The Truth About Fats: Essential Insights for a Healthy Diet
A Comprehensive Guide to Good and Bad Fats for Optimal Nutrition and Wellness
Understanding the Role of Fats
Fats often get a bad reputation, but they’re far more than just calories—they’re essential to the body’s most critical functions. From regulating hormones to protecting your organs and powering your metabolism, fats play a crucial role in keeping you healthy and energized. The key is knowing which fats to embrace and which to avoid. “Good fats,” like those found in avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish, support everything from brain function to heart health. In contrast, “bad fats,” such as trans fats and excessive saturated fats, can lead to serious health issues, including heart disease. By understanding the difference between these types of fats, you can make choices that not only support your day-to-day health but also promote long-term wellness.
The Importance of Fats in the Body
Understanding the importance of fats can help put the myths of all fats being bad for you to rest as well as provide more context toward why we need to consume them. As with all the macronutrients that we have covered, we can’t simply omit them from our diet. Understanding how to get the fats that we want and limit the fats that we don’t want is the key to managing fats.
To understand fats, we first need to recognize their role in the body. Fats are important pieces for many hormones, it is one of the pieces that make up the body of the hormones and the outside layer of each cell in the body, without fats the hormones and cells simply cannot be made. Without proper hormone production, the body’s signaling systems, such as metabolism and hunger regulation, are disrupted. Whether it is metabolic signaling with thyroid hormone, hunger signaling with grehlin and leptin hormones, or cortisol causing spikes in your stress. Without the proper amount of fat in your diet these hormones can be thrown all out of whack causing improper hormone regulation across your body.
If the hormone regulation isn’t enough, fats are also used as cushioning around your organs, slight amounts of fat are essential for keeping things in place and battling against any day-to-day jumbles that may occur. In excess, this becomes an issue but there is a certain amount that is needed to help protect these vital areas. This is an area that is tough for people since they hear visceral fat which is the fat that surrounds the organs. Typically this is one of the worst types of fat as this is typically what causes significant issues. With excess visceral fat, we are applying pressure and causing our organs to work harder than they normally need to. The key word here is “excess.” If we keep the visceral fat to the point of normalcy then we aren’t applying the increased pressure but we are supporting and protecting the organs.
The last key piece of fats that I feel is important to chat about is what they do for energy systems in the body. Unlike carbs which are our explosive energy source, aiming to sustain efforts of 30 seconds to 5 minutes, fats are our long-term sustained energy system. Our body will largely be burning fats to keep us alive throughout the day. When we transition to exercise this is going to be taking over after 5 minutes of sustained exercise to make sure we are keeping that level of energy high. After about 5 minutes of exercise, you may notice a drop in intensity, as this is when your body shifts its main energy source to fats. Fats take longer to process into energy but you can get significantly more energy per gram compared to your body's carbohydrate stores.
Key Points: Your body needs fats. You can’t avoid eating them. Fats are essential for hormones and cell production. Fat is your long-term energy source, taking over as the primary source after 5 minutes of exercise, and is normally used in your day-to-day activities.
The Dual Nature of Fats: Good vs. Bad
Now we have all heard of “good fats” and “bad fats” but what does that really mean? What are the things that we want to be looking for? We hear all the time that saturated fats are bad, unsaturated fats are good, and trans fats we want to completely stay away from. Face value that is very good advice, some pieces to consider but in general this is solid advice. Let’s chat about this so you can better understand what each type of fat is and how to identify it.
First to chat about is the good fats, let’s get those out of the way now the good fats are the unsaturated fats, these are fats that don’t clog up our arteries and can help remove plaque off the side of our arteries. These fats are easily identified as the fats that are going to be liquid at room temperature. Things like olive oils or vegetable oils are examples that fall into this list here. This is what is generally known as the healthy fats that we want to consume more of. While we don’t want to overconsume them, the majority of our fats should come from these sources. If you have ever heard your doctor talking about raising your HDL Cholesterol this is going to be a large contributor to increasing your HDL Cholesterol and lowering your LDL Cholesterol.
Next, let’s cover what we know as “bad fats” these being saturated and trans fats. These are going to be fats that are solid at room temperature, this comes with butter, cheese, animal fats, and products that fall into that category. There are also some saturated fats like coconut and avocado oil which also fall into this category, but we will chat about why saturated fats aren’t always bad. Trans fats should always be avoided. Fortunately, they are being phased out of many foods, making them increasingly rare. They typically come from highly processed foods. These are something that aren’t going to be readily visible without looking at the labels of foods. If you see trans fats we want to be putting those down and opting for something else.
Now, saturated fats, have the name “bad fats” but there are some exceptions to this rule. The exceptions come from the quantities that we are taking in. If we are taking in enough unsaturated fats it can ensure that we aren’t building up too much plaque and triglycerides in our bloodstream. There are also saturated fats like coconut oil, avocado oil, and animal fats that are loaded with vitamins and nutrients. If we were to avoid those we may think that they are bad, in reality, they can be a great source of nutrients! Making sure that we are paying attention to the quantities is going to be what is key in that situation.
Key Points: Unsaturated fats are good and can help increase your HDL numbers and lower your LDL numbers. Avoid trans fats completely. Pay attention to your intake of saturated fats. They can be dense with vitamins and minerals but we want to be sure to not over-eat them.
Key Guidelines for Fat Intake
Now when we come down to how to use this information here, thankfully fats are very easy to understand and easy to work with. Keeping your fat intake balanced and prioritizing a majority of your fats coming from unsaturated sources is going to be one of the best ways. Those most common ways are cooking with olive oil or any oil that you prefer, using oil-based dressings, or eating nuts. Along with those options, eating oily fish will offer a great amount of unsaturated fats! These can all be great ways of getting unsaturated fats and keeping that intake to the place that we want it to be. As you can see, it doesn’t need to be complicated we just need to make sure that those calories are being dedicated toward the options that give us the most benefit.
When we are looking at saturated fats this is where fats can get us into trouble. Saturated fats that offer little to no nutritional value but a large amount of calories like cheese and butter will be very dense in saturated fats but don’t offer the same nutritional benefits as animal fats. Cooking with butter instead of olive oil can enhance flavor but increases saturated fat intake.
Ideally, we keep our fat intake to around 15-30% of our total caloric intake for the day with no more than 30% of those calories coming from saturated options and no trans fats. This can be a tough guideline to stick to with how prevalent they are. Cooking at home and controlling your ingredients is truly one of the best ways to stay on top of this. Keeping this balance all comes down to a bit of planning and trying to limit additional calories from them sneaking in, and when you start looking, you’ll notice that fats are truly everywhere in our modern food system. Most chips are fried in oil, baked goods often contain large amounts of butter, and many foods are cooked using some form of oil. Now knowing how dense these fats are and how some of them don’t offer much nutrients makes it very easy to see how so many people have increased triglycerides and elevated cholesterol.
Key Points: Prioritize getting your fats from unsaturated sources. Limit saturated fats to 30% of your total fat intake. 15-30% of your daily calories should be from fats. Cooking at home is one of the only ways to have complete control over your fat intake.
Conclusion
In conclusion, understanding fats is crucial for making informed dietary choices that support both immediate health and long-term wellness. While fats often face scrutiny, they are indispensable for hormone regulation, organ protection, and sustained energy. By distinguishing between "good" unsaturated fats which are found in sources like avocados, nuts, and fatty fish, and "bad" saturated and trans fats, we can better navigate our food options. Embracing healthy fats while limiting harmful ones is key to achieving a balanced intake, ideally comprising 15-30% of your total daily calories. With thoughtful planning and mindful eating, you can harness the power of fats to fuel your body effectively, enhance your overall health, and enjoy a nutritious diet. Remember, it’s not about eliminating fats, but about choosing the right ones.
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