Posted on February 19, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Low fat diets sound like a good idea, eat less fat gain less fat and all that. It seems to make sense doesn’t it, but in reality that’s probably one of the poorest nutritional choices you could make, especially if your goal is fat loss. Like everything to do with nutrition you’ll find a variety of articles giving you mixed messages from, eat 90% fat, to eat no fat. Most is founded on “bro-science” and isn’t worth the paper its written on, it is essential that you know the facts about fat in your diet if you are going to hit those fat loss goals.

Contrary to what people think, fat is an essential part of your diet and should not be neglected so this article looks at the facts about fat in your diet.

There are good and poor choices of fat of course.

Good fats can be categorized as:

• Unrefined animal fats such as fat from fish (Must be grass fed where applicable and wild/ organic etc)
• Fats from some plants such as avocados, olives, nuts etc
• Essentially these are high omega-3 fat source.

 

Bad fats can loosely be categorized as:

• refined animal fats these include sunflower, peanut, and soy to name a few
• they are lower in omega-3 and high in omega-6
• they are prone to oxidization, which essentially means bad for the body!

With this in mind what are the key points on a high fat diet in current research? I’ve only included information from meta-analysis, so no ”bro-science” here, these are all facts about fat in your diet based on research. In particular I’ve focused on research about low fat diets.

Article 1. Effects of Low-Carbohydrate Diets Versus Low-Fat Diets on Metabolic Risk Factors: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials (2012).

This review included 23 peer review reserach papaers totalling 2,788 participants and concluded that “Reductions in body weight, waist circumference and other metabolic risk factors were not significantly different between the 2 diets. These findings suggest that low-carbohydrate diets are at least as effective as low-fat diets at reducing weight and improving metabolic risk factors. Low-carbohydrate diets could be recommended to obese persons with abnormal metabolic risk factors for the purpose of weight loss”

Article 2. The Effect of Mediterranean Diet on Metabolic Syndrome and its Components (2011).

This review included 50 studies, totaling 534, 906 individuals. The study concluded “The results of the present meta-analysis suggest that adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern was associated with lower Metabolic Syndrome prevalence and progression. Moreover, greater adherence to this traditional dietary pattern was associated with favorable effects on the Metabolic Syndrome components. These results are of considerable public health importance, because this dietary pattern can be easily adopted by all population groups and various cultures

Article 3. Comparison of Weight Loss Among Named Diet Programs in Overweight and Obese AdultsA Meta-analysis (2014).

The review included 59 articles and 7286 were involved. The researchers concluded “Significant weight loss was observed with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. Weight loss differences between individual named diets were small. This supports the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight”

In conclusion its all about balance when it comes to diet, yes you can lose fat on a low fat diet…yes… is it as effective as a low processed carbohydrate diet….no.  Not only that but some fats appear to have further health benefits when looking at metabolic syndrome, Don’t read this as a sweeping statement that fats are in anyway superior than carbohydrates or protein, but they are an important part of a healthy balanced diet. Low fat diets are not a good idea instead enjoy a diet which contains a good amount of good fats.