Note: this article is written so that you can get the information most useful for you. If you have the time I encourage a thorough reading. However, if this is not your case, feel free to skip down through the article to see the common mistakes with an LCHF diet – look for bolded headings and feel free to choose the ones most applicable to you. My short, simple guide can be found at the end.
A low-carbohydrate lifestyle is sweeping the western world as a wonderful way to lose weight, increase energy, and improve markers of good health across the board. It arises as a counter to the many failed attempts brought on by following current dietary guidelines, which include consuming more whole carbohydrates, more fruits and vegetables, and only consuming reasonable amounts of what is currently deemed as healthy fats (i.e. mono- and polyunsaturated fats).
The low-carb diet has proven itself to be a great way to not only lose weight, but also to reverse dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and many other serious health conditions (see references 1-4).
However, the purpose of today’s article is not to convince you that a low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diet is healthy, but rather to help out those of you that are ready to take the leap to an LCHF lifestyle. This is not an article that is made for those of you that are skeptics. If you have no interest in an LCHF diet, there is no need to read further. I encourage you to check out some of my articles on why consuming higher amounts of fat and lowering carbohydrate intake can be beneficial.
That being said, if you are a skeptic of an LCHF diet, feel free to keep reading to get some insight into the foods this diet can contain to help you understand that this diet may not be what you think it is.
Nevertheless, I write this article today for those of you that have taken a little bit of time to understand the incredible results that can be reached by following an LCHF diet. This is for those of you that have heard the cases of how the pounds seem to magically come off, the inflammatory markers drop way down, dyslipidemia clears right up, and all the challenges that come with dieting seem to disappear.
This is for those of you that understand that an LCHF can be a magical way to help solve health problems.
This is for you, because I need to make sure that you have a reality check.
I am not here to rain on your parade because it is true that an LCHF diet can be very beneficial. There is strong evidence showing that an LCHF diet can work wonders to improve markers of health across the board, and even to reverse certain diseases. For example, a recent clinical trial (1) showed how a low-carb diet could be used to reverse Type II diabetes, as shown by an overall reduction in medication use and reduction or elimination of insulin injections in 94% of participants.
So yes, those that go on a LCHF diet can have incredible results, but we must be cautious, because as with every good piece of dietary advice, information gets heavily skewed by the time it reaches the masses, such that many people who embark on the journey to an LCHF lifestyle can make many dangerous dietary decisions.
Over the past months I have witnessed a terrifying mutilation of this healthy diet into one that reflects, well, a not-so-real-food diet, and my intention, today, is to help fix that. To do what I can to prevent individuals from embarking on a dangerous road down an unhealthy LCHF diet, I write this article to spell out how this diet should ideally work. By “should ideally work” I mean, “by what science supports as a healthy diet.”
My intention is to clear up some of the misconceptions and to ensure that you get the most out of your efforts. An LCHF diet can take a lot of time and effort and I want to make sure that this pays off.
Let’s get right to it.
Why LCHF?
The reason why an LCHF diet is so incredible is that it minimizes insulin secretion, and therefore minimizes fat storage (remember, insulin = energy storage). When you consume high amounts of fat and low quantities of carbohydrate, the body stays in fat-burning mode most of the time. This results in a body where the fat can seem to magically melt off.
Yes, this all seems wonderful, and yes, it can be! But for this diet to work its magic, we have to keep reality in check. It is all-too-easy to get focused on the “low-carb” component and forget all the other important dietary factors that are crucial for good health.
Let me remind you of some of these crucial factors.
What factors make up any healthy diet:
- Eating adequate amounts of vegetables is crucial for getting micronutrients needed to maintain a well-functioning body
- Consuming poor quality and/or processed foods sends dangerous chemicals into the body where they are free to go cause damage
- Consuming excess protein, particularly from animal sources, can be very dangerous for many individuals.
With the rest of this article I am going to walk you through the biggest problems I find with people on an LCHF diet. While doing so I will address how these problems violate the key factors that make up a healthy diet.
Common problems people have on an LCHF diet
Problem 1: Thinking low-carb = all you can eat meat
Many people embark on an LCHF diet because of the allure of all those delicious animal foods. While, yes, it is great getting to consume all those delicious animal-based foods because they contain loads of wonderful nutrients (and, again, are delicious!), we still need to be cautious about consuming too many, especially if these products are of lower quality.
While I strongly disagree with the hypothesis that animal-based foods are inherently dangerous, there are numerous reasons why we should be cautious when consuming these foods (see my article for a full review of these thoughts).
I will get into some of these details with my following three problems, but for now, think about these well-known pieces of dietary advice.
First, processed meat is dangerous no matter what diet you are on. Processed meat is often high in toxins, including preservatives (eg. nitrates & nitrites), flavorings (e.g. msg), and it is often of poor quality to begin with.
Speaking of that poor quality, meat and animal products that come from grain-fed, CAFO-style animals have a very different chemical makeup than naturally-raised animals. For example, the fatty-acid composition of a grain-fed pig can vary greatly from that of a pig raised on its natural diet. These industrially-raised animals are also often pumped up with hormones and antibiotics, which then get passed on to you when you eat them.
Two more specific problems go along with this point, which I will dive into in the next two sections.
Remember, vegetables play a very important role in every type of diet, so if too many animal-based foods are consumed, it doesn’t leave much room for getting the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and polyphenols that you need from plant foods. While animal foods can contain loads of nutrients, when animals are raised on an unnatural diet (e.g grains) the animal can’t make these nutrients, and in turn they are not available to get passed on to you.
Finally, meat and many animal products can contain lots of protein, which puts another load on the liver when it gets converted to glucose. Eating a large steak with its high protein content can easily force the body to perform gluconeogenesis (conversion of protein to glucose), so even if you consume a meal that is entirely fat and protein (e.g. a large steak), this meal can turn into glucose in your body and/or stimulate insulin. This is not inherently a bad thing and tends to only be a problem in metabolically unhealthy individuals, but we have to keep this in mind when considering our overarching goals.
Problem 2: Thinking low-carb = no-carb
Following the return of knowledge that fat is indeed healthy, the bar seems to have swung too far in the opposite direction, resulting in a nation filled with carb-phobic individuals. When considering any healthy diet it is important to consider the role that both fat-based foods and carb-based foods play.
The most important food group I am alluding to is, of course, vegetables. Irrespective of any specific diet – whether it’s keto, vegan, paleo, or whatever diet you decide to take on – vegetables deserve a strong presence in each meal. Consuming ample amounts of vegetables is necessary to get all the micronutrients your body needs to properly function. This includes things like polyphenols and antioxidants, along with essential vitamins and minerals, and of course, fiber.
When people interpret a low-carb diet to mean a no-carb diet, they neglect the important role that vegetables play in the diet. I understand that people are being cautious about putting glucose into their body, which in turn raises insulin and puts the body back in sugar-burning fat-storage mode. To avoid this, the logic goes, try to avoid all carbohydrate. But here’s the thing – eating tons of leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables hardly contributes to glucose in the body, and generally results in only small amounts of insulin stimulation. Because these types of vegetables contain lots of fiber, polyphenols, and antioxidants, and only contain small amounts of glucose, the body responds in a very different manner than it does for other carbohydrates.
We must be very careful to understand the balance of glucose and insulin levels and their response to various types of plant foods. Yes, many plant foods like grains and starches often cause large glucose and insulin responses, but this is very different than consuming plant foods like broccoli, kale, or spinach.
Plant foods of the green & leafy or cruciferous type should still be consumed in ample amounts in a healthy low-carb diet. Don’t worry about them contributing much glucose to the system or stimulating insulin. With their low glucose and high fiber content, these foods are the perfect vehicle to deliver high amounts of nutrients with very little energy.
The same goes for some other plant-based foods like nuts and seeds. While, yes, some nuts can contain large amounts of glucose, nuts are very high in healthy forms of polyunsaturated fats, and they additionally contain lots of important minerals. Nuts are a food to be a little cautious with, especially if you are on a full keto diet, but keeping them out of a low-carb diet is ill-advised.
Overall, when considering the role carbohydrates should play in your LCHF diet, think less about “carbohydrate,” which is a very broad term, and focus more on the insulin response that specific types of carbohydrates. Keep in mind this is going to be a very individualized thing – some people can get away with consuming higher quantities of carbohydrates, while others will need to be cautious.
Problem 3: Thinking low-carb = high protein
When considering trade-offs between macronutrients, it is common for people to make trade-offs with protein. In general, I believe this is a big mistake.
When considering macronutrient trade-offs, think of this as an energy trade-off. If you want to get most of your energy from glucose, then eat more carbohydrate. If you want more energy from fat, then eat more fat.
Protein is different because it is made of amino acids, and these are not immediate sources of energy – they are rather more like raw materials for the body. These raw materials serve a crucial role, and therefore it is important to get the proper amount of them – but they belong in their own group, independent of energy sources.
While protein can be converted to energy, doing so puts a load on the liver, which can be dangerous if the liver is already under a large load (as is the case with most livers in the modern world). Rather, by filling your energy needs with fat or glucose and keeping protein at a moderate level, the liver is freed up to do other important jobs.
Furthermore, when excess protein is converted to energy by the liver, it is converted to glucose, a process called gluconeogenesis. The whole point of a LCHF diet is to keep glucose levels low, but consuming excess protein simply means excess glucose in the blood. Ask yourself if this method (consuming excess protein to keep glucose levels low) makes any sense.
None of this is to say that we should view protein as dangerous and focus on limiting it. As with everything else I discuss, we instead need to understand protein’s role so we receive a proper amount for our own bodies.
For example, an individual who is insulin sensitive and metabolically healthy will likely have fewer problems with protein. A metabolically healthy individual should be perfectly capable of handling any reasonable dose of protein, even if there is some excess that gets converted to glucose.
Actually, in a carb-restricted diet, it is important that some of that protein gets converted to glucose, as the body does have some needs for glucose (e.g. red blood cells can only use glucose). Furthermore, for those healthy individuals that may have specific goals like bulking up, this higher amount of protein can be useful.
On the other hand, an insulin resistant individual with high baseline levels of insulin may hyper-respond to protein intake, putting the body in an energy-storage mode. Remember, energy storage is what we want to avoid if the goal is to lose fat mass and regain metabolic health.
Overall, protein is going to be a very individualized thing. But don’t worry, you don’t have to spend ours researching and planning the precise amount of protein you need to put in your body each day. Instead, just start with an amount that seems reasonable (0.7 grams per kg lean body mass) – somewhere around 60-80 grams a day (more for larger / athletic / older individuals). Then vary this amount as you receive signals from your body.
For example, if you find yourself hungry following meals, even if you consume ample amounts of fat and veggies, then you may need to up the protein. On the other hand, if you are failing to reach your weight loss goals or are failing to enter into ketosis, it could very well be that your protein intake is too high and is just getting turned into glucose.
Moreover, if you are physically active or middle-aged or older, you should absolutely make sure that you are taking in sufficient amounts of protein.
If all that seemed too complicated, just understand that if you aren’t reaching your LCHF goals but think you are doing everything else right, protein could be the cullprit, and you may need to focus more on getting fattier, lower protein meats.
Problem 4: Ignoring Quality
One of the scariest problems I see with LCHF diets is quality going out the window. I am a firm believer that diet quality is the most important factor that goes into health. From my perspective when embarking on any diet, including an LCHF diet, quality should absolutely take a front seat.
Moreover, this is particularly important on an LCHF diet because, while LCHF foods can be combined to make the healthiest diet, they can also come in some of the most dangerous forms. Consuming low quality animal products is one of the easiest ways for dangerous toxins to get into your body. Similarly, some of the worst foods you can consume are bad fats.
It is all-too-easy to get carried away with the magical effects of ketosis and low-insulin stimulation and forget the other important systems at work in your body. LCHF does not give you a free pass to forget quality, and if anything I would say this is the diet in which quality matters most. Let’s talk about how your two main food groups, animal products and fats, play a role in determining the health of your body.
Meat and Animal Products
When consuming an LCHF diet, you are going to be consuming ample amounts of fat and animal products. These foods can contain loads of nutrients, but they can also contain loads of toxins and reactive molecules.
When you ignore quality, remember these trade-offs:
Grass-fed vs. grain-fed:
Grass-fed cows produce meat and milk that is chock-full of nutrients. This includes important vitamins like vitamin A, K, and D. The fat from these animals is also high in omega-3’s and lower in omega-6’s. Feeding grains to cows, pigs, and other animals reverses this great omega-3:omega-6 ratio, so by eating grain-fed animals and their products, you are getting higher amounts of pro-inflammatory fats. Additionally, when consuming these cheap, industrial foods, you miss out on the high quantity of vitamins because animals fed an unnatural diet don’t get the raw materials they need to synthesize vitamins.
Organic vs. Traditional:
Organic meat and animal products means that these animals were not injected with hormones or antibiotics, and generally means that they contain larger quantities of beneficial nutrients and less toxins. Organic meat means that the animals were fed organic feed, which means that pesticides were not passed on to the animal, so then they can’t get passed on to you.
Processed:
Many of the “extras” that come along with processed meat can be very dangerous. For example, nitrates and nitrites have been linked to cancer, and in the short term, I can often feel the negative effects they can have on my body (e.g. I know they often give me a headache). The same goes for the common flavoring MSG, often found in processed meats.
All this being said, I understand that grass-fed, organic milk and dairy can be very expensive. Furthermore, free-range, organic eggs can cost triple the amount of conventional ones. The bottom line is that eating good quality meat costs a lot of money, especially if you’re feeding your family.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution: if you can’t afford it, don’t buy high quantities of these products.
I don’t base my diet off of meat and animal products for a number of reasons, chief among them being the high cost. Instead, I base it off of vegetables, and to those vegetables I supplement with smaller quantities of good meat.
On top of this base and supplementation, I load on the fat.
Fats
Avoiding poor quality fats is going to be key to a successful high-fat diet. Even though fats have, overall, been acquitted of their charges, there are still a number of fats to be wary of. I just finished discussing the animal-based fats to be wary of, but there are a large number of other fats we still need to consider. For a full overview of what I consider good vs. bad vs. okay fats, check out Is This a Good Fat? A Simple Guide to Sorting out the Confusion.
For now I’ll give you the summary:
Vegetable oils, including soy, cottonseed, canola, safflower, sunflower, and grapeseed, should be avoided as much as possible. Vegetable oils are incredibly dangerous because they are prone to oxidation due to their high polyunsaturated nature. Combine this with the highly stressful processing needed to make oil from something like a cottonseed, and you get a frankenfood primed for action, ready to enter the body wreaking havoc wherever it goes.
Saying this more scientifically, vegetable oil is highly oxidized, meaning it readily reacts with molecules and tissue throughout the body, causing inflammation and destroying the functioning of certain molecules. These oxidized fats also use up the supply of antioxidants, leaving the rest of the body on short supply.
Instead of vegetable oil, which is just another industrial frankenfood, opt for monunsaturated fats that come from foods that actually contain lots of easily accessible fat. This includes oils like high quality olive oil and/or avocado oil.
Polyunsaturated fats play an important role in a healthy body, but we must take extra care to make sure our sources of polyunsaturated fats come from whole sources. Again, polyunsaturated fats are easily damaged (oxidized), and when they are oxidized they are free to react in the body (a very bad thing). If you consume polyunsaturated fats in a processed form (e.g. vegetable oil), you can bet that they are going to be highly oxidized. If instead, you consume them in a real food (e.g. nuts and fish) then the fats are much more likely to be safe.
And then, of course, there are saturated fats. Although these have traditionally gotten a bad rep, I view saturated fats as the safest fat because they are the most stable. Even when processed these fats maintain their natural form. Don’t worry about them causing heart disease – that hypothesis is quite outdated.
Therefore, high quality saturated fats like coconut oil and grass-fed butter are also great additions, as these are highly stable fats in their (mostly) natural state. These are the fats I use most often, with monunsaturated fats coming in second. I avoid vegetable oil as much as possible, and instead get my polyunsaturated fats from eating nuts and seeds or fish.
Problem 5: Regularly using low-carb alternatives to continue consuming meals based on high-carb foods
The failure to address the previous problems I discussed could very well end up leading to some serious unhealthy outcomes. This last one is a little different, because it isn’t as pressing of a matter, but is still a big enough problem that it could end up impairing the success of your diet.
An LCHF diet is great because we get to eat all these delicious, high-fat meals. We get to indulge in beef, butter, and bacon, not to mention avocado, dark chocolate, and a mass of other wonderful foods. There are so many high-quality, low-carb foods, and we could spend years creating delicious recipes and indulging in these high-fat, nutritious meals. By combining all these delicious foods we can make delicious dishes – dishes that fully satiate our hunger and tend to satisfy our cravings.
What this does mean is that we have to give up certain foods – obviously, the ones that contain large amounts of carbs. Giving up these foods can be difficult, but the trade-offs can be so great that it doesn’t make me mind much.
But here’s the problem – a lot of people fail to give up these foods. It is all-too-common to see people on a low-carb diet obsessing about all the creative “low-carb” alternatives to making the same old high-carb goodies.
Let me clear a few things up here. First, I don’t mean this to be an all-or-nothing sort of deal. There is no way that, after months of going without bread, making a keto-bread is going to do much harm. Rather, I’m talking to those of you that are consistently making these not-so-low-carb foods a part of your diet. Second, the problem isn’t the idea of the meal being what’s thought of as a high-carb meal, but rather the processed ingredients that go into it.
For instance, I have been making “low-carb” pizza all week. I make the crust out of cauliflower instead of wheat. The result is a dish that is really just a whole bunch of vegetables with lots of coconut and olive oil, as well as egg and some meat, which in my view is the perfect balance of delicious, nutritious foods.
On the other side of things, I am constantly seeing people stuck making meals out of biscuits, muffins, and other forms of “bread,” and touting how they are still on a low-carb diet.
I understand that a transition from the Standard American Diet to one without any breads can be difficult, and that the strong pull towards products that resemble these high-carb foods feels like it needs to be fulfilled. I also understand that this is not necessarily a problem – there is nothing inherently dangerous about a coconut flour muffin. The problem is when this starts to take over the diet.
I feel the need to explain this because, when I started out on the whole low-carb journey years ago, I fell into the trap of thinking “low-carb” meant “just choose lower carb alternatives and make the same foods.”
This led to the continuation of cooking treats like muffins made with nut flours and sugar alternatives. This was a problem because, instead of losing weight like a low-carb diet is supposed to, I actually ended up gaining 15 pounds over a few months.
This was a problem because, before I embarked on a lower-carb, paleo type diet, I knew I had to be reasonable with processed foods. However, often when people go on these “healthy” diets, they see all possible foods as healthy, and therefore indulge whenever they want. This isn’t the way it is supposed to work, as I so greatly demonstrated several years ago.
Think of the bigger picture. We put ourselves on these restrictive diets because we want to see results. If in doing so we continue to eat a bunch of processed flour, even if it is “low-carb,” this kind of defeats the purpose.
Remember, the purpose of a low-carb diet is to remove the glucose from the system and to add in nutritious, satiating foods. When we consume processed foods, even if it is a low-carb flour, this isn’t really sticking to the point.
Again, I don’t mean to argue that these foods should never be made or consumed. Making these low-carb creations isn’t a problem in itself, but when these foods start to take over the diet they can replace the highly nutritious, highly satisfying foods that probably deserve a more prominent spot in the diet.
So what do I do about this problem now that I learned my lesson about “low-carb” cookies and muffins?
I know it is hard to give up high-carb foods, and that’s why I never will give them up entirely. There are so many incredibly delicious high-carb foods, and I am not going to deprive myself of any of these foods throughout my life. That being said, when I am in low-carb mode, I go into a full low-carb mode.
I love cupcakes, bread, and other baked goods, but when I eat them, I like to make sure they are the really good kind. You know, the real thing. So when I decide to cheat and have a cupcake, I’m going to make damn sure that it is a good cupcake, not some low-carb creation made with low-carb flours that kinda sorta looks like something that could be a cupcake and maybe sort of tastes like it too.
But I am not going to do this every week, or even every month. It will only be when a really good occasion comes around, or otherwise if I feel I have reached my goals with my low-carb eating style.
That being said, I haven’t had the need to be in a deep, longterm state of low-carb eating, something like full on ketosis. When you are on a full blown keto diet, it isn’t easy to cheat with something like a real cupcake, even if it is only a few times a year.
If this is your case (or even if it’s not), of course you can feel free to make some low-carb muffins. Just be careful if you find yourself eating them regularly, as this could be hindering the success of your diet.
Instead, if you need a good dessert, maybe make some delicious fat bombs, or some spectacular avocado mousse – foods that you do get to indulge in, and ones that better fits the diet you chose to embark on. Moreover, if you feel you need a bun on that burger, you could step outside the box that box and think about all the other ways a burger can be jazzed up (I’m imagining a burger patty loaded with chipotle mayonnaise, homemade sauerkraut, avocado, and wrapped up in some butter lettuce).
My guide to an LCHF diet:
The following is the guide I use to plan out meals on my own LCHF diet. It is based on my founding principles, which include making vegetables the base of my diet, avoiding industrial foods, and ensuring that what I eat contains ample amounts of micronutrients and is limited in toxins.
- Let vegetables be the vehicle for your fats. Saute your veggies up in ample amounts of high quality, stable fats, and then feel free to add on more fat.
- Use meat wisely: opt for lower amounts of higher quality meats, and think of these as supplementation to the diet, not the main course.
- Stock up on high quality fats like coconut oil and grass-fed butter – feel free to go a little crazy with these.
- Do your best to avoid vegetable oils. If you need oil, instead opt for avocado oil for cooking and extra virgin olive oil for dressings.
- Take care not to swing too far in the opposite direction – the “drinking oil” direction. You can overdo the fat to the point where you may not be able to achieve weight loss goals. A healthy LCHF diet is still a diet based on real, whole foods, so your plate should tend to resemble this, as opposed to an oil smoothie. It’s just that, in your case, you get to make sure that those real, whole foods are coated in delicious, satiating fat.
References
- Hallberg, S. J., McKenzie, A. L., Williams, P. T., Bhanpuri, N. H., Peters, A. L., Campbell, W. W., … Volek, J. S. (2018). Effectiveness and Safety of a Novel Care Model for the Management of Type 2 Diabetes at 1 Year: An Open-Label, Non-Randomized, Controlled Study. Diabetes Therapy. http://doi.org/10.1007/s13300-018-0373-9
- Gardner, C. D., Trepanowski, J. F., Del Gobbo, L. C., Hauser, M. E., Rigdon, J., Ioannidis, J. P. A., … King, A. C. (2018). Effect of Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults and the Association With Genotype Pattern or Insulin Secretion. Jama, 319(7), 667. http://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.0245
- Feinman, R. D., Pogozelski, W. K., Astrup, A., Bernstein, R. K., Fine, E. J., Westman, E. C., … Worm, N. (2015). Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: Critical review and evidence base. Nutrition, 31(1), 1–13. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2014.06.011
- Volek, J. S., & Feinman, R. D. (2005). Carbohydrate restriction improves the features of Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic Syndrome may be defined by the response to carbohydrate restriction. Nutrition and Metabolism, 2, 1–17. http://doi.org/10.1186/1743-7075-2-31