Why Low Fat Diets are Making You Fat and Wrecking Your Health

08 Oct Why Low Fat Diets are Making You Fat and Wrecking Your Health

If you’re like most people who struggle to lose weight you are probably under the misunderstanding that all fat is bad for you.  But what you also probably don’t realise is that one of the keys to burning stored body fat is to eat more foods that contain ‘good’ fats.

Did you know that coconut oil, butter and avocado, for example, are some of the healthiest fats you could eat?

Yes, those saturated fats we’ve been led to believe are so bad for us can actually help you lose weight.

The problem is that much of our understanding about ‘healthy’ diets and how to lose weight even from ‘trusted’ sources has come about because of marketing hype and politics, rather than solid science.

Over the last 12 years I’ve discovered a lot about the behind the scenes lies and cover-ups since my journey discovering natural health solutions began.  And during my last 9 years in practice I’ve helped many clients understand how their “healthy” diet is keeping them overweight, sick and making them age much faster.

You see, weight gain, slowed metabolism and chronic diseases generally attributed to aging are all often greatly accelerated by eating too little fat or the wrong type of fat in your diet.

But you don’t have to believe me.  Just this year Denise Minger published her mind-blowing book called “Death by Food Pyramid”.  In it she exposes how many so-called facts about diet are actually fiction, and how they came about.

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that highly processed trans-fats, polyunsaturated vegetable oils and margarine are healthier than saturated fats in coconut oil, avocado, butter and even cheese, cream and bacon.

One undeniable fact is that saturated fats like these are necessary for making all our steroid hormones including oestrogen, progesterone, cortisol, DHEA, hormones that regulate your blood mineral levels and vitamin D.  They are all made from cholesterol!

Our bodies are also designed to burn fat and fat helps to boost your energy.  Low fat diets make us feel depressed, anxious, cause brain fog, hormonal imbalances and vitamin D deficiency.

Including healthy fats in your diet will help you to lose weight in 3 different ways.

How?

When fat passes through from your stomach into your small intestine two hormones are released.  These firstly switch off your appetite and secondly they slow down how fast your stomach empties, keeping you feeling satisfied for longer.  Therefore you’ll eat less!

Thirdly, certain types of healthy fats help to switch on fat-burning.

If you’re worried about saturated fats and heart disease you needn’t be.  There is plenty of research to debunk the myth that saturated fat is bad for us once and for all.  Studies on cultures last century that still ate their traditional food showed the ones eating the highest amount of fat were actually the slimmest!

Looking back to the not so distant past, our grandparents, great grand parents and their ancestors ate high quantities of animal fat.  They ate butter, lard, dripping and the offal from animals and it was also common for many families last century to take a daily dose of cod liver oil.   Eskimos lived entirely on seal blubber.

An article published in March 2014 in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine concluded “Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.”

The culprits when it comes to making you fat are those processed carbohydrates, especially highly processed grains like bread, pasta, crackers, cakes, biscuits etc which have replaced fat as a source of energy in your diet.  These types of foods are very quickly converted to sugar in your body and end up getting stored as fat.  Not to mention that they increase your appetite and you’ll end up eating more!

Many low-fat or ‘lite’ products are also laden with sugar and other additives to make them palatable, which adds to the problem.

On top of that, polyunsaturated vegetable oils sadly being promoted as ‘healthy’ belong to the class of omega 6 fats which cause inflammation.

Soybean oil is the most highly inflammatory oil you could put in your body and it’s followed closely by canola. They’re both cheap to produce and are found in so many processed foods today.

Somehow the daily habit of taking cod liver oil died out so it’s like you’re getting very little omega 3 fats and way more omega 6 fats in your diet, even if you do take a fish oil supplement.

Omega 3 fats from fish are anti-inflammatory and having too little of these and more pro-inflammatory omega 6 polyunsaturated oils and trans-fats found in processed foods will tip your body towards inflammation.  Inflammation makes you gain weight!

You can really reduce the level of inflammation in your body by eliminating these types of oils as much as possible and eating more foods containing anti-inflammatory fats like sardines, herring, wild-caught salmon and trout.

Here are some of my top tips on fat:

• Have frequent meals with sardines, herring, wild-caught salmon and trout
• Coconut oil is the best fat for cooking with and can boost ‘good’ cholesterol
• Olive oil is great for salad dressings
• Choose red meat and dairy products from grass-fed cows, preferably organic
• Enjoy a little organic butter for frying with or over veggies
• Fresh, unroasted nuts and seeds or a little nut butter make healthy snacks
• Avoid trans fats, deep fried foods, hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats – read the labels on processed foods carefully
• Avoid all vegetable oils especially soy and canola oils
• Don’t only look for 0 grams of trans fat, but also check for other harmful ingredients, especially sugar

My clients who make the shift and include more ‘good’ fats in their diet are finally losing weight without experiencing hunger and cravings.  They also notice other positive “side-effects” like thinking more clearly, feeling calmer, happier and much more energetic.