Fat Loss Nutrition - The Big Fat Lies

More people than ever are on a diet and yet obesity is now epidemic. Diet foods such as low-fat and low-carb products are a $7.6 billion-a-year business but if they worked, then fat loss would not be an issue. The simple fact is that the food industry keeps you fat with processed foods, so it can sell you more diet products. Avoidance of both is the path to weight loss.

Fat loss nutrition needs to be understood, along with the right kind of exercise, to ensure successful and healthy weight loss. Many diets are not balanced and are not designed to encourage healthy eating habits to help you keep the weight off once you stop the diet. When the weight creeps back on, people turn back to the multi-million dollar diet industry for help. Fat loss nutrition takes a more balanced approach. You should be thinking of about 4 grams of carbohydrate and 1.5 grams of fat for every 3 grams of protein you eat at a meal. The types of fat, carbohydrate and protein you eat are crucial.

Fat Loss Nutrition: Good Fats, Bad Fats

Low-fat is the myth that has fuelled the diet industry, with complete disregard to the quality of fat you consume. The 'ugly fats' are the 'trans' fats or hydrogenated fats in fried and processed foods which are the toxic fats that are dumped in the body's fat tissues. These fats are difficult to shift, so fat loss nutrition has to increase the balance of good fats. Although omega-6 fat is a 'good fat', our diet contains too much of it in relation to the other 'good fat' omega-3. This imbalance contributes to insulin resistance (see Carbohydrates below for more information). So, not only do you need to reduce your omega-6 fat intake (vegetable oils, grain-fed beef and many processed foods), you need to increase your omega-3 fats (in fish, fish-oil capsules, or flaxseed oil). This will bring your essential fat intake (and yes, they are essential to health) to a more balanced one-to-one ratio.

Saturated fat has been demonised for so long that it is quite difficult to convince people otherwise. Coconut oil, which is a good saturated fat, has been shown to increase weight loss as it has the ability to help stimulate your metabolism and actually burn fat for energy. It also helps regulate blood sugar, an essential in weight loss - and it’s good for your heart too!

As coconut oil is such a stable fat it is the best fat to use for cooking. Save your extra-virgin olive oil for salad dressings.

Carbohydrate Quality and Fat Loss Nutrition

The key to fat loss nutrition is blood sugar balance. You need to reverse the insulin resistance that contributed by processed foods to burn off the fat. The excess of carbohydrates from our starchy and sugary diet is a far greater contributor to weight gain than the fat on its own. The combination of wrong fats and wrong carbohydrates is the route to an unhealthy lifestyle.

We consume far too much bread, cereal, pasta, corn, rice and potatoes, mostly as processed food. Good for the food industry, but not for fat loss nutrition and for you. These processed carbs stimulate the over-production of insulin, which leads to insulin-resistant cells. The sugar in your blood has no place else to go except to your fat cells, resulting in bulging stomachs and rolls of fat.

Increasing the fiber in your diet plays a powerful role in fat loss nutrition and weight loss. Eat brown rice rather than white rice or pasta. Grains should be limited to start but when you do eat them, make sure they are whole grains. Fill up on vegetables which are a great source of fiber.

Fat Loss Nutrition: Protein

Protein helps to stabilize blood sugar by slowing down the digestion of carbohydrates, which means that you do not get a sugar surge. This does not mean eating red meat at every meal, which is associated with higher risk of colon and possibly prostate cancer. There are plenty of other sources of protein to choose from such as lean white meat, fish, beans and lentils.

The fat loss nutrition approach means that even snacking on a handful of pumpkin seeds with an apple can help to slow down the sugar release.

Balance and Quality

Weight loss has little to do with willpower. Fat loss nutrition is all about the right balance and quality of foods, and the right exercise. This balance is easily obtained by avoiding all the low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, high-fat diet fads and avoiding processed foods as much as possible. If you get the fat loss nutrition right, you don't have to be overly concerned about how much you eat and you won’t go hungry.

Article Source: http://www.diyarticlelibrary.com

Health writer and nutritionist Natalie Beech writes informatively about a variety of health topics, including fat loss nutrition and healthy weight loss. If you want to find out more about the surprising facts about fat loss nutrition and healthy weight loss, go to the Fatloss-Fitness Website
This and other unique content fat loss nutrition articles are available with free reprint rights.

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