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The Importance of Fats in Dieting

By Anna Williams

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Published: 25Jan2009
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An essential but often overlooked part of any nutritional diet or weight loss program is consuming a sufficient quantity of healthy fats.

Fats have incorrectly been given a bad name and have been wrongly viewed as something to avoid.

There are unhealthy fats which can cause weight gain and health problems when consumed in excess. On the other side of the coin, there are healthy and essential fats which are necessary in the body and which actually assist in weight loss efforts.

This article is not an official medical document and does not serve to give specific instructions on how much of which types of fats should be consumed by whom, or under which circumstances, etc.

It only serves to raise awareness on the existence and importance of healthy and essential fats, and what some of them are.

"Good fats" contain essential fatty acids.

Essential fatty acids are the fats which are needed in the body, but which the human body can not synthesize. In other words, the body can not make these fats on its own, and it can not use components from other foods to create these fats. It has to obtain them directly from food.

They are called:

Linoleic Acid

Arachidonic Acid

Linolenic Acid

But don't worry if these seem like big confusing words. They are just the scientific names of the three essential fatty acids.

Principle sources of essential fatty acids include the following:

Natural vegetable oils, corn oil, soybean oil, and cottonseed oil (containing 35%-70% essential fatty acids) Safflower oil (containing 85%-90%).

One can also get essential fatty acids from other substances in smaller amounts. Some of these foods are not the healthiest though. These include:

Animal Fats

Cream

Butter

Fish-liver Oils

Egg Yolk

Natural Lard (the richest animal source, containing 5% - 11%)

Avocados

Almonds

Olive Oil

Now lets look at the difference between essential fatty acids and that fat that accumulates in our bodies when we eat more sugar or starch than the body can immediately use.

Since the body can not create these essential fats, which we need for health, that means that the an over-abundance of body fat will not replace our need for them.

Therefore it is incorrect to consider that one "does not need to eat anything with fat" just because one is overweight.

On the contrary, a lack of essential fatty acids can contribute to weight gain!

Eating too little of these healthy fats is possibly one of the principle causes of weight gain. The following are a few of the reasons for this:

1. When an insufficient quantity of essential fatty acids are present in the body, the body changes sugar into fat much more quickly than normal. This fast change of sugar to fat also causes the blood sugar to go down fast, which can lead to cravings for more food, overeating, and hence weight gain.

2. Fats are more satisfying than other foods. You might avoid 100 calories of fat in a meal, and as a result become so hungry that you wind up consuming an extra 500 calories of sugars and starches, in order to satisfy your hunger. And thus you gain more weight than you would have if you had eaten those essential healthy fats.

3. Many overweight person simply have an excess of water in their bodies. Adding adequate healthy fats to their diets (such as in salad dressings) has caused them to lose pounds.

There is quite a lot more that could be said about healthy fats and essential fatty acids. But this gives a basic summary. As a general rule, try to eat these fats in as raw and unadulterated form as possible. Fats can be harmed and made very unhealthy when they are heated and processed. I would suggest making home made salad dressings with raw oils, and/or adding raw nuts and seeds to one's salad, and then eating salad as frequently as possible. This encourages you to eat more vegetables as well. Salads can be varied in thousands of ways and can become gourmet works of art while retaining their health value.

So a great dieting rule of thumb would be to use salads liberally, and don't forget to put some healthy fats in your dressing!

For more information on health and nutrition, please visit Anna's website, at Living Clean - Recipes .

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