Making Sense of Dietary Fat (PART 1)

THE FATTY INTRODUCTION
I wanted my first blog post (ever in the history of time) to be about something that causes a ton of confusion for people trying to figure out the right stuff to eat. The aim is to reduce some of that confusion, at least by a tiny amount, by focusing on FAT and what kinds are good or bad or maybe either for you, and what the latest research tells us about it.

Does FAT make us FAT? Well, it sure can. But probably not. From all the research and my own personal experience, fat intake is just a small factor in the much greater scheme of things. You will gain weight, and therefore some fat, if you eat more calories than you burn. It really is as simple (and as complicated) as that. You will lose weight, and therefore some fat, if you eat less calories than you burn. There are a ton of things that affect how much you burn (just know that the majority of what you burn is NOT through exercise, but just normal body function to keep you alive), but that’s another topic for another day. Just know that no matter how much FAT you eat, it really is more about the total caloric intake that determines whether you gain or lose weight.

Ok so why is fat so important? It allows us to absorb certain vitamins (called fat soluble vitamins — A, D, E, and K), it keeps our hormone levels in check leading to better mental and reproductive health, performance, and body composition, it provides long term energy stores and can produce glucose for short term energy as well (just not as efficiently as consuming carbohydrates), it is part of the cellular function of nearly every organ in the body, and the list goes on and on. Simply enough, you need to eat fat. Your body, mind, and overall health will suffer badly without consuming it.

So now that that’s out of the way, we should talk about why I decided to write this blog. It wasn’t to tell you to eat a ton of fat, although if you want to, more power to you. It was to hopefully shed some light on the kinds of fat you should be trying to eat and the kinds of fat you should be trying to avoid. I’m going to split them into categories. The first category will be those fats you should specifically seek out for various reasons. They might help your cholesterol levels or other biological markers and risk factors, or counteract the effects of certain other fats, as you’ll see shortly. The second category is the “do not be afraid of these fats” category. You’ll see why. And the final categories are fats you should eat sparingly or try to avoid the best you can.

THE GOOD STUFF
Omega 3 (Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid)
Omega 3 is really big right now in media, being called the most amazing thing ever, but we need to talk about the real stuff here. The latest research shows that supplementation with Omega 3 does somewhere between jack and squat to your health, cholesterol, disease risk, and everything else. So what’s good about it? Because it still matters a ton, if the circumstances are good. It’s all about the ratios between the consumption of Omega 3 and the consumption of Omega 6.

First things first. These are both polyunsaturated fatty acids. You’ve probably been told that you should be eating as many unsaturated fats as possible, but there is a legitimate difference among all of the types. Omega 3 and Omega 6 compete for the SAME receptors in our bodies. In fact, the receptors prefer Omega 6 over Omega 3, so if there is too much Omega 6 consumption, very little Omega 3 will get absorbed. The Western diet has around 15:1 or up to 30:1 Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio, and our goal is to get it down to something like 4:1, although the jury is still out on the exact numbers. Simply adding a bunch of Omega 3 to your diet without changing what else you’re eating may not do much for you. Still, eating Omega 3 in the form of good foods such as salmon, tuna, and other natural stuff, is a step in the right direction.

Omega 3, without too much Omega 6 consumption, improves a ton of biomarkers. It has one main function that helps everything else. It reduces inflammation. That can serve to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in the form of atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and a number of other issues. The benefits of Omega 3 consumption will start to show once we remove a lot of the unnecessary Omega 6 from our diet.

Monounsaturated Fats
This type of fat is one of the few that doesn’t have an absolute ton of controversy and conflicting research surrounding it. What a breath of fresh air! These have been shown, without much doubt, to reduce LDL, aka the “bad” cholesterol (I loathe to call it that since there’s a lot more to it, but for the sake of this article, sure it’s “bad”). They may also increase HDL, the “good” cholesterol, but that is currently up for debate. In short, eat a lot of this stuff. Olive oil, avocados, and macadamia nuts are amazing sources that don’t have a bunch of less desirable fats in them. One of the reasons the Mediterranean diet has been deemed so healthy is that they use a ton of olive oil!

PART 2 FOLLOWS!