Being self reliant starts with you looking after yourself, building your capability to stand on your own two feet and face harsh reality. The goal is to become more capable of looking after yourself, your family, as well as your neighbours and friends, and ultimately become an asset within your society, not a liability.
Central to that objective is your health, strength, mobility and general well being.
This article describes how to go about adopting a Low Carb – High Fat (LCHF) diet, if one so chooses. It is not meant to convince you of the benefits of such a diet, in preference to other diets. We suggest you conduct your own research in that regard, and decide for yourself accordingly.
Latest research and widely reported results suggest that long term health is directly improved by certain new diets – specifically those based on a low carb/high fat approach, such as the Keto diet.
The basic principle these diets focus on, is replacing carbs with healthy fats as your primary source of daily energy. This has many long term health benefits such as avoiding detrimental health afflictions caused by metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, which are becoming a huge problem world wide.
That is provided you eat healthy fats, which are saturated fat from healthy animals, as well as monounsaturated fats from certain fruit flesh, such as olives, avocado and coconuts.
While there are many more detailed guides on how to adopt a low carb/high fat diet, a simple way to understand the objective of this diet is you are not trying to eat less in general, nor eat more protein, but rather to permanently replace carbs with fat as your primary source of daily energy. Thus you only need to make two changes to your diet, at least to start with – which is to cut out, or significantly reduce certain food types from your diet, while focusing on others as being preferred. If you can successfully at least cut out the foods listed below, depriving your body of carbs as your daily source of energy – once you make that transition, you should see quite quick results and feel better in general.
The key to adopting these diets is to cut your sugar and carb intake as aggressively as you can to start with (which forces your body to start relying on fat as it’s daily energy source instead), and then just eat the preferred foods, listed below, to satiety. You will probably find that once you adapt, you will not need to eat a lot to feel satisfied, and you will not get hungry later, the way people often do when relying on carbs as their daily source of energy.
One of the main benefits of a fat based diet is that fat provides more than twice the calorific energy per gram than carbs do, and if you have body fat available, you will probably be burning some of that body fat for your daily energy as well, so you will probably not need to eat a lot of fat to get the same daily energy as before, at least to start with. And in addition, fat is satiating, and the energy provided is slow release and thus long lasting, so you will quickly feel full and not feel the need to constantly eat during the day. Another benefit is consuming fat does not cause massive swings in your blood glucose levels, which carbs and sugars cause, so your mood becomes more calm and stable throughout the day.
Although it is acknowledged that making the transition from a carb based diet, to a fat based diet can be difficult for some people, who are very used to the carb based diet (make sure you get enough electrolytes, up to level 2 teaspoons of salt a day, if you need that). It may take a few days or even weeks to re-train your body, before you convince your body to use fat as its primary source of energy. But many people find once they become “fat adapted”, they feel much better in general, are not hungry all the time, can work and think and even perform moderate exercise for longer before becoming fatigued, sleep better, and where relevant, their weight comes down quite quickly to stable healthy levels, among many other health benefits.
But no matter whether you make the transition gradually, or just go “cold turkey”, your objective must be to significantly reduce, or completely cut out the following food types:
Food you should aim to cut out completely because they are now thought to be generally harmful to your health in the long term:
- Sugar in all its various forms – aim to reduce your sugar intake, to zero ASAP. It is further suggested that you avoid resorting to artificial sweeteners, which are potentially worse than sugar. Rather just steadily reduce your sugar intake until you don’t want it any more (many people find that they no longer like the taste of sugar, once they cut it out – which eliminates the constant craving for sweet things, which is another reason to avoid artificial sweeteners). Make that transition as quickly and aggressively as you can.
- Seed oils such as sunflower oil, canola oils etc. Plants do not want you digesting their seeds, so oil from plant seeds tends to include inflammatory irritants, or otherwise cause health issues, because plants have evolved to try discourage animals from digesting their seeds.
- Food fried in seed oils – oxidised seed oils are particularly unhealthy.
- Highly processed foods – any food made in a factory/industrial type environment with a long list of mostly synthetic chemicals, colourants, additives etc, or food which is hydrogenated, or full of artificial preservatives, or includes “thickeners”, or “taste modifiers” such as MSG etc.
Food you should aim to significantly reduce (ideally to no more than 5% of your daily calorific intake for all these food types combined, in order to become fat adapted):
- Starchy vegetables (potatoes etc)
- Fructose (including sugary/sweet fruit)
- Grain or wheat based food (rice, bread, cereals, pap, pasta, oats etc)
Preferred Foods in Your Diet:
- Animal meat (preferably grass fed/free range)
- Wild caught fish
- Eggs (preferably free range)
- Animal saturated fats (eg butter, cream and lard)
- Monounsaturated fats (eg. extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil)
- Non starchy vegetables
- Food in its natural “whole” form (ideally straight from the farm, preferably prepared and cooked by yourself, and not cut up, our ground up too finely)
- Fermented foods like yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, kefir, apple cider vinegar
- Fruits like avocado which are high in monounsaturated fat, as well as fibre, but low in digestible carbs and sugar.
- Nuts like macadamias which are high in monounsaturated fat.
Now obviously we are all different individuals, perhaps with specific sensitivities and allergies. One should tailor one’s diet based on what actually works for you. Sustainable results are the objective which should guide you. If your health improves, your weight stabilises to a healthy level, your energy levels are sufficient for your daily activities, then the diet is working – if not, then you may need to adapt accordingly, or even take a completely different approach. You should see results within a few weeks, and can thus make up your mind on that basis.
