, except methionine, of the semi-purified diet, AIN 93G, in Wistar rats. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Seven-week old male Wistar rats (n=16) were randomly divided into two groups: a control group and a group with 40% restriction of dietary amino acids except methionine. After 7 weeks of dietary treatment, the animals were sacrificed and their livers were extracted to isolate mitochondria immediately and measure ROS production and oxygen consumption; these data allowed the percentage of free radical leak to be calculated. Oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA was calculated as 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine by HPLC-EC. RESULTS: At the end of the experimental period, a decrease in kidney weight was observed, but the weight of the liver, heart and brain was unchanged. ROS production in isolated liver mitochondria was unchanged with complex I (pyruvate/malate or glutamate/malate) or complex II (succinate) linked substrates. Maximum rates of ROS production significantly decreased with glutamate/malate+rotenone but not with pyruvate/malate+rotenone or with succinate. There were no changes in oxygen consumption with any substrate either in state 4 (resting) or in state 3 (phosphorylating). In agreement with the ROS production results, there were no differences between groups in oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together with previous results concerning methionine restriction, the results obtained in the present study clearly show that the decrease in ingestion of only one molecule, methionine, causes the decrease in ROS production and oxidative damage to mitochondrial DNA that is observed in dietary restriction in relation to the decrease in the rate of aging.

Also, I wasn't trying to say that people who have sugar values above 70 are having problems with processing sugar, but most people who eat a kitavan type diet, or okinawan diet seem to have around these values. I don't see the poiint in inducing ketosis to make everything but the brain resistant to glucose --- which is also why people on a very low carb diet start seeing there blood sugar values rise on blood tests over time (sometiimes)-- i just don't want to take the risk. If anything, I want my muscles to soak up any glucose they can, so they can run on a very clean fuel-- with the byproduct being just be CO2 and water. I definitely don't want to use protein to obtain my glucose!

Of course things like IF or caloric restriction are going to produce favorable outcomes in terms of health and or longevity. The benefits are from a hormetic response happening in the body (ie, a little stress makes you stronger!). Even though I think you should minimize fructose-- a little fructose might even make the body stronger (just like the above hormetic responses). I'm positive most humans benefit from the processing of oxins in fruits and veggies-- as long as you don't eat too much. Eating too many veggies makes you look crappy like those in the Dr. Fuhrman or vegan camps. I don't even think we gain much in terms of nutrition from vegetables-- but processing the toxins in them from time to time makes our body stronger.

What this all means is that i want a clean source of fuel-- carbs are clean-- but they really shouldn't been the form of fructose or grains that have large nutrient inhibitors-- I usually eat some buckwheat or other non-gluten grains (fermented if possible)-- and even a little white rice (no nutrients inhibitors!) i still get a hefty amount of fat in the form of animal fat and olive oils.

hope this starts some discussion-- i really feel most people on the paleo side of things don't talk about the above ideas (and most of the foods i eat are paleo!)

Peter at hyperlipid blogged about having to go off the low carb diet for 3 days to get normal lab values for glucose-- I tend to think something is wrong if i have to go off the diet just to get good results-- you can find it someone on his site-- I've also read it elsewhere, but i'm too lazy to look--- i'm not too worried about it because i'm not on a diet that causes ketosis.

When i said the inuit diet is heavy in polyunsaturates-- it's in absolute terms-- while most of there fat was mono or saturated fat--- they consumed an awful alot of polunsaturates in absolute terms-- because most polar animals and fish use polyunsaturated fat in there tissues.

the studies you show me on AGE formation being higher in vegetarians (which i've looked at before) has no basis in the diet im suggesting- It is almost certainly the result of high fructose ingestion-- non -fructose carbs would not have this effect.

I would argue that a lower overall IGF-1 is beneficial to longevity--- just ask castrated males! they live longer! this is also why i want to watch my overall protein intake- or high fat intake which can actually lessen SHBG.

Great site! I just went (nearly) carnivorous a month ago- check my blog about it at http://meatasaur.us. There's a lot of great knowledge on ZIOH, but they're a little fanatical for me.

Nice squarespace theme, by the way. Did you design it yourself?