What is a High Carb Low Fat Diet?
A high carb low-fat diet is a diet where dietary fat is kept low, protein is moderate and carb intake is high.
This is often abbreviated as HCLF.
Any diet where carb intake is 60% or higher and fat is 20% or lower could be considered a high carb low-fat diet.
These percentages are based on calories.
Here’s a standard HCLF Macro Chart.
*Another name for HCLF diets is “Ultra Low Fat” (which is why we chose this name for our website).
The percent of fat can go lower than 20%.
For instance, the most popular form of this diet is called an HCLF Vegan Diet where carbs make up 80% of the diet, fat is kept at 10% or lower, and protein makes up around 10% of the daily calories.
Although HCLF vegan is the most common form of this diet…
HCLF Diets don’t have to be vegan.
Both carbs and protein have 4 calories per gram and fats have 9 calories per gram.
Here’s how many grams of each macronutrient a person eating 2,000 calories per day would eat.
- 300 grams of carbs
- 100 grams of protein
- 44 grams of fat
Note: This is using the 60% carb, 20% protein, and 20% fat version of this diet. An HCLF Vegan Diet would be 400g carbs, 50g protein, and 22g fat.
What Do I Eat on a High Carb Low Fat Diet?
In some ways, this is the opposite of the ketogenic diet. You are going to want to avoid foods with high fats like bacon and cheese and instead focus on whole-grain foods, starches, beans, fruits, vegetables, and lean protein.
Do Not Eat (Partial List)
- Fatty Meat – fish, beef, lamb, eggs, etc.
- High Fat Dairy – hard cheeses, high fat cream, butter, etc.
- Other fats – coconut oil, high-fat salad dressing, saturated fats, etc.
Do Eat (Partial List)
- Fruits and Vegetables
- Tubers – potato, yams, etc.
- Grains – wheat, corn, rice, cereal, etc.
- Nonfat Dairy – skim milk, nonfat yogurt, nonfat cheese
- Lean meats – lean beef skinless chicken breasts, fish
To see more advice on what to eat, check out our full high carb low-fat food list.
Ideally, you will aim for whole-grain versions of bread, oatmeal, and pasta most of the time. Look for the words “whole grain” on the packaging of these items. The words “whole wheat” don’t necessarily have the same benefit.
It’s fine to eat some refined carbs but is healthier long-term when whole foods make up the majority of the diet.
No foods are totally off-limits with a high carb low-fat diet.
If you do decide to have a high-fat food like cheese or bacon, you would just limit your fats in your other meals.
There will also likely be days where fat is over the target percentage. The goal isn’t to be perfect.
As long as you keep fats 20% or lower on most days, you will be fine.
What are the Benefits of a High Carb Low Fat Diet?
The high carb low-fat diet is heavily weighted towards fruits and vegetables. Not only are these loaded with vitamins and minerals, but they also contain phytonutrients that you can’t get when you simply take vitamins in pill format.
According to the Mayo Clinic, supplements shouldn’t take the place of whole foods:
Supplements aren’t intended to substitute for food. They can’t replicate all of the nutrients and benefits of whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables.
Here are some of the benefits of eating an HCLF diet.
Weight Loss
Eating a high carb low-fat diet works well for weight loss because carbs and protein are unable to get stored as fat directly.
Excess protein gets converted to glucose. Glucose from carbs and protein gets stored as glycogen in the muscle cells. It is only when the glycogen levels are full that glucose begins to get converted to fat. This is called de novo lipogenesis and rarely happens to any significant extent.
There was a study a few years ago, where the goal was to try and get participants to store carbs as body fat.
“The participants could barely do it. They were cramming bagels down their throats while the researchers were begging them to persevere. In other words, the participants could hardly eat enough carbs per day to get any of those carbs stored as fat.”
Every time they increased carb intake, their metabolisms increased as well. The metabolism increased by 35% with this carb-heavy diet.
Dietary fat gets stored directly as body fat when eaten in excess. This is why you want to limit fat intake to 20% or lower when fat loss is a priority.
Improved Insulin Sensitivity
If you are insulin resistant, it means your body doesn’t respond properly to insulin. When you have glucose (sugar) in the blood, insulin gets released but is unable to do the job of storing glucose in your muscle cells. The body releases more insulin to get the job done.
This causes blood sugar issues. At times the blood sugar is too high and other times it is too low. This is all caused by insulin resistance.
We now know that insulin resistance is caused by too much fat accumulating inside of the muscle cells, called Intramyocellular Lipid.
There are two studies that examine this:
- Intramyocellular lipid kinetics and insulin resistance
- Insulin resistance in morbid obesity: reversal with intramyocellular fat depletion
Insulin acts as a key to get glucose into the muscle cell. Excess fat gums up the insulin lock, so insulin is unable to do its job.
This is what it means to be “Insulin Sensitive”.
The best way to do this is to keep fats low. This is how eating a high carb low-fat diet will improve insulin sensitivity over time.
Increased Energy
Glucose is your body’s preferred energy source. When you consume a high carb diet, you will have immediate energy from the carbs and any excess glucose from the carbs will get stored as glycogen in the muscles for later use.
The only time this becomes an issue is when a person is insulin resistant. As I mentioned earlier, we now know that insulin resistance is largely caused by fat accumulating in muscle cells (Intramyocellular Lipid).
Reducing fats to 20% or lower can get the body back to a healthy insulin sensitive state. Once the body becomes insulin sensitive, carbs will provide immediate energy without crashing.
Lower Blood Pressure
According to a 2020 study, those following vegan or vegetarian diet plans typically have lower blood pressure than those who include meat in their diets.
“In conclusion, vegetarian diets are associated with significant reductions in BP compared with omnivorous diets, suggesting that they may play a key role in the primary prevention and overall management of hypertension.”
As far as blood pressure goes, it is hard to beat vegetarian diets or whole foods plant-based vegan diet. You don’t necessarily have to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet to get these benefits.
A recent study found that simply eating a fiber-rich low-fat diet results in lower blood pressure compared to a more traditional diet.
“The Low-sodium, High-fiber, DASH, Low-fat, Low-protein and Vegan dietary approach were significantly more effective in reducing SBP compared to a control diet.”
A non-vegan high carb low-fat diet includes some meat, but it isn’t a major focal point of the diet. Making fruits and vegetables a priority helps keep blood pressure under control.
High Fiber Diets are Tied to Longevity
I believe some of the most exciting discoveries in health and nutrition have to do with slowing the aging process.
Scientists believe that aging is caused by the shortening of your telomeres.
Telomeres are like caps on the end of your DNA chromosomes and as you age they shorten.
There have been two things that have been shown to keep telomeres long:
- Exercise and being physically active
- A high fiber diet.
A study about exercise and aging found that those who spend more than 3 hours each week exercising vigorously had telomeres as long as inactive subjects who were 10 years younger.
High fiber intake also has a significant impact on telomere length.
There was a study published in 2018 that examined this.
This looked at 5,674 adults in the U.S. and they found that those who eat a higher fiber diet have longer telomeres than people who eat very little fiber.
“A difference of 4.8 to 6.0 years in cell aging was found between those in the lowest compared with the highest quartiles of fiber intake. Overall, the present study highlights the risk of accelerated aging among U.S. women and men who do not consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber.”
Fiber also reduces your cancer risk according to the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR).
The AICR recommends getting at least 30 grams of dietary fiber each day in order to lower cancer risk. Most Americans get less than half of this amount of fiber per day.
A high fiber diet simply stacks the decks in your favor when it comes to living a long and healthy life.
High fiber intake could be one of the biggest advantages of following a high carb low-fat diet
Protein Sources on a High Carb Low Fat Diet
Before I discuss protein sources, let’s talk about how much protein to eat per day. Protein recommendations can vary quite a bit depending upon the source.
The Dietary Reference Intake recommends .36 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
- 64 grams of protein per day for a 180-pound man.
- 46 grams of protein per day for a 130-pound woman.
This number likely looks lower than you might expect. This is also almost exactly the protein number that an HCLF vegan diet would hit.
A common recommendation for gaining muscle is 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. This is triple the DRI recommendation.
For gaining muscle at the fastest possible rate, it is likely that you will want to eat more than the DRI recommendation. This doesn’t mean that you need to eat three times the recommended amount.
The most comprehensive book on protein is written by Brad Pilon and is titled: Eat Stop Eat How Much Protein.
This book looks at dozens of studies regarding protein.
How Much Protein to Gain Muscle?
The protein range Brad recommends for gaining muscle is 70-120 grams of protein per day.
If you don’t want to add muscle then closer to the DRI recommendations is fine.
If you are following the 60% carb, 20% protein and 20% fat numbers of a standard high carb low-fat diet, you should hit this number.
For instance, if someone eats 2,000 calories per day then 20% protein would come out to 400 calories or protein. Since there are 4 calories in one gram of protein, that is 100 grams of protein per day.
If you are worried this isn’t enough protein I would reduce fats to 10% and increase protein to 30% per day.
This is tough to accomplish on an HCLF vegan diet but can be done with vegan protein powder.
It is possible that the focus on protein intake has been overblown.
Here’s a partial list of grams of protein in common foods.
- Chicken breast 4 oz 36g
- Cod 4 oz 26g
- Tuna 1 can 26g
- Nonfat Milk 1 cup 8g
- Nonfat cottage cheese 1 cup 25g
- Nonfat yogurt 1 cup 8g
- Chickpeas and Beans 1 cup cooked 15g
- Lentils 1 cup cooked 18g
Didn’t the Low Fat Diet from the ’80s Fail?
The problem with the low-fat diets that were popular in the ’80s is that they were NOT low fat enough.
Most studies and literature consider 30% fat, a low-fat diet.
In the ’80s our “low fat” diets were around 30% fat.
That is too high in fat to experience many of the benefits listed above.
The only people who stuck to 20% or lower in fat back in the ’80s were bodybuilders and fitness competitors before their competition.
They would get super lean by reducing their fats to 10-20% of their diet.
If the rest of the population would have kept fats to 20% or lower, I believe this would be the diet we would still be following today.
One Warning About Starting a High Carb Low Fat Diet
If you are coming from a low carb diet, you WILL gain weight at first.
This is just glycogen getting stored in your muscles from the increased carb intake.
It’s not fat.
After 2-3 weeks you should begin experiencing the benefits and positive effects.
Give it a shot!