Consume Butter and Cream

I weigh myself every day, even if I only report it on this blog once a week.  I have been trying an experiment recently, where I am consciously adding more fat to my diet and eating less protein.  I am striving for 75% fat, 15-20% protein, and the rest in carbs (5-10% for those of you bad at math).  In particular, I make sure I eat two or three eggs per day, use butter for cooking and seasoning, eat fatty cuts of meat (bacon!), and eat more cream (in sauces or whipped up and eaten with berries).  The weight keeps coming off.  Even though I do not make any attempt to count calories and eat until I am full (but I don't overeat), the weight keeps coming off.  So far this week, I have dropped 3.6 pounds.  Of course, I avoid most carbs except for green vegetables plus I am active (we walk a lot in Europe), and both of those activities contribute to the weight loss success.  But the butter and cream are great sources of fuel and help me to feel full. A recent study demonstrated that children who eat saturated fat and full cream dairy products were healthier than those who did not.

And I won't be dying from a heart attack any time soon.  Remember: saturated fats do not cause heart disease.  The fat in mothers' milk is 60% saturated and our brains are 60% fat.  If saturated fats are so bad, why is so much of it in mothers' milk?  We are designed to consume saturated fats (by evolution or our creator, whatever your belief system).  We've been around for a long time, and it's only in the past few decades that Americans in particular have become hung up on the concept of saturated fat.  And as our rates of saturated fat consumption have plunged (see table 1 in this linked document), cardiovascular disease has increased. Something does not compute.

So go ahead, eat butter and cream if you are following a low carb diet.  Don't gorge on it, and stop when you are full.  But eat butter and cream.  Put butter on your veggies, cook your meat in butter, make delicious sauces using cream for your meats, eat cream with your berries, add cream to your scrambled eggs, etc. and you will be healthier and lose weight.