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My Routine So Far

#1 · January 29, 2025, 11:04 am

Quote from Joseph on January 29, 2025, 11:04 am
Want to post my routine as I have settled into low vitamin a much more heavily the past year after being aware of GG the last four or five. I have now decided to stick much more closely, like no exceptions close, after a couple ill feeling days where I veered off the path, veering I thought not very much. But I will be just recommitting to and slightly refining what has been my every day diet for over a year.

Food:

beef steak, or ground beef
I was buying supermarket beef but now have more freezer space so I am bulk buying from Ayshire Farm in Upperville, VA. It is grass fed and finished, restorative-run organic. No tinkering that I know of. Excellent staff and communication if I need to know anything else about what they do. My purchase gets me a mix of cuts, all muscle, it's pretty lean.

White rice

I would like to switch to white rice from russet potatoes. I am researching how to bulk buy dry white organic rice, sites or varieties are welcome advice.

Black beans

I have been buying organic black beans canned. It's expensive. I want to switch to bulk organic black beans dry. Apparently you can cook them easily enough in a crock pot.

Garlic and Onion powder

When I make my carb mix, I put G&O powder in with the black beans, cubed potatoes, and some salt. Boil it slightly. Everything I could find online says organic garlic and Onion powder have 0 IU vit a.

Beef Fat

I buy rendered beef Fat from Chicago packing, it says "wagyu", most likely not organic. It is nice and neutral, white and easy to spread. I cook the potatoes with it, and every time I take a complete meal of steak, carb mix, out, I heat it up on the stove with beef Fat and one other ingredient...

Coconut Aminos

Like soy sauce but the only ingredient is coconut flakes, fermented. Sweet and salty, I like it. It claims to be 0 iu.

Nutritional Yeast

Used by vegans as a Parmesan cheese substitute, it is salty, powdery and flaky, and kind of parm -like. Sometimes I sprinkle this over my unholy mixture. Claims 0 iu.

Beer

Was drinking the occasional Guinness, it is claimed 0 IU online. It is also pretty highly fluoridated, so I found a German alternative, kostritzer schwarzbier. It's hard to find great vitamin a levels on beers, especially smaller foreign ones. Beer is interesting to me, I would like to have one now and then, dont want to risk vit a. They almost all contain barley, but maybe that doesn't transfer to the liquid during the time in the pot? Maybe the vit a leaves with the filtering out of solids? Advice appreciated.

Coffee

I kicked the corporate habit and only drink organic locally roasted beans. I buy them bulk whole, grind them and put in my machine with clean water.

Water

Stopped tap years ago. I only drink vapor distilled, remineralized water. Only cook with it too. Use pink Himalayan salt to remineralize gallons at home.

Creamer

I make either cashew or almond milk at home. Soak cashews, then blend with more water, filter out through nut milk bag (har har). Tastes great. I no longer crave any sweetener in my coffee. Tried it recently and it tasted ruined.

Sweetener

I have organic dark maple syrup on hand if ever I need sugar. Also organic cane sugar. Occasionally I will make a "dessert" of cashews, salt, and maple syrup in a cup. Sexy I know. But also I made cashew milk ice cream like this in an ice cream maker. Managed to make a whole pecan pie with almond meal, cashews, pecans, maple syrup, and beef Fat. Served with cashew milk ice cream, it might have been the most Thanksgiving thing I have had since going low-A.

Vanilla extract

Make it myself, 0 iu or so it would seem.

Nicotine

Former cigarette smoker, I gave that up a long time ago. Quit with vapes, then went to cigars (not inhaled) occasionally. But then I stumbled across research about nicotine lowering vitamin a levels in the blood. Not tobacco, mind you, nicotine alone. So I tried those Zyn pouches and now I love them. The company did not respond to my questions about the pouches vitamin content, perhaps they thought I was some mad TikToker trying to eat them for a challenge! But I hope they don't have any. Any advice welcome. Also interesting note, came across the Peruvian shaman here, he says he vomits bile when he drinks nicotine shaman liquid. Interesting, but dangerous yes! I was interested in cooking with tobacco then found out how toxic it is, if you don't know what you are doing, just ingesting tobacco willy nilly can kill you quick. Someone quoted me that one standard cigar has enough nicotine to kill 3 men if they were foolish enough to eat it. But I have encountered others, old professors, who have ventured to the rainforest and done tobacco rites. They brought back uncured green tobacco sticks (basically giant doobies) and told stories of very lean, energetic, vigorous men smoking raw tobacco and dancing all night. Cool!

Charcoal

I have been doing daily activated charcoal the last year. One half teaspoon with afternoon meal.

Plasma

Gave blood once. Want to donate again and get on a schedule. I don't have anywhere convenient nearby hopefully I can find some place that has good hours. All the ones near me are in the ghetto, pay you for plasma, and want you donating like every damn week. I think they are targeting poor people and drug users who are desperate for money. I will not engage them in my real thoughts, that they are doing me the service. Every three months like Grant said sounds good

I am a large guy and pretty physically active in practice, I hit the gym daily. But my jobs are sedentary. So my calorie intake is pretty high but will probably go down. I definitely the noticed the whole eat-A, crave-sugar dichotomy the last two months. It would go away a couple days after eating something not on-plan. Now I just want to stay on plan permanently. My health feels good, following the breath book by James Nestor and instituting sleep tape at night has been huge. It was about 8 months in to the low-a diet for me that I felt the thing Grant talked about, sleeping less and sweating less, less temperature sensitive. That feeling of imperviousness increased with nose breathing adaptations.

To be fair, I have been playing with keto and carnivore diets for 8 years and working out very hard my whole life. So maybe I got some detoxing out of the way already. But eager to see what cannot improve only more! Any advice, warnings about hidden vit a, very welcome! And to those of you still keeping this forum alive, keep it up. Great work!

Want to post my routine as I have settled into low vitamin a much more heavily the past year after being aware of GG the last four or five. I have now decided to stick much more closely, like no exceptions close, after a couple ill feeling days where I veered off the path, veering I thought not very much. But I will be just recommitting to and slightly refining what has been my every day diet for over a year.

Food:

beef steak, or ground beef
I was buying supermarket beef but now have more freezer space so I am bulk buying from Ayshire Farm in Upperville, VA. It is grass fed and finished, restorative-run organic. No tinkering that I know of. Excellent staff and communication if I need to know anything else about what they do. My purchase gets me a mix of cuts, all muscle, it's pretty lean.
White rice
I would like to switch to white rice from russet potatoes. I am researching how to bulk buy dry white organic rice, sites or varieties are welcome advice.
Black beans
I have been buying organic black beans canned. It's expensive. I want to switch to bulk organic black beans dry. Apparently you can cook them easily enough in a crock pot.
Garlic and Onion powder
When I make my carb mix, I put G&O powder in with the black beans, cubed potatoes, and some salt. Boil it slightly. Everything I could find online says organic garlic and Onion powder have 0 IU vit a.
Beef Fat
I buy rendered beef Fat from Chicago packing, it says "wagyu", most likely not organic. It is nice and neutral, white and easy to spread. I cook the potatoes with it, and every time I take a complete meal of steak, carb mix, out, I heat it up on the stove with beef Fat and one other ingredient...
Coconut Aminos
Like soy sauce but the only ingredient is coconut flakes, fermented. Sweet and salty, I like it. It claims to be 0 iu.
Nutritional Yeast
Used by vegans as a Parmesan cheese substitute, it is salty, powdery and flaky, and kind of parm -like. Sometimes I sprinkle this over my unholy mixture. Claims 0 iu.
Beer
Was drinking the occasional Guinness, it is claimed 0 IU online. It is also pretty highly fluoridated, so I found a German alternative, kostritzer schwarzbier. It's hard to find great vitamin a levels on beers, especially smaller foreign ones. Beer is interesting to me, I would like to have one now and then, dont want to risk vit a. They almost all contain barley, but maybe that doesn't transfer to the liquid during the time in the pot? Maybe the vit a leaves with the filtering out of solids? Advice appreciated.
Coffee
I kicked the corporate habit and only drink organic locally roasted beans. I buy them bulk whole, grind them and put in my machine with clean water.
Water
Stopped tap years ago. I only drink vapor distilled, remineralized water. Only cook with it too. Use pink Himalayan salt to remineralize gallons at home.
Creamer
I make either cashew or almond milk at home. Soak cashews, then blend with more water, filter out through nut milk bag (har har). Tastes great. I no longer crave any sweetener in my coffee. Tried it recently and it tasted ruined.
Sweetener
I have organic dark maple syrup on hand if ever I need sugar. Also organic cane sugar. Occasionally I will make a "dessert" of cashews, salt, and maple syrup in a cup. Sexy I know. But also I made cashew milk ice cream like this in an ice cream maker. Managed to make a whole pecan pie with almond meal, cashews, pecans, maple syrup, and beef Fat. Served with cashew milk ice cream, it might have been the most Thanksgiving thing I have had since going low-A.
Vanilla extract
Make it myself, 0 iu or so it would seem.
Nicotine
Former cigarette smoker, I gave that up a long time ago. Quit with vapes, then went to cigars (not inhaled) occasionally. But then I stumbled across research about nicotine lowering vitamin a levels in the blood. Not tobacco, mind you, nicotine alone. So I tried those Zyn pouches and now I love them. The company did not respond to my questions about the pouches vitamin content, perhaps they thought I was some mad TikToker trying to eat them for a challenge! But I hope they don't have any. Any advice welcome. Also interesting note, came across the Peruvian shaman here, he says he vomits bile when he drinks nicotine shaman liquid. Interesting, but dangerous yes! I was interested in cooking with tobacco then found out how toxic it is, if you don't know what you are doing, just ingesting tobacco willy nilly can kill you quick. Someone quoted me that one standard cigar has enough nicotine to kill 3 men if they were foolish enough to eat it. But I have encountered others, old professors, who have ventured to the rainforest and done tobacco rites. They brought back uncured green tobacco sticks (basically giant doobies) and told stories of very lean, energetic, vigorous men smoking raw tobacco and dancing all night. Cool!
Charcoal
I have been doing daily activated charcoal the last year. One half teaspoon with afternoon meal.
Plasma
Gave blood once. Want to donate again and get on a schedule. I don't have anywhere convenient nearby hopefully I can find some place that has good hours. All the ones near me are in the ghetto, pay you for plasma, and want you donating like every damn week. I think they are targeting poor people and drug users who are desperate for money. I will not engage them in my real thoughts, that they are doing me the service. Every three months like Grant said sounds good

I am a large guy and pretty physically active in practice, I hit the gym daily. But my jobs are sedentary. So my calorie intake is pretty high but will probably go down. I definitely the noticed the whole eat-A, crave-sugar dichotomy the last two months. It would go away a couple days after eating something not on-plan. Now I just want to stay on plan permanently. My health feels good, following the breath book by James Nestor and instituting sleep tape at night has been huge. It was about 8 months in to the low-a diet for me that I felt the thing Grant talked about, sleeping less and sweating less, less temperature sensitive. That feeling of imperviousness increased with nose breathing adaptations.

To be fair, I have been playing with keto and carnivore diets for 8 years and working out very hard my whole life. So maybe I got some detoxing out of the way already. But eager to see what cannot improve only more! Any advice, warnings about hidden vit a, very welcome! And to those of you still keeping this forum alive, keep it up. Great work!

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#2 · January 30, 2025, 6:45 am

Nicotine is very addictive, I'm not sure I'd go down that path?

I wish you good luck and health!

Interesting post! I hope you get some good feedback!

#3 · January 30, 2025, 9:33 am

Thank you @joseph-5 for your post.

Worthwhile to read about your routine, and the changes and improvements you're making along the way.

Very helpful to see specific details about your approach.

Appreciate you taking the time to write and post here.

#4 · January 30, 2025, 10:41 am

Quote from lil chick on January 30, 2025, 6:45 am

Nicotine is very addictive, I'm not sure I'd go down that path?

I wish you good luck and health!

Interesting post! I hope you get some good feedback!

I have basically accepted that it will be like coffee. But when you do not inhale direct to lung it is a different experience, much less addictive. I go without nicotine all the time, days at a time. That would be impossible as a cigarette smoker.

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#5 · February 4, 2025, 3:03 pm

Rewriting this because apparently the software gremlin deleted my first attempt.

This is an example of how working with an ingredient constraint leads to cost savings. I was looking to avoid fluoride so I found a toothpaste where the main ingredient was bentonite clay. I know I would need to buy a new tube soon so I looked for a replacement that was unflavored because the only bottle I could find had spearmint essential oils and I don't think this company makes an unflavored version.

A quick note on spearmint if you look at Google it tells you that one serving and a tea yields

4054 IU vitamin A

Yikes. The process for making essential oils involves a lot of boiling and condensing but I don't know if that eliminates the vitamin A, I would not count on it. Because it is hard to find nutritional information on an essential oil since it is not meant for ingestion then I just assume it's still there.. I also know from practice that if you're brushing your teeth with a substance you're going to swallow some.

The other ingredients were just colloidal silver and bentonite clay. I figured I didn't need the silver and would only really need the clay to make an effective toothpaste. Turns out plenty of people do this they get raw food grade bentonite clay powder and mix it themselves. And is this clay sold in bulk? Yes.

So the original very friendly looking bottle went for $10 for 4 oz, but I can get 32 oz of the powder for $22. Mixed with water or coconut oil to make a paste that comes to potentially over 80 oz of paste. So a cost of 25 to 35 cents per ounce instead of $2.50.

You can put it in a small jar and dip the toothbrush in or put it in a silicone tube that is refillable, I had some already for travel toiletries.

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#6 · February 8, 2025, 2:01 pm

Did a pickup of some food today. Grass fed organic beef, no organ cuts, no bones. Also 10 pounds of wheat flour, organic, milled with no additives. Ayshire Farm Upperville Virginia, great farm. Also picked up 5 pounds of organic whole coffee bean from a local roaster.

Now I will need to get fat stores again. I was using South Chicago Packing Wagyu beef fat, popular on Amazon. It was very convenient of course. But I researched beef fat in particular, what a conundrum! Many beef fats are not rendered (cooked by slow heat) but "hydrogenated". And some are apparently adulterated with emulsifiers and even other oils to make them stable and spreadable at room temp! Other fats, in my fat! So I have some emails to write to some lardists, gonna see who is transparent about what they have. I'm looking now at Fatworks Grass Fed Organic Tallow, 132 dollars for 112 ounces, so not much more expensive than the Amazon wagyu fat.

The prices were

Beef - $1000 for 120 pounds, mix of all cuts

Flour - $20 for 10 pounds

Coffee - $92 for 5 pounds

Might seem high but compared that to going out to eat it is cheap. I tried swearing off all restaurants last year but went to a few at the end of the year. I definitely kept my resolve about coffeeshops, I dropped them in January 2024, don't miss them! Now with the plan to go zero A very dedicated, I feel that the money will work itself out, and the health benefits will be worth it.

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#7 · February 8, 2025, 2:03 pm

Here are the meat photos had to crop them

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#8 · February 9, 2025, 12:43 pm

Made a batch of pancakes from scratch with the wheat flour today. Subbed two egg whites for the one whole egg. Subbed beef tallow for the butter. Slathered it in maple syrup. And crazy enough, I feel fine a few hours later. No rock in my stomach, no crazy carb cravings. I look leaner than two weeks ago when I began Zero A in earnest. I have been taking a weekly weigh in and picture and tomorrow will be the third one. It's looking like I will drop a few lbs this week and this has been the "worst" by all conventional diet metrics.

8 or 9 beers, a few desserts of cashews and maple syrup, and the huge pancake plate on Sunday. I'm thinking Grant hit the nail on the head with the last paper, how insulin really never was the cause, just the symptom. Ditto for consumption of carbs or sugar in general. What a ride.

#9 · February 9, 2025, 7:49 pm

Yes, I agree, carb problems are the symptom, not the cause. It doesn't mean carb problems aren't real, it just means carbs aren't the enemy.

It never made sense that carbs could be the enemy, if you look at diets round the world.

#10 · February 10, 2025, 5:17 am

Quote from Joseph on February 10, 2025, 5:17 am

Quote from lil chick on February 9, 2025, 7:49 pm

Yes, I agree, carb problems are the symptom, not the cause. It doesn't mean carb problems aren't real, it just means carbs aren't the enemy.

It never made sense that carbs could be the enemy, if you look at diets round the world.

No, I think it means carb problems are not real. I went back for a second session of pancakes, they were just so damn good. That's my usual steak and potatoes, plus making two batches of pancakes with syrup and beef fat spread, over twice the amount of calories and maybe seven times the amount of carbs than I get on a normal day.

I feel fantastic this morning. Weigh less than the last two Mondays, that's a pound down each week. Looking at the study of rice and sugar that Grant posted, the actual "problems" that can come from carbs alone, separate from vitamin a, seem minor. You would have to eat carbs to the exclusion of everything else to do harm, and even then, if you are like most and have big fat stores, you can probably get sufficient nutrients from your own fat while it lasts to support a full carb diet (speculation on my part).

So I don't know what "carb problems" even are anymore. There are "problem carbs", yes, but that's because they contain vitamin a. So the carb was never the problem. Looking back at all the times I "broke my diet" and went over on carbs, there was something else involved - outside food sources. I was too dumb to realize that every time I had some nuts and maple, or a couple beers (zero vit a), I always added something from a local restaurant or snack bar. The fries I liked from that place? Fried in corn oil. The bread on a cheese free burger? Enriched wheat flour full of vitamin a. I had never thought to add up the days in a row I had been fully clean of vitamin a. That should have been my true metric for health all along.

That and plasma pulls. I'm doing my second aggressive Plasma pull today. Cooking my weeks food, then working out, then a shot of vodka and off to the plasma. What I really want to do soon is get my serum retinol level. I am guessing that Grant Genereuxs original timeline of nine years can be expedited by just pulling plasma more frequently and being smarter about conditions for the pull.

Quote from lil chick on February 9, 2025, 7:49 pm

Yes, I agree, carb problems are the symptom, not the cause. It doesn't mean carb problems aren't real, it just means carbs aren't the enemy.

It never made sense that carbs could be the enemy, if you look at diets round the world.

No, I think it means carb problems are not real. I went back for a second session of pancakes, they were just so damn good. That's my usual steak and potatoes, plus making two batches of pancakes with syrup and beef fat spread, over twice the amount of calories and maybe seven times the amount of carbs than I get on a normal day.

I feel fantastic this morning. Weigh less than the last two Mondays, that's a pound down each week. Looking at the study of rice and sugar that Grant posted, the actual "problems" that can come from carbs alone, separate from vitamin a, seem minor. You would have to eat carbs to the exclusion of everything else to do harm, and even then, if you are like most and have big fat stores, you can probably get sufficient nutrients from your own fat while it lasts to support a full carb diet (speculation on my part).

So I don't know what "carb problems" even are anymore. There are "problem carbs", yes, but that's because they contain vitamin a. So the carb was never the problem. Looking back at all the times I "broke my diet" and went over on carbs, there was something else involved - outside food sources. I was too dumb to realize that every time I had some nuts and maple, or a couple beers (zero vit a), I always added something from a local restaurant or snack bar. The fries I liked from that place? Fried in corn oil. The bread on a cheese free burger? Enriched wheat flour full of vitamin a. I had never thought to add up the days in a row I had been fully clean of vitamin a. That should have been my true metric for health all along.

That and plasma pulls. I'm doing my second aggressive Plasma pull today. Cooking my weeks food, then working out, then a shot of vodka and off to the plasma. What I really want to do soon is get my serum retinol level. I am guessing that Grant Genereuxs original timeline of nine years can be expedited by just pulling plasma more frequently and being smarter about conditions for the pull.

My Routine So Far

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