How to Cut Fat on a Ketogenic or Low Carb Diet (and Why You Might Want To)

Reduce fat intake? On a low carb or ketogenic diet?

Amy, have you done lost yo' mind?

You know people use the abbreviation “LCHF,” right? And that means low carb high fat, right?

Yes. Yes, I know. But remember what Ted Naiman, MD, said:

I’ve heard from many, many people who are struggling to lose body fat on a low carb or ketogenic diet. And while there are many possible reasons for this, the simplest, most obvious, and most common one is, they’re eating too darn much fat.

Too much fat?

On a ketogenic diet?

What is this madness you speak of?

Too much fat. On a ketogenic diet.

This is possible. It is, as they say, “a thing.”

Remember: when you reduce your carbohydrate intake to the point that your body must switch over to running primarily on fat for fuel, you go from being a “sugar burner” to being a “fat burner.” But what this means is that you’re burning fat. It doesn’t mean that the fat you’re burning will automatically and unfailingly come from your love handles and thunder thighs adipose tissue (your stored body fat). It could be coming from your fatty coffee, avocado smoothie, fat bombs, or a heavier-than-you-realize hand with nuts, cheese, and ranch dressing.

Bottom line: the more fat you eat, the less of a need your body has to tap into its stored fat to use for fuel. If you’re already lean and happy with your weight, this is no problem. You might need a bunch of fat just to maintain your weight. (I hate you. Lucky you.) But if you’re struggling with fat loss on low carb despite doing “all the right things” and being on-point with your diet, there’s a chance you’re simply overdoing the dietary fat.

It’s true. If your carbs are very low, then insulin will be pretty low, which is what allows you to get into “fat burning mode.” But just because insulin is low doesn’t mean you’ll magically drop body fat regardless of how many calories you take in. Even if you’re in ketosis, the food energy you take in still has to go somewhere. It has to be used or stored. And if you’re using the fat from your food, you’re not going to be using the fat from your hips or belly. After all, that’s what stored body fat is there for: as an energy supply to be used when there isn’t enough energy coming in. If you drink a cup of coffee loaded with 400 calories of butter and coconut oil, your body has no reason to use its backup supply of fat.

Am I saying it’s all about calories? After writing a post like this one, am I actually saying that?! No. It’s not all about calories, but it’s maybe a little about them. Contrary to popular opinion, you cannot eat unlimited fat and still lose body fat on a low carb or ketogenic diet. If you are following a strict ketogenic diet and adding extra fat to things in order to arrive at a “ketogenic ratio” in the ballpark of 75-80% of your calories from fat but you’re having a hard time losing weight, stop doing this! This is the single biggest mistake I see people making with this way of eating. (And I’ve done it, myself. Believe me; I’ve learned the hard way. The running joke on this blog is that I’m not allowed to keep mayonnaise in my house, because it starts as a spoonful with my food, but then, before I know it, it’s me, the jar, a spoon, and 3000 calories later...)

If you’re using a low carb or ketogenic diet for the purpose of losing body fat, you do not need to eat a super, super high-fat diet. If you’re using this way of eating to manage a specific medical condition that might require a high level of ketones for efficacy, that’s a totally different story. (See here for details on this.)

So, if your goal is weight loss, but you’re having a hard time, here are some tips for reducing fat intake while still keeping carbs low:

Blast from the Past: Mardi Gras, a.k.a. Fat Tuesday!

Hey Everyone!

I’m falling a little behind in my blogging, but rather than keep you waiting for something new from the dark recesses of my mind, I thought it was time to resurrect a post from the past. An oldie but a goodie, as they say. This was originally posted November 6, 2012, making it one of my earliest posts, back when really, truly, no one was reading my blog. (All I've done is add some links to posts I've done since then.) I joke about having no readers now, but, based on page views these days compared to back in 2012, things have come a long way since those early days. I still have a [relatively] small audience, but I know you’re out there, and I am grateful for you! I tell people I have a small but loyal following. And, in my humble opinion, most of you are of above average intelligence. [Maybe you’re from Lake Wobegon? Any American who gets that reference, I am even more grateful for you, haha!] Frankly, I’d rather have a smaller audience of…how shall I say…”choice individuals,” versus catering to the great unwashed masses. ;D  I try to remind myself of that and be grateful for the few but meaningful comments my posts garner, as opposed to the flame wars, irrationally angry comments, and utter stupidity that abound on sites with a bigger reach. We’re a small, tight-knit group here, and I kinda like it that way.

I’ll try not to do these repeat posts very often. Right now, though, I’ve got nothing in the hopper, so I need to get crackin’ on some new posts. I think I’ve got a couple more to tack on to the insulin series, and yes, dear ones, I will be getting back to the cancer series. (Eventually.) I also have some epic-ish rants coming.

Okay, enough blathering. On with the show!

Mardi Gras! It means different things depending on where you live and what you believe. It could be a period of uninhibited eating, drinking, and general debauchery preceding Lent. Could be a time to make funny masks, eat traditional King cakes, and do…um…certain things to get lots of beaded necklaces.

On this blog, however, I’m gonna stick with the English translation: Fat Tuesday! What’s not to love about those two things? Fat is delicious and good for you (no, really, it is!), and Tuesday…well, it ain’t Friday, but it’s better than Monday! (And everyone knows Mondays suck. Disagree? Obviously you haven’t seen Office Space. And if that’s the case I have two questions for you:  what are you waiting for, and how big is the rock you’ve been living under?)   

So, Fat Tuesday. What’s that about? Where am I going with this?

ITIS -- It's the Insulin, Stupid (pt 7/8)

Seven down, one to go!

 

As of this writing, the first post in this series has 5316 views, and part 6 has just 739. Quite a decline in readership there, so my sincerest thanks and appreciation to anyone out there who’s still with me. (If I am extremely verbose in written media, you’d be amazed how quiet I am in person.)

Last time, in part 6, I introduced my interpretation of the chain of causality regarding metabolic/endocrine dysregulation and the accumulation of body fat. Conventional medicine and nutrition hold that people get fat accumulate excess adipose tissue because they are lazy, greedy, gluttonous, and too sedentary. They eat too much and move too little. These shortcomings in willpower, discipline, and good morals lead to overweight & obesity, and overweight & obesity subsequently lead to diabetes, hypertension, infertility, heart disease, and more.

But you’ll recall that I believe differently. I believe it works like this:

Blood glucose & insulin dysregulation (hormonal/endocrine issues) ---> preferential use of glucose for energy + storage of excess energy (from carbohydrates and fat) in adipose tissue + inhibition of 
lipolysis ---> accumulation of adipose tissue.

In my theory, metabolic and hormonal abnormalities come first, and the accumulation of body fat is the result. I like that much, much better than the chain of causality that looks like this:

Laziness, greed, gluttony, sloth, character flaws ---> accumulation of body fat ---> "diabeetus"

Label Madness Monday: Buttery Spreads, Take 2

It’s that time again, kids. The start of another work week, and a new adventure in food label land. A couple posts back, we looked at a buttery spread whose very name implies it is “Simply Delicious,” even though we made mincemeat out of that claim pretty easily. I left off at the end of that post saying we’d come back and take a look at some even wackier imitation butter spreads, and I’m making good on that today.

First up: Smart Balance “dairy free butter” with omega-3s.

Food for Thought Friday: Food Prudes & the Low Carb Backlash

You know the phrase, folks:  Everything old is new again.

Dr. Robert Atkins was practically driven out of professional medicine by an angry mob wielding knives and pitchforks. How dare he suggest that obese people might have success in losing weight by reducing the amount of carbohydrate they consume? And worse—far worse!—how dare he tell people it was okay to eat butter, cheese, and red meat? Sure, people could lose weight by cutting back on starch, but didn’t Atkins know that the high-fat foods he recommended (especially the ones from—gasp!—animals!) would clog people’s arteries? (Um, no, he did not know that, because it’s not true. Also, by the way, Dr. Atkins was a cardiologist, so one would assume he would not have put thousands of his patients on a diet that could have had him indicted for malpractice, but I digress.)

From the publishing of Dr. Atkins’ first diet book in 1972, through its newer editions during the 1990s, it seemed like the more people that were successful on the Atkins diet, the louder, more strident, and more vitriolic the backlash became.

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we are smack-dab in the middle of another round of low carb hatred. I suspect it’s due to the wild popularity not just of the low-carb approach, but also to the exponential increase in interest in Paleo, Primal, and low-allergen diets. (None of these is low carb by definition, but they tend to be significantly lowER in carbs than the standard American diet.) Moreover, even mainstream nutrition and medical organizations have basically rescinded the last 3-4 decades’ worth of recommendations to avoid every single molecule of saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol.

The powers that be can see the writing on the wall, and they do not like it.

Thoughts on the Brain Fair (Rant Warning!)

Greetings, Earthlings!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, on April 18^th I had a table at the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair, which was part of their annual convention. The event was free and open to the public, and as far as I could tell, it was mostly the public that came through the exhibit hall, since I didn’t get any doctors sidling up to my little corner of this shindig. (None that I know of, anyway.) My presence at this thing coincided with the launch of my e-book on Alzheimer’s disease. I am pleased to report that I had people coming up to me all day. People were very interested in hearing about the influence of food and nutrition on brain health. I don’t expect a lot of book sales to come from it, but I think I’ll be hearing from a few new clients. (And I made an Indian woman very happy when I told her it was okay to eat ghee again!)

There were some encouraging moments, and I think I dropped more than a few “knowledge bombs,” as Sean Croxton likes to say. But there were many discouraging moments, too. In fact, my main feeling on the event can be summed up in two words:

Holy, and crap.

Label Madness Monday: It's So Simple...

It’s time for another round of food label smackdown, folks!

If you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the next post in the cancer series, get a bigger seat and scoot back for a bit. I’ve been working on a big project and am falling a little behind on those cancer deep-dives. But fear not; I definitely haven’t forgotten about them and there will be more...eventually. In the meantime, let’s take a look at something as “simple” as the vegetable oil spreads that have been masquerading as butter for the past few decades.

First up: “Deliciously Simple,” by the food chemists who bring you I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® (The company employing these food chemists is Unilever, the same company that brings you all these other non-foods and edible food-like products.

Let’s see just how “simple” this product is:

Book Review - Extra Virginity

Olive oil has a bit of a unique place in nutrition science. It’s one of the only single foods all the warring factions agree is good for us: Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, low-carbers -- we've all got a bottle of it in the kitchen. It’s lower in saturated fatty acids than most animal fats, which pleases the veg-heads (and the ignoramuses who think saturated fat is “bad” for us), and it’s loaded with monounsaturated fatty acids, which seems to please everyone else—doctors, nutritionists, chefs, and newspaper journalists who think they know anything about biochemistry. Olive oil has been anointed (pun intended) with the magical powers to do just about everything from preventing heart disease to making your salad delicious. (The latter, I agree with; the former, I don’t think we can say for sure. Prevent heart disease, maybe, maybe not. But biochemically and physiologically speaking, it’s sure less likely to cause cardiovascular problems than, say, soybean and cottonseed oils.)

I love reading about the science of nutrition, but I also love reading about cooking, culinary culture, and, if I’m especially enamored with something, individual ingredients. Since olive oil figures heavily into my diet—and probably yours, too—when I heard there was a book called Extra Virginity, which covers some of the historical, cultural, gastronomic, and economic significance of this palate- and health-pleasing oil, I got my keister to the bookstore to get a copy. And with a subtitle like, “The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil,” I knew I’d be in for some serious eye-opening.

Fat Tuesday: World's Simplest Tallow

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably realized by now that there are few things I like talking about more than fat. Especially delicious animal fat, and even more especially, that of ruminant animals, such as cows and sheep. These fats are predominantly saturated and monounsaturated, which makes them stable for high-heat cooking, and of course, there’s the most important point: they’re delicious!

I have written in detail about beef tallow before. To people who are new to the traditional food scene—and sometimes even to us old hands—rendering tallow and lard at home can seem like a daunting prospect. The good news is, you don’t have to do it all that often to get a supply that will last you a while. If you make a big batch of stock, depending on the types of bones you use, you could end up with lots and lots of tallow, which you can store in the freezer for a long time. (In addition to the “boney bones,” you’ll want some meaty bits, too. They’ll give the stock more flavor, and if you choose fatty shanks, maybe some short ribs, and other fatty pieces, all that gorgeous fat will render out during the simmering process and you’ll be left with lots of golden delicious fat. And you thought that phrase was only for apples!)

And the even better news is, if you’re not of a mind to do it yourself, more and more small, family-owned, grass-based farms are selling lard and tallow on the farmstead and also at farmers’ markets. (With more and more people getting into this kind of thing these days, you can even order the good stuff online now.) So being skittish about the DIY process is no excuse to keep cooking with soybean or corn oil.

But here’s the best news of all: getting your hands on good ruminant tallow is as simple as cooking some gound beef or lamb in a skillet, and reserving the fat in a separate container, rather than throwing it away, the way fifty years of “fat-is-bad” propaganda have conditioned us to do. (Remember: fat isn’t bat. Not even saturated fat.)

I’m not kidding! It really is that simple. Here’s how it works:

Book Review: The Big Fat Surprise

“It would be hard to imagine a greater set of unintended consequences than those resulting from the vast, uncontrolled experiment that the United States and the entire Western world have undergone by adopting a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet over the past half-century.” (p.333)

“Measured just by death and disease, and not including the millions of lives derailed by excess weight and obesity, it’s very possible that the course of nutrition advice over the past sixty years has taken an unparalleled toll on human history.” (p.330)

“It now appears that since 1961, the entire American population has…been subjected to a mass experiment, and the results have clearly been a failure.” (p.330)

  

Since the earliest days of this blog (back when I had just three readers, as opposed to the five I have now), I have been talking about dietary fat. Specifically, I have been trying to shed some light on the chemistry of fats and oils, so that we, as buyers, home cooks, and maybe most important—eaters—of these things, can make informed choices.

More than just fats and oils overall, I have been trying to provide a little non-scary education regarding saturated fats, in particular, because while we have been generally advised to follow a diet that’s low in total fat from all sources, saturated fats, specifically, have been targeted as being especially detrimental to good health.

Better than 80/20 - Diet, Pt.2

In part 1 of this update on my diet, I talked about when and why I eat what I do. This time, I’ll cover the what. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I am more low-carb than I am Paleo. I eat some foods that are not considered “Paleo,” and I sleep without fear that the food police are going to come take me away in the night. That said, I stick mostly to whole, real, non-processed foods, with a little wiggle room for occasional exceptions. (I say this to distinguish the way I eat now from how I ate years ago, when I first started learning about all this, and would eat any ol’ low carb shake/bar/food-like thing, as long as it was low carb. So I’m still low-carb, but now it’s real food, for the most part.)

Like I explained last time, I am putting only the smallest amount of thought and effort into what I’m doing and I’m getting satisfactory results. This is not to say I put no thought or effort into my diet, only that planning and preparing my food doesn’t rule my life, I can generally throw together a meal in about twenty minutes, and I’ve never found myself at a restaurant where there was “nothing” I could order and consume without worry.

So the way I eat these days isn’t entirely effortless, but it’s certainly not difficult. And yes, I could probably be “cut,” “ripped,” or “shredded” if I wanted to micromanage my diet and exercise to the exclusion of all other aspects of life on planet Earth, but call me crazy, I just think there are more worthwhile things to experience than bouncing a quarter off my abs.

Armchair Experts

 

With so many people visiting to pay their respects during the shiva period following my mother’s death, I had the opportunity to overhear many conversations about diet, food, and health. It is amazing what passes for knowledge about these topics these days—and not in a good way.

If you have ever paid a shiva call, then you know that pretty much everyone who walks through the door comes bearing some kind of cake, platter of cookies, fruit basket, or some other food offering, intended to comfort the mourners. Well, the dining room table at my sister’s house was a testament to this outpouring of love and support via sugar and baked goods. For a week straight, it was covered in chocolates, cheesecake, seven-layer cookies, danishes, banana bread, brownies, muffins, bagels, and Edible Arrangements (with pineapples, melon, grapes, and strawberries artfully cut to look like flowers). (Click here for coupons, if you are so inclined!) Not to mention what was in the fridge: about a hundred years’ worth of “real food,” courtesy of many out-of-town friends flooding the local kosher deli with orders to be delivered. (Traditional Jewish-type foods, like whitefish and herring, lox and smoked sable, about eight zillion pounds of cream cheese for the eight zillion bagels out on the table, roast chicken, mushrooms & barley, and a few kasha knishes for good measure.)

As visitors made their way through the offerings, I overheard quite a few explanations and justifications for why people were picking and choosing this or that, and staying away from certain things and reaching for seconds of others. Most of this, as you might imagine, given that I have been driven to write a blog post about it, was total nonsense. (One guy even asked if we had any low-fat cream cheese. *Facepalm.*)

Most of what I overheard had nothing to do with anyone’s individual metabolic or physiologic needs. No one said anything about skipping the bagels because of a gluten issue, or avoiding the cakes because they were diabetic. (The people, not the cakes, hehheh.) Most of it was more along the lines of, “…all that cholesterol is no good for you,” or, “The brown rice is better because it’s a whole grain.” Moreover, these things were said with complete confidence. They were declarative sentences, not questions. These people honestly believed that what they were saying was factual. That they were ironclad truths. And the situation being what it was, I just didn’t have the inclination to call anyone on it. I didn’t want to stir up trouble by asking how someone “knew” that eating a lot of cholesterol is bad for them, or why they said, with complete confidence, that brown rice being a whole grain makes it a better choice. (Better than what? And for whom?)

All I did was sit back and listen, and come to the unsettling conclusion that, when it comes to nutrition, there are enough armchair experts to fill every last chair in every furniture warehouse in America.

And this got me thinking.

Fuel Partitioning 101: The Hybrid Car's Gas Tank

Hey kids!

Recall from the previous post in this series that we’re attempting to unravel the mysteries of fuel partitioning, appetite regulation, fat loss, and metabolism, and we kicked things off by thinking of the human body as a hybrid car. Using this as a guiding idea, we established that, just as a hybrid car can run on gasoline or electricity, our bodies can run on different types of fuel.

Last time, we looked at the major sources of calories we eat or drink, in order to determine which one(s) make the most sense to use as fuel: fat, carbohydrate, protein, and alcohol. (I haven’t forgotten about my beloved ketones, but we’ve got to put those on hold for now.) We said that protein is too valuable for other purposes to let it be used as our primary fuel source. And unless you can stay gainfully employed and safely operate your motor vehicle under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol, alcohol isn’t the fuel we want as our go-to either. So that leaves fat and carbohydrate.

We compared carbohydrate and fat to quick-burning kindling and long, steady-burning logs, respectively, and determined that fat is a more efficient fuel. (Remember the 4mpg and 9mpg gasoline analogy?)

But let’s not stop there. In order to answer this question and really convince ourselves which type of fuel it’s most sensible to have our bodies run on, let’s take a look at the gas tank. In terms of fuel efficiency, so far, it looks like fat is a better choice than carbohydrate. But which of these is the gas tank, itself, designed to hold?

Fat Tuesday: Eat the Yolks Preview

“Margarine is the greatest culinary and dietary atrocity ever to be inflicted upon our society.”

You’ve got to love a book with a line like that!

I’m almost done with Eat the Yolks, a brand-spankin’ new book by Liz Wolfe, the non-Diane half of the Balanced Bites podcast and the gal behind the RealFoodLiz site (formerly CaveGirlEats). I’ll post a full review of the book soon, but in the meantime, I couldn’t help wanting to share some of the great quotes about fat. It is Tuesday, after all, and you know what that means...

  

Fat Tuesday: "Vegetable Oil" - A Thought Experiment

When you get a look at the pictures in this post, you might think they’re better suited for my Label Madness Monday series. But it’s been a while since I’ve served up anything new in the Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday category, and according to the pageview stats, the posts about fats are pretty popular. So in the spirit of giving you more of what you seem to like reading about (plus more of what I like writing about), I present you with a little thought experiment regarding fats and oils.

  

Here’s the challenge: Name the five fattiest foods you can think of. Really, take the time to think of them. Very fatty foods—at least five of them.

Label Madness Monday

Hey everyone! Another seven days have gone by, and you know what that means: a new food label to look at and start the work week with a laugh—or possibly a cry, depending on how much this stuff either amuses or bothers you. Today’s labels are such egregious examples of wacky marketing that we don’t even have to look at the list of ingredients. The manufacturers have saved us the trouble of going to that extra step by kindly putting all the ridiculousness right out front and center. So here goes.

Take a good look at this milk carton. I mean a really good look. Read all of it.

Fat Tuesday: More Saturated Fat Vindication Fun!

  





Hey Everyone! After my last post was mostly a linkfest, I’m hesitant to do something similar right away, but I found something the other day that I think is worth passing along. If you’ve been following me for any length of time (and I know there are at least two of you out there who have, hehheh), then it won’t surprise you when I say that a significant amount of the dietary and nutritional advice we’ve been given by the mainstream medical establishment (not to mention the supermarket tabloids, but I’m pretty sure all of us put more stock in the former than the latter) for the last sixty years is wrong. Not merely misguided, or a little off the mark, but straight-up, flat-out wrong. Now, it’s bad enough when, say, your mechanic gets something wrong. Maybe the tires get misaligned just a bit and your car pulls to the left or right. Or he thinks he’s fixed the problem, but that pesky check engine light comes back on the next day. But when doctors, nurses, dietitians, and nutritionists get it wrong, people die. Maybe not right away, but certainly over time. Remember: just because something doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t mean it isn’t poisonous. (Lead, anyone? Arsenic? Too much sugar? Too much soybean oil? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself...)

Fat Tuesday: Tall-ow Tales

Welcome to another installment of Fat Tuesday, the series where I drop some knowledge bombs about fats and oils. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned beef tallow. If you’re confused about tallow, what it is, where to get it, and, most important of all, what to do with it and how to use it to make some seriously delicious eats, wait no more. It's time to bring this traditional, favorite fat back into the American kitchen!

Recipe: Super-Herb Chicken

Remember when I posted that recipe for compound butter not long ago? I mentioned that I tend to overbuy fresh herbs, thinking I’m going to go all culinary ninja in the kitchen and do all sorts of fantastic and impressive things with them. Once in a while that actually happens, but more often than not, the herbs sit around for a while waiting for me find something great to do with them, and before I finally do, they wilt, get soggy, and otherwise turn unusable. Well, shame on me — and not only because that’s a total waste of money, but even more so because those little green bunches pack a powerful nutritional wallop. Most of them carry more than their share of folate, vitamin K₁, vitamin C, carotenes, and iron. They’re also good for digestion—that sprig of parsley that you’ve always thought was just the chef’s way of making your plate look pretty? It’s actually a great palate cleanser and digestive aid.

Look at these. This recipe cannot possibly be bad!

Anyway, I posted the recipe for the butter first because I had saturated fat on the brain, but I had originally bought the herbs for the recipe I’m sharing today. I hesitate to even call it a “recipe,” since it involves little more than spreading herbs on a chicken breast and sticking it in the oven. But there are plenty of people in my life who think of cooking as this mystical, mysterious thing that they can’t possibly mess around with without detailed directions, so here goes.

Saturated Fat Vindicated: Confounders

It’s that day of the week again, y’all! (Sorry, all this talk about saturated fat and butter has me channeling Paula Deen and her southern accent.) It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means:  a new post that drops a couple more knowledge bombs on the war zone that is the last sixty years of official government and medical community recommendations about dietary fats. Last week I introduced you to a paper whose author—a PhD professor of chemistry and biochemistry—concluded that maybe, perhaps, the fear mongering about saturated fat has been misguided, and heart disease might be caused by things other than butter, bacon, red meat, cheese, and similar delicious morsels.

I promised I would devote a couple of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday posts to dissecting the paper in more detail, so here goes.