Are Fats and Oils Making You Fat?

Dietary fats and oils are often blamed for the current obesity epidemic. And, at first blush, one would think this is the case.

After all, fat does contain a large amount of calories compared to the other macronutrients.

While proteins and carbohydrates each provide 4 calories per gram, fats and oils pack a whopping 9 calories per gram. And, unlike protein and carbohydrates, it doesn’t require much energy to convert dietary fat into body fat.

So, as the theory goes, when your calories come from fats and oils it is literally through the lips and on the hips!

However, this isn’t quite true.




Physical v. Physics

Although the caloric theory of weight gain has been widely accepted, it may surprise you to know that its origin was not all that scientific.

The idea of counting calories to lose weight was the brainchild of a nineteenth century Los Angeles physician, Dr Lulu Hunt Peters.
Dr. Peters based her theory of weight loss on the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can nether be neither created nor destroyed.

A calorie is simply a unit of food energy.

So, according to this theory, if the number of calories you eat exceeds the number of calories your body “burns” you store the excess energy as fat and gain weight. Conversely, if the number of calories your body burns exceeds the number of calories you eat, you use the energy you have stored as fat and lose weight.

If this was true it would make no difference whether the calories you consumed were in form of fats and oils, carbohydrate, or protein. Nor would it matter whether you consumed those calories over the course of a day or the course of half an hour.

However, while calories do count, the process is not quite as straightforward as we’ve been led to believe.



Hormones: The Missing Link

If weight control was simply a matter of balancing the number of calories you eat with the number of calories your body burns, then any two people of the same height who ate the same number of calories and exercised the same amount would have exactly the same amount of body fat.

But it doesn’t work that way.

We all know at least one of those hateful people who can eat high-calorie foods all day and never gain an ounce as well as those less fortunate individuals who seem to gain weight if they so much as sniff a doughnut. And these tendencies are influenced by sex, age and reproductive status.

For example, at puberty most young males can eat a lot of food without increasing their body fat while young females often have a hard time controlling their weight at this stage of life. And both men and women tend to gain weight as they enter their late 40s and early 50s, even if their diet and exercise habits remain the same.


Women gain an average of 20 pounds at menopause and generally have a difficult time losing it. To learn why – and what you can do about it – click here.



Obviously, there’s something more at work here than just calories. And that something is hormones.


What Is a Hormone?

Hormones control our appetite. Hormones control our metabolism. Hormones control the size of our muscles. Hormones control our energy level and our desire to exercise.

And, to a large extent, hormones control the amount of fat that we have and where on our bodies we store that fat.

Our hormonal status is not static. The levels of various hormones change dramatically as we mature and go through various stages of life like puberty and menopause. Environmental and emotional factors such as stress can also have a major impact on our hormonal status. And so does our our diet.


Fats and Oils v. Carbohydrates

Obviously, to lose weight, we need to pay attention to the hormonal impact the foods we eat.

The hormones that control fat synthesis or fat loss are influenced by the specific type of food as well as by the amount we eat at each meal.

Fats and oils do not increase levels of the main hormones that cause fat synthesis. But other macronutrients do - particularly carbohydrates,



More Exonerating Evidence

If dietary fat was responsible for making us obese, it would logically follow that those ate the most fat would be heftier than those who ate less fat.

But this doesn’t appear to be the case.

One of the most successful diets in recent years - at least in terms of initial weight loss – was the Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is a high protein low carbohydrate diet that allows dieters to eat an unlimited amount of fat. Yet those who follow the diet lose weight. (I do not recommend this diet, however. Click here to learn why.)

Epidemiological evidence also suggests that high fat diets do not make one fat. For example, North American Eskimos who follow their native diet eat huge amounts of fats and oils. If dietary fats were responsible for making one obese, these people should be among the fattest people on earth.

But they aren’t.

The relative lack of effect on body weight that eating large amounts of high caloric fats and oils have with these diets may be due to the fact that fats increase satiety so people naturally eat less, or to their high protein content. (Dietary protein is known to cause weight loss.)

But it is also likely that the lack of weight gain is due to the fact that the fats and oils eaten by people following these diets aren’t eaten with foods that caused release of hormones that would convert the calories contained in those fats and oils into body fat.


Can You Really Eat All the Fats and Oils You Want?

So does all this mean you eat an unlimited amount of fats and oils and still lose weight?

Probably not, unless you are following an extremely low carbohydrate diet.

But it does mean that you don’t need to obsess about the amount of fat in your diet as long as you are eating the right foods and the right kinds of fats.

It also means that you should NOT purchase those low fat processed “weight-loss” food products.

This is because those low fat products are typically filled with carbohydrates to compensate for the loss of flavor caused by lowering the fat content. And it is carbohydrates that release the hormones responsible for the synthesis of body fat.


Good Fat / Bad Fat

While the total amount of fat in your diet may be less important to weight loss than previously thought – and has not been linked to any disease...

The types of fat that you eat may very well play a role in weight gain as well as in the development of several diseases.

To learn which fats and oils are healthy and which should be avoided, click on the links below.

The Good Oils: Fish Oil and Weight Loss
Oils To Avoid
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