Is it necessary to eat high fat on a keto diet? I prefer to cook and eat olive oil in salads and cook in olive oil, almond oil and butter. I do NOT wish to cook in bacon grease or other such meat fats. I cut away the fat from meat protein but eat full fat dairy products such as cottage cheese and yogurt. In other words can I still get the benefits of a keto diet eating this way?
Keto and high fat
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#2
Yes, a lot of us don’t (always) eat high fat. I tend to rotate through lower fat, higher protein, then some higher fat, lower protein.
Shinita
#3
No, it’s not necessary to eat high fat but we do need enough energy and nutrients. Some people can’t avoid high fat or even very very high fat on keto as they need their 4-5000 kcal… While others, especially while losing fat, are fine with a very modest amount of food and with the little carbs and plenty of protein, the fat can be modest.
Cottage cheese and yogurt aren’t particularly fatty (well, if it’s a lot of Greek yogurt, that can bring some decent amount 
) but if you use olive oil and butter, that’s fine, vegetarian ketoers don’t eat lard or tallow either and vegan ketoers only eat plant fat, that’s keto too is the carb intake is low 
Keto is very indulgent, you can go into various directions if that floats your boat.
Pete_A
(Pete A)
#4
I was at around 75% fat the first few months when I lost the initial 80 pounds.
And always under 20 gross carbs.
Shinita
#5
I never was at 75% fat as that is quite serious overeating for me. (I did such days, even 80%, just to try it out.)
60-65% is what I should do (as it’s pretty much impossible for me to find food below that. I do have some leaner items but I eat them with fattier ones), with as little protein as possible. But it’s still high fat.
I never saw any numbers about what is high fat. It’s some vague concept to me. I consider <80g low-fat, there is moderate fat afterwards and then somewhere high fat. It’s more like the grams for me, not the percentages. What IS high fat?
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#7
Well, it depends on what you are calling high fat. Eating the fat that comes with your meat is a great way to get fat; we don’t need to go crazy adding fat. If we are not eating carbohydrate, then we definitely need to replace the lost energy with energy from fat, but bear in mind that it takes only 133.3 g of fat to provide the same number of calories as come from 300 g of carbohydrate. So less fat than you may think.
Also, because fat is so calorie-dense, eating the same weight of fat as protein amounts to 69% fat, 31% protein by calories. That’s not that much fat in terms of amount, but it’s definitely high-fat in terms of caloric percentages.
Geezy56
(Geoffrey)
#9
Just curious but why don’t you want the animal fats. Is it that you just don’t like them or are you afraid of them?
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#10
If you’re concerned about “saturated fat”, then whole-fat dairy isn’t a great option. Meat is usually mainly MUFA and less than 50% saturated fat. Meanwhile, dairy is often > 50% saturated fat.
This is for ribeye, probably the fattiest steak:
Meanwhile, cottage cheese is way higher in saturated fat, relative to MUFA:
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#12
Just a reminder: by any definition, a low-carb diet must be a high-fat diet. When the authorities talk about high-fat or low-carb, they are talking in terms of percentages of calories. When you think about it, this makes no real sense; however, it is a holdover from the days, 150 years ago, when calories (that is, the amount of heat released when a substance is burnt) were the only thing they knew how to measure.
So diets are evaluated in terms of % calories in the form of protein, % calories in the form of carbohydrate, and % calories in the form of fat. When we take into account the fact that the body actively tries not to use protein as fuel, that means that cutting carbs necessitates increasing fat, and vice versa. When we take into account that fat has (approximately) 9 calories per gram and carbohydrate only 4, that means that it takes 4/9 as much fat to yield the same number of calories, but we still have to figure that number as a percentage of calories. The amounts by weight are irrelevant.
So going from a diet of 2500 calories where 70% is carbohydrate to a diet where 70% is fat means that we are replacing 437.5 g of carbohydrate with 194.4 g of fat. That’s a big reduction in the mass of our food. Also, we are probably not going to increase our protein intake, which will mean that the fat we eat becomes a higher percentage of our caloric intake.
Short version: So it’s very easy to eat a high-fat ketogenic diet, simply by eating what feels right.
lfod14
#13
Nope! the low carbs is what’s putting you into ketosis, not the high fat. As long as your body is getting the fat it needs to run correctly, there’s no need to force more empty fat cals for the sake of doing it.
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#14
It depends what you mean by “high” fat. These are the first 4 days for the diet my wife is on:
But the highest fat day is 67% calories by fat; the lowest is 54% calories.
Edit: I guess the PSMF day (the rightmost one) is 32% fat.
Shinita
#15
Such things may be doable occasionally (“may” as it depends on the person), even I had a low-fat keto day once. It’s not my style hence it was only once but it was quite nice. Of course, such low-fat, low-cal days aren’t sustainable, it’s for a short time for most people.
Wow, your wife eats less protein than me on my successful protein minimalization days even though she eats little fat! My low fat keto day was my highest protein day I have tracked, about 250g (I tracked 54g fat, if that isn’t low, I don’t want to know what it is). I can’t comfortably go higher than that but if my fat is low, I can’t keep my protein as low/high as normal (that’s 130-180g).
I never could go near as low fat in percentage on high-carb as on that odd keto day.