How to eat fat (without getting fat)

What's going on? Good morning, good to see you all again. Today we will be talking about fat, why you need fat, how to eat fat, what types of fat to eat, and how to segment fat for better cognition, focus, body composition, energy, and all-around good health. So fats are essential, right? I see a lot of people championing a lower-fat diet, which I think is good just given the fact of how easy it is to get too much fat in our diet nowadays. Right? We have what's called an evolutionary mismatch. Our genes are not encoded for the modern environment that we live in. They're encoded for a much more scarce environment from a caloric standpoint. Now we are in a caloric surplus. It has never been easier to eat a boatload of food that is really high calorie, and people have incentives to make food high calorie because high calorie food tastes good, especially when you blend these ridiculous ratios of fats and sugars like a lot of these food companies do, because they become addicting. Your brain thinks that food tastes good because that signals to you to eat more of said food because that food encodes for better survival because it has more energy, right? So when we take that natural mechanism and we create unnatural combinations of that, we essentially hijack these same pathways that are meant to signal to us what to eat and what not to eat. So anyway, with that being said, I think it's incredibly important for us to look at fat from a much more critical lens, to be more conscientious of the fat that we consume. I look at fat in my diet almost like a supplement. I am very, very selective about what type of fat I eat, more than any other macronutrient, and there's a number of reasons for that which I'll get into. But let's talk about why fat is so important. First and foremost, your cell membranes are literally made up of the fat that you consume in your diet. Those fatty acids are going to the development of your fat cells, especially us as monogastric animals. We have one digestive system, we have one stomach. Cows and ruminant animals, they have a lot of stomachs, so they're a little bit better at metabolizing and digesting those fats and not having those go towards their cellular, uh, like foundations, which they still do, but more importantly to being stored into their fat cells, those fat-soluble toxins. Now that's why it's especially important for us. That's also why I don't eat a lot of monogastric animals, but that's a story for a different day. Uh, so our cell membrane structure is literally made up of the fats that we eat The higher quality fats you eat, the higher quality your cell membranes are. Now we also need to look at fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K. These fat-soluble vitamins are soluble in fat. You need fat to properly digest and absorb those nutrients. So a low-fat diet will not only not provide you with a lot of fat-soluble vitamins to begin with, it's going to inhibit your ability to absorb vitamins and nutrients. So you're going to be in a caloric surplus, maybe, but you're going to be nutrient deficient no matter how many calories that you eat. Remember, it's not about the vitamins and nutrients that you eat, it's the vitamins and nutrients that you absorb that counts, right? So that's really important there. Additionally, your hormones are entirely predicated on fat consumption. If you look at the hormone, especially the sex hormone metabolic pathway, or like the conversion pathway, cholesterol is at the top there. That doesn't directly correlate with dietary cholesterol, but it is absolutely essential that you have solid fats, especially saturated fats, in your diet for proper hormone function. So what would happen if you didn't have a, a decent amount of fat in your diet, if you went low fat for an extended period of time? First and foremost, you'd have that hormonal imbalance. Uh, the brain is also made up of primarily fat, right? So if you're not giving your body that fat it needs to feed your brain and literally build your brain, you will probably have cerebral atrophy. Your brain will start getting smaller. You're going to have immune impairment. Fat-soluble vitamins and fat in general is essential for immune response. Vitamin E is like one of our best antioxidants, and you're also gonna have horrible skin and hair. That's why if you look at a lot of bodybuilders, especially in their cutting period when they're preparing for a show, they look like death. Their hair has gone to shit, their skin is absolutely atrocious. A lot of people blame that on ammonia from the excess protein consumption and the excess training, which I do think has an effect, but I think the primary factor is that they are not eating a lot of fat, and they are able to bypass that initial red flag, which is hormonal issues, because because they're exogenously enhanced. They don't have to worry about damages in their very delicate hormonal system because they've outsourced it to exogenous hormones. So those are the factors there. You need fat, but you don't want too much fat. So this is how I approach fat: quality over quantity. It is so easy to get way too much fat in our diet. You want to be extremely conscientious about the fat that you consume. Remember, our genes encoded us for a scarcity environment, a caloric scarcity environment. We are in an environment of abundance. So a lot of these mechanisms, signals, and whatnot are going to tell us to eat more and more because we don't know when the next meal is coming. But we already know that there's going to be another meal, or at least most of us will. So what I typically do is I'll have one meal a day high fat, segmented from all my carbohydrates, and then I'll have one day a week high fat and all the rest be higher carb. And I'll have a few months of a year that I'll do higher fat as well, usually in alignment with seasons. When I lived in winter environments, that's what I do. Now I don't live in winter environments, but I'll still try to allocate at least a few weeks, a few months every once in a while to high fat. Now I purposefully don't combine fats and carbohydrates in my diet to an extended, like, uh, uh, like to an extended level. I'm not going to go high fat and high carb. I'll do like mid-fat and mid-carb, but I'm never going to do high fat and high carb in the same meal. There's a number of reasons for that. The primary hypothesis is that insulin signals for fat storage. It tells your body and it tells your fat cells that, hey, we've got plenty of energy in our bloodstream via all this glucose. Keep your fat, keep your fat, we don't need it, we're gonna use all this glucose. So then you incorporate that with use— with consuming a bunch of fats, which otherwise would be saying, hey, listen, use some of this fat as fuel because we didn't get an insulin spike. That means that there's no glucose in our blood. You combine the two, I think that that can potentially lead to more fat storage and potentially more triglycerides in your blood as well. Now there's some speculation around this, but all I'm saying is that I found significant significant improvements in digestion and body composition when I segment those fats. And I'm literally getting the best of both worlds. I'm able to stay very lean. I'm able to have really high performance in the gym because I'm having a lot of carbohydrates. I have a lot more energy. I think my metabolic rate has been going up. I mean, it has been going up, and I just feel better. So something for you to experiment. I reserve my carbs around my training time, so I'll have a lot of carbohydrates pre-workout and I'll have a lot of carbohydrates post-workout, and then I'll have my fat meals as far away from that as possible. So if I'm training at 4:00 PM, I'll have a fat meal in the morning. Maybe I'll have one more fat meal at 11 or noon. And then after that, I'm primarily going to be focusing on carbohydrates. So I do that. I keep my fats as far away from the workout as possible. When I'm looking at fat sources, I go quality over quantity every single time. I do not eat seed oils. I rarely eat polyunsaturated fatty acids at all. The ones that I do consume, I will show you, uh, what I consume, which is very important that you aim for high quality. Now the beauty of this is when you treat fat like a supplement, like I do, and you max out the nutrient-to-calorie ratio, you can justify paying more for really high-quality fat sources, right? So I'm buying high-polyphenol olive oil because I only consume a little bit of it, right? And let me just go through all of the fat sources that I do, and I'll kind of explain to you like how much I consume and how I consume them. So I'm mainly eating saturated fat— coconut oil in particular, 97% saturated fat. It does seem to actually enhance your metabolic rate, so it's gonna increase the amount of calories you burn at baseline. Not to mention, a lot of that fat are— a lot of those, those fatty acids are medium-chain triglycerides, so they're not even going to go through the typical fat metabolization process. They're going to be more easily burned as energy. I think there is a pretty decent fatty acid composition, but it's not what I primarily go to for my fat-soluble vitamins. For my fat-soluble vitamins, I will have a little bit of palm or palm kernel oil as well. I don't think that is the best for the environment, but I have just a really small amount, and that gets me solid vitamin E. I do have that high polyphenol olive oil like I mentioned. It's something that I just started incorporating as I've been going a little bit higher fat. I'll have a little bit with a salad that I'll typically have, you know, once or twice a week with grains and vegetables— or not grains, vegetables and leaves that I find non-problematic like romaine lettuce. Arugula is a personal favorite of mine. And then I will have on occasion avocado for some more monounsaturated fatty acids. To be honest, I think avocado is kind of overrated. I don't think that out of all the fat sources it's the best bang for your buck, but it does taste good. I'm a sucker for a good guacamole, and it's good to just switch it up, and I find that it makes me feel good. So I'll have that. I'll have seafood a few times a week. I have seafood a lot, but I'll have fatty seafood a few times a week. That'll typically look like mackerel because mackerel is found where I'm living. It's ever— it's geolocationally accurate. And then I'll actually have salmon on occasion as as well in very small ratios. Wow, it's storming up really bad, holy smokes. Anyway, moving on, I will have lamb. I've been eating lamb recently. It's a great source of fat and most importantly, it's a good source of omega-3s, right? A land source of omega-3s that can bypass some of the inherent contamination that comes with seafood 'cause our oceans have been destroyed thanks to the Industrial Revolution, but what can we do about it, right? So lamb's great. The beauty of lamb is that it's really hard to feed a lamb industrial grains, right? It's hard to feed it industrial feed like corn or soy because they'll just die. So most lamb is grass-fed. Like I said, I'm only having a little bit every once in a while, so I feel justified by buying high-quality lamb. And the same goes with fatty cuts of meat. I will occasionally have a ribeye, and when I get a ribeye, I'll have a high-quality ribeye. I'm not as worried about the toxin accumulation in animals when it comes from ruminant animals. Animals with multiple stomachs because they're better able to remove those toxins from their digestive system and they're not going to be stored as fat— or excuse me, they're not gonna be stored in their fat like a monogastric animal, which we're monogastric animals. Pork and chicken are also monogastric animals. So I'm okay with not having grass-fed meat for every meal, but when I do have non-grass-fed meat, I typically opt for leaner cuts like sirloin or a lean ground beef. So I'll do that, and then I'll have egg yolks as well. I'll have the whole egg, I'll do egg yolks. Once again, I look at it like a supplement. So I'll have maybe like 3 eggs a day, 3 egg yolks. Once again, that justifies me paying the exorbitant prices which eggs are nowadays because I'm having it as a supplement. And if you look at all of the prices of these meals, first of all, from a nutrient to calorie ratio, you're getting the best bang for your buck. Second of all, if you're comparing it to what you're typically eating, whether it's like a frozen dinner or Uber Eats, like it's still cheaper. Like I eat really high quality food. I don't think I spend that much on food because I don't eat when I go out. I'll drink when I go out, I don't eat when I go out. So that is how I identify and consume my fat sources. Remember, it's quality over quantity. Fat's in everything, you know. It's so easy to overeat fat, so just err with a side of caution. Assume that you're probably eating more fat than you think you are. Remove all of the non-natural foods in general. If all of your options are natural and healthy and evolutionary accurate, it's so much easier to eat intuitively because this intuitive satiety and palate that we have was hardwired to tell us what to eat for the best health, for the best chances of survival and reproduction. So remove all the bad stuff and you'll be able to just do this on easy mode. I never think about this too much. I just eat what I want to eat and I go with my intuition. Now what if you're struggling with digesting fat? I've noticed that some people have a hard time digesting fat, whether it's egg yolks, whether it's fatty meat. They just can't digest it. It sits around in their system forever. There's a number of reasons for this. I think first and foremost, some people just simply digest carbohydrates better than they digest fats, and vice versa. I'm better at metabolizing carbs than I am fats, right? But I'm trying to include more fats, so I have to do a few things to make sure that I'm properly digesting them. My fat digestion problems came from Accutane. I took Accutane and it destroyed my biliary system and my liver, and it potentially also destroyed my pancreas, but it absolutely destroyed my bile flow. So I utilize Tutka, which is a bile flow agent which helps with the production and excretion of bile from your gallbladder. And that has been really instrumental in me being able to properly digest and metabolize fats. If you have any form of bile duct obstructions, you are going to have poor fat digestion. And if you have poor bile duct obstructions, you're gonna have, you know, poor outlooks on your liver health as well. And then that's a reverse cycle. So if you have poor liver function, that's gonna impact your bile excretion. So you want to look at your bile, your biliary system. You want to look at your liver health, and then you also want to look at your pancreas, right? The pancreas is responsible for producing these enzymes that break down not just fat but protein and carbohydrates. So if you have pancreatic problems, you're gonna have problems with digestion as a whole. Another thing that I've been looking at here as I dive deeper into the lymphatic system in general is that lymph obstructions can also impact digestion negatively because that lymph fluid can revert itself into your digestive system and cause digestive issues. So look at all of these. The biggest thing here is if your gut is damaged or inflamed, you're gonna have poor nutrient absorption and you're gonna have poor digestion. So if you have IBS or IBD, that is seriously problematic. You need to get that figured out. And if you have celiac disease or if you have a gluten intolerance, you need to cut out gluten because if you're keeping it in that inflamed state, you're not going to be able to get those nutrients required to subsequently heal your gut, right? It's a catch-22 here. So anyway, those are the things that I look at from a supplementation standpoint. Remember, supplements are meant to help you identify root causes and for acute therapeutic purposes. This isn't medical advice. I don't want anyone going out and utilizing these supplements for extended periods of time because they're powerful and they can cause cause issues other— or excuse me, in other biological mechanisms. I use Tudka. I do like taurine. Taurine is a precursor to your bile acids. I found benefit with NAC and even milk thistle for my liver health because my liver is messed up. Phosphatidylcholine as well for liver health. Um, and then what else do we have here? If you can— if you want to help identify the root cause, you can experiment with different digestive enzymes. As well as bitters, and also stomach acid precursors like betaine and pepsin. So try those, and the objective there is to see if you improve. And if you improve, then that can help you identify the root cause of these fat indigestion problems. So as a summary, quality over quantity, always. No polyunsaturated fatty acids that aren't coming from natural sources, right? And even then, like, keep them in moderation because you will be getting excess omega-6s whether you know it or not. They hide seed oils in everything. So the best thing to do is just learn to cook for yourself. Invest in high-quality food but eat less of it, right? Invest in high-quality fats but eat less of it. Get some grass-fed tallow and use that, and then buy leaner cuts of meat. Consume less fat than you think that you need while still prioritizing fat. Prioritize the fat, get it taken care of, and then avoid fat elsewhere. And then on top of that, segment your fats and your carbohydrates as an experiment. See if that helps you feel better. Anyway, godspeed, guys.