LCHF and Butter (zoe harcombe article)

#1

I’m confused by what she’s saying here http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2018/01/lchf-and-butter/

It seems to run counter to the advice i’ve seen regarding fat loss - many people, including some here, say eat MORE fat if you want to lose weight. Incidentally I watched a Dr Berg video where he said Protein is the key to fat loss (thermogenic reaction i guess).

So I’m a bit confused. The flowchart at the end of her article says that unless your’re diabetic, if you want to lose weight and you’re eating low carb then add more butter. Why would being diabetic (i’m not) preclude more fat?

(Stan Brooks) #2

What she is saying is if you are trying to lose weight adding butter to everything is not going to help. It’s not as simple as calories in/ calories out, but calories in/ out do play a role. IF you over eat fat that’s not going to help you lose weight.

#3

Right, but people have said the opposite. Even here the advice, from some, has been ADD more fat

(Stan Brooks) #4

Well you get to choose who you listen to but I don’t add butter to everything myself. IF the meal is fatty enough you don’t need it except for taste. If it’s fatty enough and you are adding it because you think you need to add it you going to consume more food than you need. That means your body will not have to turn to fat store and you will not be shedding any weight.

When people say “eat more fat” they don’t mean “add fat to everything in excess”. They mean your diet should mostly consist of fat with some protein and a little carb.

Adding butter to everything is just cargo cult behavior.

(Alan Williamson) #5

The key to weight loss for most people is lowering their insulin level. Keto works at the beginning because people’s insulin level is high. Then it stops working. To continue, a person has to do something like OMAD and eat just fat. Fasting can work too.

(annette) #6

This is a concept I have really struggled with lately and I found some clarification from Maria Emmerich’s book “Keto”. She says you have to be taking in less fat than you are burning (she calls it fat flux). Eat correct protein…some carbs is you want (under 20), and use fat to reach satiety. The only reason you would ever eat MORE fat is is you are hungry. If you are taking in fat, you will not burn fat until the dietary fat is used so you want just enough to quiet hunger.
For the most part, I think the HIGH FAT in LCHF comes from body fat, not so much dietary fat.

Just my interpretation/understanding.

(Ethan) #7

This is also how I interpret it. Adding butter to something just to add fat isn’t a reason to add butter! Adding butter to something because you are hungry is a great reason; the fat will satiate you with an energy that won’t raise your insulin. You could also add protein, but too much protein is really not that great for you. Eat enough protein–not too much or too little. Add fat if you are hungry. The satiation signals begin working, and you actually will eat less and lose weight, too.

(Olivia) #8

What I got from her blog post was that adding butter does not a make what you are currently eating magically better. She points out that it doesn’t have a lot of micronutrients and if you’re hungry you’d be better off eating some real food such as fatty fish. That make sense.
I think people advise adding butter to things to make them more satiating, delicious and thereby, improving compliance to this way of eating. In addition, it’s a little bit of an inside-joke to make fun of the fat-phobic rest of the population.

(Ethan) #9

The issue is that for many of us, it can be quite easy to add too much protein until we are satiated. If we have already eaten sufficient protein and nutrients, but are not yet satiated, it is hard to add enough fat. Butter is a great source of that.

#10

Now we have the question of ‘correct’ protein?

(Tom Seest) #11

The way I read her flow chart, if you are wanting to lose weight and you are diabetic and you are trying to avoid hunger, then “add as little fat as needed to avoid hunger” or butter. I’m interpreting the logic in the flow chart differently than you I guess.

In the paragraph before the flow chart, she says “If you are like the lean diabetics I have met at conferences and you’re adding butter to very low carb, low protein, real food to maintain weight and energy, keep up the great work.”. I see the goal stated there as maintenance of weight and energy.

(Brian) #12

I see part of the problem as being the huge variation in the people who might be reading what she wrote.

How do you quantify how much butter someone should consume? One person thinks they need pounds of it a day to lose weight. Another still struggles with the “fat is evil” mindset and ends up trying to do low-carb / moderate protein / and low-fat… a place where a little extra butter might be a good thing.

I kinda look at it like protein; too little is not good, too much is not good, and there is a range in the middle that seems to work pretty well for most people. And that may not be the same from individual to individual. Same with butter. It may even be significant what point a person is on in their weight loss journey. (The person just starting out to lose 200 pounds is in a different place than someone who’s already lost 180 of those pounds and may find their butter needs different than the first someone.)

What a wasp nest! Most anything that can be said will be misquoted, out of (or void of) context, and used against the person saying it… (sigh)

#13

I think one of the recent 2 Keto Dudes podcast: “eating to satiety” helps clear this up a bit. From the science I’ve read regarding keto, eating fat to satiety aka rewiring/healing your hunger/satiety hormones is the goal here. When you do that, most people should naturally eat in accordance with the energy level their own body needs, and if fat loss is needed the body should take this into consideration. If you choose to use butter in order to achieve this, great! The article also doesn’t go into any kind of fasting protocol. In my own experience, fasting has been key in re-learning my hunger and satiety signals. When I’m feasting, I don’t really count any macro nutrient obsessively (also called lazy keto) but I’m losing pounds, more importantly I’m losing inches (aka FAT loss) and if I reach a plateau then I’ll shake things up. Don’t be afraid of experimentation (N=1), and don’t hold even the experts’ opinions as the “Holy Grail”. I love Zoe and how much emphasis she puts on science, but I’m sure we can find a bunch of people who did, in fact, douse their food with butter all the time and still lose lots of weight (IMHO).

#14

I don’t see how the body can tell the difference between protein and fat, and the former is more satiating. So the ‘eat fat to satiety’ makes little sense. It’s a lot easier to eat meat/ccheese for example to satiety than to add fat. I put olive oil on my food for dinner and lunch, but i can only add so much without a) the meal being overpowered and b) some being wasted (I don’t lick plates clean for example!)

Fat seems naturally limiting.

(Bunny) #15

@richard

(Adam Kirby) #16

To me the difference is adding butter to cook things in, or adding butter because it improves the recipe, vs adding extra butter simply to meet arbitrary high-fat macros because some calculator told you. The former is perfectly fine, the latter is a product of the modern day “biohacker” keto and kinda stupid imo.

#17

i’m not understanding why she says you shouldbn’t add fat if you’re diabetic, as per the flowchat.

#18

This is a guess, but generally Zoe Harcombe is addressing an audience of people who are not yet keto, or low carb, and who aren’t familiar with the keto mindset.

Among those people, the type 2s are usually fat, sedentary and have non alcoholic fatty liver disease. So encouraging them to use their own fat reserves rather than adding dietary fat would result in greater weight loss and reduction in fatty liver. And is a more accessible idea to the keto uninitiated.

Obviously, that doesn’t touch the other diabetics who are slim, and don’t have NAFLD as a factor, but it covers a majority of type 2s.

From what I have seen, many (most?) people on keto will lose weight with some added fat or need even more added fat to prevent weight loss. But often weight loss stalls at some point and then fat intake can be reduced to continue losing. In my case there is definitely such a thing as ‘too much fat’ especially if accompanied by ‘too much protein’. The balance of the two is interesting. I am learning that keeping my protein low is more important to me than fat intake, but that idea is often rejected in the keto community. For me (and who knows how many others?) too much protein will halt weight loss even in the absence of carbs. For me, protein control seems to be where it is at. Fat needs to be present to prevent hunger, but too much of it will also halt weight loss.

(I speak as a fat, sedentary T2 without NAFLD, and I kind of get irritated by ppl telling me that losing weight will ‘cure’ my glucose derangement issues. lol. If that were the case then I wouldn’t have had glucose derangement back when I was slim and active, would I? bangs head on desk )

Edited to add para 4
I hope that makes sense. It is 2am here and I am not sure anything is making sense at the mo. May re-visit to add coherence in the morning.

#19

you generally don’t have to limit added fat until you are less than 20% body fat (or so). when you are obese/metabolically deranged you will benefit from the spontaneous reduction in calories eating "fat to satiation"helps foster.

however once your body gets comfortable at a metabolically sustainable level of body fat (which guards against starvation, something that is hardwired in us from a million years of hunting/gathering) then you might have to get fat flux working in your favor by reducing dietary fat. this unfortunately generally comes with being hungry and uncomfortable.

you can sort of hack this “vicious circle” by engaging in high intensity resistance trainign which will allow to eat much more protein and thus decrease hunger. this is the essence of PSMF/protein leverage aka what ted naiman is always talking about.

#20

To put things into context : I’m petite (5’1) and asian (so BMI over 23/24 = overweight). I have 25 pounds to loose and I started keto on December with no result.
I figured out that I ate too much nuts and dairy. Then I was loosing and gaining the same 4 pounds.

And after the podcast about satiety I added 100gr of butter in my meal (after cooking it with butter) and suddenly : it’s working !!!
So my conclusion after my n=1 experience is that if you don’t have a lot of weight to loose, you really have to add a lot of butter in order to feel satiety without adding carbs or proteins.

I used to fear the fat. Now I’m thinking of new ways of adding butter everywhere.