A day in my low-carb life: May 2017

Last updated on July 29th, 2017

It’s been a while since I recounted a day of low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) eating.

Granted, only an LCHF beginner would find such a post interesting and/or useful, and even that may be wishful thinking on my part, but taking a close look at what I’m doing diet-wise is a major purpose for the blog — at least from my point of view.

If nothing else, writing down what I’m eating makes me pay attention to the process.

So here goes.

May 2, 2017

I was up early — around 6:30 a.m. — but didn’t eat any solid food until noon. That’s because I’ve decided to fast for 16 hours a few times a week. My goal yesterday was to get all my eating done in an eight hour period.

That said, I did permit myself coffee with cream in the morning — three cups, each with two tablespoons of heavy cream. Yes, that’s a lot of cream, about 300 calories worth, but most of the calories were from fat.

Eventually, I’ll cut out the cream, at least on fast days, but for now I needed. Besides, Jason Fung’s The Complete Guide to Fasting says I can have cream.

Noon

To break my fast, I had breakfast, albeit at the normal lunch hour. I ate four eggs scrambled in two tablespoons of butter, four strips of bacon, and one pack of Wholly Guacamole. I put a couple tablespoon of salsa on the eggs. The calorie count was 708, with 60g fat, 7g carbs, 3g fiber, and 33g protein.

The meal’s ratio of fat to carbs plus protein was 60:47, which works out to a fat-burning quotient of 1.28. Not bad, especially after you factor in the three cups of coffee and cream I’d consumed up to that point.

6:45 p.m.

I drank three more cups of coffee during the afternoon, bringing the total for the day to six. The nutrition from the coffee and heavy cream amounted to 602 calories, 63g fat, 6g carbs, and 5g protein.

That’s a lot of calories from drinks, but the 63: 11 ratio of fat to other macro-nutrients was decidedly LCHF.

For dinner, Anita made us a broccoli slaw stir-fry with olive oil and chicken thighs. My portion provided 424 calories, 37g fat, 27g carbs, 16g fiber, and 26g protein. The fat-burning quotient was only 0.7.

7:55 p.m.

I finished eating for the day with a treat of two squares of 90% dark chocolate: 120 calories, 11g fat, 6g carbs, 3g fiber, and 2g protein.

Totals

For the day, I ate 1,943 calories, including

• 171g fat
• 45g carbs
• 22g fiber
• 67g protein

My fat to carbs-plus-protein ratio was 171: 112, which results in a fat-burning quotient of 1.53. Anything over one is OK, but I could do better.

All in all, my diet yesterday was very low-carb (with only 23g net carbs), but only moderately high in fat. I’m surprised that I ate so much in just eight hours! My strategy was to eat a larger early meal, and a smaller late meal, but I may have over done meals by 100 calories or so.

Or I suppose I could’ve cut out some of the coffee and heavy cream.