Is increasing fat healthy if you are still eating some carbs?

(Simon) #1

If you are on a ‘traditionally healthy’ (low/medium fat, lots of vegetables, high unprocessed carb) diet is there any health benefits to increasing the quantity of (good) fats in the diet in place of (mostly unprocessed) carbs (rice, pumpkin, potatoes), even if carbs are still largely present in the diet, and often present in the same meal.

For example, if you previously ate a Bircher muesli with oats, coconut milk and berries, would this meal be healthier by reducing the oats by half and adding a few tablespoons of coconut oil and some macadamia nuts (for example)?

I ask this as almost all the talk is about the benefits of using fat for fuel through ketosis and/or becoming fat adapted. However, if you are still consuming carbs I would assume you wouldn’t be entering ketosis and therefore it is the carbs that are being consumed for energy first.

A bit of help around the science of what is happening when you consume good fats AND carbs would be great.

I ask this as I have almost zero chance of convincing my family to completely remove carbs and replace with fats, however I could probably convince them to eat ‘less’ carbs, and ‘more’ fats, but I am wondering if this is even a healthy thing to recommend if you don’t go all the way to a ketogenic state.

I’d love your thought on the science and your own experiences!

(Michael ) #2

If you eat carbs, especially ones with a high glycemic index, blood sugar spikes. To deal with the blood sugar, the body releases a bunch of insulin. If you’re insulin resistant like most of the western world, the body has to release even more insulin in order to deal with the blood sugar. When you have very high insulin levels, the body cannot burn fat. So, eating a bunch of high calorie fat, will store it all as fat. Fat is only your friend if you keep insulin down

That said, i don’t think eating rice and potatoes is unhealthy necessarily. It’s just not a great way to lose weight. My wife and kids are Japanese. All her grandparents are still alive and thin in their 90s and eat rice with every meal. There’s a lot of factors at work with Japanese people but simply put, unhealthy is a strong statement based on observations. If you’ve eaten garbage your whole life, are fat and super insulin resistant, probably better to avoid the rice

(Jo O) #3

Agree with FatMike.

But you COULD switch a meal or two a week to get them familiar with the WOE.

Start with Carl’s head Pizza is the easiest gateway meal.
Maybe a few fatbomb treats that are ONLY for you. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(Simon) #4

Thanks for the responses so far guys.

So if I am getting this right - mixing high/higher fat and carbs in the same meal may not be a good way to go, but having the occasional high-fat low-carb meal in amongst a more ‘traditional’ diet would provide some benefit (and the more the better)? Even for myself (and I am just starting to dip my toe into the HFLC/Keto world) it is interesting and important to know that for someone starting to test out the diet, it is better to commit to, say, a third of all meals, but make them truely HFLC, rather than committing to a 1/3 increase in fat and reduction in carbs in every meal (if that makes sense)?

I should add that the aim for me and my family is not fat loss, but rather overall health/performance/longevity (and in my case, lean muscle gain, which has always been difficult for me), so I am asking the question from a ‘holistic health’ rather than a ‘fat loss’ point of view.

Thanks guys!

(Simon) #6

Thanks @Fat_Mike, so would this apply to low GI carbs like the oats example?

In short, say I was (for the time being) wedded to my breakfast of Bircher muesli, would you halve the oats to replace with good fats, of will this just turn it into a weight gaining calorie bomb?

There is a lot of talk about how nutrient and vitamin dense coconut oil and grass fed butter etc are are, but it is hard to tell what is self-serving “we love high-fat diets so let’s all talk about how great fats are…” talk (no offence guys) and how much of this applies as straight-up nutritional advice or whether it only really applies in the context of being in ketosis and/or fat adapted.
Thanks guys - so much to learn here!

(Michael ) #7

From a health point of view, you don’t need carbohydrates to be healthy, but some people find it difficult to participate in highly glycogen driven athletics. E.g. power lifting, marathon running etc. Grains have been heavily modified genetically and are sprayed with bacteria killing chemicals. So, from a health standpoint, there’s a lot of research being done on the effects of modern day grains on gut flora and overall health

These forums are a little biased of course. A lot of people here were dying of diabetes and this was their only chance for a healthy lifestyle. But, i don’t think anyone ever developed type 2 diabetes and 400 pounds weight gain from moderate amounts of potatoes and brown rice. Even sumo wrestlers have to eat rice and noodles round the clock to get fat

In summation, you don’t need any carbohydrates for your health. The body can make everything it needs from fat and protein. But if you are someone who feels and performs better with some carbs and are capable of moderation, my personal thoughts are that it’s not unhealthy. Stay away from processed foods and grains though. E.g. white bread

Also, it’s unlikely that you will experience the positive effects of ketosis advertised in this forum if you continue carbs above 50 g a day. Some people can get away with different amounts but bottom line if you’re not in ketosis: body needs regular sugar feeding for energy so likely to feel loe energy and crappy until feeding yourself more carbs. This makes people hungry all the time and more likely to say, yes please, to cake…etc. this is the main reason to go all in with 20g max carbs a day

There’s voices in the keto community who advocate incorporating carbs if desired. Check out thomas delauer on YouTube. He has a lot of knowledge on using small amounts of carbs

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #8

If you are eating a low enough level of carbohydrate to avoid stimulating insulin production, you can mix fat into your diet in quantity. For Dr. Phinney, who coined the term “nutritional ketosis,” a low-carb diet is anything under around 100 to 125 grams of carbohydrate daily. On these forums, because so many who come here are metabolically damaged, we recommend under 20 grams daily, because that level virtually guarantees being able to get into ketosis.

I suspect that the Japanese who did so well on a high amount of rice in their diet were benefiting from two factors: (1) the rice was probably not the highly polished white rice consumed in the U.S., and (2) the level of sugar consumption in Japan lagged behind that in the U.S. by about a century, so that in the 20th century, the Japanese were consuming an amount of sugar per capita that had prevailed in the U.S. in the 19th century. The Japanese rates of heart disease, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases were at a commensurate rate. (Diabetes became an epidemic in the United States during the second half of the 19th century, after sugar and highly-refined grains became major parts of the national diet.)

Of course, now that the Japanese have caught up with Americans in terms of sugar consumption, their metabolic disease rates are just like those of Americans.

#9

I stopped doing research about 2 months ago and now just do the diet. However, my impression when I was researching was that the ends are better than the middle. My motivation was to help a couple of friends and relatives who are T2 so muscle gain is not something I cared about or researched.

I had trouble understanding how the Ornish or Pritikin diet (LFHC whole food) could reverse T2 or CAD but so could our HFLC diet. The conclusion I came to in my non scientific experience is that at least for the metabolically unhealthy, the moderate diet (eg 200g carbs, 30% fat) was the worst (outside of Sad of course). Which is of course what the government advocates! It seems that sugar/carbs need fat to stimulate insulin for storage and fat needs carbs to stimulate insulin.

As for not being fat adapted and eating this way periodically, Dr. Adam Nally talks about this. It is not a place that most people enjoy

#10

You’ve may described one of the incarnations of the Paleo diet. There’s nothing wrong with unrefined carbs from real foods, so long as folks eat below their body’s carb threshold. This forum is populated with folks whose metabolism is wrecked, and it’s easy to become myopic and think they everyone had to eat as we do. It’s to nobody’s nutritional benefit to eat junk foods, but not everybody would benefit from eating LC.

(Gary STurner) #11

The University of California San Francisco did a study with over weight children. They removed all foods containing Fructose and replaced those calories with starches. All of their health markers improved within 1 week including insulin resistance even though they lost no weight. They purposely substituted starch for the sugars because they wanted to not have the results blamed on weight loss but on sugar reduction. They were doing the study to prove their research which has showed them that Fructose causes insulin resistance.

They already knew low carb diets including removing starch and sugar helped kids loose weight and improve health but they also wanted to prove that even just removing the sugar would also improve health.

I would think anything you do that removes sugar would improve your families health. Adding healthy fats will help improve health especially if they are replacing sugar or refined carb.

(Mandi) #12

I think this is a great question. I am in much the same situation as you. I am not metabolically deranged, but have been greatly decreasing carbs and sugar and have been increasing fat just for the overall health benefit. My gut feeling is that as long as you are cutting carbs and are adding healthy fats you are making a wise choice. In other words, go ahead and put the butter on, just put it on the steak and skip the bread.