To be completely confused about fat..?

[Scarletohello]

Been watching a tv show about health and it was saying how fat clogs up your arteries, using the metaphor of fat clogging up drains. I'm a big fan of low carb diets ( which means high fat), have lost lots of weight on them before and feel well when I'm not eating wheat or sugar. But when I see programs like this I get so scared and confused about whether animal fat is ok or not ... What do people think??

I know nothing scientific about all this, but isn't it true that if you eat a high fat meal but are active and burn it all off, it won't clog your arteries and kill you?

The problem maybe isn't with eating fat, but with being fat, thus storing excess fat in assorted body parts?

It's doubtless far more complex than that, but it makes some sort of logical sense.

IMO, the unhealthy foods are anything processed or man made. Do you have any idea what goes into diet food? Or healthy margerine? Absolute shite!
Anecdotally, when I severely broke my arm, I was pretty much housebound for 6 months. bad break, no cast
For those 6 months, I took very little exercise and ate my way through the River Cottage Cookbook. Veg, meat, fish, butter, cheese, cream. One week we used 2.5litres of cream.
When I returned to work, I weighed a stone less than when I left and felt great!

Just marking place to read properly tomorrow.

Coconut oil is the way forward!

Yes agree with coconut oil. It's so healthy. Butter is a bit better then marg.

I tend to eat lots of veg and some non processed protein at each meal if I can. I like to eat protein that isn't meat often. i eat lots of nuts, seeds, pulses, avocado, eggs, meat, fish, salad etc and odd bits of dark chocolate. I think we all eat too much gluten and particularly wheat here. Other countries are much more sensible.

it's very easy for people to have wheat for breakfast (cereal or pancakes or toast), wheat for lunch (bread, pasta salad), wheat for tea (pizza,pasta,pies, breaded items) and also fill up on wheat treats in between meals (biscuits, cake). I'm sure wheat is great in moderation, like everything else but we are a nation unhealthily obsessed with wheat

With regard to low carb diets like the Atkins diet; everyone I know who has followed this diet has lost shed loads of weight....and then put it all back on with more as soon as they start eating normally again.
I think diet should actually be about healthy eating and having everything in moderation. The human body needs fat, sugar, carbs, protein, vitamins and minerals in order to work properly, removing or seriously restricting any major food group can cause long term problems for the body.

Back to the Atkins diet though, surely it makes sense that eating large amounts of saturated fat is not going to do the body any good despite any apparent weight loss?

I am eating loads of coconut oil, butter and animal fats and I am losing weight much easier than when I was following the low fat bollocks.

Sorry that was a bit off topic. I do think there Is lots of healthy protein about. Yes un processed meat in moderation but also eat fish, pulses, eggs, nuts etc

If I don't eat protein for breakfast, I'm useless all day!

the way i understand it is its the "wrong" fats that can be dangerous in large amounts, ie if you eat fry ups, buckets of kfc and mcds all the time = not good

but natural fats are OK i think ie in nuts, olive oil, coconuts, avocado's, etc

Me too saggy. I love poached eggs and grilled tomatoes

I think some of you are mixing up the idea of 'bad fat' with being fat. It is perfectly feasible to be of an ideal weight- possibly even underweight and have an increased risk of heart disease etc due to having a diet rich in saturated fat. Too much fat will make you put on weight ( as will too much of any food group) but to much saturated fat will increase your cholesterol and put you more at risk of cardiovascular disease. Suggesting the Atkins diet is a good thing because when you give it up You put on weight actually proves the opposite ie the diet is a fad and doesn't work because it is unsustainable ( and also down right dangerous as there is a link to kidney failure). If carbs are so bad why are there so few overweight people in China ( the cities excepted where the more western diet is prevalent) ?
Anything in moderation is the key.
By the way I vaguely seem to remember that 'magerine' has been banned in the UK for many years and the stuff we call margarine is actually 'spread'- I may have dreamed that though

With regard to low carb diets like the Atkins diet; everyone I know who has followed this diet has lost shed loads of weight....and then put it all back on with more as soon as they start eating normally again.

Well define 'normally'! For most people in the UK, 'normal' means a return to eating a high carb diet. It's the carbs that make you fat. No surprise, then, that if they drop a low carb diet for a high carb one that the weight will go back on again.

And anyone who has actually bothered to read Atkins will know that the plan is designed to help you not just lose weight but also to be able to work out how many carbs you can consume on a daily basis without gaining weight.

This figure, incidentally, is different for everyone.

And those countries that traditionally rely on high carb ingredients as a dietary staple, like Japan, did not traditionally also stuff their faces with burgers, pizza and chocolate. It's no coincidence that obesity is known as a Western disease. The move away from traditional diets towards eating the kinds of foods that we would call 'normal' has seen obesity rates increase in those countries.

here's an interesting piece from the Japan Times

BIWI I eat more carbs than most people I know and am slimmer than mos people I know. My weight is well within the BMI healthy range. I eat low fat protein such as grilled skinless chicken and stay away from too much high saturated bad fats.
I think staving the body of carbs whilst doing the Atkins diet causes it to store the carb energy when carbs are reintroduced. No diet which seriously restricts any of the major food groups can be considered healthy in my opinion, they just mess up the bodys natural metabolism.

I'm on Atkins now and watched a documentary years ago before trying it. The science behind it is this:
When you eat carbs and fat together (say lasagne for example) your body uses the carbs as energy and stores the fat content as fat. Any unused energy from the meal turns to sugar and then fat.

If you have protein/fat only, your body can't use it for energy well and therefore doesn't store it, it passes through your body and you have to use your fat reserves for energy. This is why the weight loss is so rapid.

It's recommended that you eat lean protein such as skinless chicken, seafood, lean red meat. You can also have two cups of low carb salad or veg a day too. It's not necessarily high in fat (although cauli cheese made with cream and half a block of cheddar with black pepper is amaaaazing.)

Without the adrenaline peaks and troughs in your bloodstream, your body goes into a state of ketosis after a few days. You know when this happens as you'll be pissing like a racehorse!!!

Before and after tests on a volunteer showed his cholesterol actually went down on Atkins (but it does give you dog breath.) it's recommended you only give up carbs for a little while then slowly reintroduce complex carbs (wholemeal only of bread, rice and pasta.)

I lost 10lbs in 10 days before caving when a member of staff in Sainsbury caught me sniffing a cheese roll. I felt I had to buy it and game over.
HTH

I didn't watch the programme but i know that with fat it''s all to do with whether the fat is saturated (bad fat) or unsaturated (very healthy).

High saturated fat is found in red meat, butter, whole milk and cheese, etc (to get to know what is highly saturated fat read the label, you might get a shock!).

LOW saturated fat is found in lean meat like chicken, turkey and low fat dairy products (skimmed milk and low fat yogurt etc).

Unsaturated fats are found in nuts, oily fish like salmon and mackerel, avocado etc. they may contain some saturated fat but the benefit outweighs the risk because of the high unsaturated content.

One clogs arteries and puts on weight, the other keeps the body healthy and believe it on not, helps lose weight

runningchick

I eat more carbs than most people I know and am slimmer than mos people I know. My weight is well within the BMI healthy range. I eat low fat protein such as grilled skinless chicken and stay away from too much high saturated bad fats.

Good for you - and lucky you. Everyone is different in terms of the amount of carbs that they can tolerate. Which is why our weights all very so much. I'm glad you have found a way of eating that suits you^

I think staving the body of carbs whilst doing the Atkins diet causes it to store the carb energy when carbs are reintroduced.

Your body can only store around 7lbs worth of glycogen, which is what the carbs are turned into. If you revert to a high carb diet, then you will not only re-fill these glygogen stores but the rest of the carbs will be laid down as fat, based on the action of insulin. It's nothing to do with having starved the body of carbs in the first place and everything to do with consuming too many carbs when you stop following a low carb diet.

No diet which seriously restricts any of the major food groups can be considered healthy in my opinion, they just mess up the bodys natural metabolism.

Again, not true. A low carb diet is one where you get your carbs from vegetables and salad. It isn't a major restriction (apart from perhaps an initial strict phase of a diet - usually no more than 2 weeks). Foods like sugar, white bread and white pasta (for example) mess up your blood sugar levels and make you fat. Being fat slows down your metabolic rate.

Explain how your idea of a serious restriction messes up our metabolism - I'd be keen to know the science behind that.

runningchick if you are eating high carb but low fat this could explain how you can maintain your healthy weight. It is eating high carb/high fat that causes problems. Also, going off your MN name, do you run alot? This could explain how you are burning the carbs off.

with regards to the body storing carb energy when you eat carbs after being low carb, this in some ways is true because when you are eating low carb you generally have little glycogen in your muscles so when you eat carbs your body uses this to refill the glycogen stores in your muscles and liver. This explains an overnight gain of 2 or more pounds. Once the glycogen stores are full, any extra carbs eaten, if not used as energy straightaway, are stored as fat due to the action of insulin.
There is more and more research proving that low carb is fine for exercise and that endurance athletes can do better on ketones as they have a constant energy supply and don't hit the wall.

As for our metabolisms. As a species, we evolved to have a metabolism that can run on fat. This is why our bodies have the mechanisms to make glucose from other sources, because carbs were not a major part of our evolutionary diet. This allowed hunter gatherers to go for days on little food until another kill could be made. With the advent of agriculture, carbs in the form of grains became a higher proportion of our diets but this led to us getting shorter and with smaller brains. Our bodies have not evolved to handle this amount of grains, especially refined and processed products, hence the rise in obesity levels and western diseases once governments started telling us all to eat more grains and less fat.
If glucose in any form is available to our bodies, the body will metabolize that as a primary energy source because it is easier to do that. It doesn't mean it is the ideal fuel source for our body.
I hope that all makes sense

BIWI I have just read up low carb diets and you could be right about them not impacting negatively on metabolic rates. Suppose I have spent far too much time listening to people tell me that they are only fat because fad diets have messed up their metabolism. It was actually quite interesting reading.

Maybe I get away with eating a lot of carbs because I also do a lot of exercise so use up the glycogen quite rapidly. A typical week for me would involve running around 12 miles, swimming quite vigorously for an hour, playing racket sports for 2-3 hours and doing lots of walking. Maybe people have problems with carb overload because they are too sedentary to burn off the excess.

At least I can now ignore the people who tell me they are only overweight due to diets having messed up their metabolism.

ah, here we go - big pharma.

top tip - ignore all diet advice from anyone trying to sell you something. So that is diet writers, supplement sellers etc etc. Listen to the doctors who get paid salaries, not commission.

anyone who does know a little science knows that there are two types of dietary carbohydrate. Simple carbs (sugary stuff) which give quick energy release and a quick 'crash', and complex carbs (found in starchy foods) which take longer to release energy and so you feel fuller for longer.

so if you eat cakes and biscuits, you don't feel full for long and you eat more, so you get fat. If you eat a good percentage of complex carbs you will feel fuller for longer and are less likely to be back at the biscuit tin. Of course you need your veg, protein and dairy too.

it's all common sense. A rare thing.

As with a lot of people I know, I spent years assuming that high-carb, low-fat was the healthy way to eat.

Now I avoid processed carbs (wheat, sugar etc) and get most of my carbs from vegetables, some fruit, nuts, seeds etc.

I have a good protein intake and a fairly high-fat diet. Those fats include animal fats (butter, cream, cheese, fat on meat) and vegetable fats (avocados, olive oil, coconut oil etc).

I've never felt better. And, while eating very few processed carbs, I don't exclude any food group from my diet. Low-carb doesn't mean no-carb, which is a misnomer - it's more to do with which foods provide the carbs you eat.

As far as I can see, the confusion about fat comes from the clash between mainstream advice advocating low-fat/high-carb and research indicating that processed carbs, especially grain-based ones, are linked to obesity. Gary Taubes makes for interesting and accessible reading on this.

To answer your question, YANBU to be confused as a lot of the advice out there is confusing!

Whoops, I said adrenaline but meant insulin.

I would agree with the recommendation for Gary Taubes above.

I would also recommend watching the following lecture on you tube by a sweedish doctor, its great.

I lost 4 stone Jan-May doing a low fat diet on Weight Watchers- essentially eating exactly what the NHS currently recommend- low fat, lots of wholemeal pasta and rice, lean protein etc. I was dieting to improve my health mainly, and ate in a way they recommend to be a paragon of eating for cardiovascular health.

Then I read Gary Taubes book and learnt what the scientific research ACTUALLY shows and I couldn't believe it.

In eating this way I would have increased all my risk factors for CVD.

In particular low fat diets in women lower the rate of good cholesterol in the body which is the biggest risk factor for heart disease in women, more so than triglycerides or bad cholesterol etc.

He quotes many peer reviewed studies showing that the that the 'healthy' way of eating I had adopted was making me look thinner, but was making my body more sick.

I am now on a low car/high fat diet so that I can lose weight without damaging my health.

IMO the NHS is still prescribing a diet invented in the 1970s to please big cereal producers and the nation has in effect, been fattened up like cattle ever since.

The studies in Taubes book clearly show, for example, that people on a low carb, high fat diet not only lose more weight than people eating the same number of calories on a low fat diet, but that their triglyceride levels and bad cholesterol levels fall more significantly than those on a low fat diet.