Eat Fat, Lose Weight

In the United States 55% of the population is overweight. One in 4 adults is considered obese. Being overweight increases risk for gall bladder, disease, osteo-arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and early death.

You can reduce you food intake, reduce your fat intake, and you can be hungry all the time, feel miserable, depressed and not lose many (if any) pounds. Most people eventually give up with no lasting or significant weight loss. Each time you lower your calorie intake your body lowers it basal metabolism and you require less calories to go through a day, which will result in more weight gain once you give up your diet. It is a vicious cycle. Young people require more calories than older people. Physically active people use more calories than less active ones. People who are fasting, starving, or even dieting use less calories than people who are not. And over weight people use fewer calories than lean or muscular people. Overweight people who are dieting have even lower metabolism. And then if your thyroid gland is not working well, you may feel quite desperate. Interestingly enough, many people find, that by changing the fats they have in their diet from the unsaturated long chain fatty acids (found in seed oils) to the medium chain fatty acids (found in coconut oil), they gradually over the the weeks and months lose weight effortlessly. It has also been well documented in numerous dietary studies using both animals and humans that replacing long chain fatty acids with medium chain fatty acids results in a decrease in body weight gain and a reduction in fat deposition. 2-8

The reasons seem to be two fold. Since carbohydrates are usually used for energy, if they are not in excess they will not be turned into triglycerides and go into fat stores. Proteins are rarely used for energy. They make up the building blocks of much of our cells and systems and are usually used in that function. But fats, if in long chains, will almost always go into fat stores unless the calorie intake is low and they are needed for energy. However, the medium chain fatty acids will not do that. They will help in the digestion of the fat soluable vitamin, and they will fight bacteria and viruses (lauric acid is known for dissolving the lipid envelope that protects many pathogenic viruses and bacteria) and in the end rather than adding to fat stores these fatty acid chains will be used up for energy by the body. And since coconut oil will speed up metabolism, your body will actually be burning more calories in a day and you will have more energy. You may even become more active. This will only help to accelerate weight loss and renew your health. It is very interesting to see studies that show the unsaturated fats as having an effect on the body of causing hypothyroidism and a lower metabolic rate and the coconut oil speeding up metabolism and increasing thyroid activity.