Beyonce's Self-Care Journey, Non-scale Victories and Can You Eat Too Much Healthy Fat?

Hi Byte Wellness Fam!

We spent last week on the Daily Wellness Text Thread talking about non-scale victories (prompted by Beyonce’s Harper’s Bazaar interview.

Join the convo for FREE by sending TEXT to 1(224)302-6224.

Meanwhile, we’ve spent time answering some important questions about eating healthy fats.

Can You Eat Too Much Healthy Fat?

Is eating too many nuts bad for you? Or…am I eating too much oil? Does eating fat make you fat?

These sorts of questions are inevitable after learning about the good things healthy fats do for our bodies. So, don’t feel bad if you’re wondering about those things. It gets even harder to wrap your brain around getting the right amount of healthy fat when you’re following a specific dietary pattern. Like…what are paleo healthy fats or keto healthy fats?

The tricky thing about unsaturated fat is that it’s a double-edged sword. Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats build us up in very meaningful ways. Unsaturated fat supports our immune system, brain health and lowers the risk of heart attack. But, every type of fat (even the healthy fats) is energy-dense. “Energy dense” means it has lots of calories, y’all!

So, our bodies need some unsaturated fat to function. AND, studies show that eating plenty of unsaturated fat is better for our heart health than eating a low-fat diet all around (see last week’s Self-Love Letter for a description of the PREDIMED study).

But, eating lots of unsaturated fat adds lots of calories to our diet, which can lead to weight gain. If we gain weight and are overweight or obese (far above our healthy weight), having all that extra dysfunctional fat on our bodies can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Yes, there is such a thing as eating too much healthy fat.

So, when we’re eating unsaturated fat, the goal is not to put our foot on the gas pedal and floor it. We still need to moderate how much unsaturated fat we eat everyday.

We’ll need to watch out for foods with hidden fats. Foods with hidden fats include: store-bought pastries, store-bought “healthy” snacks, meat and dairy products, and oil. The fat in oil isn’t exactly hidden, but it’s easily overlooked- especially in “healthy” oils like olive oil.

The USDA has recommendations for how much healthy fat we should eat every day. Women over 50 years old need at least 1.1 grams of omega 3 fats every day. The recommendations only cover one type of polyunsaturated fat.

And, the new nutrition guidelines from the USDA don’t place an upper limit on unsaturated fat intake. See 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans here.

That means, we have to work with our healthcare providers to consider our health risks and come up with how much fat to eat per day.