Reducing your fat intake does not help you lose fat. On the contrary. This is probably one of the greatest myths in dieting, and with each passing day a new study emerges proving its fault (1, 2, 3). Still, 65 percent of the American population thinks that reducing the amount of fat in their diet will help them lose weight. Now science has proven that it’s the other way around. It turns out that you can get fatter thriving on fat-free food.
So what is the reason behind this myth’s persistency? According to Donald K. Layman, professor emeritus of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois, the main reason is hidden in the deep rooted belief that eating fat makes you fat. The other reason may be identified in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, that still advise cutting down your fat intake — saturated fat in particular.
The dietary guidelines are not only recommending cutting out trans fat foods (which is good), but also advise limiting the daily consumption of saturated fats to only 10 percent of your daily calorie intake. They also brand saturated fats as unhealthy, urging people to replace them with the healthy unsaturated variant. So goodbye steak, goodbye cheese, goodbye eggs!
The argument behind this is that unsaturated fats are better for your heart than saturated fats and lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. According to Dr. Layman: “These dietary guidelines on reducing fat intake are a hangover from an old philosophy. Just like the recommendation to cut dietary cholesterol went away, I think that the recommendation to reduce fat intake will go away, too.”
Why Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat
It’s true that fat contains calories – nine calories per gram, the highest of any macronutrient. In other words, eating a lot of fat will certainly reflect negatively on your waistline. But stuffing yourself with any other nutrient will probably end with the same result.
On the other hand, reducing your fat intake may result in an unwanted increase in digested calories, and an increased risk of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Here’s why: fats provide the highest level of satiety of all nutrients, and our bodies need more time to digest them compared with carbs and protein. Eating fat ensures longer stability of your blood sugar levels and reduces the feeling of hunger.
Related: What Happens When You Stop Eating Sugar
And in all probability, you’ll turn to carbs – not protein – to replace the fuel that fats had provided. While carbs are also packed with calories. “The less fat people eat, the more carbs they typically eat, and people are already getting more than twice their daily recommended intake,” Layman says.
Low-Fat Foods and Blood Sugar
Jaime Mass, R.D., a nutritionist working in Florida, also backs this theory. According to her, cutting fats from your diet can trigger sudden drops and spikes in your blood sugar levels. This results in cravings, which often leads to turning to refined carbs to get the instant infusion.
To make things worse, processed foods that claim to be low in fat are usually packed with sugar and calories, containing much more than the normal variants. By eliminating the fat from the food, you blunt its flavor – and there is a need for adding ingredients to improve the taste. According to Mass, this is usually achieved by adding sugar to the product.
“So if you take a food that had fat, remove it, triple the carbs, double the sugar, add extra ingredients to support the consistency and flavor, label it fat-free and consume it for years and years, you’re setting yourself up to be overweight and develop health problems, including abdominal fat, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular issues,” Mass says.
Related: How to Reduce Your Sugar Intake
The Low-Fat Label Trick
The low-fat label is often misleading. People tend to assume that the reduced fat content automatically makes a product healthier – and eat far more of it as a result.
According to a study from Cornell University by researchers Brian Wansink and Pierre Chandon, people who consumed snacks labelled as low-fat ate up to 50% more calories compared to those who ate the same amount of the full-fat version. Overweight people were particularly susceptible – consuming an average of 90 extra calories per snacking session when a product had “low-fat” on the label. “Low-fat labels trick people into eating more than regular labels,” says Wansink. “If we are looking for an excuse to eat, low-fat labels give it to us.”
The cruel irony is that low-fat versions of most snack foods are not significantly lower in calories than the originals. A low-fat Oreo contains 50 calories. A regular Oreo has 53. Low-fat granola is only about 12 percent lower in calories than regular granola – barely enough to matter, and far less than people assume. The fat is replaced with sugar, which means the calories stay almost the same – but your satiety drops and your blood sugar spikes instead.
The Scandinavian Study: Full-Fat Dairy and Waist Size
Another study, this one from Scandinavia, followed 1,500 people eating a high dairy-fat diet. Their results showed lower inclination for gaining fat around the waistline compared to the group eating a low-fat diet. This aligns with a broader body of evidence suggesting that dietary fat – including saturated fat – does not automatically translate into stored body fat when the rest of the diet is controlled.
Related: How to Stop Sugar Cravings for Good
The Takeaway
Fats are not your enemy. Eating the right amount of the right fats – particularly natural, minimally processed sources like red meat, eggs, cheese, oily fish, nuts, and avocado – keeps you full longer, stabilizes your blood sugar, and is far less likely to cause weight gain than replacing those fats with sugar and refined carbohydrates. The science has been shifting for years. The dietary guidelines are slowly catching up.
The next time you reach for the low-fat version of something, check the sugar content first. You may find the full-fat version is the smarter choice after all.
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