low carb and low unsaturated fat?
atlathemis
Posts: 18 Member
Hi Everyone! I've been doing low carb on and off since February of this year. I've been eating a lot of saturated fats like cheese, cheese and more cheese. Whole fat yoghurt and whole fat cottage cheese. I have started having chest pains and I'm concerned that all the unsaturated fats might be the reason. I've been to the doctor and basically didn't go through with all the tests because my insurance won't cover most of the costs. The doc says I don't fit the profile for heart disease but I also know my low carb, high saturated fat diet is not at all typical -and not what she had in mind. Trying to explain it to the doc didn't get me anywhere. She just sorted of blinked and said low carb is good (yeah, but what about all the saturated fats????)
So, I was curious if you all may have recipes or food recommendations for low unsaturated fat foods that are also low carb? I know about nuts and avocados and olive oil. I should mention, I don't eat meat but do eat seafood.
I figured I can't be the only person who has gone through this so maybe there are people on this board with some good ideas. I appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks.
So, I was curious if you all may have recipes or food recommendations for low unsaturated fat foods that are also low carb? I know about nuts and avocados and olive oil. I should mention, I don't eat meat but do eat seafood.
I figured I can't be the only person who has gone through this so maybe there are people on this board with some good ideas. I appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks.
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You may be asking the wrong question. It seems highly unlikely that you could have given yourself heart disease in under a year regardless of diet.
You may not tolerate dairy at a super high level. It is very normal for adults to stop tolerating it as they age.
That said, there are "better" fats - coconut oil (which is a saturated fat but not the same as what is in cheese), MCT Oil (which is a modified coconut oil), olive oil, avocado, etc.
If you do eat fish, sardines are a good replacement for cheese for a snack. Just don't get the ones in soybean or vegetable oil. Get the ones in olive oil or maybe mustard sauce. Soybean oil and most vegetable oil are high in omega 6 which cause inflammation. You need omega 6, but you will get all you need without adding it in here.
Like anything, fat is something you can't classify properly into just "saturated" and "unsaturated" as there are different types of both.
Digestive issues can cause discomfort in your chest - just think about heartburn. See if removing or at least significantly reducing, dairy helps with this. You can use ghee in place of butter if needed, but most with dairy sensitivity can tolerate butter.4 -
Use olive oil, avocado oil, and cold pressed olive oils if you prefer.
That said, saturated fats are not harmful, the seed oils are due to their processing, corn, rapeseed, sunflower etc. oils should not be eaten. The seeds themselves no problem, it is the processing that does the damage. Google it
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Chest pain is scary but there are a variety of reasons other than heart disease.
You can reduce your saturated fats while staying low carb. Have a look at dietdoctor.com or some of the other resources in the launchpad. Change out saturated fats for mono saturated. Or raise your carbs a little and lower your fats. I lose weight as long as I stay around the 60g carbs mark.
If you are worried about the amount of cheese you are eating, then perhaps cut back?! Dr Westman suggests no more than 4 oz a day on a low carb diet which, IMO, is a lot. I find that cheese stalls my weigh loss and creates other problems.
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Suddenly having chest pains after following low carb for a bit?
Have you had any recent cheats? Be honest now...
I suspect a gall bladder flare up associated with some recent high carb food ???
Gall bladder pain can feel very painful in the chest. Like you can't breathe2 -
Oh. And saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease anyway...
http://drcate.com/what-every-doctor-should-know-about-ancel-keys-experiments/1 -
Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »Suddenly having chest pains after following low carb for a bit?
Have you had any recent cheats? Be honest now...
I suspect a gall bladder flare up associated with some recent high carb food ???
Gall bladder pain can feel very painful in the chest. Like you can't breathe
I think you might be right about the gall bladder thing. Gall stones can cause severe chest pains. It is difficult for drs. to tell the difference, went through this at ER with my DR about this time last year in fact.
OP might want to be checked for gall stones. Oh and the "party line" is you have to go low fat for gall bladder/stone issues, that is another lie.1 -
Low fat and low carb = starvation. You can't get all (most) of your intake from protein. It's not likely that the fat is causing chest pains, it just doesn't work that way.1
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Soon after I switched to keto 18 months ago, I would often get a tight feeling on the left side of my chest and left upper arm, not exactly pain, but definitely troubling enough to make me consider giving up on keto, despite all the health benefits I had gained from LCHF. I suspected that my heavy cheese consumption might be the problem, so I tried eliminating all cheese from my diet for a few weeks. The tight feeling soon went away and has not returned since then, even after I began eating moderate amounts of cheese again (no more than 1 or 2 ounces a day--about half of what I was previously eating). I generally stick to European sheep milk cheeses like manchego and basque shepherd cheese, which I assume are mostly grass-fed, and avoid cheddar, which is the variety I most associate with the tight feeling.4
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@atlathemis - Depending on the quantity of yummy dairy products you're consuming, I wonder if you might be taking in more carbs than you imagine from lactose in cottage cheese and other dairy products (including some yogurts) that hasn't been converted to lactic acid......
Saturated fat may not stop your heart, but I'm not about to put all my eggs in the bacon basket until some anthropologist discovers that the cave dwellers up our ancestral tree ate Hormel products.
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cstehansen wrote: »You may be asking the wrong question. It seems highly unlikely that you could have given yourself heart disease in under a year regardless of diet.
You may not tolerate dairy at a super high level. It is very normal for adults to stop tolerating it as they age.
That said, there are "better" fats - coconut oil (which is a saturated fat but not the same as what is in cheese), MCT Oil (which is a modified coconut oil), olive oil, avocado, etc.
If you do eat fish, sardines are a good replacement for cheese for a snack. Just don't get the ones in soybean or vegetable oil. Get the ones in olive oil or maybe mustard sauce. Soybean oil and most vegetable oil are high in omega 6 which cause inflammation. You need omega 6, but you will get all you need without adding it in here.
Like anything, fat is something you can't classify properly into just "saturated" and "unsaturated" as there are different types of both.
Digestive issues can cause discomfort in your chest - just think about heartburn. See if removing or at least significantly reducing, dairy helps with this. You can use ghee in place of butter if needed, but most with dairy sensitivity can tolerate butter.
I definitely see your point: I probably didn't give myself heart disease in a year. I'll look into the dairy thing and see if I'm developing an intolerance. Thanks for the suggestion. Digestive issues had occurred to me and I tried taking Tums at one point, but I won't rule it out because, you're right, it does seem like it could fit.0 -
retirehappy wrote: »Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »Suddenly having chest pains after following low carb for a bit?
Have you had any recent cheats? Be honest now...
I suspect a gall bladder flare up associated with some recent high carb food ???
Gall bladder pain can feel very painful in the chest. Like you can't breathe
I think you might be right about the gall bladder thing. Gall stones can cause severe chest pains. It is difficult for drs. to tell the difference, went through this at ER with my DR about this time last year in fact.
OP might want to be checked for gall stones. Oh and the "party line" is you have to go low fat for gall bladder/stone issues, that is another lie.
Thank you to you both for suggesting I look into gall bladder or gall stones. I googled gall bladder issues and my symptoms do match up. Next time I see my primary doc, I'll ask her about that.1 -
Thanks everyone! I appreciate the feedback 3
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I had a similar issue a while back. For me it boiled down to simple electrolyte imbalance, specifically potassium. I started taking a broad-spectrum Vitamin K2 supplement along with making sure to dissolve and drink 2 bouillon cubes every day and shortly thereafter the issue resolved itself. No more strange heart flutters, etc.2
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atlathemis wrote: »Thank you to you both for suggesting I look into gall bladder or gall stones. I googled gall bladder issues and my symptoms do match up. Next time I see my primary doc, I'll ask her about that.
Just to ease your mind until then, Phinney and Volek mention in their first book that a low carb, low fat diet (as opposed to LCHF) can increase the risk of gallstones during times of rapid weight loss, since the gallbladder doesn't get the signal to empty itself if dietary fat is low. This apparently can lead to a cholesterol buildup that raises the risk of gallstones and is why low carb diets have in the past been associated with gallstones. They say that new stone formation rarely happens when dietary fat levels are kept high.4 -
atlathemis wrote: »Thank you to you both for suggesting I look into gall bladder or gall stones. I googled gall bladder issues and my symptoms do match up. Next time I see my primary doc, I'll ask her about that.
Just to ease your mind until then, Phinney and Volek mention in their first book that a low carb, low fat diet (as opposed to LCHF) can increase the risk of gallstones during times of rapid weight loss, since the gallbladder doesn't get the signal to empty itself if dietary fat is low. This apparently can lead to a cholesterol buildup that raises the risk of gallstones and is why low carb diets have in the past been associated with gallstones. They say that new stone formation rarely happens when dietary fat levels are kept high.
Great piece of info!0
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