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It is becoming a vast and varied field the world of human nutrition. The
biggest lie and mis-education of our time, that has resulted in many ill health
and disease is the tragic reported belief that all fats are bad. This is far,
far from the truth. Certain fats improve your fat burning ability, increase your
brain power, elevate your mood and regulate your hormone balance. In fact, fats
are so essential to the human body one would die without them. The correct fats
that is. The human body requires water, protein and fats to exist. It is
interesting to note, on a survival basis, that the human body does NOT require
carbohydrates to survive. We are not saying that not eating carbohydrates will
yield the best life and training results, it is simply a fact that the only
required macro nutrients for sustaining human life are protein, fats and water.
And so it is these three elements one should concentrate on making sure are just
right in their diet before even considering any other factors. Even on a high
carbohydrate, low fat diet, their are still some required fats. Fats that are
not optional. That is why they are called Essential Fatty Acids. This is because
they are quite literally essential and will affect how your body performs in
every aspect of your life. Messing up you dietary fat intake on a long term
basis will dramatically affect your health for the worse. If you only learn one
thing from this - it is that not all fats are bad.
Fats is the name given to one of the macro nutrients that includes fats and
oils, both of which are composed of fatty acids. These fatty acids are made from
the chemical elements carbon and hydrogen, and are based around carbon chains of
varying length with hydrogen atoms attached to it.
This chemical makeup gives rise to the two groups of fats, saturated and
unsaturated. Saturated fats have all carbon molecules fully loaded with hydrogen
(hence saturated) and consequently are relatively chemically inert as far as the
body is concerned. Unsaturated fats, on the other hand, have many free carbon
links and are more biologically active.
Because of this, saturated fats can only be used as an energy source for the
body, whilst unsaturated fats are used both for energy and to manufacture cells
within the body. This gives rise to the fact that there are essential fats, that
is fats that the body must have and can't make for itself. Saturated fats are
not required, and in fact for athletes should be avoided wherever possible.
The essential fatty acids are linoleic acid and alpha linolenic acid. These
themselves are converted to other fatty acids by the body.
In designing a diet, you should look to get around 15% of your maintenance
level calorie allowance from fats. Given that there are 9 calories per gm of
fats, on a 2500 calorie diet that would equate to just over 40gm of fat.
You must be careful however to get these from unprocessed sources. Processed
fats are high in trans-fatty acids that are biologically inactive. This makes
taking a dietary supplement a near must in this modern processed food world.
One can also supplement the diet with certain fats such as MCT oil - which is
not stored as a fat and is metabolised and used as a source of energy just like
carbohydrates. This makes it a perfect fuel source for those people on a low or
no carbohydrate diet looking for energy boosting effects.
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