But then, taking your body into ketosis — the process by which the body runs on fat because you don’t have enough carbs/glucose — is a rich resource for the seemingly unbelievable. This is, after all, a dieting method that requires you to purchase special test strips to examine your urine in order to confirm if you have “achieved” ketosis. (Yes, seriously.)

So is the keto diet effective? Yes and no.

The claims about keto superiority for fat loss and muscle gain are significantly inflated.

But that doesn’t mean the diet is without value.

To help you determine if the keto diet is the right approach for you, we dig into your biggest keto diet questions—and some you probably hadn’t even thought about asking. In the end, should you decide that going keto is best for you, you’ll at least know how to do it properly (most people don’t), understand what it’s really doing to your body (ditto), and be aware of the risks involved.

What is a ketogenic diet?

In a traditional ketogenic diet, you eat 80 percent of your daily calories from fat. The remaining 20 percent is divvied up between protein and carbohydrates—but most of it protein. Typically, carb intake is capped at 20 grams per day, or less than what you’ll find in a single apple, according to Andy Galpin, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., C.P.T., associate professor of kinesiology and director of the Biochemistry & Molecular Exercise Physiology Lab at California State University, Fullerton.

This number is far lower than what you’ll find with most low-carb diets, which generally max out carb intake at about 45 percent of daily calories, according to a review from Tulane University. For someone following a 2,000-calorie diet, that works out to as much as 225 grams per day.

But, don’t forget the most important part — it’s not the low carbs that surprises most people. After all, keto is known as the low-carb diet. What you need to remember is that the ketogenic diet is also surprisingly low in protein.

Why? As you’ll learn, taking your body into ketosis means having your body run on fat for fuel, and protein can be converted into glucose in your body. That means you need to keep protein levels lower to truly establish a state of ketosis.

Why do ketogenic diets go so low with carbs?

Carbs and glycogen (or carbs stored in the liver and muscles) are the body’s preferred and most efficient energy source. Once you deplete them, your body must find other energy sources.

When you cut carbs so drastically — as one does on a keto diet — you can put the body in a state of ketosis. What does that actually mean? Your liver is forced to convert fat into fatty acids and ketones — compounds the body can use to produce ATP, a.k.a. energy, Galpin explains.

It’s this process that truly separates the ketogenic diet from other low-carb approaches such as Atkins, and why the diet revolves around such a high intake of dietary fat: without it, your body cannot produce the ketones needed to keep you up and running.

To determine whether the body has truly entered a state of ketosis, you’d need to test yourself for high levels of ketones, Galpin notes. That’s why people who go keto have to urinate on at-home test strips.

If your body is not in a state of ketosis, you’re technically just following another low-carb diet.

Which means your body is not running on ketones. And all that carb-depletion isn’t going to work the way you intended.

Through ketosis, your body becomes what many refer to as “fat adapted,” meaning your body adjusts to what you’re giving it and uses fat for energy.

In a world of quick fixes and promises, this usually is not a quick process. Research suggests that it usually takes several weeks to occur, according to ketogenic diet researcher, Antonio Paoli, M.D., director of the Nutrition & Exercise Physiology Lab at the University of Padova in Italy.

What happens in the process of becoming fat adapted? Expect extreme fatigue, brain fog, and sluggish exercise performances. After all, your brain is the primary user of your body’s carbs and glycogen. Without that fuel, your entire central nervous system feels the effects.

In fact, it’s those effects on the neurological system that first popularized the keto diet. According to a 2014 review published in the Journal of Lipid Research, ketosis alters the activity of mitochondria in the brain of those with neurodegenerative conditions, which helps cut down on the frequency and severity of seizures.

Is a keto diet good for fat loss?

For those who are looking to cut their body fat percentage or improve exercise performance, the keto diet comes with mixed results.

In one Nutrients study, male cyclists who followed a keto diet for four weeks decreased their body fat percentages and improved their VO2max levels (the amount of oxygen they could take in and use in a minute), but their max power decreased.

Other studies suggest that following a ketogenic diet can allow the body to burn a larger percentage of calories from fat instead of carbohydrates and glycogen when participating in endurance events such as marathons and triathlons, according to a 2017 review in the Strength and Conditioning Journal.

But some of this is very misleading. According to nutrition researcher Alan Aragon, you’re not actually burning more body fat.

You see, when you eat more fat your body is going to burn more fat. This causes an increase of “fat oxidation,” which can easily be interpreted as an increase in fat loss.

But when protein and calories have been balanced (as in, you’re comparing diets where total calories and protein are the same — but fat or carb intake is difference), there is no difference in fat loss between a keto diet and a non-keto/higher carb diet.

“To lose weight on the diet, you still have to consume fewer calories,” Galpin says.  “There are no physiological shortcuts. Calories still matter, and while they aren’t the only thing that matter for fat loss, you still have to maintain a caloric deficit to lose fat.”

Paoli notes that a ketogenic may aid in cutting calories by increasing satiety, but that potential benefit is not yet definitive.

Is a keto diet good for building muscle?

Unfortunately for people who have body-comp goals (think: ditching fat and muscling up), research consistently shows that in order to lose fat without also losing a significant amount of lean muscle, daily protein intake has to be higher than what a traditional ketogenic diet offers.

After all, with only 20 percent of your daily calories coming from carbs and protein combined, there isn’t a lot for muscle-building protein. A 2015 review published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism showed that, in order to retain muscle mass while cutting calories, protein intake should be set at about 25 percent of total daily calories. And why must protein be so low on a keto diet? It all has to do with preventing side effects (which we’ll get to in the next section).

Just as important, keto research to date seems to indicate no performance benefit among those performing high-intensity activities such as sprinting and weightlifting, according to the review authors. This is due to both a decrease is fast-acting carb availability as well as a recruitment of slow-twitch endurance-based type II fibers over fast-twitch power ones.

It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of the studies on keto done to date have suffered from at least one big design flaw.

“A major problem with the research on the ketogenic diet is that a huge chunk of the it doesn’t establish whether study participants are actually in ketosis,” Galpin says. “Researchers often don’t draw blood to determine a state of ketosis and instead assume that participants were eating few enough carbs and enough fat that they were.”

What about side effects – is a keto diet safe?

When it comes to protein, a keto diet puts people in a sort of “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” situation.

While a low protein intakes can cause the body to lose muscle mass, too high of a protein intake can cause the body to spring out of its state of ketosis, Paoli says.

Basically, breaking down protein for energy is easier than producing ketones and using them for energy. So, if that is an option, your body is going to take it.

But a far bigger issue is that eating too much protein during a ketogenic diet can put your body in a state of ketoacidosis, in which keto acids (ketone-containing acids) accumulate and decrease blood pH, Galpin says.

When this occurs, symptoms include nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst and confusion. In very rare cases, “extreme ketoacidosis” can be fatal.

While some may think a keto diet gives them license to go crazy on greasy, processed foods and still lose weight, it’s important to focus on getting dietary fats from whole, natural sources including red meat, eggs, avocado, nuts, olive oil, and dairy (although many forms of dairy have sufficient carbs to kick you out of ketosis, FYI).

It’s worth noting that, since these high-fat foods tend to be low in fiber, a person who does go keto should work with a dietitian to keep their fiber intake at a level that prevents constipation and GI issues such as diverticulitis, Galpin says. He adds that most keto dieters require a fiber supplement to get enough fiber without going overboard on carbs.

Lastly, having a high protein intake can also increase keto-dieters’ already-elevated risk of developing kidney stones. Note that a high protein diet alone is not a precursor to kidney problems like many people believe. But, adding high protein + a keto diet approach can potentially lead to kidney stones.

What else should I know if I want to go keto?

The keto diet has a lot of very interesting research around brain health and fighting autoimmune diseases. For people that struggle with a variety of health problems, the nature of the diet is promising. And for those that don’t mind the fairly rigorous rules, it can be a very effective approach for fat loss — just like several other diet methods.

At the same time, there’s no getting around it: the keto diet is incredibly tough to follow. Researchers have found that to be true even when adults attempt the diet to control their epilepsy. If people who have such a high degree of motivation have trouble following the protocol, you have to ask yourself a simple question: how well do you think you’re going to do following the rules of the diet?

Research has shown over and over again that your success on a diet depends entirely on how consistent you can be.

So if you can’t stick to it for a long period of time, then another option might be a better fit.

After all, nutrients don’t occur in isolation—they are found in whole foods that, generally, contain some mix of the three macros. So it can be difficult to find high-fat foods that don’t put you over your protein or carbohydrate goals. And since fat is an energy dense macro, packing nine calories per gram, it’s also easy to go overboard there and wind up gaining weight, rather than losing it.

If you choose the ketogenic diet, keep a cheat sheet of ways to stay on track. Reminders like “overdoing it on protein can snap you out of ketosis” will help make sure that your efforts pay off. Or how even one carb “cheat” on the ketogenic diet can cancel out any purported benefits of the eating plan. If you’re going to see success with the ketogenic diet, you have to do it to a T — and it’s best to do so under the supervision of a physician or registered dietitian, according to Paoli.

READ MORE: 

Healthy Fat: Which Foods Should You Really Be Eating? 

The Protein Guide: How Much Protein Do You Need?

Do Carbs Actually Make You Fat? 

The post What is the Keto Diet? (And Should I Try it?) appeared first on Born Fitness.

Here’s how it works: if you’ve ever tried to drop more than a few pounds or really change the way you look, there comes a time when you have to make a choice: continue to believe in a process that is clearly not working, or look for better options for your goals.

You probably choose option B — correctly — but it leaves you vulnerable to the trapdoor. When you’re trying to lose weight fast, it’s easy to become frustrated by a lack of progress and go searching for alternative options that make sense. You inevitably stumble upon theories about inflammation, food allergies, not enough “good” fats, a lack of superfoods, how eating breakfast is the problem…or is it avoiding breakfast and fasting?

When you learn about theory of fat availability, it can change everything about how you understand fat loss.

The list goes on and on. You’re stuck in plateau mode, so just about any option starts to sound good and then you make a choice that still doesn’t lead to change. (This might explain your fexperiences with most diet books.)

The problem isn’t that you’re making changes, it’s that the adjustments and misleading solutions are overwhelming, confusing, and oftentimes inaccurate.

Most fat loss hype is just another empty promise that is more likely to leave you frustrated with your body rather than satisfied with your results. Instead of relying on scapegoats — like meal frequency, single categories of foods, or anything else that flies in the face of science — a more effective approach is rethinking why your previous attempts didn’t work.

Behind the “Lose Weight Fast” Solutions: Seeing is Not Believing

You’ve probably heard a lot of reasons why you gain weight or struggle to drop pounds, these include:

• You don’t eat enough meals in the day to help your metabolism
• You skip breakfast, which means you don’t “turn on” your metabolism to start the day
• You don’t do intermittent fasting, which means your hormones are messed up (Yes, I wrote a book on intermittent fasting; while it’s a good technique, my thoughts on how it benefits your body have changed)
• You eat too late at night and those calories are more likely to become fat
• You eat “starchy” carbs, which are transformed into sugar
• You eat white foods, such as white rice, which make you fat
• You eat gluten or non-organic food sources, which pollute your body

All of these are behavioral choices you can make…if they fit your lifestyle and feel sustainable. But don’t be fooled: none of these are reasons why you gain weight or can’t lose fat.

You can eat meals at night, enjoy gluten, and never fast a day in your life, and your body is still capable of changing.

You must learn to separate technique from causes, differentiate strategy from roadblock, and science from science fiction.

Instead of searching for quick answers for your “lose weight fast” goals, it’s more effective to ask why your current approach has failed to produce the results you want.

Here are four common weight loss mistakes and alternate solutions that can set you on the right path. None of these approaches are extreme or set unrealistic expectations. What they will do is help you understand why you haven’t seen changes in the past, and why this time — with a more strategic approach–your results can be different.

Weight Loss Question #1: What is Your Body Type?

No one likes to admit it, but genetics are an important part of the weight loss equation. They can influence what diets might work best for your body (many diet plans work, so don’t buy the hype that you must follow a certain plan), as well as how you metabolize food.

You probably have at least one friend who can eat ‘whatever they want’ and still stay thin. While exceptions exist, chances are your friend is taller than you, and this isn’t a coincidence.

Your metabolic rate is highly influenced by your lean body mass. That is, the amount of muscle on your body relative to your total body weight. And the taller you are, the more likely it is that you’ll have more lean mass. That’s because a tall person’s lean mass advantage isn’t just limited to their muscle.

Your internal organs—the real metabolic power plants of your body—are also dependent on your height. So the taller you are, the bigger your heart, lungs, liver, and every other organ that requires energy to function. And in order to keep those organs functioning, you need calories. That means those with bigger organs burn more—and can eat more without gaining weight.

In fact, your height can make a significant difference in how much you can eat every day. Consider a person who is 6 feet 4 inches tall. Compared to someone who is 5 foot 8 inches, the taller person could be burning as much as 400 calories more per day, and that’s just when you’re inactive. And the impact is only compounded during activity simply because of the size of their body.

It may not seem fair, but it’s true: The taller you are the more you can eat. What’s more, this impact is further heightened between sexes. Men’s bodies burn more calories than women, too.

When starting a nutrition or diet plan, don’t blindly follow a template that works for someone else. The “it works for them, it must work for me” is the exact reason why so many people fail in their attempts to lose weight. And the stubborn approach to stick with a program that isn’t making changes only enhances doubts about your ability to make the number on the scale shrink.

Remember, your meal frequency does not impact your metabolism. So if you eat 2,000 calories per day, it doesn’t matter if it’s spread across 3 or 6 meals; your calorie burn is the same, assuming that the food quality (proteins, fats, and carbs) is equal. Instead of following a general plan for meal frequency (for weight loss), track when you feel hungry during the day, and then build your eating plan around your schedule. This can help with overeating.

Not sure how much to eat? Start with the sample equation (below) and track your food intake for a week. (I use My Fitness Pal with my coaching clients.)

Protein: Eat 1 gram for every pound of your target body weight. If you want to weigh 180 pounds, you’ll eat 180 grams of protein. One gram of protein is about 4 calories, so 180 grams of protein is 720 calories.

Fat: Eat .3 to .5 grams for every pound of your target body weight. So if you did .5 (based on a preference of more fat-filled foods instead of carb-based foods) for a goal weight of 180 pounds, that’d be 90 grams. One 1 gram of fat has about 9 calories, so 90 grams is 810 calories from fat.

Carbs: Add your calories from protein and fat, and subtract that total from your allotted daily calories. Using the 180-pound example, that leaves you with 630 calories. One gram of carbohydrates is four calories (just like protein), so 630 calories divide by 4 would equal 158 grams of carbs.

NOTE: Remember, your diet should be personalized, so the exact amounts of carbs and fats — in particular — might need to be adjusted more or less aggressively, or changed once you reach a plateau.

Weight Loss Question #2: Are Your Being Too Patient?

The example above is a great starting point for almost anyone. But the big secret in weight loss is that one size does not fit all. And while the best nutrition plan is one that is sustainable, the doesn’t mean you can’t be aggressive with your plan. It all depends on your body and how much weight you want to lose.

Tell me if this story sounds familiar: You start a new diet and instantly lose weight. Maybe it’s 4 pounds the first week. And then a few more pounds the next week. But after that initial surge the weight loss slows down, and by the second month, your progress has come to halt. In some instances, you might have already regained the weight.

Naturally, you search for answers. The typical explanation: Your body has entered “starvation mode” or your metabolism has slowed down.

Both options seem reasonable, and you become convinced that you need a diet that’s even more extreme, or you convince yourself that fat loss pills are necessary for an extra boost.

Those answers are not what you need. Save your money.

But, when nothing works you become convinced that the problem is you.

However, slowed fat loss is natural and something that happens to everyone. You see, body fat is just stored energy. When you diet you create a deficit between the calories you eat and the amount you burn in a day.

That deficit is ‘made up’ by the calories stored in your body fat. This is known as the “theory of fat availability.”

As you become leaner, there is less fat available as an energy source – meaning you can lose lots of fat at the beginning of a diet, but less and less as you become leaner.

In other words, your body has a hard time keeping up with your calorie deficit as you continue to lose body fat. You end up feeling grumpy, tired, lethargic, and even risk losing your hard earned muscle.

Part of avoiding this frustrated is to adjust your expectations. The “how to lose 20 pounds  in 4 weeks” is frustrating because no one can blindly make that guarantee. (I’ve discussed these “lose weight fast” lies in the past.) Can quick weight loss happen? Of course. But it all depends on your body, your goals, your activity levels, your genetics, and a host of other factors. So before you start any plan, hit reset on your expectations.

That said, when weight loss stalls, most people don’t challenge the typical approach to weight loss, or at least reconsider what might work best. Instead of looking at how much weight they need to lose (and thus ignore the theory of fat availability), they start with a small calorie deficit.

As time progresses, they become more extreme in their efforts and increase the strain on their body. If you need to lose a lot of weight, oftentimes this can be the opposite of what you should be doing.

Based on the theory of fat availability, you should start off going hard, and try to drop as much weight as safely as possible in the first few weeks and then ease up. This does not mean taking extreme measures that aren’t sustainable, such as removing all foods or carbs. 

Diets that drop to dangerously low levels of calories — such as plans that go below 1,000 calories — are not aggressive, they are dangerous.

But this does mean you can experiment with accelerating the process, and then making it easier over time.

With each week reduce your expectations a little bit. Think of this as easing your way into your new body as opposed to starving yourself into it.

As a rule of thumb, you should match the size of your calorie deficit (calories you eat minus calories you burn) to the amount of body fat you have. The more fat on your body, the larger the deficit you can handle.

If you are already lean and are trying to become even more defined, then your best bet is to go with a smaller deficit for a greater amount of time. It takes a little longer, but you won’t be faced with the uncomfortable lethargy or muscle loss.

Weight Loss Question #3: Is Your Post-Workout Nutrition Strategy Really Working?

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a massive upswing in the supplement industry. Suddenly, the chalky protein powders and concrete tasting bars were more palatable, and for some even enjoyable. As the supplement industry grew to a multi-billion dollar business, a-not-so-coincidental emphasis on post-workout nutrition began to take hold of nutrition research and influence meal timing habits.

While pre- and post-workout nutrition is important, there was an overreaction to its importance on weight loss. In fact, if your primary goal is to lose weight fast, you could be undoing some of the fat-scorching benefits of your workout if you eat too many calories (and carbs) after you finish your sweat session.

The reason for eating after your workout goes like this: After your finish training, you need to replenish the glycogen (stored carbohydrates) that you burned during exercise. But here’s a truth few people ever mention:

1. Most weight workouts do not deplete the glycogen in your muscles, so there isn’t an urgency to replenish.
2. More importantly to your goal to lose weight fast: the glycogen in your muscles will replenish themselves over the next couple of days, and this slow approach will help you lose body fat.

If you stuff yourself with massive amounts of carbs and proteins after your workout, you can completely erase the fat-burning environment you created in the first place. That’s because the calorie deficit you created by exercising would be eliminated.

If you’re working out with any consistency then technically every meal you eat is both pre and post workout (because metabolic effects of a single workout can last up to 48 hours).

Every meal is important to your weight loss and muscle building goals, so there is no need to over-emphasize the meal after your workout.

If you are leaner, there is an exception to the rule. At low levels of body fat (visible six-pack), post-workout nutrition becomes more important, and the timing becomes emphasized more.

Weight Loss Question #4: Do You Put Too Much Faith in Weight Loss Calculators?

Counting calories is a great way to lose weight—with one small exception: Your calorie goal is nothing more than a guesstimate. And that has nothing with the choice of calculator you use or the foods you eat. The fact is many foods are mislabeled and your body works on a unique set of variables. (For instance, hormones like insulin can impact how you process certain foods.) So while using calorie calculators and applications may seem like a foolproof plan, you need to adjust how you eat based on your results.

Consider the following example, using a common weight loss caloric formula:

Let’s say calculate your BMR (daily calories you burn) as 1720 calories. As part of the equation, you then multiply that number by 1.3 to get the exact number of calories you burn in a day (2,236). Then, you subtract 500 calories to get 1736, or the “exact” number of calories you need to eat to lose a pound of fat in one week.

If you were to spend the next 7 days tracking every single calorie you put in your mouth, one of two things could happen: You’ll either lose the weight or you won’t. Makes sense, right?

So what happens when you don’t drop the pounds? For most people, you might blame your metabolism, your workout, or even the foods you eat (you knew those apples weren’t organic!)

But the problem most likely has nothing to do with any of those factors. The metabolic calculators and food labels are not 100 percent accurate.

The calculators are great for helping you track what you eat, make adjustments, and learn portion sizes. But they cannot accurately measure your metabolism. The provide a best guess at where to start estimating your metabolic rate, but it’s just a guess, and you have to test it out for yourself to truly determine how many calories you burn in a day.

More importantly, the calculators can’t be held accountable for bad food labeling. If you were to visit your local health food store and buy 3 protein bars and weigh them, you might be shocked to determine that many are inaccurate.

Calculators that tell you how many calories you burn while exercising are also fuzzy guesses and notorious for over estimating, some exercise machines can overestimate the calories burned by up to 30 percent. Again, this could completely sabotage your weight loss efforts if you assume you burned 500 calories during your daily workout when in reality you only burned 300.

This might frustrate you (and it shouldn’t), but there is no perfect math for the human body, especially when it comes to losing weight. Using tools can be very helpful, and it’s something next necessary for most people. But if you don’t lose weight, it’s not because the tool is broken.

Use these tools as a way to determine a starting point. From there, the key is finding what working for you, and adjusting until you find out what you need to eat and how much you need to exercise to produce results.

Personalize Your Fitness Plan

Want to work one-on-one with a coach to cater a workout plan to your goals, your lifestyle, and your schedule? Now you can. Click here to learn more about Born Fitness online coaching

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post The Deception of “Lose Weight Fast” Plans appeared first on Born Fitness.

Both have been identified in books, conferences, and even research as the reason and answer to the question everyone tries to answer: “Why are we fat?”

The real answer is that you are asking the wrong question.

Trying to pin an epidemic like obesity or a psychological battle like eating disorders on a single nutrient is a trigger. It begins a vicious process that underlies the real reason why the number of overweight people continue to grow, despite tremendous efforts to make people healthier. Making a diet stressful and cumbersome only makes it more likely that a particular approach will not succeed.

That’s not to say focused behaviors that limit food options don’t work. The Paleo movement has shown there are plenty of people that can and are willing to cut out all processed foods. The low carb movement has stricken bread, pasta, rice, and all other starches from diets and people have lost weight. But these are relatively small sub-segments and inadvertently designed for people that are wired a certain way.

Fitness communities love to berate “fat people” for not being able to make certain changes. Words like “lazy” or “lack of willpower” are tossed around at ease. But what if the changes that are being suggested aren’t sustainable for their lives, their habits and mindset, or even their budget?

The intent of these suggestions isn’t the issue: whether you believe the low carb or low fat hypothesis (or any other effective dietary approach) doesn’t matter. Each side desperately wants to help. And their research does just that with one fatal flaw: most are “extremist” approaches that create an exclusivity mindset.

Your eating habits should not be black and white. But it’s that very mentality oftentimes forces dietary habits into a position that make it more likely that people will fail and spiral into behavior that will leave them gaining weight.

Fat Frustration: Why Diets Keeping Failing

There isn’t one “right” way to lose weight. And there’s no urgent need to discover new mechanisms of shedding fat. We already know plenty of effective mechanisms. Instead, more effort needs to focus on why people struggle with the current approaches that work.

Over the last 10 years I’ve worked with hundreds of people to help them lose weight, and while I have preferences (usually a mix of calorie and carb cycling), different techniques work for different people. Some love to count calories while others do not. Some want several small meals while others prefer fewer snacks and more big meals. When you look at all of the plans, many of the nutrition principles are the same, but the application is different and never extreme.

The ongoing search for a “magic bullet” that solves every nutrition problem is where the system breaks down. It’s hard to make sense of what’s good and bad when you can barely mute the mob mentality screaming from different dietary camps:

Fat is the problem!

Carbs are the problem!

Sugar is the problem!

High fructose is the problem!

Gluten is the problem!

Throw in dairy, organic, and whatever is to come and it’s easy to see that the list goes on and on. Pretty soon no food will be safe.

The truth is many things can make us gain weight, and fat and sugar just happen to be two easy targets. Heck, too much protein will make you fat if you eat too much of it. Sounds like something your parents would say, but it’s that type of common sense approach that is all too frequently missing from dietary dogma.

The poison is always in the dose.

In the last 40 years, we’ve increased our consumption by about 450 calories per day. Of those 450 calories, about 200 comes from carbs, 200 from fats, and about 50 calories from artificial sweeteners.

Do you feel confident in picking out the culprit? Not to mention, the average energy expenditure on a daily basis has lowered nearly 150 calories. (Basically, we move less.)

When you look at things from a bigger picture it becomes clear: One problem isn’t the reason for the rise in obesity.

We eat more fat. We eat more sugar. We eat more in general. And we move less. The reasons for these behaviors are numerous, so to solve the problem we must stop looking for a single answer.

A Fat Loss Solution that Works

Finding healthier solutions starts with a more inclusive mindset. Dietary freedom and understanding can only occur when the “one thing to remove” mentality is eliminated.

Dietary dogma is a science of overreaction: The only result is dramatically pushing away from one type of food, only to fill our diets with other types of foods. The trend repeats itself over and over.

The low fat camp is eating too much sugar. The low carb/low sugar camp is eating too much fat. And everyone is eating too many calories because they are stuffing the gaps in their diet with partial nutrition that oftentimes leads to no consistency, overeating, or breaking the plan and binging…and then the vicious cycle repeats.

Some people have to avoid certain foods. Allergies and sensitivities are very real. But those problems are not experienced by everyone. If you feel better when you remove certain foods (even if you don’t have an allergy), then go for it. But when you believe that your weight is directly tied to a certain food, that’s when the overreaction starts and it’s just a tipping point.

The question is not “What food is the worst?” Instead, the focus should be on “What can I do better?”

Add in components that are missing and then reduce aspects that might be problematic. The process starts when we cease the negativity, finger pointing, and scapegoating, and start simplifying.

The principles of a good diet are universal: Eat most “real” foods. Avoid much of what is processed. Enjoy plants and fruits and if you eat animals, then enjoy those that are fed and raised in a healthy manner. There’s room for dessert and for packaged food. And most people need that, either for convenience or budget. Just make sure those foods are the smallest portion of what you eat.

In the end, a diet that includes some of the “bad stuff” and a lot of the good stuff will deliver results that will probably blow your mind. It won’t provide a food group to blame, but it will deliver a healthier body that is sustainable. And when that starts happening, that’s when the questions will stop.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Why Are We Fat? appeared first on Born Fitness.

The health scare surrounding saturated fat and cholesterol was overblown.

That was Walter Willett’s conclusion after reviewing 21 studies on high-fat diets. While Willet’s name doesn’t jump off the page, he is the chairman of the department of nutrition at Harvard University. And his powerful statement came after Harvard published a study that showed there is no evidence that dietary saturated fat is associated with coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease.

This was a defining moment in a 30-year battle to determine if eating fat makes us fat. The confusion began in the 1980s when obesity rates began to climb. The low-fat craze took over, and the next thing you knew, we all became fatter. But that was just beginning. People assumed that despite all the clever marketing, maybe we were all still eating too much fat.

Only nothing could be farther from the truth. Consider this:

• In the last 30 years the number of overweight people increased by 30 percent.
• During the same time period, the amount of fat consumed decreased by 11 percent.

While this doesn’t mean direct causation, it’s solid evidence that the consumption of fat wasn’t the problem. What people didn’t realize is that not only is fat not bad, it’s actually an incredibly potent weight loss tool and essential for your health.

So How Much Fat Do I Need?

Research now indicates that as much as 20 to 35 percent of your calories should come from fats.

Not only do the fat-filled meals keep you full, they also burn calories. Researchers from Georgia Southern University found that eating a high-protein, high-fat snack increases your resting calorie burn (think of this as your metabolism) for up to 3.5 hours.

Just as important, eating fat has been shown to:

• Help protect and run your immune system
• Allow good production of testosterone and estrogen
• Play an essential role with nutrient absorption (think important vitamins like D and E)
• Help all of the cells in your body work as intended

When it comes to understanding fat, your options can be broken down into two main groups: saturated and unsaturated fats. (Yes, there are other specific sub-types of fat, but you can understand most of what you need by focusing on these two.) Both of them have a role in your diet, and both possess a variety of benefits.

The Different Types of Fats

Let’s start with the unsaturated options. Monounsaturated fats—MUFAs (pronounced MOO-fahs), for short—come from the healthy oils found in plant foods such as olives, nuts, and avocados.

A report published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that a MUFA-rich diet helped people lose small amounts of weight and body fat without changing their calorie intakes. Another report found that a breakfast high in MUFAs could boost calorie burn for 5 hours after the meal, particularly in people with higher amounts of belly fat.

What’s more, a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that people who swallowed 1.9 grams of omega-3s daily (you’d find twice that in a 4-ounce portion of salmon) reduced their body fat, lowered their triglycerides, and raised their HDL cholesterol.

Polyunsaturated fats are more typically discussed as omega-3 and omega 6. Most people actually consume more than enough omega 6, so extra focus is not needed. They are essential, found in nuts and seeds, and most commonly the vegetable oils that many use to cook.

Omega 3s are the typical area that need a little more love. They help your HDL cholesterol, can fight against inflammation, and help heart and brain health. These friendly nutrients can be found in grass-fed meats, fattyfish (like salmon), walnuts, and chia seeds.

For most people, this is an easy barrier of entry: Eat nuts, seeds, and fish. But here’s where most people misunderstand fats.

Saturated fats—like those found in red meat, eggs, and milk—used to be avoided. But now they can be considered an essential part of a healthy diet. No food represents the benefits of fat better than eggs.

If you are skipping out on the yolks in eggs for fear of fat, then you’re missing out on one of the best fat loss foods.

A study in Nutrition Research showed that the fat in eggs helped reduce appetite for up to 24 hours. And British scientists discovered that dieters who ate eggs for breakfast instead of a bagel lost 65 percent more weight—without any negative consequences to their cholesterol or triglycerides. Research has also found that consuming calcium dairy foods, such as milk and yogurt, may also reduce fat absorption from other foods, which makes it easier to stay lean.

The Bottom Line on Eating Fat

You have a lot more freedom to eat “fatty” foods than anyone would have thought 10 years ago.

When I design diets for my online clients, I do so by giving them a wide variety of options that they can plug into meal. This means enjoying everything from steak, pork, chicken with skin, eggs and fish, as well as dairy products, avocados, nuts and seeds and nut butters.

When it comes to cooking, butter, olive and coconut oil are all great options. While each individual is different, a good rule of thumb is that you the higher level of your fat intake will be around .4 to .5 grams per pound of your target body weight. (For example, if you want to weigh 180 pounds, you could eat as much as 90 grams of fat.) The number might initially seem like a lot, but when adjusted for how many calories you should take in per day, it’s exactly right.

READ MORE

Healthy Fat: Which Foods Should You Really Be Eating?

Do Carbs Actually Make You Fat?

Big Meals vs. Small Snacks: What’s Best For You?

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post How Much Fat Should I Eat? appeared first on Born Fitness.