Dr. Anthony Chaffee addresses the common misconception that eating fat prevents fat loss, explaining why restricting fat intake is counterproductive and potentially dangerous. He clarifies that body fat lacks essential fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins (D, K2, A, E), making dietary fat crucial for optimal health regardless of weight loss goals. The episode explores how low-fat approaches can trigger protein poisoning, overwhelm the liver with ammonia buildup, and actually slow metabolism by signaling famine conditions to the body.
Listeners learn about FGF-21 hormone, which increases fat burning by 400 calories daily when fat intake exceeds 90% of calories and protein drops below 9%. Combined with ketosis providing an additional 350-calorie metabolic boost, high-fat carnivore eating creates a 750-calorie daily advantage over conventional dieting. Dr. Anthony Chaffee emphasizes that sustainable weight loss follows optimal health through proper nutrition, recommending 1-2 grams of fat per gram of protein while eating fatty meat until satiated.
Key Takeaways
- Eating more fat can trigger lipolysis through FGF-21 hormone activation, which increases fat burning by 400 calories per day when fat intake exceeds 90% and protein stays below 9% of total calories
- Body fat from previous carbohydrate overconsumption lacks essential nutrients like omega-3s, DHA, EPA, and fat-soluble vitamins D, K2, A, and E, making dietary fat intake necessary for optimal health
- Low-fat carnivore approaches risk protein poisoning from excess ammonia production, potentially causing liver dysfunction, hair loss, and metabolic slowdown as the body enters perceived famine mode
- Optimal carnivore eating involves consuming fatty meat until satiated, maintaining 1-2 grams of fat per gram of protein, and eating to soft but not loose stools regardless of current weight goals
- Why You Need Fat for Weight Loss - Essential Fatty Acids and Fat-Soluble Vitamins
- Protein Poisoning and Liver Damage from Low-Fat Carnivore
- How Fat Restriction Slows Metabolism and Prevents Weight Loss
- FGF-21 Hormone - How High Fat Diet Burns 400 Extra Calories Daily
- Sustainable Fat Loss vs Quick Weight Loss - Health First Approach
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
People say, "Well, why do I need to eat the fat if I have extra fat to lose? Don't I need to stop eating fat or else I won't access my own fat?" Actually, that nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, eating more fat can actually trigger lipolysis for a number of reasons. Most of them hormonal and metabolic. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because this is about nutrition. This is about optimal health. And fat is a lot more than just an energy source. It's a nutrient. So, there are essential fatty acids that you have to have or you can get sick and die. And they're essential fats soluble vitamins that you have to have or you can get sick and die. So it's not just about the calories, okay, which are not a real thing anyway. However, energy is and while you have stored energy in the form of fat in your body, that fat did not come there from eating an excess amount of omega-3s with vitamin D and K2 and vitamin A. That fat is pretty much devoid of nutrition because that fat came from eating excessive amounts of carbohydrates, inflammatory carbohydrates that were damaging your body and causing glycation, and you had to elevate your insulin to store that and get it the hell out of your bloodstream quickly before it killed you. So, that's devoid of nutrients. that that fat does not have omega-3s, does not have DHA or EPA, does not have vitamin D3, K2, vitamin A, vitamin E, and so on and so forth, choline, etc. It's just energy, but it's also full of things like linoleic acid and other sorts of things. So, you need these other fats. You need these other fats, soluble nutrients. And remember, the most important part of this is your health. And you are not going to be at optimal health if you're not getting optimal nutrition. And the fat on your body if you have excess fat is not full of those vitamins that you need and are essential for optimal health. Also, it is still possible to get an excessive amount of protein and actually get protein poisoning when just eating lean meat. This is because you have an excess of amino acids that then have to get broken down. And a byproduct of this is ammonia that gets turned into ura and then excreted in your urine, which is where the name comes from. However, if you're eating too much of this, this can overwhelm your liver's ability to turn ammonia into ura, and you actually get a buildup of ammonia, which is very toxic to the body, toxic to the liver. I've never seen anybody's liver markers start going out of balance on my patients because I always make sure that they're eating enough fat. There are other people reporting that their liver markers are going off that and they are always the ones who are eating lean and say, "No, no, no. You don't want all that fat." That is a myth and that has been around for the last 50 years saying if you eat fat you'll get fat. And what happened? We reduce fat by 33% in America and we become the fattest and sickest we've ever been in human history. So how' that one work out? Right? It's not true. It's just not true. So you can still get protein poisoning and then people do low fat. They get really sick. They lose their hair. Their liver markers start going crazy and then they say this ketosis, this carnivore diet, this is bad for me. And then they start eating carbs and they feel better because it stops the protein poisoning. And then they confirm their own bias that this was definitely ketosis. No, it was the protein poisoning. You need to eat the fat. It's very, very important. Also, just in the context of losing weight, if you restrict nutrients to your body that your body is telling you to get, if you're eating fat and it tastes good and your body's making bile, that's not a mistake. Your body's doing that on purpose. Bile is a very valuable and expensive resource, very costly to make. And so, your body's not just going to make that for no reason. If it doesn't want the fat, if it doesn't want those nutrients from fat, even though you have fat on your body, it won't it won't make bile. It makes a specific amount of bile because it wants a specific amount of fat. And so, if you don't give your body that and you're not getting those nutrients and you're nutrientd deprived, your body is going to think that you're in a famine and it's actually going to slow down your metabolic rate and you will actually store onto fat. I've actually had patients, I just had one the other day that said they fasted for 3 days straight and they gained weight because their body's not going to let go of this energy. it's not going to let go of that stored fat if it is at all possible. Now, in that case, obviously, there was some energy used and you probably put on a bit of water weight, but still like this is something that I see again and again and again that when people overindulge in reducing calories, reducing macros, reducing food, or even fasting overly much, they can actually slow down their metabolism. And yes, they'll starve themselves into a smaller suit size, but as soon as they start just eating a normal amount, they'll regain that weight right away. So, remember, we want to encourage your metabolism. you don't want to suppress your metabolism. So, you eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good, your body knows that you're not in a famine and all of a sudden the gates open up and you start losing weight. The thing is, if you do the opposite, if you're sort of starving yourself and not eating enough and not eating enough fat, not getting enough of those nutrients and vitamins and minerals, etc., the body will actually slow down your metabolism that can actually stall weight loss. I see this a lot actually until we can correct the various vitamins and minerals that people are typically deficient in. It's very difficult for the body to lose weight. it doesn't actually want to ramp up metabolism unless it has enough of the vitamins and minerals because the vitamins and minerals are actually running the show. And so if you crank up your body's metabolism, but you run out of zinc, you run out of magnesium, you run out of vitamin D, you run out of B12, that actually hits a bottleneck and your body says, "Nope, we can't do this. So let's slow it back down." So if you correct those nutrients and you get all the vitamins and minerals you need, including from the fat, that can actually ramp up your metabolism. I see this all the time in my clinical practice. Also, we see people when they're trying to lose more body fat, they actually increase the fat that they're consuming and that can actually trigger a fat loss. So, we see this quite a lot and part of that reasoning can be from something called FGF-21. When you increase your calories from fat above 90% and you reduce calories from protein below 9%, that can actually trigger a hormone called FGF-21, which actually increases lipolysis by an extra 400 kilo calories a day. And being in ketosis, so zero carb, increases your basil metabolic rate by another 350 kilo calories a day. So you get a 750 point bump in your metabolism just by eating a very high fat zero carb diet and getting your protein below 9%. And this can actually work both ways. It's really a product of getting your protein down. So only eating protein not a great idea because you're going to suppress FGF-21. But this is where the sugar diet comes in and people say, "Hey, look at this. I'm losing weight." Just eating a bunch of candy and sugar and things like that. First of all, they're causing widespread glycation and destroying their body. However, they do trigger FGF-21 and increase their lipolysis by an extra 400 kilo calories a day. And that's a product of the protein being below 9% has nothing to do with carbohydrates. It's a protein below 9%. So, in the sugar fast and the candy diet, it was just terrible. That is also not ketogenic. So, you're not getting that 350 point bump. So, if you're doing that with fat and just still keeping the protein below 9%. You're getting the 400 from FGF-21 and you're also getting the 350 for being in ketosis. So, it's actually a better metabolic boost than whatever you get from doing that with carbs and it's also healthy. You're getting nutrition and you're not destroying your body through glycation. So, in fact, you want to increase the fat that you're taking in and that can stimulate your metabolism. It can stimulate FGF-21 and it can provide proper nutrients so that your body can run optimally and that typically actually allows your body to lose weight. We're all starting this at a different point. You you don't be in a rush to get to the finish line. The finish line is deaf, by the way. So, you know, this is this is something that you just need to be a bit more patient about because some people will lose weight very very quickly and that's great. And other people will take a bit of time because they're healing their metabolism, they're healing their hormones and there's a right way to do that and there's a wrong way to do that. You can lose weight in a lot of different ways, but you there are much fewer ways that you can lose weight safely, healthfully, optimally, and in such a way that you can maintain that for the rest of your life and stay lean, strong, and healthy for the rest of your life. This is really the best way that I found is by eating highfat zero carb carnivore diet and actually increasing the fat can trigger lipolysis. But eventually, that's going to happen no matter what you do. First and foremost, it's about your health. And you can't have health without proper nutrition. And weight follows health in this circumstance. When you are doing this unhealthy way, yes, you can lose weight and lose health at the same time. That's not what we're doing here. And so, we want to improve your health and your body composition will improve after that. So, you do not need to eat low fat in order to access and burn your own body fat. That is a myth. That's something that's been bouncing around for the last 50 years. That fat makes you fat. And if you want to lose fat, you have to stop eating fat. It didn't work for the last 50 years. It doesn't work now. You can do it, but it's not healthy. And you can give yourself protein poisoning and get very sick. You can lose your hair. You can screw up your liver. You can do all you can screw up your kidneys. You can do all sorts of bad things. And so that's not what I would recommend. I think that's really really dangerous. And a lot of people are pushing that right now when they're charging people $2,000 for a three-month course just like this. And you know, and so you know what their priorities are? Their priorities are their bank account. They don't they don't care about you or your health. They just want quick results fast fast so they can churn you out and you know churn and burn. They don't care what happens to you afterwards. Okay? I do. I care that your body is healthy afterwards. I want you to be as healthy as you can and you can do the same thing for the rest of your life and continue to get healthier. Whereas if you do the low-fat approach, you will get less healthy and eventually you'll burn out and have to change to something else. And you probably won't go high fat. I go high fat. I'm going to put on fat. actually going to go high carb and that's then that's when you're going to have even more problems. So just eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good. You do that as many times during the day as your body's telling you to and you try to go from 1 to two grams of fat to one gram of protein. If you want to lose more fat, increase the fat. So you do this at any stage in life, whether you're trying to lose fat, put on muscle, or maintain exactly where you are. You eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good. You do that as many times during the day as your body's telling you to. You eat 1 to two grams of fat for every one gram of protein. and you cut out absolutely everything else. And that's pretty much it. I've been following that exact same principle for nearly a decade now. And when I was losing body fat and getting into shape, I was eating fatty meat until it stops tasting good. As soon as I got down around 5 or 6% body fat, my body says, "Right now, you need to double that." So, I literally doubled what I was eating because I just wanted to now. And I So, I listened to my body. What my body was telling me was eat two big steaks and eat twice a day. And that's what I do. And so now, depending on the day, if I'm more or less active, I just eat when my body's telling me to eat. I eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good. I do that as many times during the day as my body's telling me to. And I try to get 1 to two grams of fat through one gram of protein. I eat fat until I have soft stools but not loose stools. And so you can do this at any stage in life, whether you're losing weight, want to gain weight, or you're just trying to maintain. So just keep that in mind, guys. And don't fall into the little tricks and hacks and trends and fads because carnivore diet is not a fat. carnivore diet has been going on since humans have been humans and the way we have eaten is a highfat carnivore diet and that is what has provided us the optimal health because it provides us optimal nutrition, optimal energy and optimal metabolic function. So if you don't have met optimal metabolic function, don't worry, it will come. You just have to be patient and that's how you get it. Okay guys, hope that's helpful. Fight you next time.