Welcome aboard Bubba

I wish you all the best on the Primal Diet.  I've actually gotten much better results from a zero-carb zero-dairy approach. Many have found, as I did, that dairy, even raw dairy, had significant negative side effects.  Butter appears to be the only exception and I assume that that is due to it being pure fat with no lactose or milk proteins to cause allergic reactions.

You'll find many different approaches to a more healthful way of eating on this board and everyone will do their best to help.  My own observations are that younger folks can get away with dairy and more carbs and still do great.  Those of us on the other side of 40, especially if we are starting to have health problems, need to be a little more selective as to what we eat.

I now eat only meat and fat from grassfed beef with just a pinch of salt for seasoning and just about every problem I had cleared up.  No more high blood pressure, sore joints, skin rashes, high blood sugar, migraine headaches etc. - all went away.

Lex

Thanks for the link Mike.  The article was very informative and stated that the yellow color of the fat was most likely from carotenes as you suggested.  It also pointed out that the fat loses its yellow color when the animals are grain fed as there are few carotenes in grain or other seed based feeds. 

The fat rendered from Slankers suet is a very rich butter yellow while the rendered fat purchased from US Wellness Meats was pearl white.  I'd say that at the very least this supports Slanker's claim that all their meats are pasture fed only - never any grains or commercail feed mixes.  It appears that the rendered fat purchased from US Wellness Meats is from animals that spent some significant time eating grain or other non-pasture feeds.

Lex

I did the probiotic thing for several years also.  I found that it was marginally helpful when eating lots of carbs but once I converted to raw meat the little critters didn't make any measureable difference at all so I stopped taking them.

Lex

Wish I could take credit for the undergravel filter with a light shining on the bottom of the tank to encourage alage growth, but I actually got the idea from another much more talented aquascapest.

Planted tanks can be a lot of work, but my goal was to automate everything possible.  Of course, trimming and thinning the growth must be done manually but I found with the 50 gal tank I created, it took about 2 hours maintenance per week to keep it looking its best.

Lex

I only eat one meal per day, and like Craig, it is in the late afternoon between 3pm and 5pm.  I eat between 1 3/4 and 2 lbs of raw grass fed beef. 

If I am doing a lot of heavy physical labor (digging sprinkler trenches, taking out a tree stump etc) , then I find I get hungry earlier in the day - say around 1pm, and I eat my normal ration at that time.  Then I'll have another 1 lb or so around 5 or 6 pm.

I can't eat more than 2 lbs at one sitting - just can't get any more down.

Lex

Just got my June food supply from Slankers.  32 lbs of Course Chili Beef, 24 lbs of Dog & Cat food, and 4 lbs suet.  Total cost including shipping was $247.

Lex

Unfortunately I have no clue about the need (or lack of need) for salt by carnivores.  I do know that on occasion I'd get annoying cramps in my feet during the night.  I read somewhere that this could be due to a lack of salt in the diet so I started adding a little bit (about 1g per day) of sea salt to my mix and the problem went away.

When I was younger, in my 20's and 30's, I was very concerned about "doing what was right".  This lead me to follow the whims of the guru of the day even in the face of irrefutable evidence that it wasn't working and my health was suffering.  I'm now much more interested in what actually works rather than what someone thinks is correct.  I'm convinced that eating freshly killed meat, blood, brains, organs, and all, would fulfill all our nutritional needs as it does for other carnivores, however, this is not reasonably or consistently available to me in our modern society.  If adding a dash of salt to make up for the lack of the availability of blood or other source of sodium chloride then it's fine with me.

I can't live exactly the way that our paleo ancestors did.  Those conditions no longer exist.  I must do what works in the current environment in which I live. 

Lex

I've found that one of the benefits of this way of eating is its low cost.  My total cost for food is about $7-$8 USD per day - which is less than $250 per month.  That's less than most people spend on lunch at a fast food restaurant.  Of course it can get very expensive very quickly if I eat out.

Here's a repeat of what I posted on the Magicbus....
-------start cross post----------
Finally back from vacation.  It was a long 2 weeks of drifting aimlessly which I'm not very good at.  I'm always thinking of what I could be accomplishing if I were home.  My last "vacation" was 33 years ago.  With luck I won't have to take another one for another 33 years.....

Stuck to my diet as best as possible.  Ate mostly very rare ribeye steaks smothered in butter.  A few times I had to resort to my back-up supply of pemmican and I was amazed at how good it tasted.  I had a 6 day supply and ended up eating 4 days worth.  On my last day in Chicago the group I was with decided to eat at TGI Fridays.  All they had on the menu was a 12 oz New York Strip.  I ordered 3 of them as rare as they would make them - terrible.  So little fat they tasted like shoe leather.  To be honest, I'd have much preferred eating the remainder of my pemmican.

I lost 4 lbs over the two weeks so my weight as of today is 156.  I did a lot of walking carrying a 20 lb backpack through the city streets of Washington DC, New York City, Niagara Falls, Toronto CA, Chicago, and Madison Wi.  My guess would be that I averaged 4 miles per day.
-------end cross post------

Good idea to cross post the files Geoff.  I'll work on it over the next couple of weeks.  I'm so behind on bills, yard work, and other stuff that it will take a few days to catch up.

Nicola - To be honest, I found that I actually preferred the pemmican to some of the steaks I had to eat.  I make it with my regular jerky recipe.  When I make my jerky I use 1/2 the salt of the way that I demonstrate in my Jerky Maker instructions so you can just taste the salt.  It works out to about 1g salt per lb of fresh meat.  Any more than that and it is way to salty for me as the salty taste is concentrated when the meat drys.  I found the Wellness pemmican to be far to salty and their fat is very soft which I don't like.  I dry the meat well, and then shred it by pounding it with a hammer on a Blacksmith's anvil, and mix it with my own rendered fat which is firm - almost like candle wax.  The pemmican ends up with the fat being very firm but smooth, and the jerky is still very chewy.  I go to the trouble of pounding and shredding the meat because if the meat is ground too fine it tends to taste like sawdust - yuck.

I've found that adding just a bit of salt is important or I start to get leg cramps and other strange symptoms.  I usually add about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon (3g-5g) of salt to 4 lbs (2kg) of my normal meat mixture.

I drank both bottled water and tap water on the trip.  I'd guess about a liter per day of bottled water.  I also drank another liter of water with my meal and this was whatever they served - usually tap water.

Lex