SALT – I usually tell people when they first switch over to increase their intake of salt. This can help with muscle cramps. If you’re drinking tons of water though and incredibly thirsty, reducing salt might be a good idea.
As of August 27th, 2018, I’ve dropped salt!
Why on earth would I do such a thing? I love salt! Especially this salt: Real Salt
Welllll I read The Fat of the Land (which I loved. Will write a post on it eventually). Anyway, I found out the Inuit people didn’t salt their food or eat any salt (I assumed there was some sort of salted fish in their diet initially). So I dropped it out of curiosity.
I had assumed my muscle cramps from May were caused by low levels of salt (as increasing my salt intake had apparently resolved them). Now I’m not so sure.
I wanted to see if:
A) my muscle cramps would come back from lack of salt
B) if we actually even need salt in the diet to thrive
I was eating almost a tablespoon of pink Himalayan salt per day, and drinking almost 4L of water. I was really thirsty. My digestion also wasn’t ideal still (still occasional diarrhea).
For the first week after dropping salt, I had absolutely no appetite. Like, negative appetite. Everything tasted like nothing. Everything as in beef…. I went down from eating 2 pounds to eating about a pound of meat a day. There were a couple of days I had even less than that from zero appetite.
The salt cravings were really bad too. Week two still wasn’t good but by the end of it, I at least started to get hungry again. Week three meat started to taste okay. Not good. But manageable. I almost gave up week four because of the cravings but I’m always careful about cravings. I don’t think they’re a good sign. So I decided to give it the ol’ “six week try” just to see. I am currently finished six weeks and honestly haven’t seen a lot of difference. But I have seen some.
I’m drinking about 1.5L of water a day instead of almost 4L. That’s huge. I’m not nearly as thirsty. So I was definitely drinking a lot because of the amount of salt I was eating, and I think that was messing up my digestion, as my digestion is quite a bit more stable.
I’ll reintroduce it soon probably but my cravings are also almost gone so…. We’ll see. I don’t have an autoimmune response to salt obviously, but it’s interesting what you need and don’t need. ALSO – zero muscle cramps. I thought I would get them but nope! Which makes me think maybe I was drinking too much water in May and upsetting my electrolytes that way – which is why increasing my salt intake helped. But maybe reducing my water intake would have done the same thing?
I still miss salt though and will probably start eating it again. I’ll update this to see if anything changes.
Update December 2018: I’m still not eating salt. Cravings went away after about 6 weeks and it upsets my digestion if I eat it. I don’t really miss it.
UPDATE: 2023 – I eat salt. Be very careful that you’re eating pure salt, and bring your own salt to restaurants to avoid anti-caking agent present in most table salts.
Fry it up in tallow then usually dump some salt on it. Very stimpy and xcrispy as nature intended
Just saw your Rogan podcast. When you said your condition wasn’t genetic, that wasn’t quite correct. You and your father undoubtedly share a gene sequence that creates a horrible reaction to anything not meat and salt. That’s the difference. Why some can eat anything with no side effects and you are stuck with beef salt and water. It seems to me that even people that simply cant lose weight must share a portion of that sequence.
When someone figures out what sequence expresses in the way it does for someone with a complete immunity to carbs, and learns how to switch it on, wow, that guy will make Bezos look like a pauper.
Anyway, my folks and their folks all died of cancer and my sister had a full mastectomy so I’m starting the carnivore hoping to stave off what looks to be inevitable. Please tell your father thank you for making my life immeasurably better. I hope I can write you in 10 years and say I’m still alive, way skinnier and healthy. Thanks for the information and the sacrifice you made to get it.
Good luck!
Keep in mind not everything inherited is genetics. Heritability rates include not only genetics but also epigenetics and shared environment (culture, socioeconomic status, healthcare, lifestyle habits, chemical exposures, etc). Also, the microbiome gets passed on from parents to child, and microbes have their own separate genetics and epigenetics. So, what Mikhaila and her father share, in affecting their dietary experience, may or may not be genetics.
The most useful tool for beef is a large wooden mallet to tenderize meat tenders with. It can turn flank steak into the texture of a creamy Bison sirloin Blackedcom and xcrispy.
I process my tallow with salt. Salty tallow guarantees certain 100% I get my daily sodium intake every beef meal. Sodium is the most important micronutrient. Salt really should be a macronutrient. I eat 4 times a day to make sure my beef nutrition never runs low.
A good Dr Shaun Baker podcast on salt.
http://humanperformanceoutliers.libsyn.com/website/episode-45-dr-james-dinicolantonio
After listening to Dr Shaun Baker I agree with all but a few important details.
The salt mixes better with the tallow than the gallon jug of water, I tried the gallon jug of water before sticking my finger in the light socket but it did not fix my autoimmune arthritis like the tallow mixed with salt.
What I learned in a nutshell. Soak the salt in the tallow, then you fry the beef until it is crispy in the salty tallow. Nothing else but this has worked to reduce the autoimmune arthritis. The salty jug of water does not work. Otherwise I agree that humans need to double even triple their sodium intakes to achieve a magnetic blood volume capable of withstanding bix nood Tyrone pounding your 6.
Salt gives the meat electrolytes which makes the tallow plants grow.
You might have seen this before, but just in case….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xweziIaUMo&t=473s
Crackers has always felt something crucial was missing from the Carnivore diet.
Real salt is the true adaptogenic-electrolyte superfood needed to allow the body to absorb the water. We need to create a carbohydrate free version of Gatorade. A Gatorade that is Carnivore-flavored with exotic hypoallergenic meat extracts and fortified with bone broth.
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