Fat is your friend, my friends. Today, I share why you should have this deliciousness in your life with a guest post by an expert in biohacking and optimizing human performance, Dave Asprey. I was honored to be a guest on his top-ranking, popular podcast which I wrote about here.
Well, this is a special week for Dave Asprey because he launched his much anticipated book, The Bulletproof Diet. All of Dave’s followers are excited to finally have this book in our hands, and I started it last night. I immediately jumped to the chapter on supplements and learned a few things such as which quantities of Vitamin K2 to take of each (not vitamin K1), as well as appreciating his story on sinus infection and high dose vitamin C. I am also going to biohack with his advice on supplemental iodine. Although I haven’t read the whole book, I expect it to be great.
In support of this book launch, I’m sharing a guest post by Dave where he details the truth about fat. I selected this topic because I’ve been wanting to cover it myself but just haven’t had the time. So, I’m happy to have an expert like Dave Asprey come on my blog to share some wisdom on FAT. Enjoy….
The Truth About Fat by Dave Asprey
Diet.
It’s a key component of a healthy lifestyle. It has dictated the existence and extinction of many animals on our planet. In the human world, diet – although geographically unique – all have focus on nutritional value. So why for so long have there been so many hapless attempts from diet fads to teach us the right way to eat healthy. More importantly, why do most dieticians and nutritionists diminish the role that saturated fat has in making us healthier, happier and more efficient as humans.
In 1950 a scientist by the name of Ancel Keys rocked the world of nutrition by claiming, with some pretty convincing research, that saturated fat caused heart disease. The low-fat diet craze immediately stormed the scene and has unfortunately stuck around ever since, despite the fact that we later learned Keys threw out data that didn’t fit his model. More simply put, Keys manipulated data to corroborate his theory. He lied.
This might very well be one of the biggest lies in diet history. A lie which not only warped our nutritional understanding of fat, but resonated for over a half century to this day, where the fear of fat is still common in even some of the most educated, healthy people.
Due to faulty research, fats have gained a bad reputation, but the right types of fats are healthy and essential for life. All nutrients are converted inside the body before being used. The right fats are a clean burning, nutritious, and satisfying energy source that keeps your body and brain functioning at maximum capacity.
Firstly, fat contains more energy per gram than any other food, so it is most effective at delivering energy to the parts of your body that need it. Compared to protein or sugar, fat also has the lowest impact on insulin levels. Low-fat foods containing sugar spike insulin levels in the bloodstream, which leads to energy crashes and weight gain. Furthermore fat – unlike protein or carbohydrates – doesn’t raise the stress hormone cortisol, which increases blood sugar and suppresses your immune system. Eating fat increases the stomach’s bille production, which in turn allows it to release more toxins. This can be compared to a car having an oil change. To put it simply, healthy fats are an important component of the human body. It’s what we’re made of. The healthy female body is comprised of about 29% fat, while men are about 15% fat. Portions of every part of our bodies are made of fat, including our brains. This means that low-fat diets starve not only our stomachs but also our brains.
A large amount of people who quit their diets owe it to the waning of their will power. One of the main reasons people fail on so many dietary goals is that they feel like they’re being tortured and simply give up and go back to eating the foods they actually enjoy. Humans are like psychological misers, we have limited attention and willpower and once we meet our threshold we are likely to break. Saturated fats not only improve your bile turnover which as previously mentioned allows your body to excrete toxins more effectively, but it is also prevalent in some of your favorite, most delicious foods! This is music to struggling dieters ears. Rather than struggling through the fat-free agony, you can instead reap the health benefits of a high-healthy- fat diet and wake up every morning thrilled about the food you’re going to eat that day.
Like many big decisions in our lives, dieting deserves careful research before jumping in.
The reality is that saturated fats are both healthy and key for dieting. They balance hormones, help in excreting toxins, and are found in some of the most delicious of foods. Doing your research on incorporating saturated fats into your diet, will not only make you feel better in both mind and body, but will allow you to conserve your willpower and make your dieting experience more effective and tolerable.
Fat is the foundation of The BulletProof Diet, an incredibly in depth dietary guide created by bio-hacker and best-selling author, Dave Asprey.
Dave Asprey is a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who spent 15 years and $300,000 to hack his own biology, losing 100 pounds, upgrading his IQ, and lowering his biological age. He runs the No. 1-ranked iTunes health podcast and The Bulletproof Executive blog about using biohacking to increase human performance — and he invented Bulletproof Coffee.
You can find more about biohacking, the art of changing your environment and your biology so you perform better in his new book The Bulletproof Diet, and also on The Bulletproof Executive website, Facebook and Twitter.