But, doesn't eating more fat make you fat?
Short time ago, the battle was waged against dietary fat and its supposed cause of heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol and the world’s ongoing obesity epidemic.Today, many foods advertise low-fat or fat-free alternatives, appealing to the belief that fat makes you fat. Of course, around here we can’t just accept this to be true without proper evidence. There’s no doubt that out of the three primary macronutrients we consume, fat is indeed the easiest to be stored as actual fat. The fat we consume are in the form of triglycerides, which is essentially identical to the fat we store in our bodies. It doesn’t take much effort to process dietary fat into our adipose tissue. Carbs and protein, on the other hand, have other priorities. Carbs are first used to produce energy and replete glycogen stores before being stored as fat. Proteins are used for protein synthesis and a slew of other metabolic purposes. It will hardly be used for producing energy.
Dietary fat is also the most rich macronutrient in calories, clocking in at 9 calories per gram compared to 4 per gram for either carbs and protein. On the surface, it does seem like eating fat might actually translate to more fat stored in our bodies. However, we have to consider the bigger perspective. Yes, our body favorise carbs and protein for other metabolic purposes other than fat
storage, but eating these in excess will prevent your body from getting into ketosis to use fat for energy. Fat is not the problem, but rather excessive caloric consumption above our energy needs.
A 2017 meta-analysis, which thoroughly analyzed 32 controlled feeding studies comparing low-fat and low-carb diets. In their findings, low-fat diets had a slight 16 grams per day fat loss advantage
over low-carb, high-fat diets. Now before you think this proves that eating fat indeed makes you fatter, consider that controlled studies are special scenarios. In real life scenarios, we don’t have researchers bringing us meals in a controlled environment to ensure adherence. Low-carb, high-fat diets might actually have an advantage since restricting carbs means restricting practically all junk food loaded with added sugars.
To get a better feel for more life-like situations, we can look at another study released earlier. In this study, subjects were simply instructed to adhere as closely as possible to either a low-carb or low-fat diet with the focus of weight loss through the course of 12 months. A lot of potential variations can exist just as it would in real life. In the end, the researchers concluded that, while accounting for genotypical and insulin differences, there were no significant differences in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet versus a healthy low-carb diet. Both achieved the same weight loss results.
With all this in mind, let’s ask again: Does eating fat make you fat? In terms of total calorie consumption, yes for sure. Consuming more fat with excess consumption of any sort, can make you fat. Keyword, though, is excess consumption, meaning more calories consumed than burned. But if you’re not overeating, then having a higher proportion of your dietary intake as fat isn’t going to make much of a difference to your waistline. Now to close, the biggest take-home message is to stop worrying about eating less fat or even less carbs. What matters most is adherence. Choose a diet that you can stick to and allows you to comfortably avoid eating in excess.
Short time ago, the battle was waged against dietary fat and its supposed cause of heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol and the world’s ongoing obesity epidemic.Today, many foods advertise low-fat or fat-free alternatives, appealing to the belief that fat makes you fat. Of course, around here we can’t just accept this to be true without proper evidence. There’s no doubt that out of the three primary macronutrients we consume, fat is indeed the easiest to be stored as actual fat. The fat we consume are in the form of triglycerides, which is essentially identical to the fat we store in our bodies. It doesn’t take much effort to process dietary fat into our adipose tissue. Carbs and protein, on the other hand, have other priorities. Carbs are first used to produce energy and replete glycogen stores before being stored as fat. Proteins are used for protein synthesis and a slew of other metabolic purposes. It will hardly be used for producing energy.
Dietary fat is also the most rich macronutrient in calories, clocking in at 9 calories per gram compared to 4 per gram for either carbs and protein. On the surface, it does seem like eating fat might actually translate to more fat stored in our bodies. However, we have to consider the bigger perspective. Yes, our body favorise carbs and protein for other metabolic purposes other than fat
storage, but eating these in excess will prevent your body from getting into ketosis to use fat for energy. Fat is not the problem, but rather excessive caloric consumption above our energy needs.
A 2017 meta-analysis, which thoroughly analyzed 32 controlled feeding studies comparing low-fat and low-carb diets. In their findings, low-fat diets had a slight 16 grams per day fat loss advantage
over low-carb, high-fat diets. Now before you think this proves that eating fat indeed makes you fatter, consider that controlled studies are special scenarios. In real life scenarios, we don’t have researchers bringing us meals in a controlled environment to ensure adherence. Low-carb, high-fat diets might actually have an advantage since restricting carbs means restricting practically all junk food loaded with added sugars.
To get a better feel for more life-like situations, we can look at another study released earlier. In this study, subjects were simply instructed to adhere as closely as possible to either a low-carb or low-fat diet with the focus of weight loss through the course of 12 months. A lot of potential variations can exist just as it would in real life. In the end, the researchers concluded that, while accounting for genotypical and insulin differences, there were no significant differences in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet versus a healthy low-carb diet. Both achieved the same weight loss results.
With all this in mind, let’s ask again: Does eating fat make you fat? In terms of total calorie consumption, yes for sure. Consuming more fat with excess consumption of any sort, can make you fat. Keyword, though, is excess consumption, meaning more calories consumed than burned. But if you’re not overeating, then having a higher proportion of your dietary intake as fat isn’t going to make much of a difference to your waistline. Now to close, the biggest take-home message is to stop worrying about eating less fat or even less carbs. What matters most is adherence. Choose a diet that you can stick to and allows you to comfortably avoid eating in excess.
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