Good Fat, Bad Fat

The term “healthy fats” is tossed around a lot these days in particular in the “whole foods” space, which is great that people are becoming more aware that French fries are different than a fresh avocado. This is awesome and a huge improvement from several years ago when people were thinking that eating non fat everything was the key to health and that eating fat would in turn make you fat. We’ve since learned the massive health benefits of eating high quality fats but, somewhere we got a little wonky on portion sizes.  

People love extremes. We went from eating no fat to eating all the fat with popular diets like the ketogenic diet (or what people think is a ketogenic diet).  We need fat.  Our brain is made of fat.  Our cells are held up with fat.  Our hormones travel on fat.  We just don’t need as much as a lot of us are currently eating. 

As people began to realize the benefits of a whole foods diet, whole milk cheese and yogurt became popular again, eggs and bacon are the breakfast of champions and heavy whipping cream or even butter became a staple in people’s morning cup of coffee.  Listen, I love all these things and I’m not knocking on any one of them individually.  An issue that I see, is some people are *only* eating high fat foods in pretty big portions too. This raises the issue of total calories consumed and also cholesterol. While fat doesn’t make you fat, overeating cholesterol does negatively impact your overall cholesterol levels.  People can forget about fruits and vegetables because fat is so satiating.  This can be a reason people drop body fat while eating a high fat diet, mostly because they end up eating less total calories.  An issue arises when people are eating high fat, and high carb in combinations (or even just normal carb).  Again, fat and carbs are not bad, but it’s incredibly easy to eat more than your body requires which equals a calorie surplus. 

For the majority of people, sticking to around 30-40% of your daily calories from fat is sufficient. This supports brain function, hormone function and satiety while also supporting body composition. This means that if you eat 2,000 calories per day, you’ll eat about  65-70g of fat per day. This may look like a big number, but most people are surprised how easy it is to consume much more than that.  

I do believe that there are specific people and situations that do well on a higher fat/ketogenic diet. I just don’t believe that the majority of people should. Don’t fear fat, (or any other macronutrient for that matter) just realize that as with everything, it’s about moderation and being aware of the quantities you’re consuming based on what your body needs. 

Interested in learning more?  Schedule with our knowledgeable nutritional therapist, Hannah Roeter BS FNTP.