Getting Shredded on an Carnivore Diet

Carnivore Diet Help & Advice (No Plant Food & Drink Questions)

I'm a 26-year-old male, 5′9″ tall, weighing 150lbs, with a body fat percentage of 18%.

Recently, I started following a diet plan, but I made several mistakes and was inconsistent with it (eating bread with lots of butter, sweets, etc., which led to gaining some extra weight). In the past few weeks, I've been going to the gym 3-4 times a week and trying to reach 5000 steps per day (due to my job, this is the maximum time I can dedicate).

I also practice intermittent fasting for approximately 16 hours every day and have completely stopped eating bread and sweets.

My question is: to get shredded and build muscle (I currently have very little), what diet should I follow (animal-based or 100% carnivore), and what macros should I aim for, considering that I don't want to gain more weight and body fat for the summer? How many calories should I consume? How much protein? How many carbs? I'm a bit confused. Is it better to go 100% carnivore or animal-based? I prefer an animal-based diet because I love fruits and occasionally potatoes, but I'm afraid of continuing to mix carbs with fat and gaining more weight.

in carnivoredietby kubu123

78%

21d

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kubu123

-6

21d

My fear of going 100% carnivore is becoming too skinny, because many people say that carbs are necessary to build muscle. This question might seem a bit silly, but for someone new, it's a little hard to understand.

CanadianBlacon

21d

Carbs aren’t necessary to build muscle but they are optimal. That being said at your height and weight, if you eat a caloric surplus and train a lot to failure, you’ll see some muscle growth regardless. Really it’s up to you what you want to do. But you’re pretty skinny, man. You gotta bulk up.

kubu123

21d

Thanks for the help man. Do you know if there's a way to figure out how many calories I need to eat and how many carbs I can eat to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time since I don't want to gain any more fat for this summer.

CanadianBlacon

21d

I stopped tracking calories a while ago, but I think the standard general advice is something like goal weight (lbs) x12. Now that’s for weight loss. Meaning a fat guy who wants to weight 200 lbs would eat (200x12) 2400 calories a day. To gain muscle slowly without adding a ton of fault you probably want like a 300 calorie surplus. So go (goal weight) x 12, +300. You could start there. Modern science is saying 0.7g of protein per pound of bodyweight is the optimal protein consumption. I always shoot for 1g per pound. Easier to count and I’d rather eat protein than carbs anyway. I feel better without carbs.

If you’re eating at a surplus to gain muscle, you’ll also gain some fat. If your surplus is low it won’t be much and if you’re carnivore and training hard you might actually lose fat.

For training, try to hit each muscle with 15-20 sets per week, and each of those sets should be to failure, or SUPER close to failure. In my experience that means you should be absolutely working as hard as you can, really struggling to put up the last few reps of every set. The number of reps isn’t crucial as long as it’s between 6 and 30. I try to do sets of varying rep ranges between 6 and 15.

r/bodybuilding and r/naturalbodybuilding are decent places. They’ll have links for training programs. PPL (push pull legs) is the current trend. I like bro splits. You’ll find it all there.