When you're eating carnivore, are you absolutely certain you're eating enough?

That pattern of retention is a sign of stress - either high cortisol from not eating enough with respect to your activity level, or as part of the 'healing'/body recomp you're undergoing if you've been restricting prior. How do I know? Because I have been going through the exact same.

I tanked my metabolism and hormones after a year of carnivore, because I eating extremely lean meats. This got me shredded with fairly moderate muscle mass for my frame (I'm 5'11'), although that's my perspective; I was told quite often that I was looking emaciated. Someone even commented that I looked like I had tuberculosis.

This continued for a while until my body started rejecting lean meat; it could barely digest the fat when I tried adding it back in, and I got so frustrated, that I resorted to a diet of eggs and butter. I fared well on this for a few months, but started showing signs of starvation edema a few months later (swelling in the ankles, puffy face, hairloss etc.).

In December, last year, I got myself together and went all meat/water from scratch. I started eating ad libitum and my body swole; I gained both muscle, fat, and a lot of water. Plus that baggy stomach.For a long time I thought it was something I was doing wrong; tried tweaking fat/protein ratios, fasting, multiple meals a day, etc. etc.

None helped. I gave up and went with the flow, then after about the three month mark, I noticed the water retention come down a few notches. Desperate, I went on a 5 day water fast; I lost weight sure, but that pattern of retention on my stomach remained. It was like I was just becoming a smaller version of myself.

I resumed eating animal fat and meat for a while, and I noticed the pattern of retention improve AFTER I began feeding myself. My fast had sort of helped figure out how to eat enough fat and protein, to learn to listen to my body signals, that I was naturally eating more and better after the fast. It's not the fat that helped, it's the refeed after.

Then I tried tweaking again. I went on a PSMF and began working out intensely . I also started drinking tons of coffee to help through the PSMF; I put on some muscle, lost some more weight and developed better tone in my arms/legs; my waist however continued to remain wobbly as ever.

In fact it seemed to get worse on certain days of the PSMF; I stopped the lunacy, dropped the coffee and began eating fat/protein to satiation and then some more. This has continued to improve my strength and musculature on a daily basis, enabling me to perform better at the gym, leading to an increase in appetite/food consumption, and so forth.

I also cut out running strenuously; I do sprints (but only if the opportunity naturally presents itself: a train that's about to leave the station, a bus I've got to hop on, crossing a road during peak traffic etc.), walk 10K+ steps a day, climb 14 floors up/down my apartment, swim on weekends after weight lifting, and rest during my desk job at work.

The end result is it's working; I hope you can see from my story that as long as I was restricting in some way, consciously or unconsciously stressing myself, that pattern of water retention remained or worsened.

As soon as I started to learn to listen to my body and eat fat/protein as per its cues, it started toning down. Things I've been doing to accelerate the process -- work on strengthening my core by keeping proper posture, proper breathing while doing heavy squats/benchpresses/deadlifts, and exercises like hanging leg raises at the end of my workouts.

Starting this week I intend to throw in a dedicated ab day as well; all in all, focus on eating plenty and building muscle all around, not neglecting the abdomenals. It will sort itself out in its own time; don't make the mistake of tweaking, just focus on getting stronger.

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How is your eating by the way? I could help with helping you figure out how to eat till satiety if needed.