I personally would not get anywhere if I'm making a regular habit of ice cream - assuming you mean commercial ice cream.

But I second the above. A food diary goes a long way to reveal the truth of what we are really eating, and it will at least make it much easier for folks here to provide advice.

As to which kinds of fat, I try to stick to saturated animal-sourced fat: I avoid lean cuts of meat, I add butter. And of course, there's coconut oil, which I use in my coffee (and find I need less cream as a result), and I use refined for cooking anything other than bacon. Haven't managed to save the bacon grease from a pan to use again; people keep throwing it out on me around here.

Well, unless you are eating an 8 egg omelette with loads of cheese, butter, ham, and bacon in it, or a pound of bacon with those two fried egges, and two or more chicken legs with skin, you are not eating enough calories.

I recommend you get a digital scale, weigh all your foods in grams (mLs for liquids), and log it. You are 6'3" tall. You should be able to eat, man. So, eat.

Try this calculator. I have found it to be pretty darn accurate.

http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/

sweetteadrinker2 wrote: »

I'll third the calories thing, that sounds like what I eat and I'm a female who's barely 5'2"!

Hell, I eat more than that as a 5'9" woman, and that's usually a single meal. I kid you not, I just had a 5-egg scramble with a couple ounces of ham, cooked in about 3 tbsp butter, and topped with a couple tablespoons of cheese.

Log your food accurately for a couple of weeks and see how you need to tweak.

As for what fats -- pretty much all of them, when used appropriately. Avoid artificial trans fats and industrial seed oils, though. That stuff'll kill you.

But seriously -- coconut oil, lard/bacon grease, tallow, butter, etc for cooking; olive, macadamia, avocado, etc oils for dressings and other cold uses.

You don't want industrial seed oils, because those oils are high polyunsaturated, and the extraction process is harsh and oxidizes them before they even get to the store shelves. Oxidized fats are about as bad as trans fats (and it's oxidized fats that cause atherosclerosis).

Vegetable oils are industrial seed oils. The term "vegetable oil" is actually a misnomer. Usually, vegetable oil is made of some combination of soybean, corn, and/or canola oil, none of which are actually vegetables (corn is a grain, soy is a legume, and canola is a seed). For example, Crisco's liquid "vegetable" oil is actually soybean oil.

9 times out of 10, they undergo chemical extraction processes to get the oil (corn and soybean actually suck for oil production), and so need to be bleached and deodorized to get rid of the rancid smell and make it palatable. And that doesn't even get into the question of genetic modification.

Even if you find one that uses a cold and/or chemical-free extraction process, you're still talking fats that have a high polyunsaturated content, which are extremely heat-sensitive and oxidize easily.

Check out this handy guide -- https://eatingrules.com/Cooking-Oil-Comparison-Chart_02-22-12.pdf -- it's not perfect (I don't like the lumping of saturated and trans fats, but the placement and types of fat provide more context for each; I'm also not keen on the amount of nut oils in the stir-fry section, in those cases, the more monounsaturated fats the better), but it can help with general usages.

kirkor wrote: »

Dragonwolf wrote: »

Oxidized fats are about as bad as trans fats (and it's oxidized fats that cause atherosclerosis).

*koff*reused bacon grease*koff*

Unless you're cooking it on high and filling your house with smoke all the time, your bacon grease shouldn't be oxidized. Lard (which is what bacon grease is) is roughly 50% saturated and 40-45% monounsaturated, providing good protection of the remaining polyunsaturated fats from oxidization. Some of them will inevitably oxidize, but not nearly at the rate or ratio of the oils with a majority of polyunsaturated fats. And as you mentioned in another post, saturated fats are antioxidants.

I say eat the natural fats like chicken skin, lard (or any pork fat), tallow (or any beef fat), butter, egg yolks, avocados, fatty fishes, olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil, and try to avoid the nut/seed/canola/mixed "vegetable" oil/soybean/cottonseed, etc. Maybe eating those on occasion is okay, but not all the time.

As a general rule:
Hot oil: meat-based or coconut oil
Cold oil: plant-based or coconut oil

I use:
Bacon grease
Butter
Ghee
Macadamia nut oil
Walnut oil
Olive oil
Coconut / MCT oil.

-T.

Based on the chart linked by Dragonwolf, it looks like peanut oil would be a reasonable choice for frying. I know it is used in a lot of commercial fryers but I don't think I've ever used it. What are the drawbacks?

I personally stay away from peanuts, as they are legumes, and I avoid legumes for health reasons. I might allow up to one Tbsp peanut butter every once in a while as a treat, but now that I am keto, the carb count alone is not worth it to me.

That's interesting Kirkor. In my mind avocado oil and grapeseed oil should be reversed from where they are on your chart. I still wouldn't want to overheat olive oil and perhaps risk compromising it's quality. I like hemp, avocado and olive oils for salads. Lard is lower than I thought too. I'll stick to my grapeseed oil instead of coconut oil for higher heat. Thanks. ( my chiropractor may be misleading people...)