When I lived in the Caribbean, I could barely keep weight on my bones. It melted away, and I often weighed less than 160lbs. Expensive junk/convenience food kept me from eating chips or other garbage, plus no air conditioning, plus lots of walking up and down hills – all combined to make staying lean easy, though it was not easy to build extra muscle mass, despite all the hard work I did.
After moving back to the states, we suddenly had a wide range of good food at really cheap prices, plus friends that ate a lot of high-carb Southern classics. My weight started to creep up. Then I caught the Death Flu , which kept me from doing much labor for a month. Then, as I recovered, I ate whatever I liked, though food didn’t taste all that great.
By January, I was up to 168lbs. A friend said “you’re getting fat,” which is just what I needed to hear. I am a big fan of fat-shaming, at least directed at me.
Now I knew I wasn’t really “fat” by most standards; however, I was definitely feeling a bit heavy and un-fit. So I switched to low-carb, eschewing grains, sugar, etc. I also fasted for three days to help clear my system of the after-effects of the virus. At Lent, I switched to full carnivore, not even eating dairy. Just bacon, eggs, steak, more eggs, hamburger patties, chicken breast and the like. I also quit all alcohol and tobacco.
That was the ticket! Now, a month later, I am down to 161 and have re-achieved some “cut” to my stomach and more definition in my chest. I also have a ton more energy. Last week I signed up for a gym membership and am pushing it hard. Combined with my spring farm labor, that is really making me feel strong.
I never wanted to be one of those middle-aged guys with a gut. Not gonna happen!
Now my goal is to gain weight via adding more muscle mass. Rather than just remain thin, as I have generally done in the past, I want to actively bulk up with muscle and get looking great instead of just fit. I’ve added dairy back in and am consuming lots of protein to fix my muscles between workouts. For now I am still carnivore, as that really seems to keep me feeling strong. Not having alcohol helps a lot, too. I’ve found it sucks my energy away. I had a Martini last week as a “cheat,” along with some ice cream, and that made me feel weak the whole next day. No more. I am getting too old for those youthful excesses and need to be strong for my next few decades.
If I can build a pound or two of muscle each month while staying lean, I should be in great shape by summer. Already I am feeling way better than I did back at the end of 2020.
If you’re having trouble losing weight, I highly recommend going full carnivore. It certainly takes the pounds off while reducing inflammation and boosting testosterone. Eating just meat does take some getting used to – and it’s expensive, compared to cheap carbs – but it’s worth it.
In gardening news, we’re expected to get some terrible weather today. Hope it’s nothing too serious. Hail, high winds, tornadoes and thunderstorms are all possible. Ought to be an interesting day to look out the windows!
13 comments
Hi David. flollow you for years even got some seed from you in the past .https://www.marksdailyapple.com/ I ve been on almost 4 years.Not a diet but way of life.Works great with eating what you raise.Make sure to read his ideas on exercise.Your garden can be your gym. good luck Byron @ three wise acres
I found Mark long ago and he converted me over to paleo, which was a huge shift for me. He has good advice.
I do get plenty of exercise in the garden but want to push harder. Having to go to the gym gives me focus.
That is great success, hope you are sourcing clean meat. I have chosen to follow Chris (Wark) beat cancer, after a scare, and it is whole food, plant based diet, I only add a small amount of chicken from a family farm close by, free range, every now and again. At each age and stage, we find different things that work for us, God has made each of us differently, right?? May God bless your efforts, your journey, and keep you well, Betty
The plant-based thing is not good for testosterone or bone density, so I have moved away from it. Free range chicken is great, but I think you miss out by not eating red meat.
You know I’m with ya! I’ve got all kinds of things planned for my garden. Husband wants to know what I plan to do with all those things I won’t eat. I like growing beautiful things to feed to other people, though.
I’m a huge fan of yours and a fellow Floridian so it pains me to say it,..but this is awful advice. Downright dangerous! Eating cheap meats will put plaque in your brain. And processed meats are a schedule 1 for carcinogens. Watch What the health. – same as smoking cigarettes! Your risk of many diseases increases – heart disease, inflammation, cancer, arthritis, dementia – Read The China Study for more on how removing meat from diets eradicated the main diseases we call killers in the largest food study every performed. Unless you’re sourcing your meat from local farms where they had a name, you’re also participating in the worst genocide this planet has ever witnessed and all the while that tortured animal is what you’re trying to get nourishment off of it inside your body? And this is what they’re currently cutting down football fields of the rainforest for per minute. I can’t believe you would give this advice!! Danger! As a plant enthusiast I would think you’re better than this kind of advice. When I needed to lose the weight around my gut I went plant based and cut out the poisonous grains loaded with sugar and I lost it all in one month. 14 pounds fell off me in a single month without any exercise. The key to doing plant based is not eating the same meal in a 24 hour time period so you’re getting diverse nutrition. The protein thing is a myth. Animals get their protein from plants. So all you’re doing is adding an intermediary to your protein and trying to digest literal flesh which makes your body too tired to have energy to do gardening or other fun stuff. Besides it’s being gross and making guys have funky spunk and smell bad, it sits in your gut and teeth unless you floss and causes heart disease. Nothing good comes from eating meat. Be what you preach people learn to grow and eat plants! Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” If the smartest man that ever lived said it, I’d listen! Lastly, meat is loaded up with dioxins. Which are toxic and killing our species. If we didn’t pollute our lands so badly I MIGHT say it’s ok to eat meat but it’s just not. Men can only get rid of dioxins through taking chlorella. This advice pains me to see – it’s so unintelligent and downright scary. By eating only meat which is super dangerous and horrific advice – you put yourself at a ton of risk on many levels and to see this on someone’s website who loves plants so much – horrified! Please stop eating like this and if you continue, read genius foods ASAP! At least make sure you recommend high quality meats at a long distance from run off and air pollution (which is unlikely in the US!)
Naw – I feel great on meat. I went vegetarian for a year, long ago. Never again. I like being strong and fit.
I have a different take on all of this.
I have been nearly carnivore and vegan.
The result is i have a terrible condition called SIbo and it is nearly impossible to lose weight.
I wish I knew that I needed diversity and fiber to have a functioning bacteria system. I don’t know if ill ever get it back. I think the herbicides abs pesticides are contributing to the long term bacterial destruction.
I look now at traditional diets aiming for moderation and variety. I wish had avoided extremes and instead sought holistic answers.
The China Study was a fraud, and the Campbell authors knew it. It followed on the heals of the equally fraudulent Ancel Keys, who we can thank for the obesity epidemic. Low fat/whole grain/Mediterranean/BS never worked and simply made us unhealthy. We are finally returning to the diet we were born to eat, high fat, low carb, moderate protein, and our health is improving. Mel, the seventies are calling, and they want their diet back.
Gardeners see first hand how genetics and context affect plant health. I think it’s wise to recognize the same applies to us. There is no perfect diet that applies to all people everywhere at all stages in life.
But I certainly share your distate for factory farming. And I’ve also recently learned that many plants can uptake and bioaccumulate dioxins and other persistent contaminants from polluted soil. And checking for them is not part of standard soil tests. So that’s an issue we should all be considering.
Best of luck! We had the same experience living in S. America. There were no agricultural subsidies there, and some food additives that are common in the US are banned entirely: the result is that packaged junk food is really really expensive compared to meat, vegetables, and fresh fruit. Dairy was also a weirdness: most people there are apparently lactose intolerant, and without grain subsidies dairy is substantially more expensive, so…. there’s a lot of yogurt drinks, and virtually no fresh milk, and cheese was a super-expensive import thing priced like solid gold. Felt like we ate a ton of good food all the time, and also got very very lean even though we weren’t doing hard labor– just walking everywhere.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s just food content. We’ve tried to duplicate, roughly, that effect back in the states, with no success. I’m not sure you can do it with food that’s been frozen, or shipped a bazillion miles, and we still have to get in the car to go… anywhere. Sigh. Probably our meat animals are eating different things too– there is a really noticeable difference in the color of meat for sale here vs. overseas– I’ve never understood why. Beef particularly.
But low-carb is the only thing that’s ever worked for me, when I needed to lose weight *in the US*. It seems bizarre and unfair to me that I can eat bananas and mangos and rice and apples and lucumas and lose weight, overseas, but have to keep under 40g of carbs a day to do it here— and I never get really lean, just less pudgy.
My experience in S. America also exactly mirrors this. There is something very very wrong with our food supply here. Same foods, totally different results between US and SA. Im trying to source my carbs from our own unpolluted property as much as possible.
P.S. I forgot to add: I think in the country we were living in, the state gets most of its revenue through a Value-Added Tax, so that’s another thing that contributes to the way food prices go: more processing=more tax. They do this in lieu of a national income tax– sometimes I idly wish we could do that here: trade out the IRS for a VAT.
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