The low fat craze has gotten so bad, we now even have low fat ice cream. I'm sure that the thought of it actually being mis-advertised has crossed your mind at least once. Is it really possible? You're going to find out in this article that although technically it is low fat, in reality it probably isn't. If you are worried about how much bad fats you are eating, then you need to understand how this works. It all boils down to how foods are actually integrated into your body.
Before I tell you about that, let's talk about the actual low fat diet. This diet tells you to eat low fat foods to avoid getting fat. The food companies have jumped onto this line of thinking and so when you go to the supermarket, there's practically a low fat choice of any food you want to buy. But many of them replace the fat with a huge amount of sugars and other refined carbohydrates to keep the taste.
Therefore, if you are following a low fat diet, you are probably eating a lot of refined carbohydrates.
So, what does that mean?
Refined carbohydrates get processed immediately in your body, and turns into glucose. The glucose gets dumped into your blood stream, so that your blood can take it to all parts of your body, to ensure it will always have the energy to keep functioning. Now, if you don't need this energy right now, your body stores it as glycogen in your muscles. If all of your glycogen stores are already full, then it is stored as fat!
I hope you understood that. Let me rephrase it to be sure.
If you eat a lot of refined carbohydrates, it will eventually turn to fat if you eat more than you need. Unless you are very active, and make use of your glycogen stores, you don't need refined carbohydrates. Even if you are active, you would have refined carbs very selectively, like for example after you've just finished an intense workout.
So although you may be eating what's called a 'low fat' food, it is really anything but low fat.
Now the main exception to this is low fat milk, low fat cheese or low fat natural yogurt. These usually don't have refined sugar. Most of the other types of 'low fat' foods though are full of it.
The worst thing about these refined carbohydrates are that they are very addictive. If you study the role of insulin in your body, you'll realize that your body starts craving for these high sugar foods, often when you aren't even hungry. It's a vicious cycle you want to stay away from. It's a cycle that most obese and overweight people are right in the middle of. There are also other effects of eating too many refined carbs. These include unstable energy levels, mood swings, headaches and onset of life threatening diseases such as heart disease.
If you have understood this article, you'll immediately realize that trying to eat low fat to lose weight is a self defeating exercise. It won't improve your body or your health. What you eat is as, if not more important as how much you eat.
So next time you go shopping and you see the "Low Fat" sign on the food, make sure you check the ingredients label to see how much sugar and carbs are in it. Now you know that excess refined carbs are pretty much the same thing as fat, you'll be able to see right through the sneaky companies that try and trick you with this.
Have you ever thought about it? All of those companies that make low fat or fat free foods claim that their products help people lose weight. Here's the thing though: Americans eat the most low fat and fat free foods, but somehow we have the highest rate of obesity in the world! That just doesn't make sense!
Well, actually, it does make sense. Think about things in perspective in terms of time. People of all generations before us were not struggling as much as we are today with weight. What was it that was different? Well, they certainly didn't have low fat or fat free foods so if they didn't have those foods to "help" them, what was it? There's the key! They didn't have low fat or fat free foods! That's why they were not struggling with their weight!!
Low fat and fat free foods do NOT help you to lose weight! Plain and simple, that is the full truth and I know you can handle it! Okay, so here's how low fat and fat free foods make you fat...
First off, foods with fat tend to taste better than their low fat or fat free buddies. I know, it's not something that you're likely to admit since, I'm sure, you're trying to keep those types of foods out of your mind while you work hard to lose weight. But realize that usually it is the fat in foods that make things taste so great. So when companies reduce or take out the fat, the taste goes with it.
Just think about the difference between a yummy cracker topped with cheese and a low fat cracker all dry and bland. Which one would YOU choose? The tasty one of course! So basically, you're subjecting yourself to bland, tasteless, dry food that, get this, costs more! That just completely does not make sense! Anyways, the fact that companies take out the taste means that they need to make their products taste good some other way. You know what that means! Chemical galore!
Low fat and fat free foods contain so many extra fillers that it is honestly scary! You've got tons of salt and tons of sugar, way more than is healthy and you've also got odd bulking agents, flavor enhancers and even artificial flavoring. Clearly this can't be good. However, in a way, it does the trick to making low fat and fat free foods more tasty.
Secondly, now that companies have been successful in making low fat and fat free foods tasty, people tend to think that since they taste good AND are low fat, then it's okay to eat even more of these foods than regular full fat foods. This is actually very bad! It's bad because if you eat more, you end up eating tons more of the chemicals they pump into these foods! And those chemicals are bad for your body, hands down, without any questions.
Statistically speaking, when you eat low fat or fat free foods, typically everyone will end up eating 28% more calories than regular full fat foods! Can you believe that? So by eating more of these low fat or fat free foods that are artificially tasty, you're actually eating more calories than you should be, than you would be if you were eating full fat foods! Wow.
Now, that doesn't mean that if you just eat less of the low fat or fat free foods, then these will be healthy for you because they really aren't, period. That also doesn't mean that you're free to eat fatty, greasy foods either because fried foods are never good for you. What you should be eating though, in terms of fat, are foods that are high in good fats. These include olive oil, avocadoes, nuts, seeds and oily fish, like salmon and tuna.
Going the easy route with low fat or fat free foods, letting companies do the "extra legwork" for you, is just a bad idea. Success weight loss begins with making good health choices and sometimes it may mean making a healthy lifestyle change. But the key is to keep all of your health decisions in your hands. So keep learning about foods and make sure to keep your health in your focus and you'll quickly be able to lose weight successfully!
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