Dietary Fats and Low Carb Eating

Low carbohydrate diets are a staple when it comes to weight loss. In clinical trials, low carbohydrate diets offer the most health advantages when compared with other diet styles. This means that a low carbohydrate diet will not only help you to lose weight, but will lower your blood pressure, lower your cholesterol, and help you to avoid diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

The secret to the low carbohydrate diet is actually in the dietary fat that is consumed to replace those helpings of bread and sweets. Dietary fats are an important part of any diet and are especially beneficial in a low-carb diet.

What are dietary fats?

Dietary fats are the fats that are associated with the protein in a low carbohydrate diet. These will include the fat from items like eggs, milk, butter, meats and oils. Dietary fats are beneficial because they provide energy that burns slowly. Your body is designed to use several different types of energy throughout the day. The sugar you consume is used immediately to provide short bursts of energy for the body.

This sugar often comes in the form of bread, high-sugar fruits, and starchy vegetables like potatoes. If you force your body to burn fat for fuel rather than sugar, it is then forced to dip into those fat reserves that are found around your stomach and hips. Adding dietary fat to your diet while removing sugar is the easiest way to lose weight.

Dietary fats offer several other benefits aside from the natural weight loss. Energy from items like eggs, lean meat, cheese and milk does not elevate your blood sugar. When you eat a candy bar to get a boost of energy in the afternoon, that candy bar causes a spike in your blood sugar levels. Dietary fats offer the same type of energy without the big spike in blood sugar. If you are one of the many people battling with diabetes, this is excellent news. You can get a boost of energy from eating a snack like a handful of pecans, but this energy is not going to impact your next blood sugar test.

Fat is not a bad word.

Contrary to popular opinion these days, fat is not always a bad word. Dietary fats are considered to be some of the healthiest items that you can add to your daily meals. Studies have shown that Mediterranean diets include much higher fat levels than Western diets, but the Mediterranean people tend to be extremely healthy. This is due to healthy dietary fats.

Items like olive oil, whole nuts, milk and fresh cheeses offer the energy your body requires without the risk of heart disease and stroke associated with sugary and starch-filled diets. Dietary fats are healthy fats. Increasing your intake of healthy dietary fats has been shown in many studies to reduce the risk of illness associated with high blood pressure. Low carbohydrate diets that include healthy dietary fats are associated with a lowering of the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Dietary fats are also shown to reduce inflammation in the body. This means that adding a bit of olive oil to your low carbohydrate diet can actually give you relief from joint pain and inflammation that leads to heart attack or stroke. The benefits of dietary fats stretch into almost every portion of a healthy lifestyle. From increased mental activity to a lower body weight, dietary fats are the perfect addition to your weight loss and health regimen. When you feel hungry this afternoon, reach for a handful of nuts rather than that bag of chips from the vending machine.

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