Modified Keto for max health, performance and lean muscles.

Crap in moderation kills your progress. Carnivore Diet.

Angela Shurina
Food equals Health
7 min readAug 18, 2018

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I got leaner.

I got stronger.

I have more energy and muscles than ever. Feeling like my physical and mental potential is unlimited.

I changed seemingly nothing — just got serious about closing the gap between “what I want to do” and “what I’m actually doing”.

Basically — I got consistent.

This blog is about my body-fat transformation, about my own diet experiments, based on my thoughts, what I see working with my clients, what I think about, listening to the latest podcasts by biochemists, nutritionists and biohackers, reading recent books.

The results I’m getting are quite a surprise, even for myself — I’ve never been that lean, I’ve never been that consistent with my low carb high fat diet, my own version of it — it never felt easier.

Blue — in May. Red — 6 weeks from now.

It feels like I’m not doing much!

That’s why I was a bit nervous to get my body scan results — I was afraid I lost my progress (Even though the amount of daily compliments to my physique keeps growing)

I’m not doing anything drastic and extreme, but then again, I do have very extreme lifestyle, nutrition wise compared to, well, to most people, not in the same nutrition-geeks boat.

It is kind of extreme, what I do, for most people in the modern society, where most of the population assumes, that eating in moderation basically crap, that is sold as food (not necessarily what is actually food) — eating in moderation will lead to health, and you can indeed look and feel good and enjoy healthy life today and many years from now, eating crap in moderation — that in my experience is a false assumption. If you daily eat, even in small amounts, poisons, foods, that increase inflammation, cause auto-immune reactions, allergic reactions — that will slowly accumulate and kill you slowly and softly but surely — that’s how you end up barely walking in your 70s and 80s, when you could be active and ideally (that happens to centenarians and many well-aging individuals) drop dead one day with the cause of death — old age, having no or very little degenerative diseases damage.

My body fat and my health, and mental and physical performance seem to improve all the time now, since I eliminated almost all the questionable items and most of the plant foods. (Today is an official start of 6-week carnivore diet — 0 plant foods — experiment)

But it’s not just the plants, carbs and food — I’m optimizing my sleep, after reading all the studies that came out recently, I meditate, I take cold showers, I do Wim Hof breathing, I manage my mental state, making sure I’m positively charge, I eat ONLY grass-fed, wild and pasture-raised. I eat no dairy. I do intermittent fasting regularly. I take my multi vitamins and electrolytes. — I am basically applying the best of the best knowledge out there, adding some of my own experiments on top (not too many for the sake of experiments’ simplicity and trackability of results).

I’m staring my 6-week carnivore diet today, leading to my fitness model competition (more on that in tomorrow’s blog).

People say, little things don’t matter — a splash of milk in my coffee won’t kill me!

It won’t.

Right away.

Some milk here. More milk there. Some more questionable dairy in low quality cheese on your “occasional” pizza/pasta treat and other snacks, that don’t kill you in small amounts. Just a tiny bit more sugar here (won’t kill us right?), and, if it’s honey, we can put some more, yada yada yada, and at the end of the day you consume potentially dangerous for your health foods in quite noticeable amounts, ending up with accumulated belly fat, bad mood, low on energy, fatigued and hangry (hungry + angry).

ON top of that, you believe, that somehow all this “noise” about antibiotics and hormones in our food supply has nothing to do with you personally, and you can continue eating antibiotics, pathogens and hormones full chicken, eggs, dairy, beef and other creations of our ingenious food producers, having no adverse effects, wondering from time to time, where all your health, energy, vitality and zest for life have gone to lately?

Well.

I do none of that.

NONE.

I’m on a journey to optimize my nutrition and lifestyle as much as possible to have the best life experience in the best body I can create and maintain without sacrificing the quality of my life to it.

Once you make all the new routines and biohacking rules of an upgraded ape into daily habits that flow on auto-pilot — that’s not even that much work at the end of the day and requires no will power — you’ll be faced with one major problem — lots and lots of energy and drive, that you’ll need to figure out how to put to good use to build something in this life, that makes the world better, that makes your life meaningful.

So, what have I been eating and doing for the last 2.5 months to get my body fat from low to super low? My performance from good to superman like?

Food.

Early Intermittent Fasting, 9am — 3pm eating window, on average.

Modified keto, carbs below 30 g, protein 120–160 g, fats, 100–120 g.

Calories: 1200–2000. Re-feed days: 5000–7000.

I would consume a Keto Protein shake with some collagen after my workout, later at home I would eat 3–4 whole eggs, sometimes a can of in-water sardines too, feeling extremely hungry that day, few hours later I’d eat a salad of leafy greens with extra virgin olive oil, and either seafood like salmon, tuna, shrimp (all wild), or chicken (different parts of chicken), or grass-fed beef.

I would consume some grass-fed butter here and there, sometimes bulletproof coffee.

Essentially no dairy, no sugar free BS snacks of any kind, some dark (100%) chocolate often.

Supplements (on a daily basis).

Multivitamin, electrolytes, turmeric + tart cherry, CoQ10, BCAAs and Creatine HCL (in my workout water and afterworkout shake)

As you can see I was very particular about food timing, and what I consume, and when — that is a HUGE thing.

I fasted quite a lot.

I made sure EVERY DAY I sleep at least 7 hours, optimizing my sleep as much as possible, going to bed at the same time.

Once a week usually I would do a re-feed day, when I’d go bonkers with calories (5000–7000), changing nothing about the food, just more of it, more butter, more oils, more food + I’d eat pecans, Brazil and macadamia nuts, that would add lots and lots of fiber to my carb count, but almost nothing to NET carbs.

These days I’m going carnivore with essentially no plant food, no carbs.

No shakes either — whole foods only. For the next six weeks.

We will see what happens in 6 weeks, but for now, I’m feeling pretty awesome, having essentially no carbs already, being surprised often by the question, where I get my energy if I don’t eat carbs?

Well, if you have the same question on your mind — our body can use fat for energy just fine, and in fact, it’s a preferred stored fuel of our body — we have almost unlimited capacity to store fat and very limited, around 1600 calories, capacity to store carbs in the form of glycogen in our liver and muscles.

What am I working on right now?

Bringing my body fat lower for the competition in 6 weeks, building muscle mass and keeping my weight pretty much the same — burning fat building muscle basically.

Optimizing at the same time my performance in the gym and mental performance, tracking my strength, my fitness, my endurance — Smarter Stronger Leaner.

At the end of the next 6 weeks I’ll also do an advanced lab test to test as many biomarkers as I possibly can, to see how carnivore diet works for me and what I can further work on.

I feel like I’m just at the very beginning of my own journey of living my full potential, physically and mentally.

And I’m also not a millionaire, just yet, so I do what almost everyone, who prioritizes their health, can do and afford in the western society, and I also don’t have my whole day to train and optimize myself, just like everyone else I work, I live my life, I study — lots of things — and it all is SO MUCH better when you… well, just feel awesome every day — Smarter Stronger Leaner.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts:

Fats are essential

Protein (amino acids) are essential

There are NONE essential carbs you need to consume from food

Most of what is called food in our society makes us sick, and is not real food

Quality of food matters

The kinds of foods are more important than macros and calories

Timing of when you eat, exercise and do anything matter just as much, if not more, than what you actually do and eat

It’s complicated — but the truth is out there for those who truly seeks it

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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