Are you trying to lose weight and improve your health? One of the best diet adjustments you can make to improve both your health and your waistline is to decrease your fat intake.

However, another piece of advice that is gaining more and more scientific evidence is that eating fat can help us lose weight.

Which statement is true?

The fact is that although the two statements above seem contradictory, they actually aren’t. They are both right and here’s how they fit together…

We need to decrease our intake of bad fat and increase our intake of good fat.

There are three different types of fat that are classified based on their chemical structure (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated). What is important here is their role in our health.

Saturated fat is bad fat. This fat raises cholesterol, causes damage to your arteries and puts you at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer and obesity. You want to reduce the amount of this fat in your diet.

How? Choose low fat or skim dairy products (milk, cheese, yoghurt), choose lean cuts of meat (chicken breast, white fish, kangaroo and veal) and trim any visible fat off your meat before cooking. Minimise your intake of butter, baked goods and processed or fried foods (chocolate, biscuits, cakes, pastries, chips, crackers, salami, soft cheeses etc).

Monounsaturated fat is a good fat found in olive oil, canola oil and peanut oil and is good for our cardiovascular health because it lowers blood cholesterol.

Polyunsaturated fat is found in sunflower oil, corn oil, safflower oil and fish oil and also contains cholesterol lowering benefits.

These are the fats that we want to eat instead of saturated fat. Regularly consume avocado, nuts, seeds, salmon, tuna and vegetable oils (olive, canola, grape seed etc).

The human body can make a lot of its own types of fats, however there are two it can’t make: Omega 3 and Omega 6. These are known as essential fats.

Essential means that they cannot be made by the body, so we must eat them. Omega 3 and Omega 6 are required for a number of important body functions including: regulating inflammation, blood clotting, blood pressure and blood fat content.

There is now a substantial body of research finding that adequate consumption of Omega 3s, in particular, can help you have a leaner physique, longer lifespan, clearer skin and better overall health. Take a look at this interesting article on Omega 3 from flaxseed and its effect on tummy fat.

The richest source of Omega 3 is fish oil. Eat tuna, salmon, mackerel, sardines and other fatty fish. If you are not a big fish eater than you can also get Omega 3 from some nuts (walnuts), flaxseed (linseeds) and chia seed.

Here is a great post on How to get more omega 3 from your diet. You can also take Omega 3 as a supplement.

So, fat isn’t the enemy…consume the right kind and it can actually go a long way towards a healthier you!