maybe you've been pouring skim milk on
your cereal and spritzing nonfat
dressing on your salads for years but as
it turns out eating fat won't make you
fat in fact research shows that low-fat
diets don't seem to aid in weight loss
or in reducing risk of disease compared
to high-fat diets and all those refined
carbs that you've been eating to replace
that fat might be the real issue to
understand how fat can be healthy it's
helpful to first understand what's going
on with carbs in your body when you eat
a simple carbohydrate like a slice of
bread enzymes in your saliva immediately
start breaking that food down into sugar
that surge of sugar triggers a hormone
called insulin which tells your body to
store available energy in the
bloodstream in fat tissue and in other
forms and the later surge crash makes
you feel hungry encouraging you to eat
more but fats are another story fat
isn't processed the same way as carbs it
can't be broken down with saliva or
fully digested by stomach acid instead
your small intestines was the aid of
bile secreted by your liver break it
down this happens much later in the
digestive process so fat digestion is
much slower the different fats interact
with your hormones and complex ways that
unlike carbs don't cause a massive spike
in insulin and good fats are really
important for your body to function
properly mono unsaturated fats can be
found in olive oil and avocados this
good fat helps reduce inflammation and
levels of LDL or bad cholesterol in the
blood polyunsaturated fats in foods like
sunflower seeds walnuts and fish also
have significant health benefits fish
oil for example consists of one type of
polyunsaturated fat called omega-3 fatty
acids which have been found to decrease
blood pressure increase HDL or good
cholesterol and may also protect against
heart disease but saturated fats found
in red meat and dairy are a different
story
an extensive study found that replacing
a small percentage of calories coming in
from saturated fats with calories from
unsaturated fats reduce the risk of
death heart disease and a number of
neurodegenerative diseases at the same
time studies show that full fat dairy is
healthier than reduced fat dairy one
recent study found that drinking full
fat dairy was associated with a lower
risk of diabetes
so while unsaturated fats are better
saturated fats aren't entirely useless
not only are unsaturated fats essential
for your body avoiding them in the name
of weight loss isn't actually a helpful
way to shed unwanted pounds a study by
the Women's Health Initiative assigned
women to low fat diets for eight years
they found the participants didn't seem
to gain protection against breast cancer
colorectal cancer or cardiovascular
disease and in the carb versus fat
debate an extensive 2017 study found no
association between dietary fat and
heart disease in fact the researchers
found that high carb diets were linked
to a higher risk of death so if studies
show that fat doesn't make us fat or
doesn't increase our risk of heart
disease and carbs make us hungry and are
linked to a higher risk of death should
we all just ditch carbs altogether
probably not recent research seems to
advocate a balanced diet that includes a
combination of healthy fats and complex
carbs researchers found that diets high
in fiber and low in refined grains meat
and sugars resulted in less weight gain
so what should you eat the good news is
you can find healthy fats and complex
carbs in a variety of tasty foods you
can find unsaturated fats and fish
olives nuts and seeds and still have a
place on your plate for so-called good
carbs although you should probably avoid
eating lots of refined carbs like white
bread and rice foods like sweet potatoes
raw apples and legumes are a different
story
these foods don't cause the same sudden
peaks in blood sugar and like healthy
fats that contribute to a balanced diet
to keep your body running
so go forth and toss some oil on that
salad
you