Fat Is Not Free

Dietary Fat Is NOT a Free Food: Have We Become Too Comfortable With Fat?

For decades, we were terrified of dietary fat. Everything was low-fat, fat-free or reduced-fat, and eating fat was almost automatically associated with gaining body fat.

Then the pendulum swung.

We learned more about carbohydrates, blood glucose and insulin. Low-carb and ketogenic diets exploded in popularity. Avocados, nuts, olive oil, cheese and other high-fat foods went from foods we feared to foods we were actively encouraged to eat.

But have we swung a little too far in the other direction?

One of the biggest mistakes Joanne sees today is the assumption that because dietary fat has very little immediate effect on blood glucose—and doesn't require a large insulin response—it somehow doesn't matter when it comes to body composition.

In this episode of Midlife Mayhem, Joanne explains where that misunderstanding came from and why “insulin stores fat” does not mean “without insulin, fat can't be stored.”

She follows dietary fat from your plate through the lymphatic system and into circulation, explains the role of lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in fat storage, and looks at why a perfectly healthy low-carb meal can quietly become extraordinarily high in calories.

You'll also hear why the combination of high fat + high carbohydrate is particularly easy to overconsume, how the thermic effect of fat differs dramatically from protein, and why the body's response to excess calories depends partly on which macronutrients those calories come from.

In this episode:

How we went from being afraid of fat to perhaps becoming too comfortable with it

Why dietary fat's minimal effect on blood glucose can create a false sense of security