Fat: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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This is part of my Healthy Tip Tuesday Series! A couple times a month I will be sharing a healthy tip to keep you motivated and hopefully will teach you something new! I have a B.S in nutrition and am currently completing my masters in nutrition as we speak! If you have any questions please feel free to email me at ablossominglife {at} gmail {dot} com. Remember I am not a registered dietitian yet!

 This weeks topic… Fat

Everywhere you look there are low fat or no fat products. But guess what? Fat is not horrible for you! Your body needs fat in order to function properly for energy, growth, vitamin absorption, and hormones. We need a minimum of 10% of our calories to come from fat for our bodies to function properly. The USDA recommends we get 20-35% of our calories from fat. So if you see a diet that avoids all fat don’t buy into it! The problem is the types of fat we consume and how much fat we are consuming. In the typical American diet a lot of the fat we eat is from saturated fat and trans fat (although people are working to decrease this). Is there really a difference in the different types of fat? Yes! So here we go.. Fats 101

The Good Fat

Good fat are more natural fats that can be found in nuts, seeds, fish, avocados, olives, and plant based oils. These are unsaturated fats specifically mono- and poly-unsaturated fats! These fats are good for your heart and can actually help lower cholesterol.

The Bad Fat

“Bad” fats are saturated fats (ok I shouldn’t call them bad… Lets call them less healthy). They mostly come from animal sources. These fats contribute to clogging your arteries, increasing your cholesterol, and increase your risk for heart disease.  That’s why it is important to choose lean meats with less fat like chicken and try to eat less beef. If your a vegetarian or vegan than you don’t really have to worry about eating to much saturated fat! It has been shown that vegetarians and vegans have much lower risks of heart disease than meat eaters.

The Ugly Fat

“Ugly” fats are trans fats. Trans fat are very bad for you because they do two things: lower your HDL (healthy cholesterol) and raise you LDL (bad cholesterol).  Trans fats can be found naturally in small amounts in milk and meat products, but the more harmful trans fats are artificial and our found in margarine and in lots of processed foods. Remember to always read your food labels! Trans fat are hidden under other names like partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated oil!

So remember our bodies need fat but it is important to choose healthier good fats and try to limit the less healthy ones! The overall goal is to live a healthy lower fat diet! Let us not forget that exercise is an essential part of burning through all of the fat that your body does and doesn’t need in a healthy way. A friend enjoys regular Austin Tennis Lessons but everyone has their own way to go about it. Its all part of a healthy lifestyle!

What do you do to try to decrease less healthy fats in your diet?

Sources:
My education 🙂
The skinny on Fat

I party here…

3 Comments

  1. Very interesting thank you. I’m still on the fence about how much fat to eat in my diet. I’m currently eating more coconut oil and not restricting it and I’m feeling good for it. I think it does depend on the type of fat that you eat, but I prefer fats in whole food choices. I think they’ll always be the best option.
    I would love it if you shared this with Healthy Vegan Fridays, a blog hop co-hosted by 3 bloggers. I’m sure our readers would really enjoy this. You can submit a post from Friday to end of Tuesday:
    http://www.greenthickies.com/healthy-vegan-friday-30/

  2. You might be interested in taking a look at the new film Statin Nation, or reading this article by Dr. Mercola
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/the-cholesterol-myth-that_b_676817.html

    Basicly, what we have been lead to believe about cholesterol is wrong. Our brain is in fact 70% cholesterol, which is why statin drug use has shown drastic increases in neurological disorders such as Parkinsons. What we really should be on the lookout for is small dense LDL lipoproteins which come from the widespread use of hydrogenated oils, such as margarine. Animal fats are actually our best source of HDL lipoproteins which provide us with cellular, and brain protection.

    As someone following a paleo diet with a very high amount of animal fat, and protein in my diet, I can say that it is having tremendous benefits. I am also a long term sufferer of an auto immune condition, and the increase in animal fats has given me my life back.

    1. From my research I have found that the reason paleo diets work for some is because of cutting out grains n legumes not because of the high consumption of animal products. The high cholesterol readings stem from the inflammatory response to the grains. That is why anti fungal meds lower high cholesterol. Check out the bulletproof exec website and youtube video’s for more info in this. Also one would need to consume grass fed meat for this to be beneficial. Personally I only eat an occasional wildcaught fish. But I have seen the vast improvement in my auto immune issues when I cut out all grains. Try it for a week or so then eat grains again to compare how u feel with and without it. Do whichever works best for u.

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