The Skinny on Fats in the Diet

After talking about body composition last week and how a high percentage of body fat can poorly influence overall health, I decided it was important to clarify the role of fat in the diet.  If you’ve been confused about what type and how much fat to include in your diet, you’re not alone.  Yet one thing is certain:  after many years of being told to avoid fat because it will make you fat, we now realize that fat is absolutely necessary as part of a healthy diet, and if eaten sensibly, will help to keep you lean and looking and feeling good. 

In general, our diets should include approximately 20 – 35% calories from fat.  So for example, in a 2,000 calorie/day diet, this would amount to 400 – 700 calories.  At 9 calories per gram, this converts to 44 – 78 grams of fat per day.   If that sounds like a lot to you, consider why fat is so important in the diet: 

• It’s a source of concentrated energy
• It is a major structural component of cell membranes
• It’s a source of insulation
• It’s necessary for healthy skin and nails
• It slows down digestion
• It’s needed to absorb fat-soluble vitamins and nutrients
• It keeps our vision strong
• It’s involved in cell signaling
• It’s a major component of the central nervous system and necessary for proper brain function

As you can see, fat wears many hats in the body and it’s important to include it in some form at every meal.  But what kinds of fats should I be eating, you may ask?  In general, we need a combination of saturated fats, unsaturated (mono- and poly-) fats, and essential fatty acids in the diet.  

Although we’ve been led to believe that saturated fats lead to elevated cholesterol levels and heart disease, in his extensive study of primitive cultures, Weston Price found that saturated fat was an integral component of a number of diets supporting excellent health, development, and vitality.  This includes the addition of animal fats in the forms of butter, eggs, full fat dairy products, and the fats from animal tissue.  However, with our relatively sedentary lifestyles today, I recommend that they be eaten in small amounts.    

Still, many others believe that only unsaturated fats should be consumed.  However, high consumption of polyunsaturated fats, which are more unstable than saturated fats, in the forms of commercially available oils, such as corn, safflower, and soybean can lead to inflammation in the body that underlies diabetes, heart disease, cancer, digestive disorders, and premature aging.   Therefore, these fats should be used sparingly too. Hydrogenated, or trans fats, often found in processed and packaged foods are another source of unhealthy fat that can promote inflammation. 

To make fat part of a healthy diet, consume foods that already contain healthy fats since they are naturally protected in their whole state.  These include nuts, grains, legumes, eggs, fish, fruits and vegetables, and clean sources of meat.  Butter, ghee, grapeseed, and coconut oils have high smoking points so they are great for sautéing.   The benefits of extra virgin olive oil are preserved when used at low heat.  A high quality olive oil works well for drizzling on foods, in dressings and as a dip for breads. Nut and seed oils are also best used unheated as a condiment on vegetables and grains.   Here are fats to include by category:

Saturated Fats:

• high quality or organic dairy products such as fermented yogurt, kefir, or raw cheeses, organic butter
• eggs from pasture-raised chickens than were fed organic feed (antibiotic- and hormone-free)
• grass-fed, wild, organic meats and poultry raised without hormones, antibiotics, or grains produced with pesticides
• unrefined coconut oil

 Monounsaturated/polyunsaturated fats:

• extra virgin olive oil
• high quality canola oil
• grapeseed oil
• avocado
• nuts and seeds and their oils

 Essential Fatty Acids:

• ALA (omega-3) - flax, walnuts, hemp, tofu
• LA (omega-6) - sunflower, pine nuts, pecans, brazil nuts, sesame oil
• EPA/DHA  (long-chain omega-3) - herring salmon, black cod, anchovies, mackerel, tuna, halibut, herring, small amount in poultry and egg yolks, algae

 Image courtesy of m_bartosch 

Does This Diet Make Me Look Fat?

Today in the United States, ~35% of the adult population is considered obese and this number is expected to reach 50% by 2030.  This is a sobering statistic.  Even more worrisome is the rising rate of obesity among children and the potential for early onset of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  In the health survey I sent out a couple of months ago, 100% of the people who responded said they wanted to lose weight.   As much as total body weight is an important factor that determines overall health, the number staring back at you on the scale only reveals a small part of the picture.

To understand what’s not found in this number, let’s consider two people of similar body frame and weight who have lost a similar number of pounds. Suzie lost most of her weight in the form of fat and now has a body composition of 22% fat and 78% non-fat mass (muscle, bones, etc.).  Sarah, on the other hand, lost most of her weight as muscle and has a body composition of 35% body fat and 65% non-fat mass.  Both of them may look similar in size, but their bodies are functioning very differently biochemically.

The diet Suzie followed allows for a slow release of sugar into the blood stream and the pancreas to release insulin in a slow but steady manner.  Her cells are highly sensitive to insulin, which allows them to take up sugar easily.  Her cells are also efficiently producing energy and she maintains healthy cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well as hormone balance, which further supports healthy cell function.  She is energetic, well rested, can think clearly, and has good mood balance. 

Sarah’s diet causes her pancreas to rapidly release excess and unhealthy amounts of insulin.  Her excess body fat is likely in the form of visceral adipose tissue, or VAT, which accumulates around the organs and acts as an endocrine organ itself, dumping excess hormones and inflammatory molecules into the blood, leading to hormone imbalances and inflammation throughout the body.   The inflammatory signals weaken the insulin receptors on her cells, making it difficult for her cells to take up the sugar in her blood, so energy production is poor.  Excess sugar in her system increases triglyceride levels, and Sarah’s body composition raises her risk of high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2-diabetes.  Although Sarah is thin, she is metabolically fat and may also be suffering from low energy, depression, digestive problems, unexplained aches and pains, skin problems, hormone-related disorders, and more.

HOW you lose weight is just as important as how much weight you lose.   A healthy balanced diet along with supplementation, exercise and stress reduction versus fasting or crash dieting combined with unhealthy food choices, stimulants, and a sedentary lifestyle make all the difference in how you feel, and look, as you lose weight.   At the conference I attended last week, I met a woman who had lost sixty-five pounds on one of the popular already-prepared-foods diets, but when her body composition was analyzed, she discovered that she had an unusually high percentage of body fat!  The information immediately gave her the incentive to change her diet and lifestyle to improve her body composition.

Stay tuned, because after the holidays, I will be launching a three-week program designed to help you make changes to diet and lifestyle that your body, mind, and spirit will love!  

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici