Healthy Fat

Healthy fat sounds like an oxymoron, but I promise it’s real. I’ve spent my entire life with a negative view of foods with fat in my diet. Don’t cook with butter, there’s too many trans fats in it. Trans fats can cause high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease. Be careful how much oil you use, you don’t want to fry your foods. Fried foods can cause weight gain, can increase chances for diabetes, and can cause other prominent health problems. We’ve spoken about moderation before, and I urge you to grant yourself grace when it comes to foods with bad fats. They are certainly not “all the time” foods, but every once in a while they may just hit the spot.

Complete removal of all fats can be almost as detrimental to your health as over indulging in unhealthy fats. Over elimination can lead to an unhealthily low body fat percentage. Anything 5% and below is cause for concern, leave this to the pros. If you’re really pushing your threshold, you may start to notice some unpleasant health reactions. When your body fat percentage is too low, this can cause serious strain on your cardiovascular system. You may start to feel dizzy more frequently, your energy levels may plummet, you may start to feel cold all the time, and you may suffer with brain fog. It can affect your mood, your skin, your bones, and your overall quality of life.

Fats are essential to our bodies. They are crucial for energy storage, they protect our vital organs, and they insulate us. Fats can also help us stockpile essential nutrients, like vitamins A, D, E and K. Triglycerides, which are the main type of fat we consume, have twice the amount of energy as carbohydrates or proteins. Fats are also the catalysts to many chemical reactions in our bodies including immune function, aspects of basic metabolism, growth and reproduction. Basically, if we eat “the right” fats we can be super healthy Amazonian humans. While I am partially kidding, the human body is truly incredible and that’s no joke.

Of course it’s important to know what good sources of these healthy fats are, and I’m sure you will be shocked to hear it’s all about the fruits and veggies baby! My personal favs include avocados and dark chocolate. If I’ve yet to do so, let me now proclaim my deep need for dark chocolate in my daily life. To really blow your mind, let me introduce you to the avocado chocolate mousse. I’m unsure of where I came across the original recipe, but I make it by heart now. I use 2 avocados, ¼ cup vanilla almond milk (I’m sure whatever your favorite non-dairy milk would work fine), 2 Tbsps agave syrup, and ¼ cup of cacao powder. You may need to add more or less milk (of your choice), depending on the texture you want. Let this set in the fridge for at least an hour and voila! It is truly delicious. Some other healthy fat packed foods include cheese, whole eggs, fatty fishes, nuts, chia seeds, extra virgin olive oil, coconut / coconut oil, and yogurt. Of course there are plenty more, but these are a good start.

“Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food,” Hippocrates. Our bodies are incredible and incredibly complex. Food is the fuel that allows for literal miracles to be performed on a second by second basis by our amazing bodies. Understanding how food fuels us can help to positively direct eating habits and promote an overall healthy life. One important piece of this understanding is how we define certain words and communicate them. There are so many negative connotations associated with food that for the purposes of this post I specify healthy fat. Again I come back to this notion of moderation. Overindulgence of any food deemed healthy or not can cause associated health risks, and so it’s important to strike balance in your diet. Don’t shy away from something because it is fatty, just make sure that fat increases your energy and not your

by Catie Zimmerman

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Healthy Fat

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