A pic of Bear after his hippie days:



Frederick, good to see you

I've been zero carb for 4 years now. I'm more extreme than even Bear was, though. In fact, I think he was wrong about several things involving insulin and protein.

I cannot tolerate more than about 40-45 grams of protein in a day. If I eat more than this, my pancreas freaks out and I get high insulin levels which leads to hypoglycemia. My pancreas also hurts (similar feeling to pancreatitis).

I went zero carb because of severe hypoglycemic reactions to carbs.

All I eat is 40-45 grams of protein. Literally, the rest of my diet is pure animal fat.

This is what led me to study biochemistry in school. I plan to help turn science on its head and demonstrate in a lab setting two things:

1. Saturated fat is the good fat because it is an alkane and is the least likely to oxidize because all carbon atoms are occupied by the maximum number of hydrogen atoms (Bear was right on this point).

2. Carbs are pure poison. In any amount. No different from alcohol (aside from the small amount of alcohol always present in the body).

LoveMagnet, how many calories do you take in a day?

I've never understood why sat fat has such a bad rep - afterall, thats how our bodies store excess energy. All that blubber we want rid of is our bodies preferred choice - sat fat! Would it do that if it was so bad for us???

Jo xxx

Roughly 2200. Can't eat much more than that or I get nauseous.

My weight never changes. Ever. I have a small amount of fat around the belly (which I believe is actually healthy, and an advantage in historical terms if I ever came up against a famine). My stats are wrong (haven't posted in a long time). I weigh 163lbs and that hasn't changed for a long time.

Each meal consists of 35 grams of meat (8-9 grams of protein) and 36-40 grams of pure animal fat (ghee or beef tallow usually). I eat about 5 meals per day.

That's exactly right! Notice that we only store a very limited amount of carbohydrates. Bear was right about the body only needing a very small amount of carbs to function on (and it makes this on its own from both fat and protein).

I think he was wrong about his blood sugar levels, though. He believed that protein did not raise glucose nor did it raise insulin levels. That is wrong. His blood sugar tended to stay around 100mg per deciliter. Mine is typically 60-69mg per deciliter. If I were eating carbs that would be considered low, but since I'm not it is perfectly fine. I've never seen it above 69 on this diet except in the very beginning.

I think Bear ate too much protein. But, that's just my opinion.

I should have also clarified that I don't actually recommend most people go as low as I have on the protein. I think people with more normal pancreases should eat a little more meat than I do so they get more vitamins and minerals. I'm not entirely sure how much that would be. Not yet, anyway. Probably different for everyone.

I do take a very tiny amount of B-vitamins and I drink Gerolsteiner mineral water to make sure I get a good amount of minerals. Seems to take care of my needs.

Bison is the meat I eat the most because it's very high in iron, but I also work in all other meats except for beef.

I don't eat beef because it seems to screw with my blood sugar levels like carbs do. It appears to be in the particular amino acid profile, which causes insulin spikes.

Interesting info!

Very interesting. How do amino acids in beef differ from, say, salmon or chicken? Which amino acids are more likely to spike insulin?

Yes, I am curious about that too?

For me, excess protein isn't conducive since it'll be turned into glucose. This is the reason why "lean" meats aren't nearly as optimal as fatty meats--the fattier, the better.

Think ribeye.

With "adequate" protein with fat as a ballast is the optimal diet, in my view. Ideally, we should have 65% - 70% fat with the rest in protein.

I think that actually is too much protein. For me it's 90% fat and 10% protein. I have zero muscle mass loss over a 4 year period. That indicates that way less than 30-40% protein is necessary. That could just be me, though. I also don't exercise much so that factors in.

I would go closer to 80/20 for most people, but that's just an educated guess at this point.

What I do think is that Bear ate way too much protein and not enough fat. To not eat carbs and have a 100 blood sugar indicates that too much protein is being converted to glucose.

I'm not entirely sure yet which amino acids are responsible for the beef-related insulin spikes.

Leucine is an amino acid that has been shown to spike insulin, but I eat bison and bison has roughly the same amount as beef.

I plan to research this as a biochemist down the line. Hopefully I can figure out why.

All I know at this point is that I can't tolerate beef at all. It's as if I were eating sugar.

It's always possible this works in another way--for instance, protein could feed into kreb's cycle, and sort of spare glucose, so there's less pressure on the glucose already being produced. (Or reduced ketones on the higher protein diet might increase demand for glucose by the brain).

Very interesting observation, I know many tried the ZC diet and just couldn't lose weight on it, some gained, I wonder if its because beef was the mostly recommended.


What about chicken/duck etc do they have the same effect on you?