Low Fat Diets
The first thing you should know about today’s Low Fat diet is that it is quite unlike the ones that were followed in the 80s when they started exploding in popularity. As was the case with clothing fashions in that decade, we’ve learned from our mistakes and have made a lot of change since then.
It was at that time that low fat and no fat products started to appear on supermarket shelves, which made it easy to cut back on some fats. That said, since we didn’t yet understand the benefits of dietary fats to our diets, they were all treated equally and that lack of understanding wreaked havoc on our health and our ability to shed the pounds.
That is no longer the case. A low fat diet is now a fantastic option for people like you who want to enjoy proteins and carbs but know they can save a ton of daily calories by scaling back dietary fat intake. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that you’ll be attempting to eliminate all fat from your diet like the old-school diets used to recommend. Instead, you’ll be limiting your fat intake and focusing on consuming mainly the types of “good” fat that will help to support your body’s overall health and nutrition as well as the weight loss process itself.
Weight Loss Support
How To Follow A Low Fat Diet
Following a low fat diet isn’t typically a weight loss strategy on its own. Usually, it is a component of a calorie counting strategy in which you watch your overall calories while focusing on cutting back primarily on your fat intake to keep that calorie number where it should be.
The reason is that unused calories from food will be stored as body fat, regardless of whether the source was carbs, proteins or dietary fat. So while it may be easy to think that as long as you don’t eat anything deep fried, you can eat mouthfuls of jelly beans all day, that’s not exactly the case.
To be able to lose weight, you need to make sure that the number of calories your body burns all day – through regular body functions such as breathing and digestion, as well as by way of exercise and activity – exceeds the number you’re eating. This forces your body to look to its fuel reserves, your body fat, to give your cells the energy they need.
What makes a low fat diet an effective part of this strategy is that fats are very high in calories. In fact, they contain the most calories among all the macronutrients.
Experts recommend that the majority of healthy adults consume about 20 to 35 percent of their daily calories in the form of fat. A low fat diet usually sticks to the lower side of that range, depending on which one you’re following. That said, the total number of grams of fat you’ll be eating every day will depend on your daily calorie limit. For instance, if you were to follow a 2,000 daily calorie strategy, you’ll be eating around 44 to 77 grams of fat each day. If your calorie limit is lower than that, your allowable dietary fats will be lower, too.
Furthermore, because you are reducing the number of fats you’ll be eating, it’s important to focus on getting the right amounts of the healthiest kinds of fats. It might be tempting to try to speed up the process by eating even fewer fats than recommended, but try to resist attempting it. The reason is that many nutrients – some of which are critical to your metabolism – are fat soluble. Without a bit of dietary fat, your body won’t be able to absorb those nutrients and you can risk deficiencies, a less effective immune system and slower weight loss.
So go ahead and drizzle a little bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil on your huge lunch salad. It will help you to absorb the nutrients you’re eating in all those veggies and fruits. Just don’t overdo it!
Losing Weight On A Low Fat Diet
A healthy low fat diet for weight loss will usually encourage you to eat lots of plant foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains. You’ll also have a certain amount of animal based foods as well, such as low fat dairy and lean meats. This will help you to balance your nutrition while keeping your fat and calorie intake under control. Look to the fish and (skinless white meat) poultry sections of your supermarket when you’re selecting these foods. Try to keep your daily portions of those foods down to around 5 to 7 ounces.
Other great protein sources that help to keep your fat calories down include tofu, peas and beans, low fat milk (such as 1%), low fat cheese, or canned tuna packed in water, not oil. Aim for a twice per week serving of foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as ground flaxseed (your body won’t digest the seeds when they’re whole), walnuts and salmon.
When you’re preparing low fat diet foods, you’ll learn to pick up habits such as removing skin from a chicken breast before cooking it, as well as baking, broiling and grilling meats instead of frying or deep frying them. Using herbs, spices and lemon juice instead of butter, cream or cheese based sauces and dressing can also go a long way toward slashing the dietary fat you eat in a day.
For many of us, this type of strategy can take a bit of adapting – particularly if you’re used to answering “yes” when you’re asked if you want fries with that – but in the end it can teach you a lot about your foods and will help you to effectively control your calorie intake in a healthful way.
Low Fat Diet Reviews
Review: 6 Week Body Makeover
The 6 Week Body Makeover is a weight loss program that was developed by the “Extreme Makeover” star, Michael Thurmond. He has labeled himself as an expert in losing weight and has called himself a “master body sculptor”, to boot. That said, the primary reason that he has held any place in the spotlight is as a result of the use of some of his methods on the reality TV show.
Review: Jenny Craig Diet
The Jenny Craig Diet is an extremely well-known program as it has had a massive marketing strategy that has included celebrity presences in television commercials for many years. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the odds are that you’ve seen at least one of those ads.
Review: The Traditional Asian Diet
The Traditional Asian Diet is a lifestyle-based eating strategy based mainly on eating plant-based foods as is popular in several Asian countries. That massive continent is home for many countries, each of which boasts its own rich cultures and eating traditions. For...
Review: Mayo Clinic diet
The Mayo Clinic Diet is a lifestyle strategy designed to help to remove the complexity involved in trying to lose weight in a healthy way. While healthy weight loss may sound as though it’s a pretty straightforward effort, once you get started, the amount of...
Review: SlimFast Diet
The SlimFast Diet is a plan that has withstood the test of time. It has been around for decades. That said, it should be noted that while the diet does still exist, it has evolved over time so that it doesn’t necessarily look the same as it did when it was first...
Review: TLC Diet
The TLC diet stands for Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes. It is a type of eating strategy created to help people to be able to effectively reduce their cholesterol levels. The claim is that by keeping up this diet over the long term, you will be able to lower your bad...