Do High Fat Diets Really Work? My 2 Week Weight Loss Experiment.

For a very long period of time, my weight hovered between 181-184 pounds and for a guy who is 5’11 and works out quite intensely weekly, that’s not really a bad thing, far from what someone can call overweight or obese, BUT a big issue for me was that I always had problems with my sides and belly fat. 

And while my training regiment would burn up to 10,000 calories a week (yes it is very intense), unfortunately, I would supplement most of losses (caloric losses) with foods high in carbohydrates. We’re talking McDonalds, chicken and rice platters (A New York dish), Dunkin Donuts muffins, and all of these things were timed to be eaten post workout so any type of fat loss gains I’d make would be completely broken by the food eaten up and while my fitness level increased, my less than pretty side areas (love handles) did not make any improvements. 

Contents

Enter the idea of trying a high fat diet…

After reading about the concept through the 3 week diet and then further getting into the specific science of it from the Eat Fat, Get Thin book, I finally decided to change up my eating patterns and run an experiment. It wasn’t hard to implement, but as I will reveal, after 2 weeks, I had some major changes to my body…

I would eat anywhere from 3-5 meals a day. 

On mornings, my initial “meal” was a can of cod liver, a cucumber, and sometimes a bowl of flaxseeds mixed with boiling water which made it feel like oatmeal. I would also eat greens such as spinach, arugula and more.

Now the caloric combination of these foods didn’t really amount to much, but a great deal of those foods were very high in fat, especially the cod liver and it’s oil, which I admit to forcing myself to drink. We’re talking 5-6 teaspoons and while the taste isn’t quite “exquisite”, I will explain the benefits of it later.

Now usually my second meal would be dinner in which I’d have something like sushi, chicken soup or another flaxseed meal

And finally for supper (3rd meal), I may have had sushi (if I didn’t have it for dinner) and sometimes a scrambled egg meal consisting of 3-4, another great one for this diet. On some other nights, I’d eat fresh shrimp, maybe a pound of it.

Now this regiment was for none training days. For training days, my first meal would remain the same, but sometimes I’d eat a little bit more and even eat a sandwich to load up on carbs. 

Then during my training sessions, which can last anywhere up to 5-7 hours with 2, 1 hour breaks in between, during those breaks, I’d take a small meal with me which included scrambled eggs, quinoa and maybe the same flaxseed meal and time to eat half for the first hour break, then the other half for the other break.

Then when I would get home, I’d finish the day with sushi usually because I was too tired to make anything. Thus, on training days, I would eat 4 or more meals.

Doing this for 2 weeks resulted in me jumping from 180-184 DOWN to…

174-176 pounds. At best, a 10 pound weight difference. And considering how I did not limit how much I ate, eating this way got me to lose weight and I saw it on my sides, I really did. 

Now as an extra thing, I forgot to mention that I added 2-3 very fatty, but healthy oils:

Coconut, hemp and flaxseed, all of which I took sips of multiple times a day and/or used the coconut one whenever I would fry eggs. 

So with about 50-60% of my diet consisting of fat, I lost weight. Thus the 3 week diet and Eat Fat Get Thin’s science was right. 

The health benefits of a high fat diet:

While most of the benefits are explained in this book detailing this way of eating, the main benefits besides faster metabolism is that they help reduce inflammation and as someone who is very physically active, I put a lot of stress on my knees and as such, reducing inflammation there helped my mobility. 

In fact, I had very little to complain about in terms of soreness and injuries while being on this type of eating regiment for 2 weeks.

My mind also felt better and clearer and overall my energy levels were pretty high. 

Back to weight gain:

So I weight myself this morning to discover I jumped back up to 179 pounds and the reason for it is simple:

After the 2 week experiment finished and I was thrilled at my results, I let myself go in that I started to eat more of the carb heavy foods I talked about before. 

Over a 3 day period after my initial diet was all it took for my weight to jump back up which shows how fast acting carbs can be on your body if you’re not careful. 

Is there anyway to eat carbs without gaining weight?

Only if the timing is correct and by that I mean 2 things:

Eating a high carb meal before a workout will help you burn of the calories from that meal and prevent it from turning into fat. So in my cases, before I’d go training, I’d eat something more carb heavy, but usually, most of my carbs came from drinking tea with honey, otherwise, most of the foods were low carb.

Now after the workout, if I was tired and had sushi, one big problem there is the white rice which is loaded with carbs, but on the opposing end, there was fresh salmon and avocado to kind of balance it.

Never the less, my object there was to eat and then go to sleep when I’d feel hungry because it would take longer to burn off calories while I slept vs if I waited to burn them off before sleep.

As a result, by timing my carb intake in this manner, I was able to at least limit the “damage” they would do to my body and at least use it wisely for energy.

But if you can, maintain a high fat, low carb diet as long as you can, you will totally lose weight as a result like I did.

If you’re going to try and redo my type of eating plan, here is a short list of foods that I added. I didn’t count calories, it was just a manner of changing the foods of my diet to see the changes:

  • Eggs (boiled, scrambled is fine).
  • Avacado.
  • Shrimp.
  • Chicken.
  • Beef.
  • Herring, tuna, cod liver (and the oil from all of them).
  • The oils from coconut, olive, hemp and flaxseeds.
  • Green vegetables that are low in starch.
  • Salmon.
  • Quinoa.
  • Flaxseed meal (not the oil).

That is a regular list of things you can mix up anyway, but that should make up over half of what you eat weekly. Should you desire higher effects or more weight loss, do the 3 week diet as it takes this dieting idea much farther.

12 thoughts on “Do High Fat Diets Really Work? My 2 Week Weight Loss Experiment.”

  1. Very interesting concept eating a high fat diet and losing weight, actually fat is not as much as a cause for us gaining weight it sounds as we all have thought for years by your experience.

    I think high fat foods are more filling and maybe for some people, it would benefit them from eating as many calories per day, I am going to give your fat diet a try and let you know how it goes for me in a few weeks

    Reply
    • That sounds awesome Jeffrey, just remember, it’s not about eating as many calories as possible, it’s just about eating the high fat foods. Don’t force yourself to overeat to put this to the test, eat as much as you normally do, but eat these foods and not the bad ones, then see how much weight you lose.

      Reply
  2. Wow your experiment with a high-fat and low-carb 3 week diet is very interesting. I’m actually a big fan of quinoa, so try to eat it in place of rice or pasta normally. When I do I just feel so much better. I think it makes so much sense how good healthy fats are for the body, including avocados and fish oils. I actually noticed the condition of my skin and hair is so much better when I include them in my diet. Thanks for the info!

    Reply
    • Yes it’s true that healthy fats directly aid the skin and improve it’s look. So something that is good for the skin will naturally also be good for the body in this case.

      Reply
  3. Have you checked the amount of calories you ate during the two weeks you tried this high-fat diet?

    My point is that carbohydrates contain a lot of calories which you burn faster than fat and maybe by stopping eating carbs you simply ate less calories and therefore lost weight.

    There are just soo many different diets and soo many people who claim to have reached good results following them.

    Anyway I found it interesting and I might try a diet consisting of less carbs. I would like to loose 10 pounds myself.

    Thank you.

    Reply
    • I didn’t exactly measure the intake, but it is truly I ate less carbs over this period Jojo. Because I exercise a lot, I couldn’t really eat less, so I just substituted my previous foods that had carbs with more high fat foods.

      Reply
  4. This sounds similar to the concepts behind the Atkins Diet. I had a friend who was very overweight lose a ton of weight on that diet, but once he stopped and went back to his old eating habits, the weight piled back on very rapidly.

    Is this similar, or are there some differences? I’m very intrigued by this as I could certainly stand to lose 10 -20 pounds myself. The men in my family have a long history of all of their weight going to their gut, so I’m trying to prevent that.

    Reply
  5. Hello, I really liked your post, it was an informative read. I think it was absolutely nuts how you lost 10 lbs in the span of 2 weeks.

    I kind of want to experiment and try your diet, although I would have to find a way to get over eating fish. I don’t know why but I feel nauseous whenever eating fish. Haven’t really talked to the doctor about it, if fish ends up being a bad idea for me, you have any recommended replacements?

    Reply
  6. Hi there… Very interesting. I’m wondering if this was just the right diet for your constitution (body type) and that’s why you had so much success with it. Not everyone is put together the same (think about Mick Jaggar’s body type and compare it to Luciano Pavarotti) and while a high-fat diet may be good for one body type, it may not be good for another. Just my thoughts as I was reading the post… I’m going to keep this in mind for post-holiday! 🙂 Thank you!

    Reply
    • No doubt body types do play a role Jackie, but let’s face it, we as humans generally have the same anatomy when it comes to things like circulation and digestion and we create in large part similar ways to healthy and unhealthy foods so it would make sense that a high fat diet helps most people who do it.

      Reply

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