Why women should eat fats

You must have heard by now how healthy fats in a diet as essential, they they actually make us leaner etc. For a while I'd hear this and think it was ridiculous, that fat would definitely make me fat. Knowledge is power though, and here's why you should be eating more fat. 

1) When women exercise, they burn more fat. There's a variety of reasons for this, a simple one could be we simply have more of it. We store more fat in our muscles, pretty much everywhere meaning it becomes our primary source of fuel. Unlike men, who often rely on their glycogen stores for energy. 

2) Hormones - when we eat fats, the body synthesizes hormones from it. Hormones that are important in obtaining muscle such as estrogen and testosterone. Therefore, a high fat consumption promotes anabolism (muscle synthesis) in women. Estrogen, produced by fats stimulates lipolysis or fat burn. 

3) Fats don't cause this spike in insulin causing fat storage. Women are less susceptible to fat causing this response than men. 

4) Following on from what I've previously said, women who eat a high fat diet are generally leaner and healthier than women who have a low fat diet. Of course here, I'm talking in terms of good fats. 

5) For a woman to be healthy, to be hormonally balanced etc she needs fats in her diet. A low fat diet could wreak havoc on a woman's hormones even causing problems with your menstrual cycle. 

6) As mentioned earlier, men rely more on their glycogen stores during exercise. Females not so much, simply because we don't need to, we have a higher body fat percentage. Therefore, it could be noted that women don't need as much carbs as men necessarily. I'm definitely not saying avoid carbs! please don't do this, their essential. However, a female eating very little fat and very high carbs won't be able to synthesize the correct hormones for protein synthesis and stimulate as much fat burning. If we ate carbs in excess, it would not be used as fuel as much as it is in men, thus fat storage is increased. It is worth noting here though, as seen in a previous post that an ectomorphic woman would really benefit from lots of carbs in their diet, consider your body type. 

Which fats to eat? 

Avoid lots of saturated & trans fats, that's a given. Everything is fine in moderation, but too much of this stuff leads to increased amounts of the bad cholesterol, cardiovascular disease etc. Monosaturated fats however have been proven to decrease the amounts of bad cholesterol in the body. These can be found in for instance nuts. 

My favorite fat sources 

- Natural nut butters
- Nuts
- Avocado
- Cottage cheese
- Eggs
- Coconut oil
- Olives 
- Fatty fish - e.g - Salmon 
- Flaxseed 
- Omega oil 


In conclusion

Don't fear fats, they're amazing, just eat the right ones!