I know this is an old thread but I have done a very low fat diet for several months so wanted to share how it was for me. A bit of background, I started incorporating Peaty ideas about eating several years ago but am very much an intuitive eater so not usually strict about a particular diet style (I just avoid PUFAs after being convinced by all the Peatarians that PUFAs are evil LOL).
I was nearly 40 years old and 20 weeks pregnant with my second child when I developed gallstones. The only way to avoid painful attacks was to eat a very low fat diet. My surgeon recommended this too as he didn’t want to do surgery on me while I was pregnant, he basically said if I can manage symptoms until after pregnancy that would be better.
I think I was eating around 80/10/10 macros, kind of McDougall diet style with simple starches, some cooked veg, lean protein like tofu, quorn, occasional lean chicken and occasional skimmed milk/yogurt. Lots of dates and bowls of sugary cereal as snacks. I basically didn’t eat any overt fats at all, so no nuts, oils, butter or anything with oil in.
Some pros of the diet were that it felt like a kind of “clean energy”, hard to explain but it was like I would eat and then immediately feel energized, I wouldn’t get a post meal slump. I also noticed quick relief from joint aches and pains and I didn’t have typical pregnancy annoyances like digestive issues, heartburn etc. I gained a healthy amount of pregnancy weight. My baby came out 9lbs, very alert and stayed on the 90th percentile for growth for the first year or 2. He is a tall and skinny 3 year old now.
Negatives were: never feeling satiated, I would eat, get full but never feel satisfied which was annoying. Sometimes I felt spacey and had memory problems. Almost every morning I would wake up at 4am feeling restless and wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I ate a low fat protein bar or some cereal. I had a blood test when my baby was about 4 months old and my vitamin D was severely low, B12 was also low and to my surprise my cholesterol was high (don’t remember exact numbers, just that it was in red and labelled “high”).
I stayed on the diet until my baby was 4 months old and I had my gallbladder removed. The day after the surgery I was able to eat butter, chocolate and other richer foods I’d been avoiding. On the positive side, I felt satiation again and didn’t need to eat so much volume, my vitamin D levels quickly improved and my high cholesterol went back to a normal range (still higher end of normal, but I don’t really worry about that as I’m not convinced high cholesterol is necessarily bad). On the negative side, joint aches and pains came back along with a few extra pounds of belly fat, but I think that’s because I was overdoing nut butters, hummus and mock meats (i.e. I allowed too many PUFAs to creep in).
Another interesting observation, I was only able to stick to the diet because I suffered debilitating pain if I didn’t. Now that I am without a gallbladder and can eat higher fat foods to a degree, I just can’t motivate myself to eat a low fat diet and I like the satiety that comes from adding a bit of butter or coconut oil to foods. Sidenote, not long after my surgery I spent some time with an Indian friend who fed me lots of foods cooked in ghee, served with chapattis cooked in ghee with extra ghee on top, for those few days I felt great and my skin glowed
TLDR: I followed a very low fat diet for several months while waiting for gallbladder surgery. I enjoyed quick energy, good digestion, absence of joint aches and pains but suffered with being hungry all the time, very low satiety from boring food, having to eat large volumes of food frequently and ending up with very low levels of vit D and B12. I wouldn’t recommend it and wonder if a lot of the positives were just from strict exclusion of PUFAs.
I was nearly 40 years old and 20 weeks pregnant with my second child when I developed gallstones. The only way to avoid painful attacks was to eat a very low fat diet. My surgeon recommended this too as he didn’t want to do surgery on me while I was pregnant, he basically said if I can manage symptoms until after pregnancy that would be better.
I think I was eating around 80/10/10 macros, kind of McDougall diet style with simple starches, some cooked veg, lean protein like tofu, quorn, occasional lean chicken and occasional skimmed milk/yogurt. Lots of dates and bowls of sugary cereal as snacks. I basically didn’t eat any overt fats at all, so no nuts, oils, butter or anything with oil in.
Some pros of the diet were that it felt like a kind of “clean energy”, hard to explain but it was like I would eat and then immediately feel energized, I wouldn’t get a post meal slump. I also noticed quick relief from joint aches and pains and I didn’t have typical pregnancy annoyances like digestive issues, heartburn etc. I gained a healthy amount of pregnancy weight. My baby came out 9lbs, very alert and stayed on the 90th percentile for growth for the first year or 2. He is a tall and skinny 3 year old now.
Negatives were: never feeling satiated, I would eat, get full but never feel satisfied which was annoying. Sometimes I felt spacey and had memory problems. Almost every morning I would wake up at 4am feeling restless and wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I ate a low fat protein bar or some cereal. I had a blood test when my baby was about 4 months old and my vitamin D was severely low, B12 was also low and to my surprise my cholesterol was high (don’t remember exact numbers, just that it was in red and labelled “high”).
I stayed on the diet until my baby was 4 months old and I had my gallbladder removed. The day after the surgery I was able to eat butter, chocolate and other richer foods I’d been avoiding. On the positive side, I felt satiation again and didn’t need to eat so much volume, my vitamin D levels quickly improved and my high cholesterol went back to a normal range (still higher end of normal, but I don’t really worry about that as I’m not convinced high cholesterol is necessarily bad). On the negative side, joint aches and pains came back along with a few extra pounds of belly fat, but I think that’s because I was overdoing nut butters, hummus and mock meats (i.e. I allowed too many PUFAs to creep in).
Another interesting observation, I was only able to stick to the diet because I suffered debilitating pain if I didn’t. Now that I am without a gallbladder and can eat higher fat foods to a degree, I just can’t motivate myself to eat a low fat diet and I like the satiety that comes from adding a bit of butter or coconut oil to foods. Sidenote, not long after my surgery I spent some time with an Indian friend who fed me lots of foods cooked in ghee, served with chapattis cooked in ghee with extra ghee on top, for those few days I felt great and my skin glowed
TLDR: I followed a very low fat diet for several months while waiting for gallbladder surgery. I enjoyed quick energy, good digestion, absence of joint aches and pains but suffered with being hungry all the time, very low satiety from boring food, having to eat large volumes of food frequently and ending up with very low levels of vit D and B12. I wouldn’t recommend it and wonder if a lot of the positives were just from strict exclusion of PUFAs.
