Introduction
Fat is an essential nutrient. It gives your body energy, helps keep your core temperature steady, and helps you absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K. That last part is easy to overlook, since cutting fat too far can leave you short on nutrients like vitamin D. The goal isn’t to avoid fat. It’s to choose the right kind.
Good Fats and Bad Fats
Healthy fats help protect your heart. Unhealthy fats raise your LDL (bad) cholesterol, and high LDL is one of the main drivers of heart disease.
More importantly it is essential to identify the type of fat you should be eating.
Identifying The Type of Fat We Consume
- Healthy fats are called mono-unsaturated or poly-unsaturated fats and they decrease bad (LDL) cholesterol.⠀
- Good fat comes from plants and are liquid at room temperature. Eg: Olive oil, canola oil, corn oil, avocado oil, soybean oil. ⠀
- Unhealthy fat or saturated foods are solid at room temperature and are found in animal products including butter, ghee, cheese, beef, sausage, hot dog, bacon.⠀
Recommendation:
- The American Heart Association recommends that saturated fat be no more than 5 to 6% of your total daily caloric intake.
- If you eat around 2,000 total calories in a day, only about 120 should come from saturated fat.
Avoid Trans Fats:
- The worst of all fat are called trans-fats and are found in most processed and fried foods including french fries, pizza dough, margarines, shortening.
- Trans fats are also found in sweets and savory foods including muffins, chips, crackers, ice creams, cakes.
Healthy Food Swaps for a Stronger Heart
- Replace your butter,ghee, margarine with vegetable oil including olive oil, canola oil to prevent plaque build up in your arteries which leads to heart attack and stroke.
- Cut down on processed, packaged and fried foods to improve your cholesterol, your blood pressure and your prediabetes risk, and to make type 2 diabetes easier to manage.
- When in doubt always think of food that comes from plants not animals. Make sure to use a non-stick pan so that way you don’t use too much oil when cooking.
- Watch your carbs too. Refined carbs can raise triglycerides and blood sugar, so pairing healthy fats with whole grains and vegetables works best.
Prevent Future Health Emergencies!
Schedule a 60-minute comprehensive consultation with our Board Certified Nurse Practitioner to learn about medical weight loss, diabetes management and personalized nutrition counseling, and to see how you can prevent a heart attack or stroke.
Your 60 Minutes Today Can
Save Your Life for the Future!