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Like the carbohydrates we discussed last week, fats also have gotten a bad name, and it’s easy to see why. We all want to lose fat, so it makes sense that eating fat makes us fat, right?

Yes and no, because there are different types of fat. There are three dietary types of fat: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated, and your body needs a balance of all three to promote weight loss. The key is balance, and the key is to consume approximately 1/3 of your fats from each source.

Saturated fats include all animal foods, like beef, pork, eggs, butter and milk. Monounsaturated fats come from avocados, nuts, and olive oil (which is why cooking with olive oil is good for you, and why you should have avocados in your diet). Polyunsaturated fats come from fish oils, flaxseed, nuts, and vegetable oils.

So the skinny on fat is this: keep your body in balance, and promote weight loss, by consuming the correct types of fat, in equal balance.

Followers of the Atkins Diet were taught that carbohydrates, or carbs for short, are bad. Carbs are converted by the body into sugar, sugar turns to fat, body fat is bad, therefore carbs are bad. As with most things in life, it’s not that simple.

Yes, some carbs are quickly digested, which gives you a boost of energy. We all know what that’s like: you eat a chocolate bar, and immediately get a sugar rush, and then you crash. However, energy is a good thing if you are exercising, so guess what? The key to carbs is timing.

If you eat carbs during or immediately after exercise, carbohydrates give your body quick energy, which aids in recovery after exercise. And that is the secret to carbs. Consume starchy carbs that are converted into energy, like breads, grains and pasta, during the two to three hours after exercise to aid in recovery. Carbs that are high in sugar, like fruit juices and sports drinks, should only be consumed during or immediately after exercise. Carbs that are high in fiber, like vegetables, beans, and some fruits, can be eaten any time, because the fiber content slows the absorption into your body, which keeps blood sugar stable.

Next week, a word about fats.

Protein, which is found in meats and some plant based foods, is necessary for weight loss because it makes you feel full, it burns calories while it’s digesting, and with proper exercise it helps build muscle mass.

Vegetables have fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and lots of other nutrients, and I don’t think there is any sane person on the planet who doesn’t believe that vegetables are an important part of every healthy diet.

The amazing thing is that by combing both proteins and vegetables at every meal, your body will be even healthier.

It’s important to have balanced pH levels in our bodies. pH (what the scientists call ‘potential of hydrogen”) is the balance between positively charged (acid-forming) ions and negatively charged (alkalinizing) ions.

Our bodies want to maintain a pH balance of around 7.4, so it deposits or withdraws alkalinizing minerals and other products from our body tissues as needed. This may result in decreased muscle mass

If you eat a lot of acidic foods (like proteins) without balancing them with more alkaline foods (like vegetables), you will slow down your metabolism.

By eating veggies with proteins, you boost your metabolism, neutralize acid, strengthen your bones, and encourage muscle growth.

We’ve talked about proteins and vegetables; in my next weight loss blog entry I will discuss carbohydrates.

We all assume that if we eat less we will lose weight, and if we eat more often we will gain weight, but in fact the exact opposite is true. Here’s why:

Every time we eat, we boost our metabolism. We chew and swallow, then our body digests, breaks down our food, and turns it into energy. Each time we eat, the thermic effect of eating burns calories.

Therefore, the more often you eat, the more calories you will burn, and the more weight you will lose.

In other words, assuming you consume 2,000 calories in a day, you will boost your metabolism and lose more weight eating 400 calories 5 times per day, than by skipping breakfast and having a 1,000 calories lunch and 1,000 calorie dinner.

By eating frequently you reduce hunger, balance the stress on your body, and will find it easier to reduce the overall calories you consume.

Tomorrow we will discuss what types of food you should consume in each of your frequent meals.

There are some obvious reasons why a diet where you deprive yourself of necessary calories and nutrients will make you fat.

First, as we discussed on Friday, reducing calories will reduce your metabolism. Less fuel means less fuel to burn, and you are not burning as many calories chewing and digesting your food (the thermic effect of eating). Also, your body reduces it’s metabolic rate to prepare for starvation, and starts to consume muscle for energy.

This reduced muscle mass is the second reason that dieting makes you fat. Your body conserves fat due to inadequate food intake, and instead burns muscle.

Third, the very concept of a diet is a temporary concept. I go on a diet to lose weight, which means that once I have lost weight, I can stop my diet. I can go back to eating as I did before.

And that’s the final reason why dieting will make you fat. You go on a reduced calorie diet, and your metabolism slows down. Then your diet finishes, your body is now used to it’s slower metabolic rate, so when you start eating more, your body doesn’t burn it, it simply stores it as fat.

If dieting makes us fat, does that mean counting calories is a waste of time?

Check back tomorrow for the answer.

Reader’s of this blog understand that if you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight, and if you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight.

It therefore seems logical to assume that if I reduce the number of calories I consume, I will lose weight. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Our bodies have a very sensitive self-preservation mechanism that turns our metabolism up or down depending on our food intake. If you eat no food for a few hours, your body automatically slows down your metabolism to conserve it’s remaining resources. You therefore burn fewer calories.

Your body also assumes that it may not see any food for a while, so it preserves your fat reserves, and instead burns carbohydrates and muscle protein for energy.

The point here is clear. Simple calorie reduction will cause a reduction in your metabolism, and you will burn fewer calories, which greatly reduces the potential for weight loss.

In simple terms, dieting can make you fat, and on Monday we will discuss exactly why that happens.

During exercise your body’s energy requirements increase, meaning you burn more calories.

Unfortunately most of us can only exercise for half an hour or one hour per day, but the good news is that our metabolism increases even after exercise.

Our bodies are self-repairing organisms. If we damage them, they repair themselves automatically. If you cut your finger, your body repairs it, automatically. If you get the flu, or break your leg, your body must use lots of energy to repair itself, and that burns a lot of calories.

The purpose of this weight loss blog entry is NOT to suggest that you go out and break your leg, but you can use this damage and repair principle to your advantage: it’s called exercise.

If you go to the gym and lift weights heavier than your body normally lifts, your muscles are damaged in the process. This is healthy damage, and your metabolism increases so that the muscle damage can be repaired.

Since it can take up to seven days for this muscle damage to be repaired, lifting weights increases your metabolism for many hours or days after you exercise.

Of course exercise is only one side of the calorie burning equations, so tomorrow we will discuss the importance of calories and diet.

There are four components to our metabolic rate.

First, between 60% and 75% of the calories we burn are calories we burn just to keep us alive. You can calculate your resting metabolic rate, also known as your Basal Metabolic Rate, using our Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator. These are the calories you burn to keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing, and everything else necessary to sustain life.

Second, our physical activity is responsible for a further 15% to 30% of the calories we burn in a day. Obviously people who exercise burn more calories than people who do not exercise.

Third, we burn calories as we chew and digest food, and this component of our metabolism is called the thermic effect of feeding. After eating, your metabolism speeds up as your digestive juices go to work, and as food is pushed through your digestive system and converted to energy and waste products. This represents 5% to 15% of daily calories burned, depending on how often you eat.

Finally, our genes determine about 5% of the calories we burn each day.

From a weigh loss perspective, it’s easy to see how these metabolic factors determine whether or not we can lose weight. As our activity level increases, we burn more calories, and that boosts our metabolism, so tomorrow we will discuss activity and weight loss.