What exactly is LCHF?

I get really frustrated when people who have little idea of what a low carb high fat diet really is put it down and call it an unhealthy fad diet. A teeny bit hypocritical I must admit, seeing as I thought it was pats of butter with every meal, ladles of rich cream sauces, big fatty steaks swimming in garlic butter and lashing of lard and bacon fat spooned over everything.

In reality, most people will only need to add a teaspoon of butter to their veg,  keep the skin on their chicken, choose well marbled meat, have good oils found in avocado, olives and nuts and get rid of the diet products in the cupboards and fridge for their diet to be LCHF compliant. Of course it goes without saying carbs have to go! When I say carbs I generally mean processed carbs. Pretty much anything with added sugar and anything that contains a grain or grain based product. Bread, rice, pasta, ice cream, soft drinks, cakes, thickened sauces etc.

Once I got my head around this it all kinda fell into place. 

The biggest epiphany for me was that as long as I choose real, unprocessed food such as meat, veg, egg and nuts plus full fat dairy, I really couldn't go wrong.

Some people say that to be truly low carb you need to be consuming <20g of carbs a day from all sources, same say <50 can be called low carb. I think it's what ever works for you to keep you healthy and happy and losing weight (if that's your aim). If you are wanting to enter ketosis, then you do need to stay under 50g of carbs daily. Find what works for you. Like any lifestyle change its going to be a bit of trial and error to begin with.

So if you're just starting out on LCHF, try not to over complicate it. Keep it simple with good, unprocessed foods and stop fearing the fat :)

Shell x