Eat More Fat!

With advice from just about all of our governments, certainly in the west, & our medical communities, we have spent several decades now trying to reduce our fat intake. During that time, I think we may even have achieved that goal, but western populations continued to get fatter. Higher fat diets, though now far more prevalent, are still considered unhealthy by the majority. You don’t need to go any further than the dairy case in the supermarket to see which philosophy is leading in the popular opinion stakes. The low & reduced fat milks predominate. Low fat & 0% fat yogurts occupy most of the shelf space. This, still current, reality was more harshly brought to my attention when I joined a couple of Facebook groups over the recent holiday. I joined some Instant Pot® communities so I could learn more about my new toy. Then I realized there were probably groups out there for my much older T-fal Actifry® too. There were!

In both communities, you’ll find that supermarket pattern mimicked. The tone of many comments suggest that eating low-fat is just a given thing. Obvious & matter of course. An indisputable & irrefutable fact that goes unquestioned. Many people are trying to avoid the fat. Indeed, the Actifry was designed for that very purpose. When I first opened my Actifry, I threw away the little green spoon that suggest that I limit my fat! On the Instant Pot® groups, I shared my yogurt success with the 10% fat cream. The silence was deafening! And as other conversations resumed, most went back to talking about low fat ingredients again. Though there were some using, almost with guilt, that positively decadent whole milk!

I find it very difficult to lose weight without adding fat to my diet. While I’m still struggling with getting back on track after the holidays, fat is still very much a favored part of my diet. I can only diet well when I up the fat intake. Eating a good diet, for me, means that I’m not putting on still more weight during times of stress. And fat is equally useful when I’m trying to lose weight. Why is fat so important?

Consider the mainstream dietary regimen of choice during past decades, the recommendations all centered around eating less and moving more. That basically means eat a low-fat, low-calorie diet. Fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate, so it sounds like the obvious macronutrient to target. Protein is touted as the best macronutrient for satiety, so who needs fat? While all these are true, reducing fat in my diet has never worked well for me. Most often, it was because I couldn’t stick with the low-fat diet that remained.

Adding fat to my diet helps me stay the course better, & for longer. Will it get me to where I want to be? We’ll see.

Now I am not implying that I simply added a big dose of fat to the diet that was already making me fatter. Though even that might have helped displace some of the more truly fattening foods I was eating! The deadly combination, for me, is fat combined with sugar & processed starches. Though I can do a good job of gaining weight eating products advertised as low-fat, or zero-fat, too.

We’ll take a look at some of those fats that I consider good another time but for now, I’m off to enjoy some more of my 10% fat yogurt!