Not all fats are unhealthy

Fats are an indispensable part of our diet. Fat serves as a source of energy. You also need fats for, among other things, your resistance, the construction of your cells and the transport of vitamins. There are unsaturated, saturated and trans fats. The first two come from nature.

• Unsaturated fat is often healthy and is found in plants, fish and nuts.
  Saturated fats are often animal fats and are less healthy.
  Trans fats are industrially created fats and are downright harmful to your health.

What are fats?

Fat is a source of energy. If you have a healthy diet, you get 20 to 40% of your energy from fat. Fats are composed of glycerol and fatty acids. Glycerol, also called glycerine, is a sweetish, odorless and colorless liquid, which occurs in animal and vegetable fat.

Fatty acids are important building blocks of our body. Our body cannot make all fatty acids itself. That is why it is important that we get them through food. These are called the essential fatty acids.

There are saturated fats and unsaturated fats:

Saturated fats

These are often animal fats, such as butter, coconut fat and meat, but they are also found in snacks, cookies, candy and cakes. Characteristic of the shape is that saturated fats have a solid form, as is the case with butter.

Unsaturated fats

These often come from plants, such as olive oil, nuts, seeds and kernels, but you can also find them in fish. It is characteristic that unsaturated fats are liquid, such as olive and peanut oil. The unsaturated fatty acids of fish of course not.

Trans fats

These are the very unhealthy saturated fats. Trans fats are originally vegetable, but during an industrial process they have been heated and hardened, giving them a solid shape. You can find trans fats in many industrially prepared and fried foods, such as snacks, factory-produced foods, and fried foods.

When you look at the label of a food, it is not always easy to read which type of fat is used in the product. That can be quite confusing and have unhealthy consequences, because you could just be consuming too many unhealthy trans fats or inflammation-promoting Omega-6 fats.

What do fats do?

Our body uses fat as fuel, building material and as a means of transport. Most of the fat that we ingest through food is used by our body. A small part is excreted through the faeces.

However, it costs our body quite a lot of energy (read calories) to process fat into fuel or building material.

Fuel

As a fuel, it provides a lot of energy. One gram of fat provides 9 calories of energy. That is more than carbohydrates and proteins. The fats from your diet that you do not immediately use for fuel are stored as body fat, among other things.

Building material

In addition to fuel, fat is also a building material. All your body cells consist partly of fat. Fat also transports and absorbs vitamins A, D, E and K.

What do the different fats do?

Saturated fats

These fats raise your ‘bad’ LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol levels. This increases the risk of cardiovascular disease if you eat a lot of it. Saturated fats have been seen as unhealthy for the past 50 years, but more recent science shows that there are considerable nuances.

The saturated fats of coconut, for example, appear to be very healthy and a high-quality piece of beef from a cow that has enjoyed its natural diet and has been able to roam around in the meadow, turns out to be healthier than thought.

And what about cholesterol?

The saturated fats of cattle that have not been pastured and have been fed unnatural feed are much less healthy for our body. Eggs also contain saturated fat (cholesterol) and according to ancient science an egg is therefore unhealthy. That is now being thought differently.

It turns out that saturated fats and high cholesterol levels in our blood have hardly any relationship with each other and that they can hardly cause cardiovascular disease. The American dentist Weston Price discovered this as early as the 1930s.

Unsaturated fats

Unsaturated fats improve the cholesterol balance in our body. This is due to the HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. This is the positive counterpart of the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol. HDL cholesterol breaks down LDL cholesterol, so that the cholesterol balance is restored.

Unsaturated fats are not produced by the body. You get them through food. Think of nuts, seeds, kernels, vegetables such as avocado, olives (olive oil) and fatty fish.

Trans fats

These are very harmful to your health. Trans fats have an even more adverse effect on the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol than saturated fats. Trans fats can trigger all kinds of inflammation in your blood vessels.

How do you burn fat?

Fat is best burned through moderate to intensive exercise such as walking, cycling, household chores and sex. Moderately intense exercise can keep you going for hours.

Recent studies have shown that you can also burn fat by practicing short and very intensive sports such as training according to the CrossFit® Methodology. With this form of training you can burn fats and your strength and explosiveness will also improve. So double win.

You also burn fat by increasing your metabolism. An increased metabolic system simply needs more energy, even at rest.

What do fats contain?

In which foods do you find the different fats?

Saturated fats

These include fatty and processed meats such as hamburgers, hot dogs, salami, sausages, butter, margarine, full-fat dairy products, cookies, pastries, chocolate, cocoa butter, coconut fat and palm oil.

Unsaturated fats

These include vegetable oils such as olive oil and peanut oil, fish such as herring, mackerel, sardines and salmon, nuts, seeds, kernels and some vegetables such as avocado.

Trans fats

These can be found in fried food such as chips, croquettes and snacks, industrially produced food such as fast food, cookies, cakes and ready meals. Trans fats are fats that do not occur in nature, but are created by factory processing. They are very harmful to your health.

What if you eat too much of it?

The percentage of fats in healthy food is between 20 and 40%. According to Dr. Barry Sears of the Zone® Diet would be 30% ideal provided you also do the necessary physical exertion such as exercise. When you eat too many fats, or when your calorie intake and calorie burning are not in balance (not exercising or exercising too little), our body stores the surplus in the fat cells.

This body fat is located directly under your skin and around the organs. When our body stores too much fat, the fat cells grow and your weight increases. An excessively fatty diet and unhealthy (trans) fats increase the risks of many health problems. You can think of diabetes 2, cardiovascular disease, joint pain, sleep disorders and mental complaints such as low self-confidence and even depression.

An excess of body fat is also popularly referred to as obesity, obesity, overweight and even obesity. A BMI (Body Mass Index) between 25 and 30 is considered overweight. If your BMI is above 30, you are obese. In either case, you are overweight and carry too much body fat with you.

How do you get results?

You get the best results by making the right choices in nutrition and exercise. The adage “Every pound goes through the mouth” applies to this. You make the right choices if you adopt a healthy diet, with lots of vegetables, fruit, nuts and unsaturated fats.

Choose the right fats

For example, eat fish at least twice a week, preferably fatty fish such as herring, eel, mackerel and salmon. Avoid foods with saturated fats, especially trans fats, on supermarket shelves. If you don’t get it, you don’t eat it. So make sure that your calorie intake and consumption are in balance.

Move

Also, get plenty of exercise. This increases your metabolism, so that you burn more calories even at rest. You also get results by stimulating your body with different types of movement. When you follow a monotonous exercise routine, your body will get used to it.

Through routine in your movement pattern, your body gets used to the type of movement and will use less energy. Your body will always want to use energy as economically as possible. By stimulating your body with a lot of variation in your movement, you automatically burn more calories. Interval training or Tabata workouts such as we program daily are therefore ideal.

Fats are therefore an indispensable food and building material for our body. Unfortunately, the focus over the past 40 years has been on a more fat-free diet. Dietary fats were poorly portrayed because they were thought to cause obesity or cardiovascular disease.

Newer studies show that there is hardly any connection between eating fats, an increase in cholesterol levels and an increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease.