Chapter 3: Maintaining Healthy Eating for Life 49
✓ You may develop deficiencies of essential fatty acids (ones you have to
ingest through food).✓ You’ll have less energy when you need it.The key is too eat enough of the right fats. What do we mean by “the right
fats”? You may have heard terms like monounsaturated, polyunsaturated,
saturated, and trans fats. These terms have to do with the chemical makeup
of the fat, which affects how your body uses it. Saturated and trans fats are
not good for you, but monounsaturated and polyunsaturated are considered
“heart healthy” fats. Read on to find out how and why to incorporate healthy
fats into your diet.Sources of healthy fats
The following foods are good sources of healthy monounsaturated and
polyunsaturated fats:✓ Olive oil
✓ Canola oil
✓ Peanut oil
✓ Avocados
✓ Vegetable oils (safflower, sesame, soybean, corn, and sunflower)
✓ Nuts and seeds, especially walnuts and ground flaxseed
✓ Fatty fish, such as sardines, salmon, and mackerel
These fats help prevent heart disease by decreasing total cholesterol and
LDL (the unhealthy kind of cholesterol in the blood) and increasing HDL (the
healthy cholesterol in the blood).Getting the benefit from heart-healthy fats is not a case of adding them to your
current diet. Instead, exchange unhealthy fats already in your diet for some
of these heart-healthy fats. It’s also definitely not a case of “if a little will do a
little good, a lot will do a lot of good.” Fat is a much more concentrated source
of calories than either protein or carbs. Compare the numbers:✓ Protein has 4 calories per gram.
✓ Carbs have 4 calories per gram.
✓ Fat has 9 calories per gram.
So even with healthy fats you have to watch portion size (particularly if
you’re prone to dumping syndrome) and count the calories. Olive oil, a
healthy fat, has the same number of calories as lard, which as most people
know is not a healthy fat. (Both have 135 calories per tablespoon.) Stick to
about 1 teaspoon healthy fat at each meal.