The Amazing Fats That Make You Thin

The Amazing Fats That Make You Thin
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The Amazing Fats That Make You Thin

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Now if you’ve been following mainstream dietary advice then you might have to suspend your disbelief when you hear that there are fats that will help to make you thin.

Would you like to:

∙ Increase the number of calories you burn?
∙ Feel full for longer so you eat less?
∙ Decrease your body fat, both under the skin and around your organs?

Then read on!

It’s now known that there are fats that will help to make you thin. That’s right, despite being told that the only way to get and stay thin is to eat low fat foods, research today suggests that the opposite is in fact true.

There are of course other variables which need to be accounted for as well, but since the promotion of low fat diets, we’ve been getting fatter and fatter, not thinner and thinner!

Everybody knows that we need essential fatty acids, such as those found in oily fish, in our diets. But few people are familiar with the fats called medium chain triglycerides (MCTs). Triglycerides, which is just another name for fats, are classified according to how long they are and whether they’ve got lots of hydrogen atoms attached.

The fats that make up the majority of our diet are long chain ones (LCTs), which are either “saturated” with hydrogen atoms, such as those found in animal fat, or “unsaturated”, like those found in vegetables, nuts and seeds.

When you eat a long chain fat, whether it’s saturated or not, it’s broken down by enzymes and taken away to be stored as body fat, which helps create thunder thighs and bingo wings. For MCTs though, it’s a different story. They bypass the normal enzyme pathways and are taken straight to the liver where they are broken down to be used as energy and not stored as fat. But not only do they avoid making a contribution to the development of your wobbly bits, they actually seem to help reduce body fat.

Burn more and eat less
Many research trials show that eating MCTs actually increases the amount of energy our body burns. In trials where all other factors such as calorie intake and exercise are constant, people who consumed MCTs, as opposed to the LCTs found in vegetable oils, burnt more calories, had a reduction in body fat and experienced improved satiety which meant they ate less at the following meal.

One trial found that when people were given 50% more calories than they needed on a daily basis, those that received MCTs actually started to burn more calories at each meal than those given LCTs, who experienced no change at all.

In a similar trial, three diets: low fat, high LCT and high MCT, all of which were designed to provide more calories than required to encourage weight gain, were compared. After 44 days of following these various diets, it was found that groups on the low fat and high LCTs diets put on about 0.5 grams of fat a day, while those on the MCTs diet only put on 0.2 grams, which is about 60% less.

People often worry that eating saturated fats will increase their cholesterol and clog up their arteries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Leaving aside the question of whether long chain saturated fats, like those found in dairy products and meat, really have that effect (and whether they do is far from certain, believe it or not) one thing is certain, and that is that MCTs lower cholesterol, reduce LDLs and increase HDLs, all the things which show your heart and blood vessels are getting healthier.

In fact, even when compared to heart healthy olive oil, people who eat MCTs have better cholesterol, blood sugar levels and blood pressure.

So in summary, these MCTs have been shown to do the following:

∙ Increase the amount of calories burnt, encouraging weight loss
∙ Decrease body fat, both under the skin and around the organs
∙ Increase satiety, making you feel full for longer, so you eat less
∙ Improve the health of your heart and blood vessels

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