Fat is Overrated

The dieting industry is, well, huge. An extrapolation of that is that many people stand to profit from dieting services or products. Many of these products are highly useful and add value to the world, others, not so much. It’s important to be armed with information to decipher good dieting information from the bad. Some diets and dieting information can actually lead to less healthy decisions in the grand scheme of the weight loss game. The most common dieting fallacy pertains to “fat”. The name, quite obviously, suggests that fat makes you fat. While this is at least partially true, what really makes you fat is consuming an excess of calories relative to what you burn.

Items advertised as “low fat” or “fat free” are highly popular among people participating in a weight loss program. However, it’s an error on their part to put so much concern into fat content. It is true that, gram for gram, it’s better to eat protein and carbohydrates than fat. One gram of fat contains 9 calories. One gram of protein or carbohydrates contains 4 calories (as a side note, one gram of alcohol contains 7 calories). So in that sense, you would be wise to eat protein or carbs instead of fat. However, the problem is that fat is much more filling than starchy, sugary foods (carbs). For example, one hamburger patty will be a lot more filling than an equally-weighted piece of bread.

A common dieting error is that people eat lots and lots of carbs and eventually consume as many calories as they would with some highly fattening food. A good example of this is the candy Twizzlers, which are fat free. Since they are fat free, many people on a diet assume they have the green-light to consume Twizzlers. However, Twizzlers are horrible to eat while on a diet! It’s essentially nothing but pure sugar which increases your glycemic index, thus making you want to consume more starchy foods! This is why it’s easier to eat tons and tons of potato chips than, say, lots and lots of steak (which is almost exclusively fat and protein, both of which are highly filling).

So what can we learn from this? Well, let’s do a little deductive reasoning:

Calories make you fat.
Fat is highly filling, but contains many calories per gram.
Carbs don’t contain many calories per gram, but they’re not that filling (thus causing you to eat a lot).
Protein is both highly filling and contains few calories per gram.

The lesson? Eat protein!

Diets rich in protein and low and fat and carbohydrates are the healthiest path to weight loss. But as always, diet in moderation. Your body still needs some carbs and some fat. There is no shortcut to healthy weight loss. Don’t fall for the tricks. Stick with diets rich in healthy proteins (like grilled chicken, fish, egg whites, and peanuts) while enjoying fatty foods (fried foods and red meat) and starchy foods (sweets, potatoes, noodles, rice, etc) in moderation.