The Fat in Your Diet Is Not What is Making You Fat

The Fat in Your diet is not what is making you fat; in fact, the fat you fear is better for you than you think!

If you’re convinced that choosing fat-free foods will help you lose weight and stay healthy, you’re falling for one of biggest marketing scams ever orchestrated.

Maybe you have already figured out that cutting the fat out of your diet isn’t helping you lose weight. What’s more, you may be experiencing some of the side effects of healthy fat deprivation such as fatigue, mood swings, insatiable hunger, gas, bloating and acid-reflux.

Powerful corporations world-wide, including the pharmaceutical industry, continue to associate saturated fat intake with obesity, coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke, but it’s a self-serving agreement that gets you to buy low-fat products and surreptitiously supports the need for cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Factoid: Healthy Cholesterol levels keep getting lower as reported by the CDE and NCEP because they are determined as a result of testing the effectiveness of statin drugs such as atorvastatin (Lipitor) and simvastatin (Zocor). These studies involved only people with heart disease, so the lessons learned don’t directly apply to everyone.

Here are some well-documented factoids:

Low-Fat Diets Can Keep You Hungry

Fat-free foods are pretty tasteless, so we eat more of them, yet we’re still not satisfied. Why? Because fat is satiating! The fats in our diet trigger our brains telling us we are “full” and to stop eating.

Low-Fat Diets Are Often High in Carbohydrates

Low fat processed foods contain loads of sugar which is not only high in carbohydrates, but keeps you craving more sweets. A low carbohydrate diet, that eliminates sugar and carbs, lowers your glycemic level and eliminates sugar cravings.

Eating too many high-carb foods can also lead to low blood sugar. When your blood sugar drops, your body goes into a storage mode and your metabolism slows down. Also, when you eat high-carb foods, you trigger the release of insulin, which tells your body to store fat.

Low-Fat Also Means Low-Protein

Low-fat dieters will proudly tell you that they avoid red meat, cheese and that they cut back on poultry.  What they don’t realize is that they are cutting out proteins necessary for good health. How many people admit to “beefing up” on beans and tofu to replace that red meat and poultry? I would guess not many. If you are on a low-fat diet, consider adding more fat to your diet, or switching to a low-carb diet (which permits fats), especially if you are experiencing any of these symptoms:

Depression, Fatigue, Anxiety, Mood swings, Hypoglycemia, Insulin resistance, Constant and insatiable hunger, Gas, Bloating, “Acid-reflux,” Loose stools, Hormonal imbalances, Irregular menstruation in young women, Dry skin, Brittle hair and nails

Lower Cholesterol and Lose Body Fat by Eating Real Food

You are more likely to lower your bad cholesterol, (LDL) and raise your good cholesterol (HDL) by changing to a healthy, natural, balanced diet that avoids processed foods and high carbohydrate foods.

Sources: http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/news/9412

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/science/a/lowcarbcholest.htm

Get Real by Eating Real Food!

Margarine is Not Better than Real Butter

We have been told to eat margarine because butter raises our cholesterol and is bad for our heart. The truth is that margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters.

Source: (Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12)

Butter is a natural food. Margarine is an artificial concoction made from chemicals. Yes, butter is a saturated fat made from cream, but now that savvy consumers realize saturated fats aren’t going to kill us, (as the low-fat food industry would have us think), consider the reports pointing to the fact that real butter is actually good for you!  Butter is a natural source of vitamins A, D, E K, and important trace minerals – magnesium, zinc, chromium, selenium and iodine.

It also tastes a hell of lot better than margarine.

Julia Child, who died a few days short of her 92nd birthday said, “Oh, butter never hurts you”.  She is also noted for saying,  ”If fear of food continues, it will be the death of gastronomy in the United States.”

According to The Weston Price foundation and other naturopathic sources,  “The saturated fat in butter enhances our immune function, protects the liver from toxins, provides nourishment for the heart in times of stress, gives stiffness and integrity to our cell membranes, and aids in the proper utilization of omega-3 essential fatty acids.”

Other benefits include the fact that the cholesterol found in butterfat is essential to children’s brain and nervous system development and also protects against gastrointestinal infections in the very young or the elderly.

I personally recommend purchasing organic butter produced without the use of hormones, steroids and antibiotics.

Replace Highly Processed Vegetable Oils (trans fats) with Traditional Fats

For many years the media has told us to replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats like those from vegetable oils. It sounds healthful, but what they don’t always say is that not all vegetable oils are created equal. Some fats, like the vegetable shortening (like Crisco) used in cooking and prepared foods is highly processed. Those oils are partially hydrogenated – a process that rearranges the fatty acid molecules, turning them from the natural configuration into trans fats.  Not only are trans fats a synthetic product that is difficult to digest, they have been implicated as a cause of both cancer and heart disease. Practically all processed foods contain trans fats including some “healthy” breakfast cereals and snack bars.

Sources: Surprising Foods that contain Trans Fats

http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update1104b.shtml

http://www.thirdage.com/cholesterol/new-cholesterol-guidelines-lower-recommended-levels-of-ldl-cholesterol-indicate-earlier-

Your comments are welcome!

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© Copyright Cloud Nine/Making the World a Happier, Healthier Place to Live , 2012

For more information about using natural fats in a heathy diet, (including one in which you can lose weight) read up on the following articles:

What’s the Beef About Fat and Can You Eat Fat in a Low Carb Diet?

Gluten-Free-Low-Carb-Main-Course-Soup-Grilled-Beef-Thai

Are-You-A-Health-Freak?

The Ten Most Risky Foods to Eat

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