The high fat, low protein diet promotes a high fat caloric intake, which supposedly lessens your hunger throughout the day so you eat less total calories. It is similar to the Atkins diet, except that instead of the low carb intake suggested by the Atkins diet, this diet cuts out protein. Followers of this diet are encouraged to eat carbohydrates, which are high in fat and all but eliminate protein from their daily intake. Unfortunately, the high fat and low protein diet is not only scientifically unproven, but also potentially unsafe. This guide will take you through some of the problems surrounding the high fat and low protein diet.
Scientifically Unfounded
The Atkins diet, which encourages high fat and low carbs, is essentially based on the theory that without carbohydrate to burn for energy your body will instead burn fat. With the high fat and low protein diet, your body has plenty of carbohydrate and so has no reason to burn off your high fat intake. The carbohydrate will be burned for energy, and your body will store the excess fat, increasing your body fat percentage and making you unhealthier than before. Although it is true that fat calories may lessen hunger throughout the day, this is a feat more efficiently and healthily accomplished by protein.
Insufficient Protein
The only way that a diet, which is both high fat and high carbohydrate, could let you lose weight would be if you exercised enough to eliminate all the calories consumed over the course of the day. However, exercise requires sufficient protein in the diet in order to repair muscle damage and build further muscle tissue. A diet that is low in protein won’t allow your muscles to be properly cared for and will cause problems with your exercise regimen, as well as your health.
Poor Food Choices
Foods that are simultaneously high in fat and low in protein tend to be very unhealthy. There’s a reason that French fries, Twinkies and other such fatty carbs aren’t recommended in diets: they simply aren’t healthy. In fact, a diet that is high in fat and carbohydrate may be the least healthy diet possible. When this is combined with the fact that your muscles aren’t properly cared for with sufficient protein intake, the high fat and low protein diet is inadvisable, to say the least.
The high fat, low protein diet is not a diet that makes any claims to work or to be good for you in the least; it’s simply a “diet” which is easy to follow due to the profusion of foods which are high in fat and carbohydrate. There is no reason why this diet should work as a weight loss diet or as part of a healthy living program. Therefore, the high fat / low protein diet is not at all recommended for anyone who wants to be healthier.
