Tera Warner

Monique Gives The Skinny on Fat

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How long can you go with eating fruits and green smoothies with little fat for?

Answer:
Here’s the skinny on fat.

Question: How long can you go with eating fruits and green smoothies with little fat in the diet? Lets take a look at some facts first.

There is a lot of different information out there on fats. Here is a few examples:

How much good fat should we use daily?

According to Udo Erasmus about 15% of calories from good fats is a minimum, 10% might be too low. But the quality of the fats you eat is much more important than the quantity.

According to the Dietary Reference Intakes published by the USDA 20% – 35% of calories should come from fat.

According to some Raw Foodists about 9-13% of your total body weight should be fat if you are a guy and for a girl about 12-19%. The average Olympic ‘Cardiovascular’ Athlete’s body fat ranges from 8-12%.

So who’s right? Think about it! In the meantime let’s look at why we need fat in the diet.

Why Do We Need Fat to Survive?

Although fats have received a bad reputation for causing weight gain, some fat (like linoleic and linolenic acids) is essential for survival. We need these fats for the following:

Normal growth and development
Energy (fat is the most concentrated source of energy)
Absorbing certain vitamins ( like vitamins A, D, E, K, and carotenoids)
Providing cushioning for the organs
Maintaining cell membranes
Helps in the prevention of cholesterol build-up and hardening of the arteries.
Provides healthy hair and skin
Contributes to normal glandular activity
Essential fats cannot be manufactured in the body

Essential Fatty Acids (Vitamin F) can be found in nuts and seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds and their oils, walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, pistachios, and coconut), fruit (avocados, olives), spinach, seaweeds, parsley, and broccoli.

By replacing saturated and trans fats in the (SAD) diet with unsaturated fat, (found in foods like olives, avocados, nuts, and seeds) has been shown decrease the risk of developing heart disease.

The Importance of Fat Cells

Once upon a time, experts believed fat cells were no more than inert tissues that merely stored energy, enlarged extremities and generally got in the way of people trying to move around. Popular opinions have changed, however, thanks to the intense interest in fat in order to find solutions to the obesity crisis.

Experts are realizing fat cells are dynamic and complex structures that affect many crucial bodily functions. These new insights are helping scientists better understand:

  • How fat forms on bodies
  • Why it hangs on so long
  • How it causes disease

Fat cells work to dispatch many potent signals to tissues throughout the body, including reproductive organs, the brain, liver and immune system.

Fat does a great many things, far beyond regulating a body’s energy system and creating new fat cells:

Turns the body’s immune system up or down
Influences blood clots and when blood vessels constrict
Regulates when a women can reproduce

Some scientists theorize there are dozens more functions waiting to be discovered, including a few that may affect mood and behavior beyond eating and hunger.

Opinions began to change a decade ago when scientists identified leptin, the hormone produced by fat cells, that tells the brain a number of things, including how much fat a body has. The discovery of leptin also created a way of looking at fat as an endocrine organ not unlike the thyroid and adrenal glands.

Part of that complex communication systems between fat and other organs is adiponectin, a hormone that lowers the production of blood glucose in the liver and increases muscle burning to make energy. Scientists say this hormone also affects the sensitivity of cells to insulin, which may explain how obesity increases one’s risk of diabetes.

After the importance of adiponectin was recognized, scientists found resistin, (another fat cell hormone) that may play an important role in storing energy and insulin sensitivity.

Researchers have also recently discovered fat tissue is made up of much more than fat cells. In fact, fat tissue, combined with macrophages–key immune system cells–produce powerful substances that assist in regulating the body’s immune system. Some theorize that fats became closely connected to immune function over time because the body needs energy when threatened.

But a surplus of these substances, researchers say, triggers unnecessary inflammation which could explain why obesity increases the chances of many ailments like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

There you have it. Fat is important. We need it daily to survive, these things are not in conflict, however how much we need is. But if you look at what the experts say, the amounts are very close. To play it safe, you can try to stay within the 15% range, remember we are all different (man, woman, children, big, small, tall, short) and we all have different needs. I do not believe that we all fit into the same mold, so to speak. Some of us will need more fat and some of us will do better on less. So bottom line I think that it’s safe to say that you should base how much fat you have in your diet on the facts, as well as how your body feels, trust iyour body and adjust your fat intake as your n