Can Eating More Fat Make You Thin?

If you’re like most people, you’re worried that if you eat fat, you’ll become fat. It’s no wonder you have this (irrational) fear. For decades we all had the same message drilled into our heads: fat was bad.  It lines the arteries causing heart attacks, and sticks to our belly and legs, so go with a low-fat diet.

In a way, it’s understandable why this belief persisted. Fat has more calories per gram than both carbohydrates and protein, so it is easily assumed if you eat more fat, you’ll gain weight.

Curiously, the opposite has happened. Over the last 30 years or so, as more and more people have committed to a low-fat diet, obesity rates (as well as diabetes rates) have skyrocketed.

We also hear from the plant-based community that fat is bad, leading to insulin resistance and diabetes.  They say that since diabetes is associated with high cholesterol and free fatty acids in the blood, it must come from eating too much fat.

So we’ve got to ask ourselves: if people have cut out fat from their diet replacing it with higher sugar and processed grain-based foods, and, as a result, gained weight and developed more diabetes and metabolic problems, is fat really the culprit?

The Unrealistic “All Calories are the Same” Myth

When I’ve told clients of mine that in order to lose weight and reverse their type 2 diabetes they should cut down on processed, refined carbs and begin to eat more good fats like full-fat dairy, oil-rich meats like salmon, butter, olive oil, nuts and avocados, they look at me like I have three heads. They are so convinced that eating these foods will make them pack on the pounds instead of shedding weight, that they sit there and simmer in skepticism.

What I have to explain to them is that the amount of calories (food energy) in a food is not the whole picture.  Food is more than just calories.  It’s information. Carbohydrate foods impacts your weight and metabolism vastly differently than protein and fat. Thinking that all foods can be assessed by calories alone is one of the most persistent and detrimental myths around. And sadly, this myth is keeping a LOT of people fat and sick.

The truth is, that in a laboratory, food can be burned and it’s energy in the form of calories (kcal, actually) can be calculated. But our bodies are not laboratories, and the food we eat affects everything from how our systems operate to how (or if) our genes get expressed. In other words, the food you eat has a lot to do with whether your health genes or disease genes get turned on and off. The food you eat also influences your gut flora, hormones (insulin is a hormone), your immune system, and brain chemistry.

But we live in a society that constantly gives us the wrong information. I can’t always tell whether this happens intentionally or not, but I can tell it’s going on, and from the perspective of a doctor trying to help my clients gain control of their health, it’s very frustrating.

For instance, there has been pressure over the years for restaurants to add the calorie content next to their menu items in the hopes that this will help people make better food choices.  As if choosing a cranberry scone over a glazed donut is not going to help you lose weight or prevent you from developing diabetes.  Does that really make any sense?

Can You Handle the Truth? Eating Fat Helps You Burn Fat and Calories

A very interesting study was conducted a few years back by Kevin Hall from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to his work with the NIH, the guy had studied mathematical systems and biology. He took his knowledge and applied it to nutrition and found that, when you measure every ounce of food you eat, every movement you make, every breath you take (Maybe Sting studied math and biology as well), and every calorie burned, those that ate more fat compared to an identical amount of carbs burned over 100 more calories a day. That might not seem like a lot, but over the course of one year, that adds up to losing 10 pounds and without doing any more exercise.

So it would seem something is happening to our metabolism simply by eating more fat. An insightful paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) supports the idea that obesity and metabolism are not what we have originally assumed. ¹

In the paper, Harvard professor Dr. David Ludwig introduces a new concept: we don’t get fat from eating more and moving less; being fat causes us to eat more and move less. And how do we get fat in the first place? Our fat cells get hungry and drive us to overeat.

The Connection To Insulin

When we eat food, our body shifts into a “fed” state and the pancreas releases the hormone insulin to deal with the incoming energy.  Insulin is released mostly based on the amount of sugar and carbohydrates in the meal (and to a lesser extent, the protein and fat). The result of eating a carbohydrate-rich meal is a spike in insulin, which leads the body to store extra energy as fat in the fat cells, and stops us from burning stored fat.  If the surge is too high, and the blood sugar drops too quickly, this process then stimulates your brain to set off the signal that you MUST eat more. All of that energy got stored away for later in the form of fat, and you now have no energy to burn right now.

But, being calorie conscious and wanting to lose weight, you don’t allow yourself to eat more. In fact, you try to eat even less and move your body more, the typical solution for weight loss, right?  Except this only programs your body to conserve more energy and become more efficient. When your body feels that it doesn’t have enough energy, it commands you to move as little as possible and eat as much as possible. This is an evolutionary response and how early humans survived.

The interesting (and troubling) thing is that you can put your body into this relative low energy mode, simply by eating the wrong foods. You can eat 3,000 calories a day, but if the majority of those calories came from carbohydrates, your body still thinks it needs more energy.

How Fat Helps You Lose Weight

Our bodies were designed to store energy in the form of fat so that when food was scarce, we could live by burning our own fat. It’s an absolutely genius design. The problem is, most of us never really have to go without food in our modern world. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, your insulin tells your body to burn the sugar, and store fat instead of burning our fat reserves.

It’s really a vicious cycle. You eat carbs, insulin causes you to store fat, but your body feels like it needs more energy.  So you eat more carbs and the cycle continues until you become obese and develop insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes.

But when we replace the carbohydrates in our diet with protein and healthy fats, we begin to allow our body to transition into the metabolic machine it was meant to be, and burn more fat. There is no doubt about this. Your body can store a limited supply glucose (glycogen) in the liver, but virtually unlimited fat in your fat cells. We are meant to burn fat for long-term fuel and glucose as more of a short-term fuel.

Cutting way down on your carbohydrate intake and increasing your protein and fat intake is how you put your body into its natural fat-burning state. Beyond losing weight, studies have also shown that efficient fat burning promotes health on a cellular level. It turns out fat is a cleaner fuel for our bodies because it generates far fewer free radicals when burned. Glucose, on the other hand, is a “dirty” energy source because it generates a LOT of free radicals. And remember, free radicals are responsible for damage to your cells and DNA, and are linked with an increased potential for developing disease. Your choice is to consume a lot of antioxidants to fight these free radicals or eat right (less carbs – more fat) so you produce less of them.

Final Thoughts

If you want to lose weight (fat) and improve blood sugar levels, then consider cutting way down on your refined carbohydrate consumption and start eating more protein and healthy fat. Human beings have been designed to burn fat for long-term fuel, not sugar. You will be pleasantly surprised just how easy it is to lose weight and reverse your type 2 diabetes if you commit to this way of eating.  Give it a try!

Sources:

[1] Ebbeling CB, Swain JF, Feldman HA, et al. Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance. JAMA. 2012;307(24):2627–2634. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.6607

[2] Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “A carefully scheduled high-fat diet resets metabolism and prevents obesity, researchers find.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 September 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120912084430.htm>.