If you answered carbohydrates, you’re probably not alone. And, don’t take this the wrong way, you’re dead wrong.
Think about it. Your body stores roughly 1,800 calories of carbohydrates in the form of glucose and glycogen (the storage form of carbohydrates). It also stores, on, I don’t know, about eight gazillion calories of fat.
Doesn’t it make sense that the most energetic people in the world are those that tap into that virtually unlimited source of biological energy?
Of course it does.
When a marathoner “hits the wall”, it means he or she has run out of carbohydrates. However, experienced marathoners have trained their bodies to tap into their fat stores more effectively, because that source of fuel is virtually unlimited. They’ve literally become what’s called “better butter burners”. That’s why they can run longer than mere mortals.
So for optimal energy, you need to eat fat. But that doesn’t mean scarifying down fried potatoes from the fast food burger joint. To supercharge your energy batteries you also need to eat the right fat.
AVOID EATING UNDER OUTDATED STANDARDS
So if fat is so essential for our energy (not to mention for our health, but don’t get me started), how did we ever come to fear this valuable macronutrient? To this day, when it comes to fats, most of use are still boring under some of the most misguided and out-of-date information on the planet.
I’ll give you a perfect example. The other day my tennis partner and I were playing a doubles match against two guys, one of whom also happens to be the other team’s captain. After the first hour, the captain was running out of energy, not surprising because the match was brutal and we were playing in 980F (370C) heat in the California San Fernando Valley. On one of the breaks, the captain reached into his bag and brought out some cookies.
“I tell everyone to eat these to keep their energy up”, he told me, “but I make sure to tell them to get the low-fat kind!”
How ironic. This is exactly the opposite of what you want to do if you want to keep your energy up.
It’s time to set the record straight. Read on.
GET OVER THE FEAR OF FAT
Back in the 1970s and 80s, some well-meaning people came up with the theory that the reason Americans were getting too fat was that they were eating too much fat. Waistlines were expanding and heart disease was increasing. The good folks in charge of making health policy recommendations decided that eating fat made you fat. In short order, everyone got on board with what appeared to be the obvious solution: Stop eating fat.
Wrong.
I’ll never forget when I first began to question this so-called conventional wisdom. I was working at Equinox Fitness Clubs in New York with the legendary ultra-marathoner and exercise physiologist Stu Mittleman. Ultramarathoners, by the way, are folks who run marathons as warm-ups. USA Today once called ultramarathoner “the ultimate road warriors”, as their event is typical a six-day run of 100 miles. Stu held a number of record in the Ultramarathon. We used to see him running every morning in Central Park, where he routinely did twenty miles a day. When asked why he ran twenty miles a day, he would answer”, “Cause that’s all I have time for”.
Which should give you some idea about Stu’s energy.
Stu was big on eating butter and eggs.
Especially in the morning.
At the time, that wsa nutritional heresy. But as Stu explained, fat is your best source of energy. If you want to effortlessly get through your day, you have to become one of those better butter burners. You have to train your body to use fat, not carbohydrates, as your primary energy source, because, as noted, you store a ton of its at any given time. So doesn’t it make sense to train your body to use fat for energy?
To this day, Stu never eats more than about 40 percent of his calories from carbs, the rest coming from protein and fat.
So how did we ever go so wrong on our advice on fat? What were we thinking ?
Well, look. It’s not like the experts got together and saids, “Hey, what can we do to really screw up everyone’s heath?” Experts are well-meaning people (at least they usually are). They sincerely wanted to help us get on the right track. Taking a page form recent historic events, we might say that their hearts were in the right place, but they had bad intelligence. Their information was just plain wrong. As professor Harlan Onsrud put it in Science magazine, “Most of us would have predicted that if we can get the population to change its fat intake…. We would see a reduction in weight. Instead, we have seen the exact opposite”.
And that’s exactly what happened. Although the percentage of calories from fat in the American diet has actually gone down over the past couple of decades, obesity has gone up. An up. An up. And folks, it’s not because we’re eating fat. Fat is not the enemy, and cutting fat out of the diet is not the solution. Especially if you want to be at your energetic best.
So we, the experts, were wrong about cutting out fat. In fact, for many people, particularly those who have type 2 diabetes or are at risk for it, a low-fat diet can be the wrong approach. Fat helps make you feel satiated. Many fats – omega-3s from fish, for example – have anti-inflammatory properties. Some saturated fats, such as those found in coconut oil, have antiviral properties.
When you remove fat from the diet, you generally replace it with something else, usually carbs, which sends many people on a bumpy roller coaster ride of mood swings, blood sugar dips, insulin spikes, and increased fat storage. (Of course, this doesn’t apply when the carbs you’re eating are very, very high in fiber, but unfortunately that’s not the case when yo’re eating most breads, pastas, and the majority of commercial cereals).
The death knell to the idea that fat alone was the enemy of health, weight, and energy was sounded recently by professor Walt Willet of Harvard University, arguably the most prestigious nutrition researcher of our time and the lead researcher on both the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. In these studies, Willett and his colleagues examined the eating habits of more than 100,000 people over three decades. Here’s what he said: “We have found virtually no relationship between the percentage of calories form fat and any important health outcome”.
In other words, fat doesn’t make you fat. It doesn’t make you sick. And it definitely doesn’t rob you of your energy.
Quite the opposite.
What does seem to matter a lot though, is the type of fat and the type of carbohydrate eaten (see “Good” Versus “Bad” Fats below).
Bottom line: Fat is the best source of sustained energy in the human body. It makes you feel satiated, helps manage your blood sugar, and keeps your energy thank full. But you want to make sure you’re eating the right kinds. The best advice: Get a nice mixture in your diet of saturated fats (coconut oil, eggs), omega-3s (fish and flaxseed), and omega 9s (macadamia nut oil, extra-virgin olive oil), and some omega-6s (evening primrose oil, black currant oil, borage oil).
And if, like my tennis opponent, you’re tempted to fall back into the anti-fat camp, remember this: If your colories are at the appropriate level for optimal energy (and for weight management), the percentage of calories from fat are of absolutely no importance.
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