For several years, doctors and nutrients have preached that low-fat diets is the best key to successful weight loss, preventing health problems, and managing cholesterol.
That is why it is essential for you to have ideas about switching out trans fat (bad fat) to healthier fat. It is because bad fats can increase your health risks while good fats can protect your overall health condition. In fact, healthier fats are important to emotional and physical health.
Trans fats are normal fat molecules that have been twisted as well as deformed during a process, which is called hydrogenation. In this process, liquid vegetable oil is combined and heated with hydrogen gas. Partially, vegetable oils that are hydrogenated will make them less likely to spoil and more stable, which is good for all food manufacturers and not a good thing for you especially if you are maintaining a healthy weight.
Trans fats are not healthy. Even a small amount of them is unhealthy. The reason behind it is that these fats contribute to several major health problems like cancer and heart disease.
Trans Fats Sources
When talking about trans fats, many people think of margarine. Well, it is true that there are several margarines that are loaded with these fats. However, the main source of trans fats in the Western diets comes from snack foods and commercially-prepared baked foods.
∙ Baked Goods – crackers, cookies, pizza dough, pie crusts, muffins, and other breads including hamburger buns.
Snack Foods – corn, candy, tortilla chips, potato, microwave or packaged popcorn.
∙ Fried Foods – French fries, chicken nuggets, hard taco shells, doughnuts, and fried chicken.
Pre-Mixed Products – pancake mix, chocolate drink mix, and cake mix.
∙ Solid Fats – semi-solid vegetable shortening and stick margarine.
Be a Trans Fat Detective
When shopping for your monthly or weekly foods, always consider reading the labels and check out if there is a presence of trans fats in the ingredients. There are some foods that come with no trans fats label, their ingredients might be a suspect.
When it comes to purchasing margarine, choose the versions like soft-tub and ensure that the products come with zero grams of this bad fat. If you are used to eating out, set aside biscuits, some baked foods and fried foods. Avoid these foods unless your chosen restaurant does not use trans fat when preparing their meals. In addition to that, ask the counter person or server of what type of oil used to cook the foods. If they will use trans fats, you can ask them to prepare your foods with olive oil instead.
If you to get rid of trans fats successfully, avoiding fast food is one of the things that you need to do. Most states don’t have labeling regulations for fast foods. In fact, this can advertised as cholesterol free if the foods are cooked in vegetable oil.
How to Choose Healthy Fats
With the numerous sources of dietary fats, the options can be confusing. But, the bottom line is to go with the good fats, which will offer you tons of weight loss and health benefits.
If you’re concerned about the health of your heart or your weight, instead of avoiding fat on your diet, try to replace the bad fats like trans fats with healthier fats. This just means that you will need to replace some of your meat with legumes and beans with the use of olive oil.
∙ Eliminate Trans Fats from Your Diet. If you are going to a grocery store, always check the labels for you to know the amount of trans fats of what you are going to eat. Plus, limit fast food.
∙ Limit Your Intake of Bad Fats Like Saturated Fats. You can limit saturated fats through cutting back full-fat dairy products and red meat. The best alternative for red meat is fish, beans, nuts, and fish if possible. Moreover, switch to low fat versions of milk or full-fat dairy foods.
∙ Consider Eating Omega-3 Daily. The best sources of Omega-3 are walnuts, fish, canola oil, soybean oil, ground flax seeds, and flaxseed oil.
How Much Fat is Too Much?
The amount of fat that is too much for maintaining a healthy weight depends on your weight, age, lifestyle, and your overall health condition. So, if you don’t know how you will measure your fat intake, talk to some experts or make your own personalized fat limit. With this, you will not be able to limit yourself, but also you will be reduced bad fats gradually without the need to consider other ways. Plus, this can lead you the path of taking healthier fats.
Trans fats are not just one of the bad fats that you should avoid when losing weight. Saturated fats are also a kind of fat, which are found in various animal products. Reducing this bad fat can also let you achieve weight loss goals effectively.
Journaling
Writing down your fitness activity and your nutrition is a great way to keep yourself accountable to your goals. It helps you stay honest with yourself about whether you’re sticking to a fitness or diet plan, and allows you to keep track of what works for you and what doesn’t.
To get the most out of your journaling, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Try to record every day. Even if that means you journal about why you didn’t work out, stick to it!
Set a reminder to record for 5-10 minutes- before bed is a great time to do it!
Be honest!