Fat

I've become obsessed with fat since my diagnosis, not the weight I carry around but the fat content of the food that I eat, which my Liver stores and is slowly (I hope, very slowly) killing me.

The recommended daily maximum intake of fat for a man is somewhere between 90-100g and for a woman 70-80g. For us fat, lazy westerners our actual intake is probably considerably more. Now, as I have NASH, fat can be deadly. To reduce the speed of damage I must stop feeding my Liver fat, and in the past couple of weeks I've started to take steps to do just that.

First thing was to find out how much fat was I eating and then figure out how to reduce this amount. A short term crash diet will do no good whatsoever, any change I make to my dietary intake is for keeps and therefore must be sustainable (not easy for someone who ranks chocolate up there with air and water as necessary requirements for life). Most packaged food has labels detailing the ingredients and amounts contained within along with nutritional information for fat, salt, sugar, calories etc. Checking the labels of everything I ate for a couple of days was a real eye opener.

A 30g bag of Walkers Cheese & Onion crisps contains 11g of fat. I'd usually have 2 bags for my lunch. I love Chicken Salad sandwiches but crisps are a necessary addition for full enjoyment. A total of 22g of fat in those two bags alone, sheesh what must my daily total be? Lunch at work also requires chocolate. My usual purchase of a Twix and a Marathon (you may call it Snickers but I will not) to keep me going through the afternoon contains an amazing 32g of fat (18g in a Marathon due to the peanuts and 14g in a Twix). Feck me, lunch at work and I've had over half the daily recommended maximum amount of fat without actually eating any real food. It's a wonder I'm even alive.

So what to do? As I said the maximum daily intake for an adult man should be in the 90-100g range but as I suffer from NASH I should really aim for less than half that at 45-50g maximum (in reality as little as possible should be my longterm aim). Can I do it? Yes, of course. Cut out the crap and eat real, whole food instead. For the past week I've stopped the 2 bags of crisps totaling 22g of fat and replaced with 1 bag of Ryvita Minis at less than 1g of fat per bag with my lunch. To replace the chocolate bars I've been having Special K and Alpen cereal bars with approx 2-4g of fat each. Along with 2 pieces of fruit and a chicken sandwich packed with salad I'm not exactly going hungry (far from it) but I've slashed my fat intake for that one meal by a huge margin. Obviously I've not eaten my last chocolate bar but they will become the exception rather than the norm.

At home easy changes made were to switch from Lurpak Spreadable 80g of fat per 100g to Flora margarine 59g of fat per 100g (but a quarter of the saturated fat). Light mayonnaise instead of full fat, sweetcorn with no added sugar or salt, Cereal bars instead of biscuits, tons of fresh salad, no cheese (except for low fat cottage cheese) baked potatoes instead of chips, no fried food, no takeaways, wholemeal bread and rolls and salad with everything (lettuce, carrot, cucumber, sweetcorn, spring onions and red peppers, lovely), Apples, Bananas, Stawberries, Grapes and Honey Dew Melon. I've never ate so much food in my life.

Can I maintain it? Yes, I think so. Once the cycle of lazy, convenience food has been broken I'll do it. I've not missed my crap diet one bit these past 2 weeks which is a real positive sign. By educating myself where the real crap is to be found (chocolate bars, biscuits, ready meals, processed food etc) I can steer clear of it for the majority of the time allowing the odd occasion when I can let my hair down with a takeaway or something (no more cheese loaded pizzas though). As long as it remains a rare rather than regular occurrence I should see the benefit in my Liver function results, higher energy levels and reduction in my weight (currently suffering a bit of a plateau). As ever, I'll post my progress here.