I really want a story like yours! Congratulations on finding such health! How long did it take for you to see improvements?

A vegan might say that you get most of the substances in beef by mixing oil with protein powder and a vitamin pill. But we know meat is more than fat and protein, just as an apple is more than sugar and fiber. Have you read Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food?

BTW, PilotGal, impressive results. It's hard to argue against facts.

i went gluten free 3 yrs ago. that's when my gums began to heal.
had one hip replaced in 9/2008.
was supposed to have the other one done in 2009.

went all meat in dec 2008.
that's when i began to slim down immediately.
the right hip no longer needed replacing as of 6/2009.

slimming down and losing the arthritis made the biggest impact when i went ZC. my body composition began leaning out as soon as i went all meat. my body began to heal as soon as i dropped gluten.

gluten is really deadly for the human body.

I struggled with all meat at first because I had really bad diareah. For weeks. It caused me to back off from this woe at two different times. I really struggled with the idea that stomach cramps and embarassing bowel problems were somehow going to turn out to be good for me. Well...... About a box of Immodium later, several set backs, and no diet coke for months (BIG ACCOMPLISHMENT), I am a believer.

I still struggle with the social aspect of things. There is no support for lc or paleo or zc in my house or among my friends. Oh well!

I think once you magically drop a few pounds, once you really notice true hunger for the first time, once you eat until you are nearly nauseous (it's wild. It NEVER happend to me before), once you embrace animal fat for real (I don't eat any extra fat - not the grease from my hamburger or most of the fat on my steak - but I would if I wanted too!), once you eat at 10:00 am and don't even THINK about food again until 7 or 8 pm, then you begin to understand the benefits of zc.

After doing this for less than 3 months, I've recently begun to notice that my feet and hands are healing. I have a pustular form of psoriasis that attacks palm and bottoms of feet. It's disgusting and causes deep blisters followed by thick plaques on the bottoms and sides of my feet and heels. It didn't begin to subside right away - and I'm even a little afraid to say it now because I don't want to jinx anything - but it seems to be calming down. My feet are starting to look ALMOST normal. It has been 8 years since I could say that.

I tried my own version of zc before (last January) - with sweetners, nuts, and vlc veg here and there. I also supplemented with coconut oil and such. I gained. Around my waist. I went for the Bear's version the second time - animal protein, some dairy, and water. Most days, I drink a cup of coffee with whc.

I really can't say for sure that zc is the cure. All I can say is that it seems like magic to me. It wasn't easy at first. But it has been so worth it.

it is magic. read all the miracles happening in our ZC thread.

I've gone more and more zc in the past five weeks after finding and reading the zc thread and then doing additional research. My reason wasn't any particular health issue-just something about it really resonated with me.

I have never really liked fruit and it took me till adulthood to like vegetables. I do not get cravings for fruit. Whenever I have craved something sweet it has always been along the lines of a Snickers bar, chocolate chip cookies, a hot fudge sundae, or PB milkshake.

I have always loved meat. My favorite things to eat in childhood were hamburgers and steak, and they are still my favorites.

I agree with what Zeph said earlier, I just needed to know that I wasn't depriving my body of anything (vitamins and minerals) that it needed. From reading Fat of the Land I have learned that I am not. And seeing the results of zc people in their photos (ZIOH) is truly amazing. These people are the picture of health.

I might have been more skeptical if I didn't come from a plains indian tribe whose primary food source was buffalo. So, maybe I am genetically primed for it, I don't know. I only know that I feel like I have come upon the secret to bring my body to optimal health. Only time will tell if this is the case, but there are those who have been doing this for years and are in great health.

That being said, I do not believe there is a one size fits all plan for everyone. I do not believe that ZC is superior, but is superior for some. I have come across the idea (many times) that some people do better with more carbs. I've heard on a couple different podcasts that while 75% of us do well on a VLC diet, 25% of the population do better with more. I don't know where that stat comes from at the moment, just something to think about. This also goes along the line of metabolic typing that people like Dr. Mercola and Jillian Michaels espouse.

I guess the only way to know is to try it out, just like when people on this forum experiment with any other plan.

A vegan might think that oil is the worst thing you can eat, but I think most people here don't believe fat and protein are inherently harmful. Protein and fat don't deplete your body of vitamins; on the contrary, they preserve them. Sugar is a different story. The way I see it, no amount of vitamins can make up for the amount of sugar in a piece of fruit.

I read The Omnivore's Dilemma. I really liked it. Aside from a couple instances of fat-phobia, Pollan made it pretty clear meat has phenomenal nutritional value. Then I saw the subtitle for In Defense of Food and I had to wonder if he's really paying attention to his own research.

Sugar is as vital as protein and fat. That's why your blood sugar is one of the most important and tightly regulated physiological parameters. Your body will destroy its own protein to make sugar if necessary. In case you say sugar in your diet is not essential, your daily requirement for fat is minimal as well. A little omega-6 and a little omega-3 fatty acids, that's it. We all eat much more fat than we need -- not a problem, as we all know.

About In Defense of Food, you should read it. It alerts against this redutionist approach to nutrition that doesn't see food as the complex system it really is, but wants to reduce it to a couple of nutrients. That's why we have things like "enriched cereal" or "enriched margarine", as if adding a couple of vitamins to processed food could turn it into healthy food. The fact is that apples and meat may have thousands, maybe millions of different substances and we don't know what most of them do. These substances are also combined in a certain proportion. When you say that a fruit is just sugar and fiber or a vegan says meat is just oil and protein, you are ignoring that complexity. (In Defense of Food is anti-fat phobia, but also anti-carb phobia.)

The more I read about vlc the more i want to make it work for me. Can some of you guys who have struggled for more than a month to feel good tell me your tricks for sticking with it during the uncomfortable transition. How did you keep going when you wanted something crunchy, juicy and sweet. Also, did you ever feel nauseated? Can I drink lemon juice or is that too carby? Give me some tactics I can use to get through the yucky part so I can get to the good part

Aimee-

I would pop over to the ZC thread and ask your question there too-bc there are those that might have not read this thread. The ZC thread follows the Bear's def of ZC which is anything made from the animal (cheese, cream).

I wish I could offer some advice, but it hasn't been an uncomfortable transition for me. I don't crave those things, I don't have diarrhea or feel nauseated. And I am not complete ZC, I just eat a lot of meat only meals. I also eat LC vegetables (not by themselves), olives, cheese, almonds, and drink decaf coffee with HWC. I eat between 0-10 carbs a day.

???
Dietary sugar is not essential. It is completely natural for our bodies to derive glucose from ingested protein. Fat, on the other hand is our primary fuel, and most people ingest far too *little* of it.

I agree that fat is good and most people eat too little fat, but most of it is not essential, including all saturated fat. That means you will survive on a saturated-fat-free as long as you have a little omega 3 and omega 6 PUFAs. Our bodies can make as much saturated fat as it needs. Which doesn't stop us from eating saturated fat, and it shouldn't. So I don't see why the fact that dietary sugar is not essential should stop us from eating sugar, as long as it comes from paleolithic foods and we don't overdo it. I don't know why this double standard.

I was strict vegetarian for over a year and actually felt pretty good but it was very tough to lose weight and in the end I started noticing signs of nutritional deficiency no matter how well I supplemented. Before that I did Atkins and loved the weightloss aspect of it but had issues with inflammation and my doc was concerned about too much protein with only one kidney.

Eating paleo these past few months has been the best of both worlds... lots of good fat and protein without overdoing it, coupled with unlimited fruits and vegetables, while eliminating foods that were unhealthy for me. For the first time I feel like every system in my body is functioning pefectly and as an extra added bonus I'm losing weight at a good pace.

I think we're all just a bit different and should respect each other's dietary decisions without making blanket statements that one diet is better than another. There are lots of folks who thrive on a vegetarian diet and there are those that do well on a carnivore diet. Then there are the rest of us omnivores who fall somewhere in between.

I had times of very bad loose stools where I felt like something may have been wrong. I pushed through due to a combo of pure curiosity and realizing that all of my gas cleared up. I could recognize that changes were happening for the better and that I was just in an adaptation phase. Conventional paleo with fruits and veg affected me in a very bad way and switching to ZC was like night and day. I can understand why it's so much harder for you to stick with ZC when you don't have these problems with fruits and veg.

I actually just took my last HCl pill the other day. I'm on my own now so we'll see. Dairy makes me very sick, even butter if I continually use it, so I'm paleo ZC. The only non-paleo thing I consume is the occasional chili powder and tea. There are times when I miss having the option of lettuce to go with my meat but that urge has pretty much gone away. I like eating only when I'm hungry and food as entertainment has become history to me. Eating and cooking has become less of a chore and I have more time to focus on other things.

Sure you may survive on a saturated fat free diet for a little while. But that would mean you would be ingesting absolutely no meat whatsoever. This would lead to nutritional deficiencies. Get rid of meat/saturated fat = deficiencies, get rid of sugar = no deficiencies, actually quite the opposite.