How to Eat Fat...to Burn Fat

1. Check out my Meal Planning Tips below & think about how to make Good Fats the *delicious decorations* of your meals...and how to choose the best Good Fats as non-toxic "cooking accessories"...

Plus, the surprising way they become the main caloric ingredient of your Meals.

2. Go Shopping and stock up on these things...do as much as you can at a time...it does take TIME to change the way you eat, and that's ok...just keep moving forward with it 

3. At the grocery store, get into *Reading Labels*...and ditch the extra sugar & vegetable oil foods 

4. Clean out the temptations from your kitchen after you’ve gone shopping

And then here’s two more big keys:

 

**5. Add in the Healthy Fats with your meals…in general this means decorating with around 1 tablespoon (or less) at each meal...or a golf-ball size amount if we're talking a Good Fat like whole olives or avocado**

6. Ideally, get 1 - 2 tablespoons of coconut oil or MCT oil a day, in order to optimize your superstar short- and medium-chain fatty acids for digestive/gut health, energy, brain sharpness, good cholesterol profiles, muscle-building & fat-burning power.

Optimize your Good Fats:

A. SaFA and MUFA (the Safe Fats)

Ok—let’s get specific with the best Saturated Fats (SaFA fats are your safe fat friends)…and how to make them (or limit them) as the delicious decorations, and non-toxic cooking assistants—with your meals.

First, as a brief review:

Saturated & monounsaturated fats are safe to consume, even in large amounts…they’re the most flexible macronutrient of the PHD diet & can be adjusted up or down, to aid in Weightloss and/or to satisfy appetite and YOUR Macro Goals (longevity/fertility/building muscle)…f you’re going for a calorie-restricted approach to losing weight, then these are the calories to cut.

These fats are SAFE to consume because they’re our core structural fats…making up to 75 - 80% of the fatty acids in most cells

—they don’t cause a toxic effect in the body, even at high doses...except people with metabolic damage & high insulin levels, however, Dr. Paul Jaminet writes in The Perfect Health Diet that:

“The upshot is that if one has metabolic syndrome, it’s safer to eat an excess of dietary fats than dietary carbs. Best of all, however is to cure metabolic syndrome, which is best achieved by avoiding the various toxicities of excess fructose and polyunsaturated fats. High-SaFA and high-MUFA diets, by removing food toxins, are a crucial step in the restoration of healthy metabolic control and the elimination of lipotoxicity.”

—They're the most adjustable macronutrients of our diet: the quantity eaten can be adjusted up or down to satisfy appetite OR Macro goals.

—On calorie-restricted weight loss diets, these are the macronutrients to cut.

“As structural elements of cells, these fatty acids constitute almost half the lean mass of the body. Tens of pounds of SaFA and MUFA, containing tens of thousands of calories, are stored in skeletal muscle alone. Adipose cells store further amounts.”

 

Again, these SaFA & MUFA fats:

Choose these Good Fats ^^^ all while DITCHING the TOXIC ones:

The Toxic Fats include canola oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, vegetable oil, margarine, butter spreads...and too many omega-6-rich meats and fake olive oil (which is mostly canola oil).

When you trade up Fats that cause toxic end products in your body…either when you eat them as a *delicious decoration*…or you use the wrong Fat for a Cooking/Baking job…

When you focus on Good Fats instead…you can reduce A LOT of inflammation in your body.

 

A bit more about awesome SaFA & MUFA Good Fats to use instead of toxic ones:

Butter: Grass-fed butter is rich in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (an antioxidant with anti-viral properties), which helps boost your immune system and fight disease…and grass-fed butter is rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, K2, plus cholesterol, Arachidonic Acid…as well as a good amount of short-chain and medium-chain fatty acids and butyrate.

Ghee: Ghee is a type of clarified butter that’s made from heating butter and allowing the liquid and milk portion to separate from the fat. The milk caramelizes and becomes a solid, and the remaining oil is ghee. Ghee has a much higher smoke point than butter, making it ideal to cook with at high temperatures…on the stove top or with baking, too. It has a slight nutty flavor & it’s lactose-free. Plus, it’s rich in short-chain and medium-chain fatty acids and butyrate (GREAT for digestion!!)

Coconut Oil (Extra Virgin): Is best for medium temperature baking and cooking up to 350 degrees…it has a tropical, slightly nutty flavor…and it’s great for body care & as a moisturizer, too! Brands like Nutiva, scoop the coconut meat out of the shell and cold press the oil. Coconut Oil has many health benefits (see below) and contains 63% medium chain triglycerides & 50% Lauric acid (both GREAT for digestion).

Coconut Oil (Refined): Has a higher smoke point than Extra Virgin and you can heat it up to 400 degrees, making it better for high heat cooking. It also does NOT have a coconut flavor…and brands like Nutiva, refine dried coconut meat through a gentle steam process (no chemicals or hexane are used)…and contains the same amount of medium chain triglycerides & Lauric acid as it’s Extra Virgin friend.

Whole olives, avocados: these whole food Good Fats make a delicious filling snack & awesome salad toppings..both rich in MUFA fats. Avocado oil makes a nice salad dressing too!

Egg Yolks: Daily egg yolks are a key food to getting the master-nutrients of Choline and Arachidonic Acid…being deficient in Choline is a major component of metabolic disorder…and Arachidonic Acid helps fully resolve inflammation in your body

Tree nut butters (almond & cashew), Macadamia nuts: these are LOW in PUFA fats, and make a great—albeit occasional—snack or meal addition.

Tallow: very cheap & healthy SaFA fat you can make yourself at home, also a good source of Choline, great for non-toxic high heat cooking…with a smoke point of 400 degrees.

 

Personally, I like to mix it up with using Ghee/Butter and Coconut Oil (both refined & extra virgin, for different cooking purposes)…to get all of the benefits of CLA & fat-soluble vitamins from butter/ghee…and awesome short- and medium-chain fatty acids from Coconut Oil.

I could spend time singing the praises of all of these Good Fats…however, I do want to highlight the benefits of short- and medium-chain fatty acids:

One of the coolest Good Fats, for eating for energy!

And improving your digestion/absorption of your food, too.

—they help increase protective HDL cholesterol (the “good cholesterol”), turn LDL from hard into fluffy particles (a very good thing) and improve cholesterol levels/ratios overall

—they are antimicrobial (woot): they kill or inhibit parasites, viruses and fungi

—and they help promote Weightloss!

Short- & Medium-Chain Fats (SaFA *superstars*)

To get to the heart of this superstar SaFA fat recommendation...1 or 2 tablespoons of coconut oil per day may be beneficial for everyone.

Human breast milk provides 10% of fat calories as short- and medium-chain fats…the same size fats found in coconut oil, and in concentration in MCT oil (which is ketone-refined coconut oil essentially).

 

Superstars with helping to promote Weightloss:

Dr. Jaminet writes:

“Short-and medium-chain fats have been shown to strongly promote weight loss.”

And he goes on to cite two large/well-constructed studies:

—significant Weightloss & waist-size reduction happened in eight weeks, with taking 1 tablespoon of coconut oil a day…

—and decreased waist size & "bad" cholesterol levels with 2 tablespoons a day with obese women (and NO reduction results with a control group taking soybean oil)

Plus coconut oil is anti-viral & anti-microbial...and it can raise protective HDL cholesterol.

And both coconut oil & MCT oil (made from coconut oil) could be very helpful for people with problems with their digestion & absorbing nutrition from your food...as they both make vitamins & minerals easier to absorb (add some coconut oil to your meals for better absorption)...

Plus, they've both demonstrated powerful healing effects, through a ketogenic diet, in helping people with brain cancer, neurological disorders and epilepsy.

(Side note: to learn how to implement a PHD Ketogenic diet, to help brain function...I highly recommend reading their book to understand how best to modify PHD/Eating for Energy in a ketogenic way)

Dr. Jaminet writes that:

 “Human breast milk provides about 10 percent of fat calories…as short- and medium-chain fats. If this is optimal for adults, most Americans would be starved for these fats.

But the deficiency could be easily made up: 2 tablespoons of coconut oil provide about 140 calories of medium-chain fats—about 6 percent of total calories for most people.”

And indeed, coconut oil & MCT oil help improve Gut Health as well--getting right to the heart of our good gut bug mutually beneficial relationship:

“Indeed, as far as we know, the entire benefit of dietary fiber comes through its conversion to short-chain fats by probiotic gut bacteria.

It is the short-chain fats, not the fiber per se, that are beneficial.”

 

So I hope you feel as excited as me about the superstar power of 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil or MCT oil a day!

Optimize your Good Fats:

B. PUFAs go "poof!"

Get ruthlessly LOW with Omega-6’s…

Ok, so as a quick review....the next most important Fats to plan on a weekly basis are your PUFAs…polyunsaturated fats.

Dr. Cate describes PUFA fats (polyunsaturated fats) in her book Deep Nutrition that PUFAs go *POOF* when heated—they’re very fragile fats that can easily become damaged or rancid when they’re exposed to heat. So when it comes to these essential fatty acids (your-body-can’t-make-em) PUFA Fats—you DO want to *handle with care.*

Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats (along with other omegas too) are a part of the PUFA family. Omega-6 fats mainly come from seeds, nuts and their oils…while Omega-3 fats come from seafood and algae.

In the Perfect Health Diet, the Drs. Jaminet explain that in America, people consume too many polyunsaturated fats…because oils that are used in restaurant cooking & packaged/pre-made & salad bar food items contain A LOT of these PUFA oils: namely canola and soy oil.

And unfortunately these everywhere PUFA fats are also damaged, toxic fats—as these oils are chemically-extruded, deodorized and heat-damaged.

Plus they're already found in almost all natural food--so you don't need to add in any extra to your diet.

Way more PUFA info in the Protein chapter, too...In summary tho:

Ditch those vegetable oils & sub them out with SaFA & MUFA fats, instead!

Rock your Omega-3’s too

AND, it’s really key that you get your Omega-3’s from real fresh FISH and/or shellfish, bc they're frozen right after they're caught, and this preserves the very heat-sensitive & fragile omega-3’s…

And Fish oil pills become rancid…however convenient omega-3 fish oil pills may seem, they go bad and can cause more harm than good.

(If you don’t like to eat fish—the best alternative Dr. J suggests is to get *refrigerated fish oil* and take 1 tablespoon a day—this has less chance of being damaged since it’s been refrigerated…or again, omega-3 algae oil)

So with Eating for Energy:

Eat Omega-3's: You want to go for eating 2 meals (or up to 1 pound) of cold water, oily fish like wild-caught salmon, sardines & anchovies and/or SHELLFISH (and be sure to eat less than 2 pounds per week, which has shown in Japan to be a toxic amount)…

Vigorously reduce Omega-6's: ...while going for a rockstar reduction of omega-6’s….which amounts to eliminating vegetable seed oils & foods made with them (most premade salad dressings, breads, crackers, chips that have seed oils…even the grocery store Whole Foods (and Trader Joe’s) both use it a lot to be cheap in their prepared & salad bar foods!)

—The best source of omega-3 fats are: Marine fish & shellfish: salmon, herring, sardines, mussels, clams & shrimp. Other animals have few omega-3 fats…and Omega-3 Algae oil is also very good

—To reduce damaged omega-6 fats, the best meats are ruminant meats (beef, lamb & goat), non-oily fish & shellfish

As many popular meats like chicken & pork have omega-6 levels between 10 and 20%, so you want to eat them only occasionally for variety

—As far as OILS used for COOKING—you want them to be LOW in both PUFAs (low in both omega-6 and omega-3) as PUFAs go **POOF!!** and cause that lovely free radical cascade in your body…

PUFA Weekly Planning:

The big takeaway is that you want to plan your Weekly protein sources--putting your 2 meals (up to 1 pound) of oily, ocean-caught fish/shellfish at the top of your shopping list...and then planning on getting LOW with your omega-6 meats (and fats/oils) the rest of the week.

Best Non-Toxic Fats for Cooking:

Trade UP any Omega-6 cooking oils...for SaFA & MUFA cooking oils, instead:

As far as OILS used for cooking—you want them to be LOW in both PUFAs (low in both omega-6 and omega-3) as PUFAs go **POOF!!** and cause that lovely free radical cascade in your body…

So the best oils to use for cooking & sauces/dressing include ghee (clarified butter), beef tallow, coconut oil or milk, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter & macadamia nut butter

And then kick these others to the curb: canola oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, corn oil, wheat germ oil, safflower oil.

And if you're looking to lose weight by reducing your Good Fats slightly--this is the best place to do it, in my opinion. Skip *heated* Good Fat oils as much as possible. Cook foods at lower temperatures with water...and add some Good Fats after the food has finished cooking.

This makes foods like oven-roasted baby potatoes NOT hyper-palatable. Seriously--try the difference between oven roasting diced red potatoes with just salt at a low temperature (stirring a few times as they roast) VS. diced red potatoes baked with coconut oil and salt.

For me, it feels almost impossible to stop eating the coconut oil baked ones, they are just too, too good (hyper-palatable)...whereas the salt and low temp baked diced red potatoes are quite tasty, but I don't want to keep eating them until the whole pan is gone.

Adding Good Fats at the end of cooking or when serving your food helps you stick with tablespoon or less amounts...still flavors the food, without making it "hyper-palatable"...and avoids any potential toxic end products from the cooking heat, too.

Best Good Fat *cooking accessories*:

What about "olive oil"?

First of all, you have to ask--Is that *really* Olive Oil??: I know a lot of recipes call for cooking things with Olive Oil--but unfortunately, a lot of olive oil is not really olive oil--

Research studies & investigative journalism have shown that most olive oil is fake olive oil that's been cheaply cut with Canola Oil...

And canola oil should NOT be heated at all (as Canola Oil is a fragile omega-6 PUFA (PUFAs go poof!) and when you heat them, it causes a lovely free radical cascade in your body)...

You want to look for "certified real" and fresh olive oil...and also--olive oil goes rancid pretty quickly--so real olive oil is going to be kind of expensive, recently pressed--and you'll want to get it in a small bottle so that you can use it before it goes bad.

I personally just skip it (and eat whole olives (with the pits still in them, although don’t eat the pits of course) YUMM) for occasional snacks as a great source of these MUFA fats, since *real olive oil* is hard to find and expensive…

Rather than olive oil (unless you know for sure it’s fresh & real), I recommend using other Good Fats for salad dressing (like whole olives, 1/2 avocado, avocado oil) and for cooking instead!

More about how to Lose Weight with Good Fats next...

And speaking of Weightloss—I know it’s tempting to think you need to be anti-Carbs…BUT instead you want to focus on being pro-Safe Starches & pro-Good Fats...

Plus next, how to adjust Good Fats as *delicious decorations* and non-toxic *cooking accessories* based on YOUR Macro Goals...