On our call last night, Reclaim Your Happy, we were talking a lot about healthy fats for managing and improving moods. As T.S. Wiley says in her book Lights Out, “We’re eating less fat than ever before…If eating saturated fat caused obesity, we would already be well on our way to reducing obesity nutritionally. Actually we would all look like supermodels. In fact, we really look like hell. The average American has actually gained eight and a half pounds since the “low-fat war” on obesity began.”
Unbelievable?
It’s not just about gaining weight when we don’t eat enough of the healthy fats. Our moods go crazy so we’re irritable, anxious, and depressed. A total cholesterol level less than 160 increases the risk of suicide and depression. We get symptoms of low blood sugar, hypoglycemia, where we get super tired, shaky, a sinking feeling in our gut, and headaches, pushing us to eat lots of sugar in one form or another. A diet low in healthy fats will cause hormonal imbalances and digestive issues. We didn’t have heart disease back when we ate healthy fats like butter.
Here are Trudy and I at the Weston A. Price Foundation conference last November. When we saw this sign we had to take our picture. We had just arrived after a long flight but this sign put a huge smile on our faces. And, we proceeded to eat butter all weekend.
When you’re at a BBQ this summer beware of that tub of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” which is a blend of soybean or canola oil, or the cooking sprays that are mostly soybean oil with some artificial and “natural flavorings”. One of my clients actually used a spray that contains “nothing” she said. I said, “Well there has to be something in it. She says, I know, you’re right, but there’s no fat. I didn’t know I should eat fat.” If it’s man-made fat, throw it away – NOW.
Is this you? Well, it’s time for you to make an oil change so you can look and feel fabulous to live a luscious life.
Think back to the fats your grandparents and great grandparents ate. Whole real fats. Before the days of white margarine where you had to squeeze a little tube of yellow food coloring to mix with it so it would look like butter.
Here are some delicious words that are used to describe fat: shining, moist, soft, rich, and good-natured. If you look back in literature, fat was associated with weatlh, joy and even sanctity. Did you know that fish oil can raise our catecholamines, our “energy” hormones? Here are some other things healthy fats help us with:
- building and balancing hormones
- cellular communication – what messages is your fat sending?
- feeding our brain for mental clarity – it’s mostly fat
- keeping us “moist” in many places
- aiding digestion
- increasing metabolism – you need fat to burn fat
- helps to tell your brain when your full
- stabilizing blood sugar
the list is truly endless…
So switch out your non-real fats and safflower, sunflower and corn oil (because we get way too much of these already) to these fabulous fats:
- coconut oil, coconut milk
- avocado
- raw nuts/seeds
- olive oil
- butter (from free range, pastured cows)
- beef (from free range, pastured cows)
- wild game
- salmon
- sardines
- nut & seed oils
- almond butter
- eggs (from free range, organic chickens)
Are you getting hungry yet?
