Why Eating High Fat Will Help You Lose Weight Faster

Many people are turning to low-fat diets as a way to to lose weight. You could actually gain weight by avoiding high fat foods in favor of some sugary carb options. Here’s the important role fat plays and why fat will help you lose weight faster than anything else!

By:  Instagram Influncer Tim Ernst Founder of Keto Kurves and F40 Fat Loss Formula

Everyone’s concerned about what to eat in order to lose weight.

Maybe you’ve been pouring skim milk on your cereal and spritzing non-fat dressing on your salad for years.

But it turns out, eating fat won’t make you fat.

In fact, research shows that low-fat diets don’t seem to aid in weight loss or in reducing risk of disease compared to higher fat diets.

All those refined carbs you’ve been eating to replace that fat might be the real issue.

To understand how fat can be healthy, it’s first helpful to understand what’s going on with carbs in your body.

What Carbs Do To Your Body

When you eat a simple carbohydrate, like a slice of bread, enzymes in your saliva immediately start breaking that food down into sugar.

That surge of sugar triggers a hormone called insulin, which tells your body to store available energy in the bloodstream in fat tissue and other forms.

The later surge-crash makes you feel hungry, encouraging you to eat more, but fats are another story.

What Fat Does To Your Body

Fat isn’t processed the same way as carbs.

It can’t be broken down with saliva, or fully digested by stomach acid.

Instead, your small intestines, with the aid of bile secreted by your liver, break it down.

This happens much later in the digestive process, so fat digestion is much slower.

The different fats interact with your hormones in complex ways that, unlike carbs, don’t cause a massive spike in insulin.

Good fats are really important for your body to function properly.

Monounsaturated Fats

Monounsaturated fats can be found in olive oil and avocados.

This good fat helps reduce inflammation and levels of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol in the blood.

Polyunsaturated Fats

Polyunsaturated fats in foods like sunflower seeds, walnuts, and fish also have significant health benefits.

Fish oil, for example, consists of one type of polyunsaturated fat called omega-3 fatty acids which have been found to decrease blood pressure, increase HDL or “good” cholesterol and may also protect against heart disease.

Saturated Fats

Saturated fats found in red meat and dairy are a different story.

An extensive study found that replacing a small percentage of calories coming from saturated fats with calories from unsaturated fats reduced risk of death, heart disease, and a number of neurodegenerative diseases.

At the same time, studies show full fat dairy is healthier than reduced fat dairy.

One recent study found that drinking full-fat dairy was associated with lower risk of diabetes.

So while unsaturated fats are better, saturated fats aren’t entirely useless.

Not only are unsaturated fats essential for your body, avoiding them in the name of weight loss isn’t actually a helpful way to shed unwanted pounds.

A study by the Women’s Health Initiative assigned women to low-fat diets for eight years.

They found the participants didn’t seem to gain protection against breast cancer, colorectal cancer, or cardiovascular disease.

Their weights were generally the same as those of women following their usual diets.

And in the carb vs fat debate, an extensive 2017 study found no association between dietary fat and heart disease.

In fact, the researchers found that high-carb diets were linked to a higher risk of death.

So, if studies show that fat doesn’t make us fat or increase our risk of heart disease… and carbs make us hungry and are linked to a higher risk of death, should we all just ditch carbs altogether?

Not necessarily.

The popular ketogenic diet is one that does have carbs but at only 5% of your daily calories.

The ratios are basically at 75% fat, 20% protein and only 5% carbs.

Like almost every other diet, Keto has a number of variations that can make it easier to adapt to depending on your lifestyle and goals.

The four main types of the Ketogenic Diet you may see are the Standard Ketogenic Diet, the High-Protein Ketogenic Diet, the Cyclical Ketogenic Diet, and the Targeted Ketogenic Diet.

• The Standard Ketogenic Diet (or SKD) – This is often the most common form of Keto that many people end up following – at least at first. It consists of around 75% of your daily calories coming from fat, 20% coming from protein, and only about 5% coming from carbs.
• The High-Protein Ketogenic Diet – This variation to SKD substitutes fat with more protein. As a result, about 35% of your calories should come from protein instead of 20% and only 60% should come from fat. The 5% carbs limit remains the same.
• The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) – Designed with exercise in mind, the CKD is used to help support high-intensity workouts with just a few high-carb days a week. A CKD program usually has 5 Keto days a week along with 2 high-carb days as well.
• The Targeted Ketogenic Diet (TKD) – Rather than designating days for eating high carbsto make workouts more productive, a TKD program allows users to consume carbs around workout times any day. This, again, is great for Keto dieters who also want to meet their exercise goals at the same time.

So What Should You Eat?

Meat

• Bacon (of course!)
• Eggs
• Chicken
• Steak
• Duck
• Crab
• Lamb
• Ham
• Pork
• Lobster
• Shrimp
• Turkey
• Veal
• Salmon
• Trout
• Elk
• Beef
• Hot Dogs
• Sausage
• Clams
• Bison
• Boar

Nuts & Seeds

• Brazil nuts
• Hazelnuts
• Macadamia nuts
• Pecans
• Pine nuts
• Walnuts
• Almonds

Fats

• Butter
• Cream
• Eggs
• Coconut, palm, and extra virgin olive oil
• Lard
• Bacon fat
• Avocados
• Fish oils
• Nut oils
• Yogurt
• Animal products

Veggies

• Asparagus
• Celery
Cucumber
• Radishes
• Romaine lettuce
• Spinach
• Cauliflower
• Cabbage
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Brussel sprouts
• Broccoli
• Green Beans

Dairy

• Cottage cheese
• Sour cream
• Greek or plain yogurt (unsweetened)
• Cream cheese
• Butter
• Various kinds of cheeses (mozzarella, provolone, Swiss, cheddar, etc.)

What’s Next?

While the standard ketogenic diet is a very low carb/high fat diet, there are different forms of keto (mentioned above) that may work better for you!

One of them is called, “TKD” or “Targeted Keto Diet.” Targeted Keto is great for beginners if you want to experiment with it before graduating to the standard ketogenic diet.