Fats:

Fats can be confusing as not all fats are the same. You can generally divide fats into four types:

1. Saturated fats, from animal fats, butter, cheese, eggs and tropical oils (virgin coconut oil)
2. Monounsaturated fats, such as a virgin olive oil, avocadoes, peanut oil, sesame oil. Hence a handful of nuts, seeds or half an avocado make a perfect snack, that keeps your blood sugar levels stable and sustains your energy levels for longer.
3. Polyunsaturated fats, such as omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Walnut oil, flax seed oil, oily fish such as salmon and mackerel, are a great source of the anti-inflammatory Omega-3 fatty acids which reduce your risk of injuries and chronic disease. Omega-6 fats from vegetable sources are not so healthy (See – ‘Glossary – Omega-3, Omega-6 and Omega-9’), however Omega-6 in proper ratio to Omega-3 is essential for health.
4. Transfats, such as margarine and hydrogenated vegetable oils. These are ‘bad’ and must be completely avoided.

Healthful fats are beneficial for cardiovascular health. Sources of healthy fats include, monounsaturated fats such as, Olives and Olive oil, Coconuts and Coconut oil, Butter & Ghee made from milk from grass-fed cattle, Raw Nuts, such as almonds, or pecans and Organic pastured eggs and Omega-3 eggs, Avocados, Meats from Grass fed animals, virgin pressed red Palm oil, Unheated organic nut oils, and even dark chocolate (with 70 percent or higher cocoa content). Raw cacao is a phenomenal source of healthy saturated fats and many beneficial polyphenols.

Another healthful fat you want to be mindful of is omega-3 from sources such as hemp seeds, chia seeds, sea vegetables and wild salmon. Deficiency in this essential fat can cause or contribute to very serious health problems, both mental and physical.

Having the proper balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats is very important for optimal health. So in addition to increasing your omega-3 (which most people are sorely deficient in), you also want to decrease your consumption of omega-6 (which most people take too much of). It is therefore important that you select the right cooking oil for your type of cooking. (See – ‘Cooking Methods, Cooking Oils & Transfats’):

The ideal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 is 1:1, though up to 1:4 or even 4:1, is alright. But the typical modern diet is more like 1:20 or much more, in favor of omega-6. The overabundance of these oils in processed foods of all kinds explains our excess omega-6 levels and the resulting chronic metabolic disease.

Transfats are bad and must be completely avoided.

Fats have several important functions in the body including;

• Providing you with energy.
• Enabling the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.
• Protecting your organs, nerves and tissues.
• Helping to regulate body temperature.
• Every cell membrane in the body needs fat for protection, and fat is also needed to grow healthy cells.
• Fats are involved in the production of essential hormones in the body.
• Maintenance of healthy hair, skin and nails.

For more energy, we need to look at Fat. Dietary fat speeds up your metabolism. The average human needs about 5 to 10 gms of lenolic acid (a type of fat found in vegetable oils, about 75 calories worth). Fat is the body’s most concentrated source of energy (9 cal/gm vs. 4 cals/gm for Protein or Carbohydrate). Unlike glycogen, body fat is virtually an unlimited source of energy. 5 percent of the food stored in the body is from carbohydrates, 95 percent is from fat. The fat gets broken down into fatty acids which are the transported by the blood to the muscles for fuel. Ofcourse the actual burning or oxidation of fuel needs adequate oxygen to burn, more for fat than carbohydrates.

Fat is stored in the body as triglycerides, Typically a very concentrated form of energy storage when compared to being stored as glycogen, about 60,000 cal of energy are stored in the entire mass of all the adipose or fat tissue of an average person, obviously with obese people storing more. Triglyceride is also stored directly within the muscle fibres accounting for about 2000-3000 cal of stored energy. The body converts carbohydrates into glycogen and glucose and what it does not need at that time, stores the extra as fat.

The muscles also store glycogen which can contribute only about 1500 cal to 2000 cal of energy. However, the body finds it atleast 3 times easier to use the energy from intramuscular glycogen than from intramuscular triglycerides and that is why the first few mins of exercise do not do much to reduce fat levels as it only after that, once the stored glycogen is used up, that continued exercise starts to burn fat.

The large stores of triglycerides within the adipose tissue are mobilized at relatively slow rates during exercise dissolving them into Free Fatty Acids (FFA), in the process known as Lipolysis. These fatty acids are not water soluble and thus require a protein carrier to allow them to be transported through cells and within the blood stream. At rest about 70 percent of the FFA released during lipolysis are reattached to the glycerol molecules to form new triglycerides within the adipocytes (fat cells).

However, during low intensity exercise, this process is attenuated at the same time as the overall rate of lipolysis increases; as a result the FFA in the plasma increase by up to 5 fold.

Dietary carbohydrate influences fat oxidation during exercise which is very sensitive to the interval between eating carbohydrate and the onset and duration of the exercise.

Eating more carbohydrates stimulates your body’s fat storage and initiates increase in insulin levels and a decrease in the opposing hormone, glucagon. Even complex carbohydrates stimulate the same response only over a somewhat longer time period, because all carbohydrates are basically sugar. Fat however is metabolically inert.

Perry Bickel from Texas University notes that – In obese people excess fat can accumulate in tissues not specialized for fat storage, such as skeletal muscle and heart. This build up can lead to dysfunction of those tissues. His research has now identified a protein ‘Perilipin 5’ in cell nucleus that can work as a regulator of fat metabolism and can kick start efficient break down of fat. Found abundantly in muscles of athletes this protein may lead to new treatments for obesity and type-2 diabetes. Such treatment will however take years to be realized, and till then you need to stick to proper diet control and exercise to prevent such fat accumulation.

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