eat your fat

Contrary to popular belief, fats are essential to include into your diet ( and a lot of them! ). A low fat diet and/or a diet with poor quality fat (like vegetable oil, hydrogenated oils, canola oil, soy oil) is not only hurting your metabolism, but also your brain, hormones, energy levels, and you on a cellular level.

If you are afraid of eating higher fat foods or including a higher ratio of fat into your daily diet, I completely understand. I once believed in low-fat too ( as the media often wants us to believe this too with every bombardment of low fat options throw in our face or tv screen ). However, after learning the importance of fat, and that fat can actually help burn more fat in your body - - I am hooked on the fat train. 

Fats (like avocado, olive oil, nuts, seeds, butter, full fat dairy products, nut butters, fatty meats) provide your body with longer burning energy, so eating fat is actually a natural way to portion control your meals. It helps you stay satisfied and will keep you full for a longer amount of time as compared to eating a lower fat meal. Fats will also help you absorb vitamins (specifically A, D, E, and K) which are all vital to your body as well as your brain health. Eating higher fat also promotes healthy hormone production too. When your hormones are balanced, you will usually have a happier and stable mood as well as more energy to crush your day!

Eating a low fat diet and/or poor quality fat diet also affects your body on a cellular level. Every cell in your body is made of a cell membrane that controls how cells are expressed.  You can think of cells as the way we grow and change - - for the better or worse. Leading an unhealthy lifestyle or eating poor quality foods will mess with your cell expression.  → → Then you can say hello to immune system issues, allergies, disease, poor gut health, rapid aging. . . the list goes on. 

Cell membranes also have a high fatty acid content ( why we want to feed the fat in them with good fat! ), communicate with other cells, let nutrients absorb into the cell, send waste/toxins out of the cell, and release fatty acids to the body for protection or injury repair - for a few examples. So it’s no joke, that we want the healthiest cells we can get to have optimal body system function. 

Therefore, the fatty acid component of your cell membrane is a direct correlation of the healthy fats you are or are not including into your diet. If your cell membranes are not being built of healthy and sustainable fats, then you are putting yourself at risk for more than just low energy and increased hunger.

Without the adequate amount of fat in your diet or the proper quality of fat, your body cannot produce healthy and sustainable cell membranes. For example, your organs and brain need healthy cell membranes for adequate functioning and cellular repair/turnover.  So, you can literally change your cells for the better or worse (how cool?!). You may want to re-think ever following a low fat diet after considering the cellular damage or change you may cause over time. From experience, I literally wrecked my body from my brain down to my toes in many different ways (which will be addressed on another blog post) because I followed a strict low fat diet for way too long. 

So what fats should you consider eating you may ask? A good starting point is including extra virgin or cold pressed olive oil into your salads and onto your veggies. You could also add high quality grass fed meats, coconut oil/butter, grass fed ghee or butter, pasture raised eggs, full fat organic yogurt, nuts, seeds, and all the avocados.

Be sure to stay away from “poor” quality fats or as I like to say “fake fats” that are technically rancid already ( disgusting! )  - - this includes canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, vegetable oils, hydrogenated oil (often added to peanut butters) as these fats are highly refined and then turned rancid, they will mess with your hormones too. Not something your body wants to consume! And not something your body can actually digest.  → →  more to come on digesting fats in my next post (:

My recommendation : eat all the healthy fats and reap the benefits of healthy brain function, hormones, energy, and building healthy cells for sustained and proper body function.  However, eat your balance of healthy carbs and proteins too. Each macronutrient is important to our body.

Because who knows how much more you could actually think + accomplish if you fuel your body right.

xoxo, megg