Q&A: Why You Feel Fat on a Low Carb Diet and Could You Eat Fats If You have High Cholesterol?

How is your week? Mine is wonderful! I am meeting more great people and I am really excited to have them in my life. they somehow make me feel complete and enrich my personality!

Thank you for all your messages. I decided to answer the questions why you feel fat, when you start a HFLC diet; could you eat fats if you have high cholesterol and why do I eat avocados.

Here are my answers. I’d love to read your opinion, so share it in the comments below.

Hello, Ines!

This is my third day following a low-carb, high-fat diet and I am feeling terrible. I feel that I am visibly gaining weight- and I wasn’t fat when I started the diet. I am just looking for a way to balance the body fat percentage without starving myself.

And because I am a programmer, I sit about 8 hours a day and even though I work out in the evening, I feel that I am getting fatter because of the big fat intake. I don’t eat junk foods at all.

My question is, is this gonna become better? I feel disgusting- heavy, slow, fatter. I hope that I won’t need to run additional laps, because of this “great diet”.

Considering what I just read, I guess that the reason behind feeling like this is hidden, in the fact that before you started the HFLC diet, you used to limit your fat intake. Now, when you are trying to follow a HFLC diet, the problem might be that your mind is refusing to accept the fact that fats aren’t gonna make you fat. Sometimes the feeling and the perception might be delusive.  My advice is to track your progress with pictures and take your measurements with a centimeter. Thus you will understand if it is just a delusive feeling or there is a true reason to be worried.

Besides that be careful about some of the mistakes most people make when they initially start eating a HFLC diet. Read about them HERE.

Hello, Ines. I’d like to ask you something about avocados and peanut butter. I noticed that you often eat avocado. I know about its healthy qualities, but I do not know why and with which foods I am supposed to combine it, in order to stay away from overdoing the fats.  And when do you think it’s best to eat peanut butter- for breakfast or?

I’ve noticed that people either love avocado or they totally hate it. There is no middle. I am one of those people who love avocado and I usually add it to my salads or eggs. 100 grams of avocado has about 20 grams of fats, so I use it as an additional source of fats. As a whole I think that it is far better to emphasize on eating animal fats, than eating vegetable fats, but avocados are something like a variety on my menu.

When it comes to peanut butter, a you probably know, I am not a big fan of it. You can easily eat too much of it. And in reality it is not the best food. But you could use it as an add on to your meal.

When are you gonna eat it, depends on how and why you are eating it. If you eat it, as something that is supposed to substitute the sweet things in your nutrition, you could add it to your dinner, because the sweet cravings, usually come at night.

Personally I do not recommend you to eat it in the morning. In the morning your hormonal status is in its best, so you can burn more fat. And in my opinion peanut butter is not the best way to start your day. As you know, contrary to the popular belief, that you could it whatever you want, as long as you eat it in the morning, I think that your breakfast should be one of your best, highest quality meals. What you have for breakfast, determines how you will feel later on through the day. So if you eat peanut butter, add it either with your afternoon snack or if you do not have one- with your dinner.

Ines, I have high cholesterol. Do you think that I could eat a HFLC diet?

Nobody needs to eat a HFLC diet, more than somebody who has high cholesterol. As I’ve said a billion times, high cholesterol has nothing to do with the fat in foods.

Cholesterol is essential to your body! As weird as it may sound- your body needs cholesterol in order to function properly! How is that possible? Well that is due to the important role that cholesterol plays in your body! Cholesterol is an essential part of your cellular makeup, fat digestion, the root of vitamin D
and it is also a building block to hormones that regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, balance minerals and the functions of progesterone and estrogen. Actually the reason behind elevated cholesterol has nothing to do with dietary cholesterol ( the one that you ingest with your food).

Dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with blood cholesterol. To understand it you should first know some things about glucose. When you eat carbs, that leads to elevated blood sugar, but because sugar can’t stay in your blood for too long, otherwise it is toxic, your body produces insulin to take the sugar away from the bloodstream. While the sugar is in your blood, it destroys the walls of your blood vessels. When that happens your body needs to compensate this in some way and here comes cholesterol. Your body uses cholesterol as a band- aid in order to temporarily cover any lesions in the arterial wall. And what is the problem with that?

Actually what happens next is that cholesterol plaque gets acted on by macrophages and is oxidized, which leads it to take more space in the artery, thus that slows down arterial flow and it could get to a point where it breaks loose and forms a clot. And because it is easier to claim somebody being guilty instead of searching deeper, cholesterol gets all the blame. And actually cholesterol was just trying to protect you! Too bad you are avoiding it because it is dangerous, and instead are stuffing yourself with sugars, which are actually the reason behind all that drama!

Besides that, your body can produce cholesterol, when it needs it. That’s why instead of avoiding fats, start eating them and limit the intake of processed foods.

In case you want to know more read this:

It’s Insulin, Not Cholesterol That You Should Watch Like a Hawk

Why We MUST Eat Fats