Fat is Good For You, Says New Study, and Fuels Yo GAINZZZ

Everything they told you was bad for you is actually good for you (except for smoking), just as was predicted in Sleeper.

Eat fat. Especially the delicious saturated kind.

Current dietary advice says foods containing high levels of saturated fats such as cream, butter, red meat, eggs and cheese should be avoided because they increase the risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.

But a study published in a leading medical journal has found the opposite is true, with a diet full of natural fats improving the health of people taking part.

Professor Sherif Sultan, a heart specialist from the University of Ireland, said: "We urgently need to overturn current dietary guidelines.

"People should not be eating high carbohydrate diets as they have been told over the past decade.

"Instead our diets should be largely based on good quality high-fat foods. This will prevent the rising epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and reverse the growing numbers of people suffering weight-related heart problems."

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found overweight middle-aged men who ate high levels of saturated fat and low levels of carbohydrate became slimmer and healthier.

Researchers also saw reduced blood pressure and glucose levels, which are associated with a lower risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer, in the patients.

Oh I have to mention, on the blood pressure front, my own blood pressure had dropped from the high range into the barely-even-on-medication-anymore range. They cut my dosage of one pill down to 25% of what it was when they found my blood pressure was (while taking medication) too low.

My own GAINZZZ: dropped another pound. A pound in a week isn't great, but I am now 5 pounds away from my "goal," which isn't really my goal. It was just a number I chose out of a hat because it sounded achievable, plausible. My real goal, I guess, is to lose at least fifteen more pounds of fat.

My totally-inaccurate electrical impedance body fat measurement is supposedly down 2%, but that's silly, and just shows how inaccurate these things are.

My attempts to use calipers were a failure because I can get wildly different numbers depending on how I perform the measurement, and I really don't know what the right way is.

(By the way, people keep saying "don't measure your weight loss, measure your fat loss" but that's kind of bad advice because it's very, very hard to get an accurate measurement of your current bodyfat percentage. Yes, it's fat loss that you're looking for -- but unless you are within driving distance to a university lab that has a DEXA scanner and can pay $400 for the bodyfat scan -- and pay for it every couple of weeks, to see your progress -- you're just not likely to get very good measurements.)

So: Tell me about YO GAINZZZ, brahs and brahettes.

posted by Ace at 05:51 PM

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