Short Articles on Weight Loss

Practical Guidelines for Handling Fat, Protein, & Carbohydrate when Dieting

Your body uses the fat, carbohydrate, and protein in your food in completely different ways.

If you have read the other articles in this section, you understand that in order to lose weight successfully you need to provide your body with the right amounts of the right types of fat, carbohydrate, and protein daily.

Here are some general guidelines for eating:

1. The less fat you eat the better, because dietary fat will always be added to existing bodyfat stores until needed for energy  (which could be never). Paradoxically however, in order to be able to do this, you must make sure you eat a small amount of the right type of fat. Good sources are English walnuts, "high-linoleic" safflower oil, and flaxseed oil. All of these provide the Essential Fatty Acids in concentrated amounts with very few additional Calories.
2. The less carbohydrate you eat the better, because more than a smallish amount of carbohydrate shuts off fat burning almost immediately. Paradoxically however, you must eat a small amount of carbohydrate because it is required for:
   1. energy by some tissues, and
   2. to burn fat normally, and
   3. to prevent proteins from being "cannibalized" to provide glucose for cells that must have glucose.

In other words, the right amount of carbohydrate keeps the brain and some other tissues happy while still allowing a steady stream of fat to be delivered to and burned by muscles and organs that need it. Therefore, you need to strike a balance between too much and too little. This involves managing both the type and quantity of carbohydrate.

1. Generally, more protein is better than less protein because protein is required to keep the active tissues that burn fat functioning properly. Paradoxically, however, if you eat too much protein, the excess will itself suppress the need to burn fat. (Many protein foods also have considerable amounts of fat in them.) Once again, you need to strike a balance between too much and too little. Your goal is to eat low-fat, high-protein foods in the proper quantities.
2. If you do lose control  (it inevitably happens from time to time) and you find yourself in the early stages of an uncontrolled "pig-out",  then try to direct your piggery toward either a low-fat protein food  (e.g. tuna)  or toward a fat-free, sweet carbohydrate food (e.g. a fruit-flavored candy). Obviously, any type of pig-out will stop your weight loss immediately, but with these types of food at least you won't gain fat—and then you can try to figure out what went wrong and resume your diet again tomorrow.