I'm suggesting he eat the meat part of them (and more of it), and lose the delicious fruits and vegetables. It's obviously a bit tongue in cheek. Or at least I thought it was...

He's not wrong. If you intend on losing weight, you do have to eat at a caloric deficit over time. What a proper and nutritious diet does (after you've tweaked it for your own individual needs so that you can actually continue to eat like that for the rest of your life), is allow you to eat ad libitum, without busting out a calorie counting app, scale and/or a spreadsheet. When dialed in, you will not:

• Feel perpetually hungry while losing weight
• Gain weight even though you're only eating to satiety
• Maintain your weight at an unhealthy level even though you're only eating to satiety

Things like Keto, Paleo, Carnivore, Intermittent Fasting, etc, etc are nutritional, dietary and lifestyle hacks that allow you to do this without thinking too much (or at all) about it. You're still in an energy balance (calories in/calories out) - the extra calories you require to live and support your activity levels are simply coming from your own stored fat, instead of your mouth. Hormones (leptin, insulin, etc) regulate fat storage and metabolism, and eating correctly is what manipulates those, such that your body maintains a healthy amount of it.

You know you've dialed your diet and lifestyle in, when you eat to satiety when hungry, don't bother eating when you're not, and are either losing weight (if overweight) or maintaining your current weight (if at a healthy bodyfat percentage) - and (critically) you're able to do this by simply listening to your own body. I'm of the opinion that any diet that requires precise calculation of caloric content and precise knowledge of metabolic rate in order to maintain a reasonably lean physique, is broken in some way. If you eat to satiety when hungry and don't eat when you're not, you should be either maintaining a healthy weight without thinking about it, or losing weight if you've got too much fat on you. Without thinking about it. If either of those are not happening, you're metabolically broken in some way, and it's probably because you're eating something you shouldn't...in quantities you shouldn't. You then have to figure out why, and make some adjustments.

But if you're losing weight, you are in fact eating at a caloric deficit over time. The shortfall in calories is coming from your stored fat, thus keeping your energy balance...well, balanced. But carnivore or not, you can't eat 5000+ calories a day and expect to lean out. And if your nutrition is dialed in like it should be (opinions vary on what that looks like - I say it's hyper-individualized), you won't feel the need to even try.

Holy SHIT, dude.

One of mine from a few years ago popped up as a suggestion in my "Facebook Memories".

I'm at 170 (I'm 5'10"), but I've resisted doing the whole "look what I did!" thing with the after photos. I'm not done leaning out yet (it's still dropping), and I don't think it's all that interesting to share until you've been at a very healthy weight for a year, minimum.

I'll do the whole before/after montage after I look damn good without a shirt on. And then I'll put that shirt on for the pic, because nobody wants to see a married douchebag in his 40's showing off his abs.

Since you're straight carnivore, check out the zinc content in oysters when you get a minute.

They're fucking delicious and well-tolerated by most people.

What you described sounds perfectly healthy to me (I'd personally skip the smoothie thing, but I don't see anything bad in there so have at it). I would probably work in some oily fish (salmon, trout, swordfish, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines...) a couple days a week. Bonus: Keeps you from getting bored. Speaking of getting bored, try to do the whole "nose to tail" thing. Eat the whole damn animal. Do some Googling and YouTube rabbit-holing if you're not the chefy-type already, and learn ways to prepare oxtail, tongue, liver, cheeks, kidneys, heart, and the marrow from the bones. That's next level shit, for your cooking game. Bonus - it's nutritionally complete (and how!). You're covering all the bases.

After you've done that for a good while, you probably won't find it difficult to do an n=1 experiment on yourself, and just lose the vegetables entirely. Do that for 30 days, and see how it goes (it won't hurt - hell I could go vegan for 30 days, without harming my long term health - I'll just bitch about it the whole time ). It's sort of the ultimate elimination diet. Then, if you decide a month later that a day without fruits and vegetables is like a day without sunshine (I'll kill a motherfucker if I can't get some mushrooms and shallots in...), then start adding them back one by one and see how you feel. Or just keep it straight carnivore, if you like it and feel fine. It's all good.

Just don't do what everybody else does (or seems to), and go full-retard falling off the wagon inhaling a rail of girl scout cookies washed down with a bottle of Coke, if you discover that what you've been doing (carnivore or otherwise) just ain't working for you. Use your head. Eat real food you've prepared yourself. It's really hard to fuck that up.

I have a vacuum sealer. When my groceries come in (once a week), I spend an hour or so in the kitchen with that pile of meat and produce on the counter doing some minor "prep", before putting everything away. It's what makes my life easier during the week. Vegetables are washed and cut depending on what they are and what they'll be used in, blocks of cheese are run through the food processor to shred or grate them if I need that handy. Roasts, seafood, steaks, etc are portioned then seasoned (or marinated, or...it just depends what it is) and vacuum sealed before going in freezer or refrigerator, etc, etc. The protein gets plopped into the sous vide bath ~1.5 hours before dinner (or 24 hours before dinner if I'm doing something like a chuck roast or anything else with a lot of connective tissue to break down). I even make the various dressings, condiments and sauces I'll be using that week. I've got a whole routine down.

If I bought a shit ton of ground beef (I rarely do - I much prefer to take a few minutes while I'm standing there anyway and grind my own), I divide the the ground beef into 1lb portions, and vacuum seal them. Into the freezer they go (save for anything I may want that day).

On the money savings - if the only thing you're buying at the store is fresh beef, lamb, poultry, pork, eggs and seafood (because that's literally all you're eating, right?) - your grocery bill ain't gonna be that high.

Put it in a ziplock bag and press the air out. If you want to get super clever with it, immerse the ziplock (with the beef in it...) in a container of water to force all of the air out, before zipping it shut. Kind of a poor man's sous vide trick for people who don't own vacuum sealers.

Or hell, just wrap the package up tight in plastic wrap. It'll be fine in the fridge for a few days. What temp do you keep your fridge at? If you don't know the answer to this, you need to fix that. If you don't have a way to accurately measure it, you need to fix that too.

Eat every part of the animal ("nose to tail", as douchey as I know that sounds). Learn to cook the organ meats and the oddball cuts, in a way that makes the delicious (it's more technique than anything). Some of what you eat will be extremely fatty, some of it will be extremely lean, some of it will be incredibly nutrient dense, some of it will just be kind of meh in that department. On average, you'll get what you need over time.

If you're worried about the amount of fat you're getting, don't start doing wierd-ass "fat-bomb" hacks to it. Eat fattier parts of the animal.

You're eating animals. It's not supposed to be complicated. There's honestly not much to it. A "well-balanced diet" in a carnivore context means eating all of the animal in question, and many different types of animals.

Cook the shit and eat it. You'll be fine.