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Why fat is so important to remain in ketosis

Dr. Terry Rondberg

Special to the Village News

Most of us eat way too much sugar and too little fat. A lot of people eat too much protein, which is often riskier than a high-carbohydrate diet. It is due to brainwashing that anyone believes glucose is the preferred energy for our body.

This is bad advice and has been a driving force in increasing obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets prevent healthy function. Dietary fats are the preferred fuel of human beings. The benefits of a high-fat diet are explained in the BBC documentary, “Fat [Versus] Carbs with Jamie Owen,” which originally aired in October 2016.

Owen, a Welsh journalist and BBC news anchor, challenged the traditional western diet by going on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet.

In 2015, Owen tested out more traditional weight loss advice, cutting sugar and exercising more. He did lose weight as a result. It wasn't long before he put it all back on – and then some. This result is a notoriously common issue. Wales has a major obesity problem, Owen said, as do so many other nations, including the U.S., and most are not overweight for lack of desire or effort to slim down.

Most people make food choices which are preventing them from achieving weight loss. Conventional weight loss advice is so bad that it prevents long-term success, even if you do exactly what they say. Reducing calories, eating low-fat food and exercising more are not the answers. If it were, two-thirds of Americans wouldn’t be overweight and half of these would not be diabetic or have other debilitating diseases.

The British National Obesity Forum and the Public Health Collaboration issued a joint report on obesity based on the analysis of 43 studies, warning their policies encourage people to eat a low-fat diet and which is having a disastrous impact on their health.

In conclusion, the report suggests a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and cutting out snacks may be the answer to the obesity epidemic.

“As a clinician treating patients all day every day, I quickly realized that guidelines from on high suggesting high carbohydrate, low-fat diets were the universal panacea, were deeply flawed,” said Dr. David Haslam, president of the National Obesity Forum. “Current efforts have failed, the proof being that obesity levels are higher than they have ever been and show no chance of reducing despite the best efforts of government and scientists.”

The report shared some of the major findings.

Eating fat does not make you fat. Studies show high-fat, low net-carbohydrate diets are in fact superior to low-fat, high net-carbohydrate diets for weight loss.

Saturated fat does not cause heart disease; in fact, it’s good for your heart. There’s no evidence to suggest avoiding saturated fat or dietary cholesterol reduces heart disease or death from heart disease. A recently published reanalysis of evidence from 40 years ago also does not support restricting saturated fat to protect heart health.

One of the original researchers involved in this study was Ancel Keys – the man who initially proposed the link between saturated fat and heart disease – and it’s believed he was largely responsible for suppressing these damning findings, as they don’t support his original hypothesis.

Only hand-picked parts of the trial’s results were published, leaving out the fact that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oil had no impact on mortality. While vegetable oils did lower total cholesterol levels by 14 percent after one year, overall mortality risk actually increased.

For every 30-point drop in total cholesterol, there was a 22 percent increased chance of death. The vegetable oil also did not result in fewer cases of atherosclerosis or heart attacks. On the contrary, autopsies revealed that while both groups had similar levels of arterial plaque, 41 percent of the vegetable oil group showed signs of at least one heart attack compared to just 22 percent of those in the saturated fat group.

To lose weight, stop counting calories and reduce meal frequency. All calories are not created equal. They have different metabolic effects depending on their source, so counting calories is useless for successful weight loss.

That said, excessive snacking is a significant contributing factor to obesity. To lose weight, the report concluded you need to reduce your meal frequency. I recommend limiting it to one or two meals per day, either breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner, within a six- to eight-hour window each day. It’s also beneficial to avoid eating at least three hours before bedtime to improve healthy function.

Obesity cannot be conquered simply by increasing exercise, as obesity is the result of metabolism dysfunction which leads to abnormal energy utilization.

While your body can use and needs fat for fuel, you do not require carbohydrates. Fat is in fact a far preferable fuel for your body.

When your body is able to burn fat for fuel, your liver creates water-soluble fats called ketones which burn far more efficiently than carbohydrates, creating far less oxidation and free radicals that can damage your cellular membranes, proteins and DNA. Fat found naturally in food – whether animal-based or plant-based – is healthy for you. Far from being an artery-clogging health disaster, saturated fat found in animal products and coconut oil increases your large fluffy LDL particles, which are not associated with an increased risk of heart disease; increases your HDL levels, which is associated with lower heart disease risk and compensates for any increase in LDL; and does not cause heart disease as made clear in a large number of studies and serves as a “clean-burning fuel” for your brain and mitochondria, producing far less damaging free radicals than sugars and non-fiber carbohydrates.

Keys’ hypothesis that fat promoted heart disease was not entirely incorrect. Keys wasn’t clear. The problematic fats are man-made. Harmful fats that contribute to heart disease are trans fats and highly refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

The trans fats are pro-oxidant; the polyunsaturated vegetable oils are high in damaged omega-6 and produce toxic oxidation products like palmitic acid. Vegetable oils promote oxidized cholesterol, which becomes destructive when entering your LDL particles.

Additionally, omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, when taken in large amounts, cannot be burned as fuel. Instead, they're incorporated into cellular membranes. Here, they become highly susceptible to oxidative damage, which ultimately damages your metabolism.

Oils promote gut inflammation, disrupt blood flow through the arteries in your brain, deplete your brain of antioxidants, attack the nerve cellular membranes and impair brain development and alter your epigenetic expression.

Vegetable oils made from genetically engineered crops have additional health risks, thanks to the presence of toxic herbicide residues like Roundup.

Owen lost 7 pounds in seven days on this diet. At the end of three weeks, he’d lost over 13 pounds, but weight loss is not the only benefit. It can also help manage or reverse diabetes, improve your energy level and mental clarity.

The scientific evidence also strongly suggests it can help prevent many common chronic diseases, including cancer and heart disease. While total cholesterol by itself is a virtually useless parameter by which to gauge your heart disease risk.

This result came as a great surprise to Owen. As it turns out, his cholesterol improved on the high-fat diet.

Not much is said about the fact that overwhelming data demonstrates the long-term health outcomes of current dietary recommendations are an absolute disaster.

I believe a diet high in healthy fats with low net carbohydrates and moderate amounts of protein is the key many of us have been looking for, because it solves so many different problems.

Not only does it help you shed excess body fat, it does it while improving your metabolism, increasing your energy, lowering your inflammation, promoting optimal health in a number of different ways.

As a guideline, to optimize your fat-burning and stay in ketosis limit your net carbohydrates – total carbohydrates minus fiber – to a maximum of 30 to 40 grams per day. You can consume as many high-fiber veggies as you like. They are carbohydrates, but since they’re high in fiber, they’re typically quite low in net carbohydrates. Limit your protein to 15 percent of your daily calories and increase healthy fats to 85 percent of your daily calories.

Intermittent fasting will speed up the process. Once your fat-burning ability has returned, you can intermittently fast on a maintenance basis.

For more information, visit www.OmegaBrainHealth.com or contact [email protected].

 

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