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.

[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.

[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.