I’ve never really got the detail of LCHF. I see people recommending high fat meats, cream etc and it’s counter intuitive for me. So I do eat loads of meat and fish but it’s lean. I cook with butter rather than oil. I eat more eggs than you could shake a stick at! The (cheese - higher fat, lower carbs) oatcakes only a couple of times a week. In all honesty I think my problem is the ****** quality of the carbs I’m eating, and the fact that I’m having the bulk of them in the evening.
I can’t decide between committing to Keto or IF. The sort of person I am, I like to follow clear instructions - can you link me to some detailed programmes for either or both of these? I don’t like to spend lots of time researching this sort of stuff. I do that sort of thing for a living, and it requires me to do it in depth. I’m more keen to just adopt a recommendation and go with it for my T2 management.
It *is* counter-intuitive, because we've been hearing for 4 or 5 decades that fats are bad for us. So it does take a bit of a mind flip, after all that. Okay, the basics, which you probably already know: There are 3 macro nutrients. Fats, carbs and protein. If you cut one, you have to up at least one of the others, otherwise you won't get enough micro-nutrients, and be hungry all the time as well. You need to get enough vitamins and minerals, or you're going to crash and burn (fatigue, malnutrition, heck, even scurvy can happen if one goes to extremes, but you seem like a level-headed type, so...). Carbs make bloodsugars skyrocket, protein makes them go up a little but not a lot, fats however... Fats are a bloodsugar flatline, they won't impact them negatively at all. Better yet, if you have fat with the carbs you do eat, it slows down their uptake, keeping your BS from spiking as badly as they would have otherwise. So for a T2, fats are good. And cheeses and eggs are fatty as well, as is oil, so yeah, that's all okay... It's just the oat part that might trip you up, but it's really up to you how many carbs you want to eat per day. I kept dropping lower because my weight-loss stalled and I really, really want to get rid of my fatty liver. (I had so much fat packed on there when diagnosed, they thought the entire liver was a tumor and I was about to kick the bucket. Still here, no cancer, never was. Woohoo.) Anyway, Keto and IF help me do that, tackle what I need to tackle. But it really is different for everyone.
A lot of people combine keto with IF because they do complement each other. On keto you start burning (stored) fats instead of carbs for fuel, so you have to be careful about staying in ketosis as long as you want to stay in, because if your carb intake creeps up, you're out of ketosis and you start burning carbs again. (Getting back into ketosis takes a few days. And I hate those days because I ache all over when that happens.) If you are in ketosis, you feel hungry less, so then it is easier to start with intermittent fasting, which can take a load of shapes... For me, I skip breakfast and postpone having lunch as long as possible. Usually that means I eat two meals a day. Some go OMAD (One Meal A Day), others fast 24 hours, two non-consecutive days per week... All depends on what you want to do and what you feel works for you, your rythm and your body. So while there's loads of methods I can point you to, it really is a highy personal choice. But alright: dietdoctor.com caters to LCHF, Keto/IF, and the Diabetes Code book by Dr. Jason Fung is an excellent (and not dry) read with everything you ever wanted to know and more you didn't even know you needed to know. Then there are apps like Keto Diet Tracker where you log your meals, and they figure how many macrontrients you need per day, depending on age, weight, sex, so that's helpful and rather straight forward.
Basically, if you don't want to figure out what works for you at length, just go for a one-size fits all. LCHF, you kinda have to figure out for yourself as it depends on how many carbs you want to eat/can process. Keto, well... That's just 20 grams of carbs a day or less, plenty of fats and fluids, moderate protein, done. (Let an app calculate your needs if you want specific numbers to stick to.). Can't get much more straight forward than that, really. No idea of this helps at all, but one can hope.