Fat: The New Health Paradigm [pdf]
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-Many people do not tolerate high fat diets well. For them such diets are not an option.
-A low carb high fat diet is pretty suboptimal for athletes. Many proponents of low carb diets attempt to mitigate this by having athletes eat carbs only around training sessions. The problem with this is it greatly ignores the science showing carbohydrates' usefulness in the recovery process, specifically in building and maintaining muscle mass. It's important to move out of a mindset of "good vs bad" food and into one of goal oriented eating. If you are an athlete and you are eating very low carbs, you should probably reevaluate. If you are not an athlete and are eating significant amounts of carbs, you should probably reevaluate. Putting jet fuel into a car is not a good idea, but the inverse is true as well.
-There is not science showing high fat diets perform any differently than high carb diets when calories are equalized for the purpose of weight loss. High fat is a compliance hack, allowing some people to more comfortably consume fewer calories than they do on a high carb diet. Many people talk about insulin spikes etc., when talking about high carb. That's kind a red herring: insulin spikes happen with significant amounts of protein as well, and they really aren't a bad thing.
-Cutting out carbs usually leads to an initial 5lbs-ish drop in water weight, which makes people look less bloated pretty quickly, provided they were coming from a poor diet in the first place.
high fat != high protein
fat is not the same as protein. you can eat fat without eating protein.
it may sound obvious, but i don't know how you read an entire article about fat, write 3 paragraphs about fat, and then conclude with a fact about protein. wtf???
My main point is that carbs and fat behave very similarly as energy sources, and that to focus on removing carbs because you can blunt your insulin spikes is idiotic. If removing carbs helps you cut calories consistently by all means go ahead. But if you think it's some magic bullet you're misreading the science.
Besides the weight loss (and I still have a ways to go) I've experienced:
-- A lot less desire to eat. Sometimes I just eat one meal a day because I'm no longer hungry all the time.
-- More energy. Part of this is having the muscles developed for a heavier body but carrying around a smaller one... but since I sometimes eat a few carbs or have an off meal for whatever reason, I can tie those carb meals to lower energy levels more directly.
-- Better mood. My outlook and mood is much better... my self esteem hasn't changed (I've always been happy with how I looked and liked myself, so I'm not loosing weight because I feel bad.) .... but I'm much more in control of my mental state, if that makes sense, and I'm more motivated and focused.
I don't know about fat, but I will say this-- for the past week I've been eating hamburgers (no bun) so just meat cheese, tomatoes and lettuce with the occasional grilled onions etc. And I feel great.
downsides: Early on I was not getting enough salt! Also I have started using lite salt to get my potassium up and eating a spinach dish (with cream cheese, it tastes great) to get magnesium up. And I'm taking supplements... but I don't seem to need them. When I go a week without them I'm still fine.
However, I am doing 4 diets: -- Intermittant fasting, 18-23 hours between meals -- Portion control (easy when you aren't hungry) -- Lower calories (a consequence of portion control and lower appetite.) -- LCHF -- I believe in ketosis, it works for me.
These work in combo, and the days where I am better at IF I lose more weight than the days where I spread my meals out... and I've never limited myself on how much or how often I can eat (EG: I have a small portion of protein and fat, but I can do it again if I'm still hungry after finishing it.)
Easiest, most fun, and by far the most successful diet I've experienced.
My feeling is that going low carb/high fat helps to fix a broken metabolism, but once this is done, returning to a higher carb diet seems a wise move. I am now eating 180-200 grams per day (from rice/potatoes and veggies), all post-workout. I lift weight 3-4 times per week and do 2-3/week long walks at a brisk pace.
[1] http://freetheanimal.com/2014/02/ketogenic-diets-news.html
"No" carb? I'm sceptical. I'm diabetic, and my doctor suggests a minimum amount of carbs for me, as well as a max. You need carbs for energy.
Remember that fruits and vegetables are carbs.
Perhaps you mean "no bread," or "no processed grains?"
No, you don't. Of course, no carbs at all is impossible as even meat contains trace amounts but keeping it under 30gr (which is what's generally accepted for keeping a nutritional ketosis state) is perfectly sustainable.
"Foods high in carbohydrates are an important part of a healthy diet. Carbohydrates provide the body with glucose, which is converted to energy used to support bodily functions and physical activity."
We can quibble about what mix you need of carbs, but if you aren't getting your carbs from something that's obviously from a plant, you may not be getting enough and you should probably pay attention to however you do get them. The less processed your carbs the better; the carbs you get from a cow are very highly processed.
You need glucose. No carbs is probably not what your body evolved to live in.
Low/zero carb diets are unlikely to be the holy grail for everyone but if you want to argue, at least spend some time reading up on the actual science involved, rather than blog posts by unknown authors.
And while I find close-to-zero (if you want to be 100% technically correct) carbs diets too restrictive for my own taste, people are not exactly dropping dead from them either:
I think the biggest thing I noticed is my knees stopped hurting. I have bad knees and it got to the point where I couldn't walk down stairs or bend down to tie my shoes without knee pain. In winter I'd wake up at night with my knees throbbing until I "cracked" them. After a couple of weeks in keto I could bend down and do anything else without pain. After I started going to the gym I was careful with squats for this reason, but soon realized that I can squat heavy and not worry (I'm still cautious, though). The times I've fallen off the wagon the knee pain came back. Now, this is likely just some placebo effect and I know of no science backing this up, but if it works I'm happy .
Interesting, MCTs are saturated fats.
Also, beware of cooking with oils that have a low smoke point - smoking oil means free radicals, which are no good.