High fat diet to lose weight

[miacova]

My trainer is putting me onto a high fat diet (flaxseed oil, walnuts etc) and I am wondering if I should be getting cholestorol levels etc. checked before doing this type of diet.

Has anyone done this before? What have your experiences been?
Did your cholestorol levels rise when doing this type of diet?

 

[timtim]

the diet will more than likely have little effect on your cholesterol if the fats are healthy.

if you want to see where you are before the diet and after i would say go for it, always good to know.

 

[RDJ]

High fat is good, but make sure you get enough protein too, to prevent muscle breakdown. Back when we were hunters we ate nothing but meat in good times. That's what your body is designed for, meat and fish. In lesser times we ate nuts, berries, stuff like that. Things that you can eat without cooking. Things you have to cook are indigestible otherwise, which means the human body did not know how to use it untill mankind started using fire. Our main diet is fish and meat. High in protein, high in fat. Low in carbs. It's what we ate for millions of years.

For more on this topic, google for paleo diet.

 

[RDJ]

Also see this article. We seem to be 100% carnivores physically.

 

[sublime35]

Many of our ancestors also died of intestinal diseases from high protein and high fat without much fiber.

 

[RDJ]

They did? How would you know? Any data backing that up ...

Please read the source I posted. We are terribly inefficient carbohydrate processors just looking at it from a scientific point of view. Ofcourse eating nothing but raw meat has its downsides

 

[RDJ]

I never tried this myself, I just found out. But I think the logic behind it makes a lot of sense. Eat what we ate for millions of years. Agricultural products have only been available for a few thousand years. Back then we had a very different carbs/fat/protein ratio in our diets, and I doubt that there were many sick and fat neanderthals with weird nutritional diseases otherwise our specie would not be here today.

If you eat like a neanderthal you can also eat fruit (berries) and nuts. So there are some carbs ofcourse. Nothing however that needs cooking. It's a very interesting theory, which I plan on trying out myself. Someday

 

[RDJ]

From this source:

The Paleolithic Diet a.k.a. Neanderthin is the diet that we humans are genetically adapted to eat. The paleolithic age is the same as the Stone Age - so this is a stone age diet or life style. This has been humanity's preferred diet for something like 2.5 million years, and humans have only genetically changed 0.005% since the introduction of agriculture (the Neolithic). As a rule, agricultural (and technological) products are not healthy to eat, and we should predominantly try to eat only those whole foods that are healthy in their raw state (though almost all humans, including hunter-gatherers cook their food).

 

[miacova]

Guys, thanks for your responses - some good info to check through.
I have also spoken to a couple of other health professionals as I wanted to get a good view of what this diet may do before starting it and all agree that if anything, my bad cholesterol level should decline.
I having been training and eating healthy for the past 7 months with good results, so I should be ok to start this diet but I will still get a full checkup in a couple of weeks just as a precaution.

 

[sublime35]

hey rdj, I don't have any online sources, what I've heard was from the History Channel. As long as you get enough fiber in a higher fat diet you should be okay, but fat can clog up your insides, which can lead to problems.