How to Not get FAT!

What modern science has to say about obesity, diabetes and cholesterol

source: link

Recently, my wife and I watched a documentary movie called Fat Fiction (2020) and had our minds blown! Turns out that there is no science behind some of the things we were taught about nutrition during grade school. Needless to say, we have since made drastic changes to our diet.

Fat Fiction is a must watch! We actually had to watch it a few times to properly absorb the avalanche of information. In this blog post, I will try to consolidate the key takeaways.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to be taken as medical advise.

How do you get Fat?

• Eating fat doesn’t necessarily make you fat; the amount of excess calories does
• But the trick is not only to count calories (balance the calories IN vs calories OUT)
• You also need to pay special attention to the types of food that you consume for calories
• The same amount of calories from carbs/sugar are more likely to result in weight gain than calories from meat/saturated fat

i.e. bacon and eggs are better than whole grain bread toast 😱

• The reason for this is because that your body can absorb the energy of carbs and sugar quickly; causing a spikes in our blood glucose levels. Proteins and saturated fat releases their energy more gradually.

source: Fat Fiction movie

• This spike in blood glucose level is the root cause of your weight gain, due to the following viscous cycle

• When blood glucose level rise, your body produces insulin, which aids to convert the glucose to body fat. This Results in a glucose level crash, which in turn triggers your bodies hunger response. This is why, with carbs, you keep gaining weight and feel hungry throughout the day.
• Such glucose level swings have also been attributed to physical and mental fatigue
• On the other hand if you consume most of your required calories through proteins and saturated fat; your blood glucose level remain stable; leaving you felling full throughout the day
• This approach has been popularized by the “Keto diet”, which promotes a high protein, adequate fat and low carbs
• While a Low-Fat diet can work, the Low-Carb diet has had more evidential success. Even being able to reverse insulin dependency among diabetes patients.

The truth about heart disease

• Cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease!
• The chronic inflammation of the arteries caused by a diet of high sugar, refined grains (i.e. wheat) and refined vegetable oil based products (i.e. fast food/ fried food) is the culprit
• It’s not the cholesterol from animal proteins/fats that causes heart attacks
• The pictures of cholesterol clogged arteries that we were shown at school are actually of cholesterol trying to fix the damage done by chronic inflammation
• The reason why we were taught otherwise is because, that was the position that the “American Heart Association” took, in the 1960’s, when they were trying to figure out why heart attacks were increasing at an alarming rate in America
• We now know that the actual reason for the mid 20th century heart attack epidemic was the increase of smoking
• But due to many capitalistic reasons (i.e. funding from industry giants), they end up backing a hypothesis that saturated fat caused heart disease
• This is the reason why we had the whole “Low Fat” craze. In many cases it did more harm than the high fat alternatives; because the low fat foods were loaded with sugar to make them not taste like cardboard.
• High sugar intake is the #1 cause of heart diseases; while also being the #1 cause of diabetes and obesity.
• The other major contributor to heart disease is processed vegetable oil. Not the naturally occurring coconut or olive oil types, but the industrially processed palm and sunflower class of oils.
• These vegetable oils and derived products like margarine contain Trans Fats that are extremely bad for your health

So what do we eat?

The take away is pretty simple.

1. Minimize or even completely eliminate carbs : rice, bread and pasta (even whole grain)

2. Consume saturated fats and proteins to make up your daily calorie requirement : dairy (including butter and cheese), coconut/olive oil, nuts, eggs, sea food and red meat

3. Ditch Sugar : Cream biscuits, soft drinks, sweet cereals

4. Ditch Trans Fats: Vegetable oil and margarine based food. Including fried foods, bakery goods and misc processed foods (sausages, crisps,..)

5. Eat non-starchy veggies and fruits for other nutrients and fiber

Effectively we need to invert the food pyramid that we were taught at school.

Credit : https://www.lowcarbusa.org/

This advise may come off as being a bit elitist. I mean, I am effectively saying that you should eat cheese instead of biscuits and consume a week supply of meat in a day or two. Not everybody would have the means to support such an expense. For what it’s worth, my wife and I have been trying to strike a balance by cutting most but not all of our carbs and by completely replacing all unhealthy snacks. Our costs have gone up, but consumption has gone down since we are not always hungry.

Regardless of your financial means, you should keep these pointers in mind and make smarter decisions with your food when possible.

After all your health is your wealth!