A Complete Beginner’s Guide to the High Fat Diet

Do you want an easy, effective, healthy, and convenient way of eating?

A way of eating that gives you clear mental focus, almost endless energy, and even helps you lose weight?

Well, then you sound like the perfect match for the high fat diet.

In this article I’ll explain to you what a high fat diet is, why it’s superior to other “diets”, why Jonas and I eat accordingly, and why I think you should probably give it a shot, too.

And I’ll even show you seven of our go-to meals which we heavily rely on most of the time.

Ready? Let’s start off with the basics the high fat diet…

Not too complicated:

A high fat way of eating means that you consume most of your calories from healthy fats. In other words, you consume a high amount of fat.

This is in contrast to the modern western diet in which you consume a high amount of carbohydrates and very little fat.

• High fat diet: Most calories come from heathy fats such as meat, fish, nuts and seeds, and various oils.
• Modern western diet: Most calories come from carbohydrate-rich foods such as bread, pasta, grains, fruits, and processed foods (which are pretty much all high in sugar).

• High fat = low carb
• Low fat = high carb

Your body has 2 main fuel sources to create energy.

Your body can burn glucose (which comes from carbohydrates) and it can burn fats (in form of dietary fats or body fat).

• Glucose fuel: Comes from carbohydrate-rich foods
• Fat fuel: Comes from dietary fats or stored body fat

Here’s the deal:

There are 3 main problems with low fat diets… aka with heavily relying on glucose for energy:

1. You get hungry quickly and are forced to eat all day long.

Glucose is a fleeting energy source. You can’t store a lot of it in your body, which means you have to constantly refuel the tank. You may be full for 2-4 hours after a high carb meal, yet after those initial few hours your energy drops, you get hungry, and you need to refuel the tank. Basically you’re constantly hungry and are forced to eat all the time.

2. Your body un-learns to burn fat for energy.

Because your body is always using glucose for energy, it un-learns how to burn fat for energy effectively. It’s like the “fat-burning muscle” atrophies because it’s never used. This means you can’t burn much body fat, PLUS the fat you’re consuming is more likely stored because the body can’t burn it effectively. The end result is MORE body fat.

3. High-carbing leads to high blood sugar and high insulin levels (both TERRIBLE for your health!).

The process of consuming carbohydrates and burning glucose happens in four steps.

1. Carbs are broken down into glucose.
2. Glucose is released into the bloodstream where it’s called blood glucose or blood sugar.
3. Blood glucose rises.
4. Insulin is released to bring glucose into the cells where it can be used for energy.

The more carbs you consume on a regular basis, the higher your blood sugar and insulin levels will be. (That’s a wild oversimplification, but it’s mostly true.) High blood sugar and high insulin levels in turn lead to overweight, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and eventually type 2 diabetes. Apart from that they also harm your brain and make you dumber.

Let’s recap that:

Consuming a high carb diet (like the modern western diet) and heavily relying on glucose for your main energy source means you’ll be hungry quickly and often, you’ll store more body fat, and your blood sugar and insulin levels are chronically elevated which means you might eventually develop pre-diabetes or type-2-diabetes.

In short:

You’ve got to eat all the time, get hungry often, and over time get sicker and sicker and/or fatter and fatter.

Before we look at the main benefits of a high fat diet, let’s dismiss the notion that a high fat intake is somehow unhealthy.

For decades fatty foods have WRONGLY been demonized and labeled as unhealthy or downright dangerous for your health.

Especially saturated fats have gone through a rough patch… being accused of causing high cholesterol and leading to heart disease.

Well, guess what!?

Recent research proves the EXACT opposite:

Saturated fats raise good HDL cholesterol and change bad LDL (small, dense) cholesterol into good LDL (large) cholesterol.

Wait what?!

Here’s what you need to understand: Saturated fat does NOT cause heart disease. In fact, it’s one of the healthiest and most essential fats for the human body.

Soooo… with that B.S. out of our way, let’s look at 3 main benefits of a high fat eating style:

• BETTER cognitive function such as increased focus, better concentration, sharper memory, etc. (which leads to faster skill acquisition, better recall, easier learning, and more)

• Lowered risk for various diseases including type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, and more

• Almost effortless weight loss

• Fewer cravings and almost no hunger

• And most importantly: High, stable, and long-lasting energy (which translates into high performance and productivity all day long)

This varies depending on your individual physiology and your goals.

As a general guideline the macronutrient ratio will look somewhat like this:

• Carbohydrates: 5-30% of calories

On a high fat diet you generally consume somewhere between 50-150g of carbohydrates.

The lower end of the spectrum (50g) is usually best for overweight and not very active people. The higher end suits generally fit people who exercise a lot.

If you want to lose fat rapidly you can go below 50.

• Protein: 15-30% of calories

If you exercise a lot, have a lot of muscle mass, are trying to build more muscle mass, or are trying to lose weight, then you will want to consume more protein.

If you fall in any of these categories, then you can get somewhere between 100-200g of protein per day.

Otherwise somewhere in the range of 70g – 120g of protein per day is optimal.

• Fat: 50-80% of calories

The rest of your calories should come from healthy fats.

Depending on your energy output (your caloric needs) that will be more or less.

I wouldn’t worry about the exact number of grams of fat or calories from fat. The fats that make up the bulk of a proper high fat diet are incredibly healthy plus it’s hard to overeat on them.

Make sure that you do consume plenty of healthy fats. A low carb + low fat diet is seriously unhealthy. If you’re feeling low energy on a high fat diet, it’s probably because you’re not consuming enough fats.

If you want to be sure that you’re eating approximately the right amount of carbs, proteins, and fats, you can use a free tool like Fatsecret where you can log your daily food intake. It’ll give you the macronutrient breakdown and the amount of calories you consume.

Now, before we move on to the practical stuff, we have ONE last thing to cover…

When you switch from a standard western diet to a high fat diet, your body needs time to adjust until it can efficiently burn fat for energy.

There are certain hormones and enzymes that need to be upregulated for the body to burn fat as your main source of energy.

This adaptation process can be harsh on your body in the first few days and the full adaptation may take a few weeks.

During the first few days of carbohydrate restriction certain side effects may appear. This is also known as the “low carb flu” and lasts usually 3-4 days. Symptoms include:

• Headaches
• Tiredness
• Lightheadedness
• Irritability
• Low energy

For most people these side effects are mild or don’t happen at all. It’s certainly nothing to worry about. Your body is just so used to burning mainly carbohydrates that it takes some time to get used to burning mainly fat for energy.

When you suffer from the low carb flu there are a few tricks you can use to get rid of the symptoms:

• Consume MORE healthy fats
• Drink a LOT of water
• Drastically increase your salt intake for a few days (drink some bone broth, add some salt to your water, or simply add more salt to your food)

Most people thrive on this high fat style of eating and feel better than ever once the initial adaptation period is over.

Alright, that’s about all I got for the theory.

Let’s now dive into how a high fat diet looks like in the real word. Let’s start off with the kind of foods to eat or avoid, and then we’ll look at a full day of eating a high-fat diet.

Foods to eat on a high fat diet

Not all fats are created equal and not all fats are healthy.

Highly processed fats are still unhealthy as fvck (like pretty much all processed foods) even if they have a high fat count.

To truly THRIVE on a high fat diet, get all the benefits we discussed earlier, and feel fvcking fantastic all the time, you want to consume natural foods that humans are genetically adapted to eating. Also, these foods should be minimally processed.

Here’s a list of the foods that make up the bulk of a healthy high-fat approach to eating:

• Meat: Beef, lamb, bison, pork, goose, duck, goat, turkey, chicken, etc.

• Seafood: Salmon, cod, anchovies, lobster, mussels, oysters, haddock, flounder, trout, tilapia, etc.

• Dairy: Raw grass-fed butter, full fat cheese, full fat yoghurt, full fat cream

• Eggs: Chicken, duck, goose, pheasant, emu, etc.

• Vegetables: Spinach, parsley, brussels sprouts, collards, cilantro, bok choy, celery, cucumber, artichokes, carrots, fennel, etc.

• Nuts and seeds: Coconuts, almonds, cashews, brazil nuts, pecans, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pistachos, pine nuts, chia seeds, flax seeds, etc.

• Fats and oils: Grass-fed butter, clarified butter (ghee), extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, coconut milk, lard and other animal fats, avocado oil, dark chocolate

• Spices and flavorings: Pink Himalayan salt, apple cider vinegar, rosemary, turmeric, lavender, thyme, cinnamon, oregano, ginger, cilantro, parsley, etc.

• Coffee and tea: Organic coffee, organic tea (green tea especially)

• Healthy sweeteners: Stevia, xylitol, erythritol

• Fruits*: Lemons, limes, berries, melons, peaches, apples, etc.

• Other healthy carbs*: Carrots, white rice, sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter sqash, yams, quinoa, rutabaga, cassava

*Keep the carbohydrate content of these food groups in mind. Unless you’re a very active person, you probably don’t want or need to eat these foods on a daily basis.

Foods to AVOID on a high fat diet (and any other diet…)

To get the most out of a high fat diet, you want to ban high carb foods as well as any other unhealthy foods from your diet.

The list below contains all the foods that you want to AVOID if you’re looking to optimize your health, energy levels, productivity, and overall well-being.

• Sugar: Table sugar, soft drinks, fruit juices, ice cream, candy, and most processed foods

• Artificial sweeteners: Aspartame, ascesulfame, sucralose, saccharin, and others (found in many processed foods!)

• Seed- and vegetable oils: Soybean-, corn-, cottonseed-, sunflower-, grapeseed-, safflower and canola oils

• Grains (including bread and pasta): Wheat, barley, rye, spelt, etc.

• Trans fats: “Hydrogenated” and/or “partially hydrogenated” oils (which may be found in margarine, seed and vegetable oils, and a variety of processed foods)

• “Low fat”, “zero fat”, and “diet” products: Certain dairy products, protein bars, cereals, crackers, etc.

• MOST processed foods: Anything that has more than 5 ingredients is probably NOT good for you

Alright, now that we know which foods to eat and which to avoid, we can look at how a full day of eating a healthy high fat diet can look like.

• Breakfast: BP Coffee
• Lunch: Grass-fed buffalo steak + a ton of steamed veggies
• Dinner: Some fried eggs + white rice + half an avocado
• Snacks: A handful of almonds, a whey protein shake, and some dark chocolate

Since your body can conveniently burn body fat in between meals, you probably won’t feel hungry between meals.

If you do get hungry, here are a few snack ideas that are healthy, taste decently, and are for the most part easily portable…

• A protein shake
• A low carb smoothie
• Full-fat yogurt
• An avocado
• Some olives
• Hard-boiled Eggs
• A handful of nuts
• Coffee or tea with some added butter and/or coconut oil
• Some cheese or meat
• Canned sardines with coconut oil
• Some dark chocolate (70% cacao or more)
• Celery, carrot, or bell pepper sticks with some nut butter
• Celery, carrot, or bell pepper sticks with guacamole (self-made, not the store-bought crap)

…mmmm some of them are actually really delicious.

(If you need more snack ideas, here’s an awesome compilation of 120 Keto Snacks)

Anyway,