I have been playing around with the notion of a ‘fat fast’ where you attempt to get your percentage of fat really high. Of course, I never follow directions, so I have been aiming for 80% fat and have so far eaten 10,000 extra calories this week according to my LoseIt! app – but I’ve lost almost 5 pounds.
Freaky – huh?
The problem is: it’s damn hard to eat that much fat. I like fat – no, I LOVE fat – but a lot of foods simply don’t have a good enough fat to protein ratio. Most fish is too high in protein, and even 80% lean 20% fat ground beef – the fattiest you can typically find – is only 60% fat.
Checking out the meat counter I spied pork bellies – the stuff they make bacon out of. A huge fatty slab of the stuff is $5.99 a pound and according to what I looked up, the stuff is 93% fat. If you were so inclined to want to maximize your fat intake, pork belly is a good choice, though you might be wondering what the heck to *do* with a pork belly.
I got you covered.
The following is NOT a ‘low carb’ recipe – it’s a recipe that just happens to be low carb. This is an authentic Chinese recipe for pork belly that is typically eaten with rice – but you don’t have to eat the rice to enjoy this – though other members of your family might enjoy it like that. There might be some ingredients here that you are unfamiliar with. I recommend, if you can, finding them. Asian markets will have them, or well-stocked specialty markets.
- 2 pounds pork belly
- 1 cup rice cooking wine
- 1 bulb garlic
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 6 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon white peppercorn
- 5 large slices of fresh ginger root
- 4 anise stars
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 3 scallions
- 1 cinnamon stick
It is very simple to make. Just chop the pork bellies into large cubes, as wide as it is tall. Maybe 1.5 – 2 inches on a side. Put olive oil in pan and cook the pork bellies on high just to brown the outsides. Add the rest of the ingredients and let simmer on medium heat for about an hour, turning the squares occasionally. When done, remove the cinnamon stick, the ginger, and the anise stars. With the ginger, we just slice without peeling and toss it afterward; I see no reason why you couldn’t peel and grate for even more ginger flavor if you like ginger (I love the stuff).
The spices in this dish impart such a wonderful accent of flavor to the pork that I urge you to NOT skip the sugar. The carbs in 1 tablespoon of sugar, spread across 2 pounds of pork belly, is so small as to not be an issue.
If you’ve ever thought that eating this much fat is gross, or that a recipe needs to work to make this much fat ‘palatable’, you have not experienced just how good a well-prepared slab of mostly fat like a pork belly can be.
Being too lazy to take my own picture, I found the one at the top of the page on a blog from Singapore. Her recipe is almost the same as mine, though adding the eggs is something I will have to try. Her photography is WAY better than mine.
The next time I try this I might follow her recipe exactly to see how the flavors differ.
I haven’t run the numbers on this (that lazy thing, again) but I assure you: high fat, low carb, low protein and induction-friendly as I am in ketosis at present.
Low Carb Confidential 
The higher fat and calorie aspect with weight loss is fascinating !!
You want fascinating? How about this: what if your body during overfeeding in certain circumstances might actually reduce the surface area of your intestines, decreasing absorption of calories. Conversely, what if cutting back on calories increases your ability to extract every last calorie out of food?
This would mean that every calorie-counting diet will end in disaster as you teach your body to grab every calorie it can. It’s a race to the bottom, with calorie restriction to lose weight will result in having to cut back MORE until you can’t take it, quit you diet and go back to how you used to eat, but being you’ve got yourself a high-efficiency gut now, your weight balloons.
There is only a little research that fuels this speculation of mine, but it would explain a lot about why traditional diets don’t work – wouldn’t it?
Yep- it would.
That is fascinating. I struggled for years trying to lose weight and was only eating 1200 or less calories per day just not to lose anything. I started low carb dieting 5 weeks ago and am down 15.5 lbs and I quit counting calories. I think there is something to what you are stating above. Love the blog by the way…