When I started eating fat I dropped weight!! Why????

Question

I've been watching what I eat for a few years now. I've been trying to do all the right things: eat whole grains, stay away from white stuff, no sugar, watching my calorie intake, drinking lots of water, walking to/from work, and I've also been staying away from fat like it was the plague. I dropped about 50 lbs over the course of my new lifestyle, and hit a plateau and stayed at the same weight. Then I began to relax a bit and eat a little more fat. I thought I'd gain weight but I ended up dropping another 10 lbs! Now I KNOW I shouldn't eat MORE fat to drop MORE weight, but I just wonder why I lost more weight when I introduced more fat into my diet? And what do I do from here?

Answer 1

Your body NEEDS fat. That's why any diet that requires you to cut way back on a nutrient like fat or carbs isn't good for you. Here's a quick primer on fat:

TRANS FAT = VERY BAD. Trans fat is any type of partially or fully hydrogenated oil. It causes weight gain, it raises your cholesterol, and it can also raise your blood pressure. Avoid this stuff like the plague.

SATURATED FAT = BAD. Like trans fat, it causes weight gain and raises cholesterol, but it's not as bad for you as trans fat. It's found in meats (mostly red meats) and dairy products. Keep it to a minimum -- go for lean cuts of beef and pork, and go low-fat or no-fat on the dairy.

MONO-AND-POLYUNSATURATED FATS = VERY GOOD. These fats help your body metabolize vitamins like Vitamin E, they aid in weight loss, and they lower your LDL ("bad" cholesterol) while raising your HDL ("good" cholesterol). Best sources of these healthy fats are: avocadoes, eggs, fish, fish oil, flax seed, flax seed oil, nuts, and olive oil.

So keep eating fat, but make sure most of it is the good stuff. If you're still trying to drop weight, aim for an even three-way split between protein, carbs, and fat in your diet. And don't forget to exercise, even if it's just a 15-minute walk every day. Good luck!

Answer 2

When dieting, eating fat is not necessarily a bad thing. As you found out, it can be beneficial for a couple reasons. If you eat the "good" fats, your body doesn't feel it needs to store fat. It's not in starvation mode. Secondly, you get the raw materials from these fats that allow your body to produce needed enzymes for sleep and weight loss, like human growth hormones. You were at a plateau because your body thought it needed to preserve all the fat it had because you weren't going to give it any more. Now it can let it go. I'm not telling you to go out and gorge on fats. Just have a bit of avacado, or olive oil, or a spoonful of peanutbutter every now and again and keep up the good work! I bet your cholesterol went down as well! `congratulations!

Answer 3

This may be due to your diet being more balanced. Some nutritionists argue that you should eat balanced fats, carbs, and proteins. Maybe when you added some fat back in it made your eating more balanced causing weight loss. Keep a diet journal and you can figure out if that is what you ended up doing. Sometimes when you do something different than your normal eating/exercising routine is revs up your body getting it out of the rut it got into from doing the same thing everyday. Congrats on the weightloss!!!

Answer 4

Your metabolism (and your tastebuds, I'm sure) thanks you!

While this may not satisfy the most clinical of people, it is my experience that when you reach that plateau state, your body has fully adjusted to your intake and considers it the new "normal". When you vary from it, your body takes different nutrients different ways, and uses them as well as it's able.

The thing that all of the diets lack is balance. You give your body one form of nutrient while depriving it of another, and eventually, you plateau. Not good.

That's why you lost weight, at least, from what I've observed in myself and others. Now, what to do from here.

Balance your diet more. If you were as anti-fat as you say, a little fat a couple of times a week is only going to benefit you. Keep eating the good stuff, and drinking water is AWESOME (though a little bloating - try alternating with sugar/caffeine free green tea, it helps to drop that extra water weight)...maybe add five minutes in the morning and night of crunches into your exercise (your body adjusts to this as well).

Good luck!

Answer 5

maybe you are actually eating less or the same amount of calories when you added the fat back to your diet and do not realize it. Your body probably became adjusted to your new lifestlye and you hit your plateau. If you are losing weight, keep your diet the same without adding extra fat, and when you hit another plateau, switch back to your whole grains, etc... keep up the exercise, and good luck!

Answer 6

dietary fats are essential in order for the body and metabolism to function normal. the uneducated media has brainwashed the masses into believing the ingesting fat makes you fat and that low fat diets are optimum for fat loss. in reality low fat diets are counter productive to fat loss. for women when the level of fat is reduced to less than 20% of the daily calories testosterone production can drop between 30-40% causing a drastic decrease in the metabolic rate.

fat is not the enemy, a caloric excess over an extended period of time and a sedentary lifestyle is.

Answer 7

this is quite troublesome to lose 35 pounds without construction muscle. you should do diverse cardio, operating is a sturdy decision yet swimming works your entire body. The extra muscle you've, the extra energy you'll burn to maintain all that muscle. for this reason, commence determining. besides the undeniable fact that, you probable received't get all the way down to one hundred ninety because you'd be gaining muscle even as dropping fat together, and muscle weighs better than fat.

Answer 8

To know how much calories you have to eat just add zero to your weight

Answer 9

Try sprint intervals to lose belly fat

Answer 10

push a grocery cart for 45 minutes