Right away you can tell that Eat Fat, Lose Fat marries the foundational topics of Nourishing Traditions with helpful information for those trying to lose weight. This book does a fantastic job of helping people understand how nourishing food is the key to both health and weight loss, while dispelling the myths behind low-fat and low-calorie diets. (I recently wrote an article about the destructive nature of low-calorie diets here.)If you’re still wondering if low-fat dieting is healthy, Eat Fat, Lose Fat really puts in the nail in the coffin on this one. Not only does it tackle the issue of low-fat, but it dispels all of the myths about saturated fat as well. If you haven’t starting using real butter on your bread yet, by the end of this book you’ll be wondering why you were ever afraid of this valuable superfood. Same goes for cholesterol: eggs are one of the healthiest foods on the planet, and this book can show you why.
Eating Plans, Carbs, Fats and Proteins
The book includes two weight loss plans, which are very similar but with slightly different calorie recommendations (but no low-calorie dieting allowed!). Really starchy foods (like bread and potatoes) are somewhat limited in these plans, though not banned entirely. Carbohydrates in general are restricted compared to the SAD (Standard American Diet), but much higher than what you would see in the Atkins diet. In concurrence with the title of the book, Eat Fat, Lose Fat recommends over half of your calories to come from fat (mainly saturated fats like butter and coconut oil). To crunch some numbers, macronutrient recommendations from this book are about 60% fat, 30% carbohydrates and 10% protein.
There is also a Health Recovery plan which puts weight loss on the back burner while you let your body recuperate (though you may still lose some weight on this plan) and an Everyday Gourmet plan, which is for those already at their goal weight.
All the plans emphasize nutrient-dense food like eggs, raw milk and butter. Eat Fat, Lose Fat also strongly promotes coconut oil for both health and weight loss. Daily cod liver oil is highly recommended (and for good reason), as well as soaked grains, fermented beverages and other traditional foods.
Nourishing Recipes Included
No need to buy a separate cookbook to delve into these plans. In the back of the book, you’ll find a ton of nourishing recipes. Some may seem a little complicated, but I personally loved the easy coconut macaroons and the home-baked soaked breakfast cereal (I was actually able to stop buying extruded cereals because of this one, yay!). I also learned how to make easy kefir soda with this book. A lot of the recipes emphasize coconut (maybe a few too many for my taste--and I love coconut!). Overall, this is a great alternative to Nourishing Traditions, which is the mother of all traditional recipe collections but can be quite overwhelming for most folks.
Final Thoughts on Eat Fat, Lose Fat
The one thing missing from this book is a sense of flexibility and individuality. No one diet provides the solution to health for everyone. Some people need more carbs and protein than this book recommends. Others may find many of the foods in this book difficult to source or too expensive to afford.
My favorite part of the book is how health is emphasized over weight loss. Sure, you might lose some weight by water fasting or slashing calories, but Eat Fat, Lose Fat shows that these diets really do a number on our bodies and will backfire in the end because of what they do to our hormone systems and our metabolisms.
Overall, I consider Eat Fat, Lose Fat a condensed version of the sometimes overwhelming Nourishing Traditions, with some extra focus on how to enjoy successful weight loss. If Nourishing Traditions seems like a little too much to take in, start with Eat Fat, Lose Fat to get you going in the right direction, with the added bonus of weight loss!
Have you taken a look at this book? If so, I'd love to hear your review!
Buy Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon here.
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I recently finished reading this book, and found it extremely eye opening! One doesn't realize how brainwashed our society has become until you take a moment to reflect on some of the topics discussed in this book.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy the breakfast shake recipes in the book, and I just made the chicken stock, mayonnaise and coconut crackers today as well!
My well-highlighted book is now on loan to my parents, who desperately need to understand that low-fat dieting is NOT the way to go!
I think Eat Fat, Lose Fat really does a great job of dispelling those pesky low-fat myths. I hope it gets through to your parents! I'm lucky that my folks are following this way of eating, too, but it's hard to see my other family and friends going down the wrong path. Everyone goes on a low-fat diet for all the right reasons, just with the wrong information.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear you're enjoying the recipes! We've also enjoyed the shake recipes; they are great for nutrition in a hurry (and aren't we all in a hurry sometimes?).
I did not follow the EFLF diet in its particulars, but I did add Coconut Oil to my diet, reduced grains (because I wasn't able to prepare them properly, got my carbs only via starchy veg in limited amounts, i.e. potatoes or corn), and concentrated on eating eggs, protein, veg, fruit (blueberries were in season!), raw milk, fermented foods. My appetite WAS reduced, I felt SATISFIED and I lost 35 lbs. This was last spring. I got off-track because of summer travels, and reintroduced bread/starch back into my diet, cut back on coconut oil and stopped eating as many eggs. Haven't lost any weight since. I'm hoping to get back on track with it very shortly, and this time add bone broths etc. So I highly recommend the concept, though for me making sure I watched my grains was very important. (Read Good Calories, Bad Calories for an explanation about that...)
ReplyDeleteI definitely need to check out Good Calories, Bad Calories. I know for me, it's not hard to cut out the grains, but once I let them back in I want them all the time!
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad to hear your had so much success using these principles! Bone broths are really important, such a healing food for the whole body. They can really help you recover from not eating right.