Ben Greenfield answers a listener question about whether eating more fat can help with weight loss. He argues that specific fats—omega-3 fatty acids (e.g., fish oil, flax), monounsaturated fats (e.g., extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts), and medium-chain triglycerides (e.g., extra virgin coconut oil)—can support fat loss and lean mass when consumed appropriately. Key mechanisms mentioned: correcting an omega-6/omega-3 imbalance to reduce inflammation, allowing the body to burn fat efficiently rather than store it, stabilizing appetite, and producing smaller insulin responses compared with carbohydrate-rich foods.
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Question number five in the Nutrition, Diet and lifestyle and exercise and Fitness series from BenGreenfieldFitness.com? number five comes from listener Barry. And he says, is it true that eating more fat will actually help me to lose weight? Actually, I'm wearing one of our BenGreenfieldFitness.comT shirts right now. On the back of this T shirt it says, my personal trainer told me to eat more fat. Whenever I give somebody one of these T shirts or I give them out on the website, I tell people, well, you got to know why the back of the T shirt says that. And it really relates to the question over here. And what the idea is, is that our western diet is very, very high in what are called omega 3 fatty acids. And those can generate a condition in the body that, if you listen to question number one in this series, really can cause inflammation, blood or gut or oral body inflammation that can put the body in a state where it does have a weight loss plateau or an inability to burn as much fat as it normally would. And so what we want to do is balance the omega 6 fatty acids out by getting more omega 3 fatty acids into our diet. Omega 3 fatty acids in studies have been shown to actually improve someone's lean body mass or increase their lean muscle, decrease their body fat. An example of omega 3 fatty acid would be like fish oil. Another example would be flaxseed or flax oil. Fish also, if you're careful not to get farmed, fish is also a great source of omega 3 fatty acids. Another type of fat that you can actually consume that will actually help you to lose weight, again, assuming not eating too much of it. Fats are very calorically dense is a monounsaturated fatty acid. And these are the vegetable based fats that you hear about all the time in the Mediterranean diet. Extra virgin olive oil, avocados, olives, almonds, things of that nature. And what the monounsaturated fatty acids allow your body to do is actually burn that type of fat efficiently as a fuel. And that's as opposed to actually storing it as fat, say, wherever you tend to store it, in your waistline or in your hips or your butt. And that's another type of fat in addition to the omega 3 fatty acids that you should incorporate into your diet if you're trying to eat a healthy diet. It also assists in the formation of good cholesterol hormones, assists with joint health, things of that nature. Another type of fat that there's a little less research on, but that is still fairly beneficial in a fat based diet. What's called a medium chain triglyceride. Not a lot of forms of those out there that you can get, but one of the ways that you can get it is extra virgin coconut oil. This is actually a little bit solid at room temperature, but you can actually use it for cooking. It's pretty heat stable. Some people put it in smoothies and things like that for texture. I don't think it tastes all that great in smoothies, but you could even, for example, cook an omelet with a little bit of extra virgin coconut oil. Adding just a little bit of that medium chain triglyceride can again stabilize your appetite and give you some fat to burn. That's going to keep your body going throughout the day. The advantage is that you don't get quite as big insulin release as if you had consumed say a sugar or a cereal or a grain. So great question. That's question number five from the BenGreenfieldFitness.com series on exercise, nutrition, lifestyle fitness, diet. And if you want to check out more, you can head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com we answer questions every week on the show.
