One Size Does Not Fit All, Part 4760

For a few months I've been following a "zero carb" board where it's advocated to eat nothing but unseasoned red meat (preferably really fatty ribeye steaks, hamburger and chuck roast) and water. I endeavored to do so and succeeded much of the time. But on the few occasions I weighed myself, I found myself gaining weight, not dropping like crazy like other people were. In addition to the cankles mentioned my stomach is bloated and to be honest I feel like garbage a lot of the time.

Back when I first read Protein Power the Drs. Eades mentioned arachidonic acid, which is found food-wise in ... fatty red meat. They said that it was inflammatory and if patients were having problems in losing on their diet they would recommend cutting out red meat and cutting down on egg yolks. Later on Mike Eades said that AA wasn't as horrible as once thought and they've toned down on the warning. But it always stayed with me regardless, and so I started Googling and researching. Sure, it might not be bad to have a steak once a week or some eggs, but a diet of NOTHING but fatty red meat? The cankles/swollen feet are a relatively recent phenomenon. I was looking through my personal journal and saw where I'd written an entry on "WTF is up with my feet, the tops are all swollen." The date? Roughly two weeks after I started the new dietary regime. AA plus liquor? The clicking you hear is the sound of the pieces falling into place. When I read in several places that AA is considered a good supplement for bodybuilders to help them get puffed up plus Pooti's response to my previous entry, it made perfect sense.

To clarify, I was NOT powering down two-pound ribeyes three times a day. Normally I'd eat once, maybe twice a day and the servings were pretty normal, but obviously it's taken its toll. When I delicately tried to bring this up in the ZC forum, I was of course immediately told that I hadn't given the plan enough time to work and I had admitted I didn't stick to it so it was probably the other stuff I was eating. All I know is what the dates tell me ... and I wasn't feeling this stuffed and bloated and headachy before I went to All Red Meat All The Time. Maybe like a lot of other plans it works for some, but this particular one doesn't work for me. I'd already discovered a problem with pork so I pretty much have given that up anyway. Fortunately there's a lot of chicken in my freezer. I've missed chicken. And salads. And broccoli. And cauliflower (no, I don't make pizza out of it). In the original PP book it said "when in doubt eat meat, fish, fowl and salad."

Can't hurt. Might help.