How the Feds Made the Country Fat

[ChicagoGranny]

That sounds like a reasonable diet to me, but it doesn't sound like 76% fat.

Probably the app is calculating percentages based on calories instead of weight. Fat has a lot more calories per gram than carbs or protein. Still, the calculation sounds high.

[palerider]

8 oz of homemade cherry kombucha.

*waves hand* recipe please! (feel free to PM if you want to avoid dealing with TR.)

[ChicagoGranny]

I looked at the nutrition label for walnuts. If you ate walnuts all day and nothing else, you would only be getting 69% fat.

You are right about 69% if the calculation is by weight of the food. But I looked at walnut nutrition label and if you calculate by calories, it is 89%.

I think that is how these high fat diets seem strange until you look at what people on the diets are actually eating.

[Janknitz]

Remember, there's fat in coconut milk and coconut yogurt, in eggs, and meat--it all gets counted by the app, not just the added fat used in cooking.

And yes, the app counts fat as a percentage of the calories, not a percentage of the grams of food. 9 calories per gram of fat, 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate and protein.

[The Choker]

Here's a somewhat typical day for me (none of them is exactly "typical"):
Breakfast: Large cup of coffee with 1 Tbsp of coconut oil, 1 ounce of coconut milk. (Sometimes that's all I have)
2 egg omelet with sautéed veggies. I use about 2 tbsp. ghee between sautéing the veggies and making the omelet.

Lunch: Salad with a little lettuce and a lot of veggies--usual fresh salad veggies like carrots, cucumbers, and radishes, and some leftover cooked broccoli and chard from the fridge. Leftover meat (in this case some lamb shank). Topped with 1 tbsp. lemon infused olive oil, salt, and pepper. Most commercial dressings have PUFA's and I'm not a big vinegar fan.

Dinner: Stir Fry with chicken thigh meat, red spinach (it turned the chicken pink!), onions, and mushrooms cooked in olive oil. 1 medium artichoke with two dipping sauces (garlic butter, curry with homemade mayo). 8 oz of homemade cherry kombucha.

Dessert: 3 oz of homemade coconut yogurt (no sweeteners) and a small serving of frozen blueberries.

In My Fitness Pal this came out to 76% fat, but my real intake is usually a little bit less because I'm not drinking up every bit of what gets left behind in the cooking pan. Carbs were 55 g total, 22 grams of which were fiber. Total Calories were 1783 which is a little higher than my usual daily caloric intake of around 1500. I generally don't count calories, but I do look at carbs and fat. As long as carbs are low (I try to stay under 50 g/day total) and fat is high, I'm good.

This doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me and unless I am missing something, I would not call it LCHF. Many of our meals are like that and we thought it was in the mainstream if you leave out a fairly large (double meaning) group of people who eat poorly. This type of diet as you described in the one day example leaves out grains, processed sugars and oils from grains. Not a big deal. Everyone should eat in a similar manner.

But we can't feed 7 billion people if we leave grains out. One solution is to continue to develop GMO products and aim for ones which avoid insulin spikes and inflammation.

[SleepWrangler]

81.7% fat

Well I am back to my "drink olive oil?" question. What in the world do you eat? I looked at the nutrition label for walnuts. If you ate walnuts all day and nothing else, you would only be getting 69% fat.

Ha. No. I have very severe insulin resistance and thus carbohydrates affect me more than most people. I also have hepatic insulin resistance which means my liver will usually flood my blood stream with glucose for two hours after about twenty minutes of exercise. I interval jog 10k (6 miles) almost every day and lift weights 3 times per week. As a result I must tightly control both carbohydrate and to some extent protein intake. LCHF limits glycogen stores in my liver so that any glucose dump from my liver has far fewer raw materials with which to damage my vital organs and arteries. Instead my body uses ketones from fat to satisfy energy needs and relies on my severely broken insulin / glucose response to a lesser degree.

Breakfast: Decaf coffee with organic coconut oil
( 270 kcal, fat 100% )

Second Breakfast: Wild cod /w butter and cream white sauce, Spinach and spring mix salad /w Italian dressing, cheddar cheese and sunflower kernels
( 2113 kcal, carbs 4%, protein 13%, fat 83% )

Lunch: Organic beef broth with organic red palm oil
( 270 kcal, fat 100% )

Total ( 2653 kcal, 3%/21g carbohydrate, 11%/71g protein, 86%/254g fat, 1108mg sodium, 596mg dietary cholesterol )

I eat the majority of my calories before noon and often before 10:00am. This technique is called intermittent fasting and is said to improve insulin and leptin sensitivity. I am still evaluating but it seems to allow me to eat more calories and yet continue to maintain a steady weight. Intermittent fasting seems to improve my overall energy level. Even though my weight is relatively steady I am trading body fat for lean muscle mass. Over time this ought to change my metabolism and arterial health for the better.

I am now beginning to study the science behind gut flora and will likely include Kombucha and Milk Kefir in the next update to my diet.

[Janknitz]

This doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me and unless I am missing something, I would not call it LCHF.

Low carb has varying definitions, depending on whom you speak to. My belief is that under 100 g/day is low carb, under 50 g/day is very low carb. I aim for VLC (under 50 g), but as you see I went a little bit over on that day. 5 grams here or there, not a big deal, 50 extra grams would be a very big deal for my health.

High fat is expressed as a percentage of calories. Over 65% is considered high fat. As My Fitness Pal calculator measured it, my fat percentage was well over 65%, so it was high fat.

That's LCHF by any definition I know of. Some people--as you are seeing here--go much higher in their fat percentages. But doing that means eating fewer vegetables. Personally I believe that there are micronutrients in the vegetables (vitamins and minerals) that are better obtained from real food rather than supplements or hoping and praying the vitamins and minerals in animals you eat are going to provide what you need. I'm a big fan of Dr. Terry Wahls and her protocols--I think she's on to something there, and nutritional deficits may eventually catch up with people who don't eat some veggies, too. So I aim for a moderate approach that includes plenty of veggies.

I think people have this perception that LCHF eaters eat meat and cheese and nothing else. And there are a few who do--I don't know how long people can last doing that, but there are some who swear by that approach. There are also some low carb dieters out there who eat LCHF by depending on crap products like Atkins and make tons of Frankenfood treats with artificial ingredients. LCHF junk food may help them lose weight, but not necessarily regain health.

So I get where some critics of LCHF are coming from. But, as you see, it's also very possible to eat a well-balanced, healthful LCHF diet. I don't have a diet "guru" per se, but the one who comes closest to expressing how I eat is Dr. Andreas Enefeldt at http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf. (Be sure to scroll down--there's a LOT of info there).

But we can't feed 7 billion people if we leave grains out. One solution is to continue to develop GMO products and aim for ones which avoid insulin spikes and inflammation.

I totally get that I am fortunate to have been born in the USA and to have food security when many people don't. I get that it would be hard to feed everyone without grains. I am extra fortunate because my husband's employer has some of the same values as I in terms of creating sustainable agriculture, and we get a discount at his farm store on vegetables organically grown, grass fed meat, and sometimes eggs. It would be hard to have meat on our table as often as we do without that discount. But ultimately I am responsible for my own health and that of my family, and as long as I can afford to eat this way (and more importantly, I cannot afford to NOT eat this way) I will do so for me and for my children who complain that they are ruined for life since they cannot stand eating American Cheese slices or chicken nuggets.

We budget carefully. We have cut a lot of things out in order to eat this way--we don't buy $5 boxes of cereal and $6 loaves of bread, sodas, chips, frozen pizzas and chicken nuggets like our friends and neighbors do. We only rarely eat out, and we carry our lunches to work/school and we prepare most of our meals from scratch. I'm not sure why anyone thinks I should feel guilty about the way I eat. It's essential for my health and a damn sight better than what most of our friends and neighbors eat without a thought or care. So, no, maybe 7 billion people can't be fed this way, but our family can. And we do.

[Janknitz]

*waves hand* recipe please! (feel free to PM if you want to avoid dealing with TR.)

Palerider, to get the homemade cherry kombucha you have to have a SCOBY and set up for making kombucha in the first place. If you don't have that but you're interested, PM me and I'll send you some links.

I make my kombucha using a continuous brew system--I grew my SCOBY from a bottle of commercial raw kombucha. For the secondary ferment I add 12 dried cherries to a 16 oz bottle of freshly fermented kombucha and it sits on the counter for 7 days. That's it--easy peasy. It's yummy!

[49er]

On a somewhat off topic note, I wanted to let folks know that just because the doctors says your metabolic blood work is fine isn't necessarily the case. PCP calls to tell me my blood work is normal which of course, I appreciate her doing do.

So I go online to see results and my A1C is 5.6. Prediabetic range starts at 5.7 so technically, she is right. But when it was taken previously, it was 5.5. And in light of my issues with high carb foods causing high spikes that can go into near diabetic/diabetic ranges, sorry I don't consider this to be a normal "normal" result. And yes, I had mentioned my issue with high carb foods causing severe spikes.

I realize folks who are reading my post might think I am being a data nut but there have been many stories where people had warnings like this that weren't taken seriously by doctors and they ended up with full blown diabetes. I don't want this to happen to anyone nor myself.

49er

[SleepWrangler]

Some people--as you are seeing here--go much higher in their fat percentages. But doing that means eating fewer vegetables. Personally I believe that there are micronutrients in the vegetables (vitamins and minerals) that are better obtained from real food rather than supplements or hoping and praying the vitamins and minerals in animals you eat are going to provide what you need. I'm a big fan of Dr. Terry Wahls and her protocols--I think she's on to something there, and nutritional deficits may eventually catch up with people who don't eat some veggies, too. So I aim for a moderate approach that includes plenty of veggies.

Wahls' methodical approach is something I admire but I am very suspicious of her blatant commercialism. Go to her website and immediately see her top three messages: new book, shop DVD and CDs, how to cover the cost of a visit to the Wahls foundation. In my opinion her statement to the effect of "I was lost until I found information on the internet" strikes me as pure manipulation. Wow. Just wow.

Like Wahl I intend to follow a methodology consisting of a food plan designed specifically for me with measurable checkpoints. No problem with including plenty of nutritionally dense foods because eating them in quantity doesn't affect macro nutrients so much as getting tired with chewing. Less nutrient dense vegetables and fruit are an issue and will affect calories, usually carbohydrates, and thus overall macro goals. I include these food types strategically. My previous diet of leafy greens, sulfur-rich vegetables, colorful fruits and vegetables, Omega-3 fatty acids and iodized salt didn't cure me and was accomplishing the opposite.

Managing insulin levels and LDL-P is currently my top priority.

[Janknitz]

Here's a video that sums it up nicely in 20 minutes: http://www.cpmc.org/services/ihh/classe ... -food.html

Sleep wrangler, under your theory, everyone who has a book to sell is suspect. Under my theory, every so-called evidence-based study supported by a drug company or by an agricultural or food production conglomerate is suspect. So who are we going to trust? I read all I can and SIFT to find the kernels of what seems to be truth to me.

I'm not ever going to succeed at Wahls recommendation for 9 cups of veggies a day, but that's sure a better thing to strive for than the diabetes educator's advice that it's "ok to have some soda as part of a balanced diet as long as you exercise it off"-- the diabetes educator is fresh off a continuing Ed class sponsored by Coca Cola. After she sells you her book (or you get the info for free from a YouTube video) what more does Wahls have to gain?? Maybe she bought a lot of stock in organic kale??