A lot of people freak out when we tell them to include more fat in their diet.
It is so contrary to the accepted low-fat/no-fat dogma that people’s eyes widen like a deer caught in the headlights. Intelligible speech is inhibited and pupils dilate as pulses quicken…
“But I’m so terrified of blowing up.”
“I’ve been told by my doctor to eat low-fat.”
“…What?….”
These are often the first responses. If you just experienced one of these while reading this, don’t worry, its completely normal.
Simply put, fat in your diet does not equal fat on your body. In fact, if we can get lots of healthy fats into your diet on a regular basis, chances are the more fat you eat the less fat your body will store. The reason for this is that healthy fats help to create a hormonal environment that tells your body “It’s OK, I am well fed, I know where my next meal will come from. You can let go of the jelly rolls and we’ll still survive the winter.” We’ll get into a more in-depth explanation of the hormonal changes that occur when your body is burning stored body fat in a later post.
For right now, it is so important to understand this that it’s worth saying again.
Dietary Fat ≠ Body Fat* (*assuming you’re eating the healthy fats and avoiding the unhealthy fats)
Healthy Fats: Which Fats To Eat And Why
- Olive Oil – This is the one vegetable oil you can keep. Proven over the millennia, cold-pressed olive oil is loaded with all sorts of good stuff.
- Coconut Oil – Widely used before the anti-saturated fat craze of the 1970′s, coconut oil is one of the best fats those interested in losing weight by changing their body composition. Coconut oil’s fatty acids are short, so they get burned quite rapidly and are not prone to storage. Their short length also blesses coconut oil with anti-microbial properties that are excellent for gut health.
- Raw Butter – Butter is back on the menu! If you can, purchase raw butter from the Saturday Farmer’s Market, Lazy Acres or Lassen’s in town. Raw Butter is unpasteurized, meaning it hasn’t been superheated to kill bacteria, which means that it is a living food packed with beneficial bacteria, loads of vitamins A, D, E and K as well as heat sensitive nutrients like the Price Factor and Activator X, both heat-sensitive nutrients that are completely absent from pasteurized dairy products. Raw butter also has wonderful anti-microbial, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties.
- Lard – Traditional lard made from the fat back from well-raised pigs (i.e. not what you can buy in a Carniceria these days) is an absolute gold mine of bio-available Vitamin D. Plus, it’s insanely delicious! If you haven’t tried potatoes friend in lard, you’re missing out on one of the great joys of life!
- Duck Fat – Rendered from a well-raised duck (i.e. it lived a life that allowed it express its complete “duckness”) is another nutritional powerhouse and is ridiculously delicious.
- Other Traditional Animal Fats – Beef Suet, beef tallow, and mutton tallow Rendered fats from well-raised (i.e. pastured/grass-fed) lamb, goat
- Flax Seed Oil – Contains large amounts of the parent Omega 3 fatty acid. Should be kept cold and in a dark container and should not be heated or cooked with.
Whole Food Sources Of Healthy Fat
- Pastured Eggs – Eggs from pastured chickens (those allowed access to green grass, sunshine, bugs, seeds, worms etc.) are loaded with fat soluble nutrients and vitamins AND highly beneficial Omega 3 fatty acids. They also taste way better than supermarket eggs, typically support a more local food chain (can’t find ‘em at Safeway) and support ecological and humane farming practices.
- Grass Fed Beef - Cows are ruminants. Ruminants eat grass. When they are forced to eat corn they get sick and produce toxic meat. Choose grass-fed, hormone-free, humanely-raised local beef whenever you possibly can. Grass-fed meats are loaded with long chain Omega 3′s and fat soluble vitamins. Get it locally from Dey Dey’s Best Beef Ever.
- Nuts and Seeds in moderation – Walnuts, Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Cashews, Pecans and a few others are all good sources of healthy fat. Nuts and seeds, depending on the type, can be high in Omega ‘s, which we generally eat too much of already. Think of nuts and seeds as a condiment rather than a meal (your gut will thank you too).
- Wild Caught Fish – Wild caught seafood is a great source of healthy fats, particularly the Omega 3′s. Lucky for us, we live by the ocean! Visit the SB Fish Market and enjoy! Please choose sustainably harvested species – you are dollar voting every time you buy!
- Avocados, Coconuts, and Green Stuff! – Enjoy our local bounty of avocados. Coconut milk (whole fat) is a great source of healthy coconut fats. Eating green stuff is a great way to get the parent Omega 3 fatty acid (the most common fatty acid on the entire planet oddly enough!)
Unhealthy, Pro-Inflammatory Fats To Avoid
- All Vegetable Oils Except Olive Oil – Vegetable oils are high in the Omega 6 fatty acids that our diets already have too much of. This promotes a pro-inflammatory (i.e. high stress) internal environment, which is not conducive to fat loss, good immunity and good health. This means oils from canola , soybean, safflower, sunflower, peanut, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed or any funky combination thereof should be consciously avoided in your diet.
- Fats Extracted At High Temperatures, Pressures, Or With Chemical Solvents – These industrial extraction techniques expose fats to light and air, which causes them to go rancid. To get the last bit of oil out of the extraction pulp processors will often chemical solvents like hexane, a known carcinogen. Look instead for expeller-pressed, unrefined oils that are stored in darkened or tinted containers.
- All Hydrogenated Or Partially-Hydrogenated Fats - These fats are made from cheap oils to begin with (corn, cottonseed, soy, canola), already rancid the the faulty extraction process detailed above, and mixed with tiny metal particles like nickel oxide to spur the hydrogenation, laced with added emulsifiers and starches to change consistency, steam-cleaned to remove unpleasant odors, and then dyed to make them resemble real butter (after all that processing, hydrogenated fats are gray). These fats WILL contain trans fats (even if the label says “Zero Grams Trans Fat”, due to a loophole) which wreak havoc on the body by impairing basic life-supporting reactions due to their rigid structure. These Franken-Fats actually block utilization of essential fatty acids (the Omega 3’s and Omega 6’s), thus causing terrible effects like sexual dysfunction, increased blood cholesterol, and a weakened immune system. Trans fat consumption is known to cause cancer and is associated with heart disease, diabetes, obesity, immune dysfunction, low birth weight babies, birth defects, decreased visual acuity, sterility, difficulty in lactation and problems with bone and tendon development.
- All Homogenized Fats - Usually found with dairy fats, homogenization is a process by which fats are strained through microscopic pores of uniform size under immense pressures. This shears the fat particles to a very small size, thus they stay in suspension instead of rising to the top of milk. This causes fat and cholesterol to oxidize and go rancid (and rancid fats are known to be cancerous).
- Powdered Eggs, Powdered Milk, Deep Fried Meats – All of these are processed at high temperatures, which increases oxidation of cholesterol (oxidized cholesterol is known to be cancerous and atherosclerotic).
You don’t need to be a Registered Dietician or a Ph.D. Biochemist to know exactly which fats in which amounts to feed your body. Stick with the healthy fats listed in this post as the mainstays in your kitchen at home. Read labels. When you seed a red flag like those listed above, put it back on the shelf. You’ll that not only do you have MORE options when you choose healthy fats, but they also taste amazing too!
If you have further questions please post them in the comments section below so we can get more people in on the discussion.
Now go forth and enjoy delicious, healthy fat!
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