Lchf ( Low Carb High Fat )

[Simon Zackrisson]

Thought I'd initiate a place for discussions about the diet LCHF: Low Carb, High Fat.

 

This is a diet that is exactly as the name suggest:

• Decrease the amount of carbohydrates consumed (Especially sugar, and slower carbohydrates, such as those found in for example Pasta, Potatoes, Bread)
• Increase the intake of saturated fats. (Natural fats, eggs, meat, avocados, cheese.)

 

An exceptional resource for more information about LCHF: www.dietdoctor.com 

This is a website free of any financial recieving from any company or government. 

 

I've personally been eating this diet LCHF, for about 2 years. (With a non-strict approach, meaning I deviate as I see fit, sometimes I go crazy and eat whatever I want. ^^)

I've most definitely felt a benefit in doing this. For example: no desire to buy candy when in store (this blew my mind the first month), feelings of better health and being overall in a more calm setting etc. 

If you know anything about blood sugar and insulin, this makes sense.

(If you are interested in information concerning diabetes, you should learn the basics of LCHF)

 

There is much more to this diet, so feel free share your thoughts, and send out questions.

Note: I do not consider myself an expert on this topic.

 

Do you have any experience with LCHF, or similar diet?

Edited February 25, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson
Increased content, better formulating in sentence structuring

[Cabot]

Tried it for a short time, felt pretty good. I ate mostly eggs and cheese, olives... Standard regular food like that, nothing processed. Didn't stick with it though. 
It's only important to keep in mind that fat has double the calories compared to carbs of protein, gram per gram... That's where the green leafy vegetables come in I guess, you can eat as much of that as you like, it's almost non caloric, and feels so good.

 

[Simon Zackrisson]

22 hours ago, Cabot said:

Tried it for a short time, felt pretty good. I ate mostly eggs and cheese, olives... Standard regular food like that, nothing processed. Didn't stick with it though. 
It's only important to keep in mind that fat has double the calories compared to carbs of protein, gram per gram... That's where the green leafy vegetables come in I guess, you can eat as much of that as you like, it's almost non caloric, and feels so good.

 

Yes.

However, it is generally said that you can drop the neurotic count of calories if you follow the guidelines for this diet.

There is a hormone called leptin, which is a hunger related hormone.

A little bit simplified: If you eat fat and not carbohydrates, the hormone leptin will function as normal and you will feel too "full" to engage in dysfunctional eating habits.

Interesting question: Can you think of any other animal that needs to contemplate the amount of food it eats, so as health damage doesn't occur? (If its natural diet is within reach)

Edited February 10, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson

[Cabot]

 

5 minutes ago, Simon Zackrisson said:

Yes.

However, it is generally said that you can drop the neurotic count of calories if you follow the guidelines for this diet.

There is a hormone called leptin, which is a hunger related hormone.

A little bit simplified: If you eat fat and not carbohydrates, the hormone leptin will function as normal and you will feel too "full" to engage in dysfunctional eating habits.

Interesting question: Can you think of any other animal that needs to contemplate the amount of food it eats, so as health damage doesn't occur? (If it's natural diet is within reach)

So you let your hunger dictate how much and when you eat? Sounds great, though I'm not sure if I'd be up for that myself... I really, really love cheese...  

It's also important to note there are also no insulin spikes due to lack of simple carbs. This means your body doesn't get that signal to immediately store fat after you've finished eating a big meal. This is why you also avoid energy crashes, which is one of the biggest benefits of this diet.

However, if you overeat, you'll still gain weight, though not as easily as on a standard american diet, right?

No, I can't think of any other animal that has to "control its self" this way...  

 

[Simon Zackrisson]

22 hours ago, Cabot said:

 

So you let your hunger dictate how much and when you eat? Sounds great, though I'm not sure if I'd be up for that myself... I really, really love cheese...  

Man, I have love for cheese too.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but yes.

I challenge you to only eat fat cheese, and keep eating and eating.

NO CARBS MIXED IN THOUGH.

 

22 hours ago, Cabot said:

It's also important to note there are also no insulin spikes due to lack of simple carbs. This means your body doesn't get that signal to immediately store fat after you've finished eating a big meal. This is why you also avoid energy crashes, which is one of the biggest benefits of this diet.

Exactly. Which is what I described, with a simplification. 

Insulin blocks leptin, and makes you feel still hungry.

22 hours ago, Simon Zackrisson said:

A little bit simplified: If you eat fat and not carbohydrates, the hormone leptin will function as normal and you will feel too "full" to engage in dysfunctional eating habits.

 

22 hours ago, Cabot said:

However, if you overeat, you'll still gain weight, though not as easily as on a standard american diet, right?

No, I can't think of any other animal that has to "control its self" this way...  

Well.. 

Yes.

But thats the same as saying: "If you keep drinking water, it will damage your health".

While it is indeed a true thing, there is a reason as to why you do not do it.

A functioning body, that has its natural diet in reach, has regulatory mechanisms.

 

Accept the challenge of keep eating fat and keep eating, and then document to me your own anecdotal evidence bro  

Edited February 10, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson

[Ida]

It have been a while since I had biology in school, but from what I remember and read in my notes, we use three different things in our body to respire. The first is stored glycogen(carbs), then its stored fat and lastly it's protein, but protein sits as muscle tissue and we don't want to lose our muscles I guess. 

So what you get from a beef is about 20 % protein and about 9 % fat, the rest is water. We need about 30 % protein a day, if we get more it will get out through our liver and kidney to our urine. If you drink milk and eat meat and egg a lot you will have a lot of protein through your liver and kidney which you should be careful with.  Protein is your body's "last" ressource(for not talking about using organs), it want to keep it(the muscles) but is flexible when it comes to survival. Also is there different forms of protein where meat contain some who is more acidic. Our body neutralize the acid in our blood by using minerals from places as the bones. This is the cause of kidney stones. Osteoporosis is also believed coming from using minerals from the bones to neutralize your blood.

Fat is not something to avoid, it's an important macronutrient. But some fats are better than others and does not cause LDL-cholesterol which is dangerous (HDL-cholosterol is the good version we all have). So be careful with saturated fat, which may cause atherosclerosis leading to blood clots. 

And what I've learned about insulin:

Fatty acid diets increase the insulin level. Insulin is used to help glycogen and fatty acids around through blood to different depots. Your body want to prevent your depots to expand so you don't become fat, so it may make you insulin-resistant preventing the fat to reach the target depot. And if you become so it will give you a too high insulin level and you will get hyperinsulinemia. 

Soo this is what I have learned from my school book and from Dr. McDougall. Im not an expert though.

[Ida]

Im sure you can loose weight on the low carb, high fat. But I don't believe it's healthy.

[Simon Zackrisson]

@Ida

My knowledge about the human body is not sufficient enough to address all the points you went through.

However, I know that there has been a lot of advancements in science regarding this.

The very magazine that initiated the war on fat, TIME, has come out with a different narrative:

 

I can however refer to another comment in another thread, regarding cholesterol:

17 hours ago, Simon Zackrisson said:

Hey man.

I feel somewhat qualified to speak out on this, since I've read quite some about it.

In short - Egg consumption is NOT dangerous for your health, even in large quantities.

It is probable that it's actually the opposite.

 

Elaboration:

I will begin by a disclaimer that my understanding may be inaccurate, so even though I'm pretty sure of this, it may of course still be faulty.

 

Alright, so lets explore cholesterol. 

To start to understand this, we need to first pierce one bubble of ignorance. 

A lot of people think that there is only one form of cholesterol. 

And, that having a high cholesterol is bad. 

 

How this narrative has been spread is profoundly dishonest. What this oversimplification has brought is lucrative business models both within the medical field (For example, a medicine called statins), as well as in other industries. Such as those who wish to not have their products exposed as the health-declining actors they are. (Think of like basically every product with sugar in it, or carbohydrates, like pasta and bread)

The truth is, in a somewhat simplified model, that there are three types of cholesterol:
 

• VLDL Very Low Density Lipoprotein
• LDL Low Density Lipoprotein
• HDL High Density Lipoprotein

(Don't think of the names for these too much, it's enough to remember the acronyms.)

 

What now? Different types of cholesterol..? Ah..  tad annoying, I thought it only were one ....

Don't worry, it's rather easy to understand. 

VLDL is just cholesterol that becomes LDL, don't think about this guy more.

 

LDL is the generally thought of as "the bad cholesterol"* 

HDL is in general the good one.

 

Ok. So high amounts of LDL causes heart-disease and high amounts of HDL lower it. How do we get more of the good HDL then?

BY EATING SATURATED FAT. Such as eggs. 

 

A diet of saturated fat increases the amount of positive HDL cholesterol. 

A diet of carbohydrates increases the amount of negative LDL cholesterol. 

 

Wait, so then why has there been all this talk about this one cholesterol, and that having high of it is bad?

Because, what they've done there is added all these three types together, forming one single set of number. 

And since we now know that they have different properties (HDL is good and LDL bad), the result displayed by this method is close to completely irrelevant. 

 

There it is. 

Any questions, send them away.

 

(*Clarification: Even though it's often deemed that LDL is the "bad guy", your body is unable to sustain life without a small amount of these guys around.)

 

[Ida]

Okay, I have learned that we can make the HDL ourselves and LDL is coming from outside. But there is a lot which is hard to be sure on, so I guess it's just about picking a belief :-P 

[Simon Zackrisson]

I wrote this post here, 

It's relevant enough to be collected into this thread.

3 hours ago, Simon Zackrisson said:

Hello lovely people.

I'm just a tiny voice of dissent in this. <3 
 

Note: I do not consider myself an expert in this.

 

I am currently eating a "diet" called LCHF, short for Low Carb, High Fat.

(Think of how humanity ate before 10 000 years, before we rolled out the serious farming)

This is a diet consisting of a tribute to what the human animal has eaten for millions of years.

(Our species has been around for about 3.5 million, with the most evolved versions dating to around 200 000 years.)

 

An exceptional resource for more information about LCHF, is www.dietdoctor.com. 

This website is driven by a doctor who previously believed the propaganda about saturated fats, and got sick of the constant worsening his patients condition, leading to a paradigm shift that ultimately resulted in helping A LOT of people achieve very tangible results.

(Such as: losing weight, throwing away the need for 12 pills a day, managing diabetes. And overall much better vitality.) 

 

What got me hooked on this website is the seemingly rigorous aspiration for objective truth. 

This website has no financial support from any organisation, or government.

(One final thing about it, I am mostly on the Swedish version for this website, but I can only imagine that the English version is as good, if not better) 

 

According to my research: No, meat in itself is not dangerous for you. Yes, there are bound to be many different studies, with many different results (that easily could be influenced by the agenda of whom is conducting the study) however my conclusion from looking over this is as stated above.

The influence factories have and how the preparation and storage is done however, is another story.

From a global perspective concerning the health of the planet, I believe for sure that our consumption of meat is NOT all dandy and fine. But this goes for the same with the industrial farming of crops, destroying lands, according to studies I've read.

 

Finally, I'm always striving to learn, to be open. Love to hear different non-defenisve, non-overemotional attached perspectives.

 

Also:

I disagree on the idea that eating a certain life-form that you can't empathise with, just simply because it happen to not express instincts of survival that you can pickup with your human senses, is more noble and makes you a more enlightened person. 

 

[InternetPoints]

I've been doing the ketogenic diet for just over a month based on researching from https://www.reddit.com/r/keto.

A lot of people on there who have had various health markers of problems get them corrected after a short period of time. Things like people who have diabetes not regulating their blood sugar well (eating more carbs just makes the problem worse even though doctors tell them to do that!), cholesterol issues (eating high cholesterol does not cause it to increase in your blood because of how the body processes it when taken in by food), food cravings, acid reflux, being over weight, and other issues.

I'm not the typical person there as most people trying it are doing it to help lose weight. I was never overweight myself at any point in my life.

I think a lot of beliefs about food are just made up crap without any basis in anything many are oversimplifying things by trying to think through something logically without knowing enough to actually do that. For example 'don't eat fat it will make you fat'. Without knowing much of what really happens when you eat fat that makes total sense, but in reality if you eat lots of fat and not many carbs, its very difficult to overeat as it makes you full much easier. You end up taking in less calories without trying as hard. I struggle with cravings partly because I work from home and so food access is pretty easy, but when I'm loaded up with fat (which isn't even enough to make me gain weight), it totally kills the urges to stuff my face with more crap.

 

Edited February 9, 2016 by InternetPoints

[Simon Zackrisson]

34 minutes ago, InternetPoints said:

I've been doing the ketogenic diet for just over a month based on researching from https://www.reddit.com/r/keto.

A lot of people on there who have had various health markers of problems get them corrected after a short period of time. Things like people who have diabetes not regulating their blood sugar well (eating more carbs just makes the problem worse even though doctors tell them to do that!), cholesterol issues (eating high cholesterol does not cause it to increase in your blood because of how the body processes it when taken in by food), food cravings, acid reflux, being over weight, and other issues.

I'm not the typical person there as most people trying it are doing it to help lose weight. I was never overweight myself at any point in my life.

I think a lot of beliefs about food are just made up crap without any basis in anything many are oversimplifying things by trying to think through something logically without knowing enough to actually do that. For example 'don't eat fat it will make you fat'. Without knowing much of what really happens when you eat fat that makes total sense, but in reality if you eat lots of fat and not many carbs, its very difficult to overeat as it makes you full much easier. You end up taking in less calories without trying as hard. I struggle with cravings partly because I work from home and so food access is pretty easy, but when I'm loaded up with fat (which isn't even enough to make me gain weight), it totally kills the urges to stuff my face with more crap.

 

Happy to hear that.
I was too never really concerned with doing it for weight loss*, it was primarily for health reasons. PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT.

 

*Even though it was/is a motivator, to look better.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson

[Olly]

If you're interest in Low-Carb/Ketogenic diets, I would recommend looking at the Bulletproof diet. I think you would like it.

[Simon Zackrisson]

On 2/11/2016 at 5:28 PM, Oliver said:

If you're interest in Low-Carb/Ketogenic diets, I would recommend looking at the Bulletproof diet. I think you would like it.

Could you provide a quick summary of what it is? 

The website seems a bit snake-oil-salesman-ish ^^
Is it basically just a rebranding of LCHF into Bulletproof Diet?
I've heard good things about Bulletproof Coffee though.

 

Edit: Correction: It wasn't bulletproof coffee I've heard positivity from.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson

[Olly]

@Simon Zackrisson Haha! The guy Dave Asprey recommends eating a diet which is basically about 70% fat, 20% protein and 10% carbs (mainly veggies) and he really limits starches and fruit. The foods that you will be eating on a regular basis is butter, coconut oil, avocados, green veggies, and GRASS-FED meats which he over stresses. Try it out for yourself, the diet mainly focuses on eliminating all cravings (which is does) and giving you more energy. 

The one downside I think is that if you workout a lot you kinda need carbs! whenever I go too low carb I loose a lot of weight (which can be good, but I am super skinny and want to bulk) so that's my only problem. Despite that, If you're just a senditary office worker I think it can give you laser like focus, try it!

The best nutritionalist I know of is Yuri Elkaim. Have you heard of him. I think he offers the best no bullshit information about nutrition, because as you probably know, there is a lot of dogma and cults out there when it comes to diet.

[Simon Zackrisson]

4 minutes ago, Oliver said:

@Simon Zackrisson Haha! The guy Dave Asprey recommends eating a diet which is basically about 70% fat, 20% protein and 10% carbs (mainly veggies) and he really limits starches and fruit. 

Which is within the limits for what is considered a LCHF diet.

16 minutes ago, Oliver said:

GRASS-FED meats which he over stresses.

 

4 minutes ago, Oliver said:

The one downside I think is that if you workout a lot you kinda need carbs! 

According to my research, this is false.

The possible exception to this if you are a heavy-duty serious professional athlete.

4 minutes ago, Oliver said:

The best nutritionalist I know of is Yuri Elkaim. Have you heard of him. I think he offers the best no bullshit information about nutrition, because as you probably know, there is a lot of dogma and cults out there when it comes to diet.

I have not.  

What is he about, his expertise? 
Or more overall?

[Olly]

@Simon Zackrisson Type him in, he's more concerned with health and 'alkalizing' the body which I think really is the key to good health. Have you heard about PH balance?

[Simon Zackrisson]

9 minutes ago, Oliver said:

@Simon Zackrisson Type him in, he's more concerned with health and 'alkalizing' the body which I think really is the key to good health. Have you heard about PH balance?

Heard about it vaguely. 

I'll be honest, it feels like this has great potential for the seller of snake oil again   
But, one has to stay openminded. Or you inevitable become the fool. 

 

9 minutes ago, Oliver said:

PH balance

Your assessment of this?

Edited February 11, 2016 by Simon Zackrisson

[Olly]

@Simon Zackrisson Notice I feel more internally cleaner. But to be honest, carbs don't actually make me feel to good. Even fruit! I ffind they make me tired. Having something like an egg and avo salad makes me feel much more energized than a fruit smoothie lets say. 

The only reason with the carbs and working out thingy is that I hear a lot of bodybuilders say they feel flat if they don't eat carbs. I think it has something to do with glycogen and water weight. 

I must agree, keeping your mind open in the nutrition world is a full-time job!

[Maria M]

Hello!

For quite some time I follow this type of diet: 10% carbs (no sugar - from veggies), 25-30% protein, 60-65% healthy fat (eggs, butter, avocado etc) and its amazing. I have lost 3 kgrs in 1.5 month but fat not body water (!) because I decsrease insuline at 0 and triggered the fat burning hormones.

 

Amazing to see your body working!

Edited February 11, 2016 by Maria M