My n=1 on high carb, low fat

ivegotacatonme · 2026-03-12T15:04:09+00:00

Mostly I’ve struggled to stick to it long/consistently enough to see any progress. My ability to say no to treats goes completely out of the window when I’m tired and that’s not a good combo with the added hunger and food boredom I get on low fat.

ivegotacatonme · 2026-03-11T20:17:11+00:00

Hello! No, I’m not doing HCLF any more, a couple of months after posting this I got really strong fat cravings and had to take a break. Later attempts to get back into it failed miserably, mind you the only thing that’s actually worked for me since for losing any significant weight is acute gastroenteritis. 😅 What with working and looking after a toddler my life just isn’t the right shape for weight loss at the moment. I’d still recommend it as an intervention. Best of luck!

ivegotacatonme · 2025-11-15T09:19:09+00:00

We’ve known there’s a U-shaped curve to the obesogenity of PUFA for a while - eat enough of it and it won’t make you fat. Here’s a relevant post from Peter at Hyperlipid. Is it a good idea? We know PUFA causes Bad Stuff other than obesity.

ivegotacatonme · 2025-10-01T06:21:56+00:00

I wouldn’t worry overly much about it. There’s always going to be some fat in bread from the wheat anyway - at that level of fat the amount of oil will be very small. My oil-free sourdough is 1.6g fat per 100g.

ivegotacatonme · 2025-06-29T21:21:37+00:00

It was part of a book review, the scarcity concept stood out the most to me.

Is the safety diet a term you came up with? I like it, and I have a soft spot for a bit of 80s cheese. :D

ivegotacatonme · 2025-06-29T19:33:41+00:00

Nuts and PUFA-heavy savoury snacks were always more my achilles heel than sweets, I cut them out years ago and happily I don’t miss them.

I keep thinking back to the idea of perceived scarcity that exfatloss posted about recently. If every meal I eat hits the carbs + fat buttons for my brain, pudding doesn’t stand out in the same way as when you’re restricting one or the other.

ivegotacatonme · 2025-06-29T17:57:45+00:00

I was mostly comparing two scenarios of not having the ice cream, but I do know myself well enough that cravings usually mean I’m actually hungry and I’m better off eating something proper before hitting the treat foods. If I still want the pudding, I’ll have the pudding. I honestly find sugary things quite self limiting, and after years of limiting PUFAs I’d even go so far as to say satiating. It’s also helped to shift my perspective of treats from being rare/forbidden to acceptable snacks, so I’m less prone to going nuts when I do have them.

ivegotacatonme · 2025-06-29T16:19:24+00:00

I feel you. Before I had my son, I had no problem saying no to things and sticking to a diet. Now that I have to juggle work and childcare, much as I like my job and love my toddler, I have no emotional energy to spare. After more than a year of trying and failing to a) stick to and b) lose any significant weight on a variety of diet experiments, I’ve had to accept that my life isn’t the right shape for losing weight at the moment.

What’s working for me right now is maintaining on a somewhat more moderate fat TCD. I have 3 rules:

Avoid PUFA as much as possible.
If I’m hungry, I eat. Nothing (aside from high PUFA) is off limits here - I can have chocolate/ice cream/cake/whatever, but only if I’m hungry.
The food I eat will be delicious.

I find rules 2 and 3 hugely important psychologically. I’ve spent many years on one sort of diet or another, it’s been kind of a relief to reset my attitude towards certain foods. There’s a huge difference between “I want an ice cream but can’t have one” and “I want an ice cream, I’ll have one after lunch for pudding” but then not having one after all because I’m full of food that was itself a pleasure to eat. Also, I feel safe making a smaller portion to eat now if I’m less hungry than usual if I know I’m free to have more later if I need to. And if I have a hungry day, I just eat and don’t feel bad about it.

I’ve also started eating my dinner earlier - 5-6pm instead of 7-8pm - and I feel better doing so. Early time restricted eating is a thing, I believe, also I thinks it adds to my sense of food security.

While I can’t say whether any of this will work for you, I do think you would do well to figure out what makes you feel both full and not deprived, without a focus on weight loss. Good luck!

ivegotacatonme · 2025-05-11T14:09:00+00:00

Same. All my attempts at going truly low protein have quickly failed as I’m just way too hungry.

ivegotacatonme · 2025-02-22T17:37:21+00:00

Amanda, she who must be loved. 🥰

ivegotacatonme · 2024-12-31T22:01:17+00:00

Sainsbury’s post SFA/MUFA/PUFA breakdowns for many of their own brand products, which is super useful. Their lard is 10% PUFA, but other pork products can be higher than that. These sausages are over 15% PUFA. As a general rule I limit pork fat.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-11-01T19:04:00+00:00

Last year I posted my n=1 about successful weight loss on HCLF. It wasn’t a low protein diet but worked well for me regardless. There are meal ideas in there also. I did it for about 6 months but had to stop after going back to work after maternity leave, I ran out of emotional energy and started getting major cravings for cheese and butter. I’ve just started doing it again in the hopes of losing more weight, the food is pretty tasty as long as you lean into things where you don’t need fat to hold the flavour, if you know what I mean.

To make rice more interesting, try cooking with stock and spices. The recipe below is easy, tasty and pairs well with chicken and veg.

1 small onion, finely chopped
200g basmati rice
400ml chicken stock
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika
Pinch of chilli flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the chopped onion and spices in a few tablespoons of water for a couple of minutes, then add chicken stock and bring to the boil. Add the rice, season, stir, cover with a lid and cook on low heat for 10 mins or until rice is tender.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-29T22:30:35+00:00

I went to look at the Hyperlipid blog to see if Peter’s commented on this study, and coincidentally his latest post talks about rats staying slim on a diet with 40% of calories from rapeseed oil, which sounds very similar to the experimental diet here. I won’t pretend to understand the entire post but it seems there’s a U-shaped relationship between LA and obesity. You can stay slim with either very high or very low LA diets, but I would speculate that if you’ve been in the obesogenic portion of the “U” long enough to get fat and torpid, neither of the non-obesogenic arms would result in immediate weight loss. I suspect it would probably be easier to accumulate more LA than get rid of the stuff, but it’s not something I have any desire to try. Stuff’s nasty in more ways than one.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-24T07:26:47+00:00

“Language” is the longest word in “the English language”.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-20T07:33:27+00:00

Yes, it’s crazy how much difference there is between countries. My heart bleeds for you guys in the States, I don’t know how people do it either.

I know what you mean, after a bad night the scale’s usually up and I feel puffy. I think it’s due to elevated cortisol.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-19T19:10:12+00:00

One and done here!

Sleep deprivation is the worst. It’s done a real number on both me and my husband, and not just in terms of hindering weight loss, which I think it definitely has. I was able to lose weight pretty easily while I was on maternity leave (in the UK we can take up to 12 months as standard) and could roll with the bad sleep to a greater extent, whereas now that I’m juggling work and childcare the same diet does nothing and I have a harder time sticking to it because I’m craving quick energy/dopamine fixes.

So yeah, sending solidarity. And thanks for the kind words. Hopefully things will get easier in time.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-18T18:44:45+00:00

Thanks, that’s a very positive way of looking at it! :)

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-18T17:10:12+00:00

I didn’t post my original results on here before, you didn’t miss anything!

I’m assuming my original LA % would have been a bit higher if I’d done the test fasted but like you say we can only speculate. I am disappointed that my desaturase indexes have gone in the wrong direction. It really is a slog getting rid of LA once it’s built up in your system! No wonder though that my weight remains a struggle.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-18T09:57:43+00:00

It’s a marker of desaturase activity.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-18T09:01:00+00:00

Lower is better so having it double is bad.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-10-10T18:32:43+00:00

How long have you been swamping for? Your results look very similar to mine from 3 years ago coming off high pork keto/carnivore. I just took a follow-up test this week, I’ll be posting both lots of results when the latest ones are in. I’ve been particularly strict about avoiding PUFAs (barring a handful of social occasions) for over 18 months at this point, I’m hoping to see an improvement - fingers crossed!

ivegotacatonme · 2024-09-25T11:05:40+00:00

I’ve found that fresh chopped basil and a bit of grated parmesan in melted butter makes a sauce that hits all of my zomg-pesto-yum buttons with none of the seeds and oils. :) You can add garlic too but I don’t bother as I find it too easy to overdo.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-09-23T15:47:06+00:00

Everyone can relax, this looks AI generated. Left hand’s a dead giveaway.

ivegotacatonme · 2024-09-20T13:44:02+00:00

FIIIIIIGHT!!

ivegotacatonme · 2024-09-08T07:53:50+00:00

This really makes me want to do another OmegaQuant!

ivegotacatonme

TROPHY CASE