High Fat, Low Carb Diet: Day Six – New Approach to High Fat

by Ivy Black, Aug 21, 2008

A failed day in my diet struggle. Instead of giving up I take a different approach and modify the diet variation.

After the depressing weigh results yesterday I just had to give in to something sweet. The chocolate fingers turned out to be way to good, and I ended up eating half the box. Definitely worth a try if you are not on a diet - Galaxy Amicelli chocolate fingers. Crunchy, chocolate covered wafer, filled with a nut mousse filling... Not good, not good. However I am very good at one thing. Making excuses...

So even despite not planning it a hundred percent I decided to implement the 5 day / 2 day variation of a high fat diet. Which basically means I can go and gorge myself on carbohydrates on Saturdays. FitnessPhilosophe describes it in a simple and interesting way, but the gist is this:

You eat five days in a row high fat and low carb foods, which gives you all the benefits of such a diet - lessened appetite, smaller stomach, nice fat loss, etc. After this you give yourself a break and eat plenty of carbs on Saturday, and a little less on Sunday. This helps alleviate the cravings, as well as raises your metabolism rate (it slows down on a high fat diet) and body temperature. It is especially beneficial if you are aiming to develop muscles while losing fat, because after being deprived of carbohydrates your body will first use them to build muscles.

The reason this is quite unique is that for the first time there is some reasoning behind the one day break. Some of the high fat diets do agree with having one "spoil yourself" day in a week after the initial period, however I have never found any rationale behind it before. It might not be essential, but I think it is nice to know that you ar enot only pampering yourself, but there is some physical benefit from going a little bit carb crazy...