Why fat won’t make you fat
My mom was a lot like most moms of her era.
You could say my formative years were the 60s through the mid-70s.
I heard things like, “Haste makes waste,” “A stitch in time saves nine,” and my favorite, “It’s always fun and games until someone loses an eye.”
The odd thing is, I can’t remember any kid losing an eye. Looking around these days, I still don’t see a lot of glass eyes.
There was one saying that still applies today…”You are what you eat.”
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of truth to that one. You eat a healthy diet, and you’ll be healthy. Eat a crappy diet, and you’ll look and feel crappy.
Is that truly the case when it comes to sugar and fat?
The one thing most people can agree on is that too much sugar is bad for you.
It’s the one thing you can get all of the “diet religions” to buy into. That’s right, it’s the one thing the vegans and the paleo group can agree on.
Where everyone becomes divisive is when it comes to fat.
For the past 40-plus years, we’ve been told that fat will do everything from making you morbidly obese to clogging your arteries and causing heart disease, right down to causing cancer.
While we as Americans have gone out of our way to cut fats of all sorts from our diets, just the opposite has happened. We’ve caused more cancer, heart disease, and turned morbid obesity into an epidemic.
We were so good at this, we got most of the free world to follow along.
I’ve said this before – hell, I’ve actually written about it in my book Fitness Confidential – the biggest problem with the word fat is that it’s called fat.
If we called it energy, then no one would have a problem with it.
I know what you’re saying, Vinnie, isn’t sugar energy? Can’t we derive energy from protein?
Yes, you can.
As a matter of fact, sugar is a more readily available energy. It would stand to reason that it’s better for you.
That’s where the problem begins and ends.
To keep it simple, our livers take glucose and turn it into glycogen, then store it in muscles for energy. But our glycogen gets topped out quickly.
If the excess is not burned off immediately, it’s converted to a triglyceride and stored in our fat cells for later use.
Does this mean all you have to do is eat fat to lose weight?
No, the laws of thermodynamics still exist.
By making the right food choices, eating a higher good fat diet and limiting sugars and grains, you’ll be well on your way to a healthier lifestyle.
No fad diet necessary.
