The thing about dietary fat…

…is that it’s GOOD for us. If you are new to keto and still trying to wrap your head around the idea of consumption of dietary fat being GOOD for us, please check out this post, “How did we get fat?” to learn just how (and when) Western society began to fear fat.

Unfortunately, many have a hard time learning to not be afraid of fat.

So how did I finally start to BURN my own body fat with very little exercise, and just diet?

By focusing my daily caloric intake on the following percentages of macro-nutrients:

Moderate Protein – GOAL
(about 25-30%)

Very little carbohydrate – LIMIT
(5%)

High Fat – UPPER LIMIT
(55-75%)

Meet your protein goal, and limit your carbs to 20 net grams*, and have some fat. If you’re still feel hungry near the end of the day, have a little more fat, as long as it does not exceed your upper macro limit by too much. With keto, we can eat natural saturated fats freely, but if we have a lot of body fat to lose, we need less dietary fat (% of caloric intake can be increased as we lose body fat). If I feel a little peckish past dinner time (rarely), I’ll have some aged zero-carb cheese for dessert, or drink a cup of decaf coffee or herbal tea with heavy cream, or even a mug of hot bone broth (I try really hard to not eat any later than 7:30 p.m., most nights I’m through by 6:30).

The simple rule of fat when it comes to keto

A fat macro should not be a goal, but be treated as an upper limit in our daily caloric intake.

Many people think it’s OK to just gorge on fat in order to be in ketosis, but really, if you have body fat to LOSE, you will only burn the fat you eat if you overdo your fat intake regularly. The reason for the confusion I believe, comes from the most popular description of the ketogenic diet, which is that it’s a “low carb, high fat” way of life/diet, so it’s easily mistaken (and understandably so) to mean just inhaling bacon and coconut oil like there’s no tomorrow.

The reason we say “high fat” is because the caloric intake of fat in the ketogenic diet is higher than in the standard American diet (which you may often see referred to as “S.A.D.”). Many of us grew up being told that eating only low-fat or fat-free foods is the most healthy, and a “balanced” diet is one where we’re told to eat 35%-60% carbohydrate, 10-15% fat. 25-30% protein (which seems to be the only one that doesn’t deviate, in terms of comparing it to LCHF/keto).

On the other hand, when starting out, in the first week or two don’t worry too much about overdoing fat intake. In fact, if you FEAR the amount of fat this new lifestyle is introducing you, it’s actually a good idea to make sure you get a lot, in order to get used to it, IF you are currently very addicted to starch and sugar and are struggling to not be tempted by it or crave it.

Eat protein to your heart’s content, until you feel you are satisfied. You can honestly tell when you’ve eaten too much protein (although there’s really no such thing). It’s when you feel like another bite of protein-rich food may make you feel nauseous.

Some ways to ease into a higher dietary fat when starting out with keto:

Add butter and cream to your vegetables, buy fatty cuts of meat instead of lean, or cook lean cuts in butter and lots of oil (coconut, avocado, or olive). Go ahead…as long as you keep your carbs to 20 net grams per day. Once you have become used to eating fat, your body will start to crave this fuel and will work to seek out more of it, and guess what? In its quest, it finds and starts to burn the excess fat you’ve been hauling around. That’s how ketosis works and is the best way I can describe the point that you have become fat-adapted.

This burning process becomes your body’s favorite way to fuel itself, and it works, provided you don’t overdo the fat. The amount of glucose your brains and cells require is magically created and delivered by a process which your liver does, called gluconeogenesis, wherein amino acids and fatty acid (glycerol) from proteins are formed into glucose, which is why the human body requires no dietary sources of glucose or carbohydrate.

Yes, you read that right.

The body does not require dietary carbohydrate, because what it needs, it makes its own.

Fat is such a precious fuel to the human body. Our brains and healthy cells use it the most. This is why low-fat diets only leave you feeling tired and hungry all the time. Our bodies need the fat for keeping cells shiny and new and repairing cells that are damaged. Without going into more grand and detailed explanations, the processes of cell feeding and renewal that our bodies do more easily because it favors fat over excess glucose, is what gives us that keto-gasmic feeling of youth and energy like we’ve never experienced before.

Next week, I’ll write a post about how to put keto on auto-pilot.

* Net grams = carbs minus fiber. Some people can get away with more than 20 grams, but if you’re metabolically challenged or a type 2 diabetic, try to stick to 20 or less each day, to start.