The low carb/high fat diet has had the biggest impact on my thoughts concerning nutrition, diet, and exercise. This diet contradicts many established trends currently dominant among the general population. These include: we get fat because we eat more calories than we use, saturated fat is bad, cholesterol is bad, salt is bad, whole grains are good for you, and long distance jogging is good for you.
The potential benefits to being on a high fat diet are:
- The ability to lose weight quickly.
- The ability to not eat for a long time and not feel hungry, and not lose physical or mental performance.
- The end of sugar cravings and binge eating.
- Having a greater amount of energy throughout the day for both physical and mental activities.
- Better sleep.
- The ability to perform in athletic events for a long time without hitting the "wall". The reason for this is that a person can store about 40,000 calories of fat, so it is unlikely that the person will run out of calories during any given athletic event.
- Reduced chance of getting cancer (cancer cells feed on glucose).
- Reduced chance of getting diabetes.
- Reduced chance of getting alzheimer and dementia.
- Reduced chance of getting a heart attack or stroke.
The high fat diet has the following principles:
1. Avoid carbohydrates, especially empty carbs and sugar. This means to avoid pasta, wheat, bread, corn, rice, soft drinks, fruit drinks and sugar.
2. Eat foods which contain large amounts of fat (including saturated fat), and protein. This includes meat, fish, milk, cheese, butter, lard, eggs and nuts.
It is important to understand the biological process that causes us to get fat. The following summary comes from Gary Taubes book: Why We Get Fat. Most people believe we get fat because we eat more calories than we work off (by exercise and physical activity). This is incorrect. The reason we get fat is because of a hormone called insulin which is created when we eat carbs. Insulin tells the cells in the body that they need to absorb glucose (sugar) that is entering the body because glucose is actually poisonous in the bloodstream. Insulin also tells the body to stop burning fat for energy in order to use up the incoming glucose. Insulin accomplishes these two tasks using two enzymes: Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL) and Hormone-Sensitive Lipase (HSL). LPL tells the cells to accept glucose. So the more LPL on your cells, the fatter you will become. HSL tells the cells to release fat. So the more HSL on your cells, the thinner you will become. High levels of insulin increases LPL and decreases HSL, which is necessary in order to remove glucose from the bloodstream where it is toxic.
