You have made it to Chapter 5! Congratulations! You are an ambitious person who wants to make a lasting change in his life.

Maintaining a healthy weight can be a tough task. We all know that. Being overweight is something so common that we think it’s normal. According to a study, every 3 of 4 men are overweight or have obesity.

As I mentioned it’s something that we accept for a normal condition. However, being overweight is something that comes with its price. The outcomes are painfully familiar to you but I have to stretch them here.

Obesity and Overweight are the most common conditions that could lead to:

Type 2 Diabetes

High Blood Pressure

Heart Disease

Fatty Liver Disease

Cancer

It is your responsibility to live a healthy life and maintain a normal weight. As the great Socrates once said: “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

Weight Loss and daily activity go hand by hand. If you don’t train, I suggest you take this baby step first. Make it a habit and combine it with a nice diet plan, which suits you best.

Not feeling motivated, yet? Let’s continue with the main question.

Can you lose weight on a low-fat diet? Absolutely! There is one condition though. You have to be in a calorie deficit (burning more calories than you eat). Every diet’s goal is to put you in a calorie deficit if you want to lose weight.

Losing weight is the easy part. Keeping and maintaining your results is a little challenging. However, there is an easy way to track your calories and maintain your weight. It’s called “MyFitnessPal.” This app is one of the many tools you can use for tracking your calories and macros.

This useful app helps you track your calories and macronutrients. It learns you to always read the labels of the foods you consume. With one click you add your meals in the app and the magic happens.

You will feel it’s taking a long time in the beginning to add every one of your meals. Trust me, after 2 or 3 months you won’t need it anymore because you will have created a valuable habit.

Pro Tip:

Use our calorie calculator to figure out exactly how many calories you have to consume to reach your goal.

Now, let’s take a look into 11 myths about fats and cholesterol that you should be aware of:

Cholesterol Rich Foods are unhealthy and you should avoid them

There are thousands of individuals who think foods like whole eggs, organ meats, and full-fat dairy products are unhealthy. Yet, that’s not true.

Foods like ice-cream, fried foods, and processed foods should be limited, however, that’s not the situation with nutritious, high cholesterol foods.

High cholesterol foods can be a nutritious bomb for you. For instance, full-fat yogurt is packed with protein and calcium, while egg yolks are high in cholesterol and also happen to be filled with important vitamins and minerals, including B12, choline, and selenium

On top of that, eating healthy, cholesterol-rich foods like eggs, fatty seafood, and full-fat dairy can improve many aspects of your health.

Eating fat increases diabetes risk

There is a big misunderstanding when it comes down to the risk of diabetes and dietary fats.

Eating big amounts of trans fats like whole-baked goods and fast food can certainly increase your chance of getting diabetes. Nevertheless, other fat sources can offer protection against diabetes development.

Remember the good fats? Poly and monounsaturated fats like olives, nuts, avocados, and fatty-fish all improve blood sugar and insulin levels and potentially protect against diabetes.

Omega-6 rich oils and Margarine are healthier

There is a hypothesis, which states that consuming vegetables-oils based products like canola oil and margarine is better for health, instead of animal-fat. Yet, based on recent research, that’s not the case.

Margarine and canola oil tend to be high in omega-6 fats. Yet, most of us need omega-6 and omega-3 fats for general health, both of them are too high in omega-6 and low in omega-3.

This little inequality between margarine and canola oil can cause health conditions like mood disorders, obesity, insulin resistance, raised heart disease risk factors, and mental decline, due to the higher omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.

High-fat foods are unhealthy

There is even bigger disbelief with the high-fat foods. Even the nutritious fatty foods have a bad reputation and go to the “bad foods” group.

This is weird because many high-fat foods are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They also help you keep your hunger down between meals and helps you maintain a healthy weight.

Consuming rich in fatty foods like eggs, avocados, nuts, and full-fat dairy may help boost weight loss by reducing hunger-promoting hormones and increasing feelings of fullness.

Of course, eating too much of any food, including the foods above, can delay weight loss. However, when they’re added to the diet in healthful ways, these high-fat foods may help you reach and keep a healthy weight while providing you with an important source of nutrients.

Fat-free products are the smartest choice

Fat-free products are all around you when you enter the grocery. The tricky part is that they are there for a reason. They have a targeted group of people who buy these products.

This target group is usually people who want to lose weight. Who on earth doesn’t want to eat his favorite foods like ice-cream, biscuits, potato chips, and cheese and still lose weight?

Firstly, there is nothing wrong if the calories of the foods are low, right? Well, there is always a catch.

Low-fat foods may seem like a smart choice but in reality, they are not so good for overall health. Commonly, fat-free foods like vegetables and fruits are a good choice, unlike processed foods in the grocery shop. These foods can negatively affect your metabolic health, body weight, and even more.

The tricky part here is that there is always an added sugar. And eating high amounts of added sugar leads to nothing good. Diabetes, heart disease, and obesity are only a small part of the equation.

Eating too much-added sugar in your diet might also cause a negative effect on the hormones leptin and insulin. They can cause you to eat more calories in general, which leads to weight gain.

It’s like a cruel circle. Don’t get involved in that circle! Control your fat-free food consumption and everything should be good.

Saturated fat causes heart disease

This topic is highly disputed among experts. Yet, recent research showed no relationship between saturated fats (fats from meats, dairy products) and heart disease.

Saturated fat improves well-known heart disease risk factors, such as LDL (bad) cholesterol and apolipoprotein B.

Saturated fat intake tends to improve the amount of large, fluffy LDL particles, but reduce the amount of smaller, denser LDL particles that are linked to heart disease.

Also, research has demonstrated that certain types of saturated fat may enhance heart-protective HDL cholesterol

I would be able to feel it if I had high cholesterol.

You can’t tell if you have high cholesterol or not. The reason for that is because there are no symptoms of high cholesterol. Seldom, some people encounter yellowish growths on their skin called xanthomas, which are cholesterol-rich deposits. People with xanthomas may have high cholesterol levels.

The bad cholesterol can’t be felt or experienced except you had a heart attack or stroke. For this reason, the Dietlife team suggests checking your cholesterol levels every 3 to 5 years.

Eating foods with a lot of cholesterol will not make my cholesterol levels go up.

Things could get complicated here. It is a fact that foods with a lot of cholesterol usually also have a high percentage of saturated fats. Saturated fats can make your cholesterol higher, so always pick foods that are low in saturated fats like foods with plenty of fiber.

Oats

beans

Healthy fats like olive oil, nuts, and avocados are a good-to-go option. Decrease the consumption of red meat, butter, and cheese because they have a lot of saturated fats.

I can’t do anything to change my cholesterol levels.

Yes, you can! You can do many things to keep your cholesterol levels at a normal and healthy range.

Talk to a medical care provider because he will tell you best if you should start taking any medicines or not. If that’s the situation, continue with your prescribed medicines and everything should be alright.

Quit smoking now! One more way to keep your cholesterol levels normal is by ending all tobacco products. Smoking harms your blood cells and hardens the walls of your arteries. These two increases the chance of getting a heart disease.

Increase your daily activity! Professionals suggest a minimum of 150 to 300 minutes of moderate physical activity every week.

Make better food choices. Try to pick foods naturally high in fiber like the ones above and limit foods high in saturated and trans fats.

Know your family history! The odds of you getting high cholesterol by DNA is much higher if someone from your family also had it.

These all guide to getting tested more often. Every 3 to 5 years is a good timeframe for testing yourself for high cholesterol.

If the Nutrition Label shows no cholesterol, the food is heart-healthy

Remember that almost all foods labeled as “no cholesterol” have huge amounts of trans and saturated fats. Be sure to constantly check the labels and read them in detail before buying certain “no cholesterol” food. The devil is in the details.

In addition, be aware that the serving size that those numbers are based on are usually smaller than the entire package.

Only overweight and obese people have high cholesterol.

People of any body type can have high cholesterol. People of any age can also have high cholesterol. It doesn’t matter if you are a kid or an adult. It doesn’t matter if you are thin or overweight (overweight people have a higher chance of having high cholesterol).

Despite your diet, physical activity, and lifestyle, you should always check yourself for high cholesterol regularly.

You learned the main thing about losing weight – calorie deficit. You have also learned that you should track your calories. Losing weight takes time, especially in the long-term. Dedication and consistency go hand by hand to achieve and keep your results.

See you in the next chapter where you will take a look at our unique low-fat diet shopping list.