Are low fat foods making you fat?

UK Health Radio guest presenter and blogger, fitness and diet guru Rebecca Lane (pictured), shares her personal thoughts on a key topic for debate amongst dieters:

I wonder how many of you buy low-fat products in the hope to lose weight.

There are so many companies out there claiming that their products help people to lose weight. According to research Americans eat the most low fat and fat free foods, but somehow they have the highest rate of obesity in the world!

People of all generations before us were not struggling as much as we are today with weight. What was it that was different? Well, they certainly didn’t have low fat or fat free foods, so if they didn’t have those foods to “help” them, what was it? Simply, they didn’t have low fat or fat free foods! That’s why they were not struggling with their weight!

Low fat and fat free foods do not help you to lose weight!

First off, foods with fat tend to taste better than their low fat or fat free. When companies reduce or take out the fat, the taste goes with it. In return large amounts of sugar is added resulting in a huge insulin spike. Low fat and fat free foods contain so many extra fillers that it’s scary! Included are huge amounts of salt and sugar along with bulking agents, flavor enhancers and artificial flavoring. However, it does the trick to making low fat and fat free foods tastier.

Secondly, now that companies have been successful in making low fat and fat free foods tasty, people tend to think that since they taste good and are low fat, then it’s okay to eat even more of these foods than regular full fat foods. This is actually very bad! It’s bad because if you eat more, you end up eating more of the chemicals they pump into these foods! And those chemicals are bad for your body.

Statistically speaking, when you eat low fat or fat free foods, typically everyone will end up eating 28% more calories than regular full fat foods! Can you believe that? So by eating more of these low fat or fat free foods that are artificially tasty, you’re actually eating more calories than you should be, than you would be if you were eating full fat foods!

Now, that doesn’t mean that if you just eat less of the low fat or fat free foods, then these will be healthy for you because they really aren’t.. That also doesn’t mean that you’re free to eat fatty, greasy foods either because fried foods are never good for you. What you should be eating are foods that are high in good fats. These include olive oil, avocadoes, nuts, seeds and oily fish, like salmon and tuna.

Successful weight loss begins with making good health choices and sometimes it may mean making a healthy lifestyle change. But the key is to keep all of your health decisions in your hands. So keep learning about foods and make sure to keep your health is your focus and you’ll quickly be able to lose weight successfully!

Follow Becky at @beckyfitness