Fat city

[darkemeralds]

My doctor--who is young and hip and up on the latest in nutrition--says that a woman my age (presumably with my particular body makeup and health history) should be aiming to get 75% of her calories from fat.*



Me, I'm Jack Sprat's wife. I like rich and high-fat foods and I do well on them. I've got no inclination to be a vegetarian. My blood lipid counts are healthy, my blood pressure is healthy, and my BMI is moving healthy-ward. I have no reason to fear a high-fat diet, and good reason to embrace it. So this dietary advice sounded like angels singing.

But getting 75% of your calories from fat, it turns out, is harder than it seems. Organic butter and cream are all very well (gorgeous, in fact), but with almost no room for carbs and none for sugar, that leaves...

...well, buttered broccoli.

Okay, it's more varied than that, but you get the idea. This isn't a high-fat diet that's also high in everything else. It's eating some reasonable number of calories, of which three-quarters come from fat, and only 25% come from protein and carbs. The fat and protein are supposed to be organic, preservative-free, grass-fed, cold-pressed, extra-virgin, raw, and other prefixes that mean Quite Expensive.

It's not, alas, french fries and donuts.

The closest I've come is about 68% fat, and sugar remains a problem, but the nearer I get to adherence the better I feel. My stomach is calm, my digestion is quiet, and (this surprised me, given that I eat a lot of dairy) my sinuses have cleared considerably.

My energy is even all day long and I don't have cravings. I feel strong, I feel solid, I feel nourished.

So despite a lifetime of FAT IS BAD messages, I'm going to stick with this. It seems to be good for me.



*I hope I don't need to emphasize that this is specific advice from my doctor to me, and not a recommendation to others. But just in case: this is specific advice from my doctor to me, and not a recommendation to others.

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

This is wild. I love bodies.

[darkemeralds]

Hee! IKR?

This goes against a lifetime's conventional wisdom, and I'd be reluctant to embrace it if Real Scientific Tests were showing any sign of trouble in my own body.

I keep going, "Whoa! But animal fat causes heart attacks!" and then I have to remind myself that no, high levels of bad blood lipids cause heart attacks. Apparently--at least in my own case so far--butter isn't the underlying cause.

[just_jes]

Wow! I'm all for undoing the "eating fat will make you gain fat" myth but taking the idea all the way to 75% of calories from fat sounds... well, heh, it sounds positively indulgent but I know that's because I'm defaulting toward picturing things that are both high in (trans) fats and calories which is hardly the reality if you're trying to eat high fat but also healthful and not high in total calories. I just looked up an avocado to get an idea of where it would fare for a 75% fat goal and it's pretty much exactly on target so that's helping me picture a high fat plan a bit more accurately.

I've been mostly focused on net calories rather than worrying too much about macronutrients so far (well, other than making sure that I get some arbitrary amount of protein because I know my vegetarian self tends to fall a bit short there) but maybe that's something I should play with a bit more now that I'm used to paying attention to caloric intake. It's crazy (and yet completely understandable) that finding a macronutrient balance that's right for you can have such a noticeable effect on how you feel.

[darkemeralds]

Good insight about avocado. That's one of my favorite lunches--a whole one, with balsamic vinegar in the hollow. Olives, I believe, come in at a similar ratio.

Having counted calories for more than a year now without too much regard for macronutrients, I already had an idea that when I kept the carbs down I had better luck keeping the calories down. I was edging towards this high-fat approach, based on reading and some past experience. When my doctor said he'd like me to think about getting rid of all grains, I was mentally ready to consider it.

It is restrictive, though. I've done Atkins before, and in the absence of artificial sweeteners, which I just can't use anymore, it's not a practical long-term plan. Life forever dessert-less is asking too much. I'm still testing the waters and looking for a sane balance.

Also--no doubt about it--this approach calls for supplementing at least vitamin C.

[jumpuphigh]

Reading the comments above I realized that when I was eating a raw diet, fat is where I got most of my calories. I don't know if it was as high as 75% as I did eat a fair amount of raw proteins but my body was really happy eating raw.

[darkemeralds]

I'd imagine that raw food eating is similar to "paleo" type eating in that by restricting grains (presumably because they're indigestible unless cooked), it forces you to get your calories from lower-carb sources. And that means fat and protein.

It sounds so startling, put baldly as 75% of calories from fat, but on analysis it starts to seem less extreme. And in practice, it's very pleasant.

[jumpuphigh]

A typical lunch was comprised of one entire avocado, a bell pepper, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and part of a sweet onion. I'm actually really craving that right now. A typical dinner was raw cheese, raw bread (usually onion bread), and a salad with raw dressing. I ate nuts all the time. Nuts can be made into a lot of different things like pie crusts and sandwich patties by adding spices or agave or dates. They are very versatile. I know some people would do raw meats or fish but as a vegetarian, that was not going to work. On the other end of the spectrum, some people go raw vegan which I didn't do either.

Man, why am I not eating raw right now?!?!?! (That's rhetorical. I am conscious of why that doesn't work for me right now but if I could hire a chef, I'd go back to mostly raw in a heartbeat.)

[darkemeralds]

I've gone around and around with myself on why I'm not more consistent in habits--food and other things--that demonstrably are better for me. I think there was a long period of not actually knowing what was better for me and trying to stick to plans and programs imposed by external authorities.

Then there was a long period of figuring out what messages from my body I could trust (e.g., the difference between an appetite and an addictive craving), and overcoming the the external authority issue.

And then I had to learn that many of my best-laid plans go too much against the flow of the culture I swim in to be very easy. I've come to accept that some of my big ideas, at least some of the time, are just too hard--and I've had to forgive myself and remember that the perfect is the enemy of the good-enough.

It's an interesting journey.

[jumpuphigh]

For me, not eating raw is a combination of a number of things. I mostly did ok at the time in terms of culture. There used to be a restaurant here that had an extensive raw menu so if I wanted to eat out, that was the place. The economy killed it, unfortunately. More, it is that raw is both labor-intensive and errand-intensive. You have to have fresh food and when I was eating raw, I hit Costco weekly and at least one other grocery store once a week. Then, prep was labor-intensive whether I was making a meal to be eaten right away or making something to be dehydrated for later. I just don't have enough spoons for those things to even be possible anymore. These days, I am fairly excited if I eat two meals in a day and it is a rare meal that I make from scratch. Frozen is my friend.