Ok, so some of you want to try eating leaner meat in hopes of losing weight. It’s not that simple.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The wrong way is just eating leaner meats. Read on to find out how to do it the right way.
By Dana – 13+year Zero Carb Carnivore
First of all, if you have not tried doing the Zero Carb Diet the way we know works for most people, then you should try that for at least 9 months before deciding the diet doesn’t work for you and start messing with macros. This hack is not for newbies. You must be fully ZC fat adapted. If you are not fully ZC fat adapted then how do you know the diet doesn’t work?
The #1 reason people are not successful on the zero-carb carnivore diet is that people are not eating enough fat (80%) and or calories. Not supplying your body with the energy and nutrition it needs is not healthy or sustainable. It just slows down your metabolism and eventually causes problems like any low-calorie diet.
About 6 years into my ZC journey I started gaining weight. (Why I gained weight is a long story for another post.) I gained for 3 years until I remembered something “The Bear” said about having to eat leaner as he got older. So I gave it a try and started losing fat immediately. That week I was down 3lbs. I have continued to slowly lose weight for over 4 years now.
I learned rather quickly, that I needed more meat now that I was eating leaner. I went from about 2lbs a day to about 3lbs a day.
Here is what my macros looked like before. I basically ate the same thing every day for 7 years prior to gaining weight. ( My first 2 years, I ate more variety and lots of non-optimal ZC foods, but I still lost 50 lbs.)
What I did to go leaner is I switched to 80/20 ground beef for breakfast and stopped pouring all the fat into my bowl and worked in some leaner meats. Instead of fatty ribeye almost every single day, I have rotated in chicken thighs, trout, pork shoulder steaks, NY steaks as well as ribeye.
Here is the macro and calorie breakdown of what I now eat.
The key for this working and being sustainable is to maintain your current calorie level. If you don’t maintain your current calorie level then you are just on a low-calorie diet. Yes, you will lose weight, temporarily, then your metabolism will slow down, you lose energy, and eventually stall or start gaining again.
As you can see from my macro charts my before intake was 81% FAT and 3261 calories per day
Now, my Fat % is about 70% and my calories are about the same 3277. I have effortlessly lost weigh for the past 4 years eating an average of 70% fat and over 3000 calories per day!
The Get Lean Formula:
- Track your macros and calories for 1 week. I use Fatsecret. Calculate your average fat% and calories for 1 week.
- If your fat% is over 77% eating leaner meats might work for you.
- If your fat% is between 73 – 76% eating leaner probably won’t work for you.
- If your fat% is below 73% you should try adding fat.
2. Play around with different meats in your macro tracker to see what a typical day will look like with a lower fat% and your current calorie level. From there you can figure out what a leaner weekly menu will look like.
You really don’t want your fat% to get much below 70%.
AGAIN, I repeat – You must keep your calories about the same! You will be surprised by how much more meat you will need to eat. If you don’t maintain your current calorie level, then you are just on a low-calorie diet and you won’t be able to sustain that forever. You might lose some weight, but at some point, it will come back.
Going leaner will not work for most people. It makes me sad that so many people are jumping on this “go lean” bandwagon because it probably won’t work then they will blame the diet and go back to eating unhealthy.
Most people just need to do the zero carb carnivore diet properly and give it time. There are no shortcuts.
For more information or questions please join our Facebook groups ZIOH(public) or ZeroCarbHealth (private).