Why Eating Fat Doesn’t Actually Make You Fat
Over the past fifty or so years, there has been strong debate as to what actually causes you to gain weight. Funnily enough, it is a misconception that eating fatty food is the culprit. Whilst a balanced diet should consist of some fat, it is the natural fats found in foods like nuts, avocados, olive oil and all the other unsaturated fat foods.
It is trans-fats, or processed fats found in fast-foods that will raise your cholesterol levels, and put a strain on your health.
It is not fats that are the reason for the rise in obesity – it is sugar. Particularly processed sugar. Excess consumption of processed sugars that the body cannot metabolise are stored in the liver and eventually converted to fat. This fat is stored within the body’s cells and the physical representation of this, is you gain weight.
Fat is an energy source that requires oxygen to burn it, if you exercise at high intensity, your body will look to burn carbohydrates and glucose to release energy. This is why low-intensity exercise such as brisk walking is a good weight-loss tool because the body will look to burn its excess fat stores.
Fat got the bad rap for making us fat because sugar is big business. The rise in heart disease during the latter half of the 20th century can be directly attributed to our increased consumption of processed sugars in things like fast-foods.
Fat is something we have been eating since time began, as is the case with natural sugars found in fruit. Processed sugars found in fast-food is something we’ve been ingesting for not even a century. Our bodies are simply not equipped to efficiently deal the sheer volume of processed sugar we consume.
So, we get fat.
This video below does a great job explaining this in detail – and its quite funny too!