Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to the Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet (19 page)

Some fats are more apt to readily convert to ketones than others: short- and medium-chain fats, like those found in pastured butter, cultured ghee, coconut oil, and especially MCT oil (taken as a supplement), will readily convert to ketones. This can help improve the efficiency by which a person adapts to a healthy fat-based, ketone-fueled metabolism.

– Nora Gedgaudas

What is most astounding about this is the fact that the fat phobia that’s rampant in American society is not supported at all by the scientific evidence. And yet if you asked the average person about their thoughts on dietary fat, the overwhelming response would be that it is unhealthy and should be avoided at all costs. Why is our culture vilifying whole-food sources of saturated fats like butter while at the same time promoting canola oil, a highly processed rancid rapeseed oil that’s treated with deodorizers, as a “healthy” option? It doesn’t make any sense at all, and yet that’s the world we currently live in.

A Gallup poll conducted in July 2012 found that 63 percent of Americans believe that a diet low in fat is beneficial to their health, compared with just 30 percent who think the same about a diet low in carbohydrates—this despite the mountain of evidence that has been building in favor of low-carb eating in recent years. However, the same poll shows the tide is already beginning to shift ever-so-slightly in the public’s thinking about low-fat and low-carb diets. Compared to the same poll conducted a decade prior, fewer Americans are now lending credence to cutting fat and more are starting to recognize the benefits of carbohydrate restriction. We still have a long way to go in what my
Low-Carb Conversations
podcast co-host Dietitian Cassie describes as “unbrainwashing” ourselves from the decades of nutritional propaganda.

We have been ingrained (pun intended) with a fear of fat, and most everything else, other than pure fiber, can interfere with ketosis.

– Dr. Ron Rosedale

This is one of the reasons why the book you are holding is so sorely needed now more than ever before—to break through the decades upon decades of indoctrination we have been subjected to on the subject of fat. Here’s the truth of the matter: when you cut the fat in your diet, it’s replaced by carbohydrate, which is far more damaging to your health than fat will ever be. Saturated fats, like those in butter, coconut oil, and red meat, and monounsaturated fats, such as those found in avocados, olive oil, and macadamia nuts, are basically safe for consumption in terms of your health. They don’t raise your blood sugar, and they don’t cause any harm when eaten to satiety. In fact, they are quite beneficial: they are anti-inflammatory, raise HDL cholesterol, help you feel full, and—most important for our purposes—they help you create ketones. Compare this to the polyunsaturated fats found in vegetable oils, which increases systemic inflammation and are linked to multiple health problems, despite the fact that they are heavily touted as the healthy oils we should be consuming.

In the treatment of obesity, nutritional ketosis facilitates fat loss through a reduction in levels of insulin, the controlling hormone of fat storage. It does not guarantee fat loss if dietary fat intake meets or exceeds energy expenditure. This situation would be very unusual because most people become satiated prior to reaching that level of fat intake.

– Dr. Keith Runyan

Fat is not the enemy in your diet. Fat is your friend. So don’t fear it. Fat makes you feel fuller for longer periods of time than anything else you could possibly consume. And don’t forget, you need to eat fat in order to burn fat. And it only makes sense to eat fat when your body is a fat-burning machine, right?

One of the primary reasons for eating plenty of fat with your low-carb and moderate-protein intake is that it will prevent you from being hungry—without it, you’d quit a low-carb, high-protein diet in a very short amount of time due to frustration and exasperation because of the constant hunger! What many so-called health experts fail to realize is that people on low-carb diets
need
dietary fat to burn as an alternative fuel and to help them feel satisfied and energized between meals. When you switch from burning sugar to burning fat, you have more energy and better mental acuity, and you’re more satisfied after a meal.

Once my clients get past the initial pitfalls of keto-adaptation, one of the first things they notice is a diminished sense of hunger where that annoying feeling of crankiness goes away. They also become more mentally clear, get their energy back like gangbusters, lose body fat, and get leaner. They often check their blood sugar and the numbers start to normalize. One of the most impressive reactions is noticing their sugar and carb cravings drop, and bad food starts to taste like
bad food
.

– Stephanie Person

Perhaps you’ve tried a low-carb diet before and thought that if low-carb is good, then low-carb
and
low-fat must be better. That would be a huge mistake. Mixing low-carb and low-fat diets is not a recipe for healthy living—especially if you are attempting to experience the benefits of being in ketosis. Think about it: If you cut your carbs and reduce the amount of fat you eat, then what’s left? Protein. And as discussed in the previous chapter, eating too much protein can actually increase the amount of glucose in your body, making it next to impossible to create ketones.

Or perhaps you are currently overweight or obese and you’re reading this chapter with a healthy bit of skepticism about consuming
more
fat in your diet. You may be thinking to yourself that you have plenty of fat on your body and therefore you don’t need to be eating as much fat as everyone else. Please don’t do that to yourself. Yes, you have a lot of body fat that will be used to fuel your body when you are in a ketogenic state. But think of eating fat as a way to prime your metabolic engine. The only way to access stored body fat and use it as fuel is by shifting your body from a sugar-burner to a fat-burner, and the only way to do that is to feed your body what it needs to commence fat-burning—dietary fat.

Effectively adapting to using fat and ketones as a primary source of fuel to form a very stable energy substrate, even in the absence of regular meals, is just like putting a big log on a fire burning in your wood stove.

– Nora Gedgaudas

In March 2013, there was a news story in RedEye Chicago, a website of the
Chicago Tribune
, about a thirty-six-year old Illinois man named John Huston who was embarking on a 72-day, 630-mile journey through the Canadian High Arctic in subzero temperatures. This was obviously going to be a very energy-demanding trek for Huston and his team, so how did he fuel himself? He consumed deep-fried bacon and at least a stick of butter a day! Here’s how he said it: “It sounds disgusting, but when you’re outside every day at forty below, butter is your best friend.” Sounds like my kind of guy, because he knows dietary fat is an outstanding fuel source.

For most people, getting over the fear of eating fat is probably the most difficult aspect of being on a ketogenic diet. We’re told by doctors, teachers, the government, and other health authorities that fat is bad, and somehow we’ve come to accept without a second thought that it will make us fat and eventually kill us. (But it won’t.) I grew up watching my mom eat rice cakes and drink skim milk in her futile attempts to follow a low-fat diet. In the end, she never permanently lost the weight eating that way, and she ended up getting so frustrated that she resorted to gastric bypass surgery in her late fifties (though even that didn’t keep her from gaining back the weight she lost). It’s a sad reality that so many people still fear eating fat so much that they are unwilling to try a high-fat diet even though it could not only help them manage their weight but also prevent the onset of chronic diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer. (More on that beginning in chapter 16.)

Insufficient fat intake is among the most common tripping points in trying to gain, then maintain, a ketogenic state. We need to rid ourselves of any residual fear that fat intake is somehow bad, causes us to get fat, or causes heart disease. Enjoy the fat on your T-bone steak or coconut oil used to sauté your vegetables.