If you grew up in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s, your brain was washed to believe that eating fats equaled being fat. The myth was that the fat we consumed would become the body fat we’d carry on our tummies and hips. That's about when the reduced-fat diet fad was born. Low-fat, non-fat and skim were the buzz words of the day and foods like yogurt, milk, cheese, mayonnaise, snack foods and salad dressing with these false promises began to line the store shelves. Labels promising weight loss due to fat reduction became the industry norm and consumers, excited at the thought of easy weight-loss, bought it like hotcakes. (Low-fat ones, of course.... ha!)
Popular brands of "Fat-Free" salad dressing appear to be “diet” foods, and the calories are not surprisingly low, but take a look at the carbs... 11 grams in just one serving for many brands! Then, look closely at the list of ingredients. Pretty long, huh? But, here’s the kicker… high fructose corn syrup is number 2 on the list... otherwise known as pure sugar!
Even worse are many brands of fat-free creamer. Corn syrup is one of the top ingredients listed. Sugar, sugar and more sugar!
Today, the myth behind the “miracle” has been dispelled. Unless you’ve been stuck in a time warp or hiding under a rock, you’ve heard the news surrounding a concept that completely runs in the face of those lies. The promise of lowering your body fat by lowering your nutritional fats has been scientifically disproved.
But if you haven’t heard the news, to put it simply, fatty food doesn’t create fatty figures. Carbs and sugar do!
The main idea of the ketogenic diet is to train your body to use dietary fats to reduce body fat! Sounds crazy but it’s true. You need to eat fat to burn it! The keto lifestyle flies in the face of all those low-fat myths.
On the keto diet, you eat 75% of your foods from fat, 20% from protein and 5% from carbs. This means that if you eat 1,200 calories in a day, you would consume about 60 calories from carbs, 240 from protein and 840 from fat. Let me say that in a different way… you need to eat foods containing healthy fats to burn body fat. Eliminating carbs from your diet and adding healthy fats (and a moderate amount of protein), forces your body to burn fat instead of carbs.