Myth: Eating Fat Makes You Fat

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Myth: Eating Fat Makes You Fat

Your body fat is stored fat or potential energy. It might seem logical that eating more of the fat stuff will make you store more of it in your body.

However, there is nothing uniquely fattening about fat, except that it is often found in calorie-dense junk foods. Fat-storing takes place when any one of the three fat-storing hormones is triggered in the body. Eating fat is not one of the triggers for any of the three fat-storing hormones. Interestingly, diets that are high in fat (but low in carbs) have been shown to cause weight loss in studies (1).

Eating a lot of fat along with a high-carb, high-calorie, junk food-based diet will definitely make you fat. But it’s not just because of the fat, it is because of the high-carb content. Carbs (we are talking about simple carbs here like refined grains and sugars) are big triggers for the fat-storing hormones.

Bottom Line: Fat has often been blamed for the obesity epidemic, but in the eyes of fat-storing hormones, fat is a neutral entity. There is nothing inherently fattening about dietary fat. It depends entirely on the context (what else it is consumed with).

Reference:

  1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00518.x/abstract

Dr. John Erickson, DC
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