I don't know. I could speculate but that wouldn't do. I'll try anyway.

Conceptually, insulin is the master hormone for growth. Without it, no fuel can enter cells, no protein can enter cells, no cell can grow bigger. Functionally, the lack of a substance is the same as the resistance to that substance. Here, low insulin is the same as insulin resistance.

Carbohydrate drives insulin resistance. Insulin resistance prevents cells from growing bigger for the simple reason that they don't take in fuel nor protein, relatively speaking of course. Once carbohydrate is taken out, cells become more sensitive to insulin. Fat cells can now take in fat and grow bigger. All other cells can now take in protein and grow bigger. You gain weight.

But again, that's just speculation. I don't know why you gain weight when you cut out carbohydrate and add fat meat. Maybe the meat isn't fat enough. That would be understandable since our view of how much fat we should eat has been corrupted by the low fat dogma. I eat about 200-250g, sometimes up to 500g, of fat per day. Maybe you believe that 50g per day is enough but it's just not enough. I don't know, you tell me.

I don't know anybody in offline life who makes stock out of anything except (and this is rare) a turkey carcass.

Then again, in all fairness, I only know a few folks who cook at all and all of them are older. All the people I know with kids my kid's age, cook maybe a couple different things (say, tacos, hamburgers, fried chicken) and everything else they eat is frozen, canned, boxed or window'd.


That's what I was hoping to find, thanks -- which bones to ask for. Also in a previous post Matt said 'soup bones' -- that helps too, and makes me feel a little less idiot asking for them since that sounds so reasonable. I have never SEEN a 'soup bone' in a store. You know, like in a package. I wonder why.


Um. You just stick them in the oven? (Sorry, I'm still a cooking retard. I'm learning though.) Do you put them IN anything? Add water or something? For how long, at what heat?


Well I am not real worried about losing all the vitamin A or whatever; I have other sources for most of its nutrients. But the natural contents (like collagen/gelatin/marrow) I seriously doubt are "going anywhere" from that pot and those are the things I'm aiming to add.

I don't mind crockpotting or long-simmering things, except to be honest, I have this thing about smell=food. When I was young I worked in retail food for a few years and I had such a problem eating at all because after smelling food all day my body had zero interest in eating it. I find I still have that result if I have to smell something for more than a couple of hours. So I like the pressure cooker idea although it seems a lot of babysitting to use one for a whole hour. I have only used my pressure cooker once so far (it is a good one though, but stovetop not electric) but I was a bit imperfect with the regulation of it. (I must have been expecting disaster--I am the Smoke Alarm Cook at the best of times--because when it suddenly leaped into a major steam-venting at one point I nearly had a heart attack!)

The other thing about a pressure cooker is that it can REALLY cook the stuffing out of bones, sez the various writings, can literally cook bones to totally soft in a pretty short time, so I figure PC probably gets a lot more of the 'stuff from bones' that people actually want for stock.

Years ago I lived with a woman from a different culture(s). The first time we had chicken and she started eating the bones I completely freaked out. I had never even heard of that, I didn't even know it was physically possible. To her, this was normal. Her idea of a holiday dinner was a pig's head. (She also had a food rating for every kind of dog, cat and bird. When her family [asian] lived in France they were literally starving, dumpster diving behind restaurants and any bird in the tree or pet wandering the neighborhood was definitely not safe. Maybe that's why she became such an animal lover when I knew her, because in her youth she hadn't been able to have pets that weren't shortly dinner!) Anyway, through my life I have seen things in stores like cow's tongue, pig's feet, and to be honest that stuff strikes me as just the grossest stuff in the world and I can't believe people eat that. (Although once I found out what tripe and chorizo were, I still can't believe people eat that either.) It hadn't occurred to me until recently that maybe people weren't just trying to EAT something like pig's feet, maybe they were simply COOKING them as part of making broth or something. I hope.

I think even if carbs are 'fairly low' (<150) and meat-fat content is high, that two things must still be an issue for some, based on my own experience:

1 - Calories don't seem to matter when near zerocarb but I think every carb you add makes them matter more for some reason. By the time you hit your 50-100 carbs mark I definitely think they DO matter with that intake, and so a gradual weight gain might relate to that. Probably dropping the carbs would end the weight gain but I totally grok that you don't want to do that, I'm in the same boat (though even getting to non-keto carb levels is ridiculously hard for me without just going offplan altogether, which I do regularly). I imagine if I go back to VLC again I'll lose weight again, I just don't feel good on it anymore.

2 - I feel much better on more carbs but then I don't lose weight. So far. Like I tried to use some beans/peas to up my carbs but otherwise was eating about like I did to lose weight. I felt vastly better, liked the food, but simply did not lose anything. Probably a few more carbs or calories I would even have gained a little. Whether this is my body's reaction to legumes, or to carbs, I don't know.

Since fat storage is hormonal, I guess that means every explanation for why we do or don't lose bodyfat, or gain it, becomes hormonal in nature. It isn't about 'carbs' just because they're carbs but because of the effects on hormone based biochemicals that carbs (some more than others) seem to have. I expect that's why too much protein makes some people gain too, as it also has hormonal biochemical side effects.

Maybe whatever you're eating (or however much, or...) aside from the meat is just not really right for you. How much have you systematically experimented with this, out of curiosity?

You've got it! Now that you are truly aware of this, you can better understand everything about nutrition. You will clearly see the holes in some nutritional articles out there, including a lot of what the mainstream pumps out. And of course, you'll be able to make better decisions regarding your own journey.

Patrick

Well I'm not alone in this either. I've tried eating up to 180-200 g of fat per day, didn't lose anything, gained. I do better, maintain my healthy weight,and feel great by eating lots of fruits and veggies along with proteins. That is a fact. I did not do well eating mostly meat, and gained weight, that is fact. Your posts seem to say that the only way you believe one can truly be healthy and have weight loss is by going nearly zero carb, and I'm a prime example of why that is just not true.

I don't doubt that you gained weight. I just disagree with your interpretation of the facts.

I believe that carbohydrate is poisonous. You don't. We disagree. Now the truth is another story. Carbohydrate drives insulin and that's the truth. Carbohydrate drives insulin resistance and that's the truth as well. There is no way to make those statements false. I tried to speculate, based on these truths, about how you could gain weight by cutting out carbohydrate and adding fat meat. If you disagree with what I wrote, then please give us an alternative. In other words, how can cutting out carbohydrate and adding fat meat make you gain weight?

Martin,

I agree with you. BUT we now know which carbohydrate drives insulin resistance. Don't you think this is an important finding ?


In all fairness to zero carbs, I believe you would have to eat only meat and water for 6 whole months without any cheats whatsoever to know if you have a net gain, loss or just stayed the same. I do believe that, once you are adapted, you would create lean mass and drop some superfluous fat if your body thinks there is any.

That said, watch out if you ever eat carbs again after that, your body might not agree with it.

Patrick

How briefly? Did you try when you were overweight? I did. I lost 55lbs in one year.

But how much caffeine is considered "chronic"? I enjoy my one cup of coffee when I get to work in the morning, but I only have that one. I feel like my use might be considered habitual, but not chronic. My co-worker drinks 10-12 cups of coffee every day. Now *that* seems chronic to me. He is also a smoker.

But he is skinny and I am fat, so most people perceive him to be far healthier than I am.

I make my own stock from bones too. A friend and I enjoy sometimes going to a Chinese restaurant for Peking Duck. When we are done eating we ask them to split the duck carcase down the middle and we each take half home and make stock! I make mine in the crockpot - throwing the bones plus water into the pot and simmering on low for 12-15 hours or so.

My son uses chicken feet when making chicken soup. But I admit that he does not actually eat the feet, he just uses them to make the stock. Sometimes he will give a chicken foot to his dog.

My late grandfather supposedly adored pickled pigs feet. I don't have that sort of courage (not yet anyway) though when I was a teenager studying in Spain I inadvertantly ate tongue one night when it was served for dinner in the dorm. It tasted fine until I discovered what it was and then the yuck factor set in.

What if the 50-100 carbs someone is eating are somehow 'the wrong foods'? Hell, what if the particular meat they're choosing is? Who knows how individual bodies relate to specific foods? I ate grains and dairy almost exclusively my entire life. In my mid-30s after I'd had a child, I starting getting chronic bronchitis, asthma, allergies, etc. I'd never had allergies or asthma and was seldom sick, so this was bizarre. Turns out it's reactions to grains and dairy. Did I not react before? Was it just not strong enough? Is there a critical mass point? Did I magically get intolerant after childbirth? I have NO idea. But my point is that the foods I ate my whole life were the worst possible choice for me. Living on cereal and bread with margarine and pasta/ramen was insane but in my microculture it was normal. (After all meat and butter are bad for you, ya know!) So it seems to me that maybe even when we lowcarb, sometimes 'what' we're eating might still be a problem, not because it is inherently bad food, but maybe because our bodies do not well respond to it. Maybe if someone eats 70 carbs a day and meat and gains weight it means that one of those things -- the type of meat, the type of carbs -- needs to change. Maybe there are compounding factors based on the body's prejudice of the specific foods.

I buy beef of preferably veal bones from my butcher, throw them in a pot and cover with water, splash in some white vinegar, a few tablespoons worth, and bring the whole thing to a simmer. The vinegar helps leach the calcium from the bones. I Keep it at a simmer for several hours then cool and put in the fridge till the next day when I discard the bones and add a few chickens, bring to a simmer and cook gently for a few more hours. Yummmm. Loaded with calcium and protein and no vegies of bouillon cubes needed (or salt, in my opinion).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_toxicity

"Chronic" in the context of consumption of a substance does not have the same definition as say "Chronic disease".
So here "habitual" is synonymous with "chronic". One cup a day would be considered chronic consumption. If you have Coffee once in a while then that's different.

Patrick

There can be a constipation factor when switching to all meat and eggs or VLC -- especially if insufficient FAT is consumed along with the meats. This can account for a substantial weight gain if it becomes chronic. Also I think we need to consume some organ meats and fish weekly.