When I started CrossFit and someone told me to eat more fat than carbs I thought they were crazy. Coming from the world of "Figure/bodybuilding" fat was scary! Actually let me rephrase that-Terrifying! 1 full egg a day and 1 tablespoon of almond butter was pretty much all the fat I got. Well not counting the small amounts I would get through my chicken, egg WHITES, oatmeal and protein powder;). Which let me go ahead and say is basically nothing! I don't like to call the way I eat now a diet anymore either. I eat a healthy primal lifestyle which is about 90-95% paleo. That 5-10% coming from wine, coconut ice cream and kettle chips every once and a while (hey we all have our weakness', now you know mine!) It took me a long time to get the whole fat scare out of my head. Coming from an eating disorder background, forgeting about everything else I had already done and learned through my years of fitness was a challenge to say the least. It took patience and dedication but I can truly say now that I am free of all the scares. The bulk of my calories every day now come from protein, veggies and fat. TOTALLY DIFFERENT! No grains, very little chicken and lots of beef! My body loves it! I feel better than I ever have, I am leaner than I've ever been without dieting my ass off for 4 months miserably hating life #justsain. My health is amazing and my performance is through the roof. I found this article below about fat and I highly recommend reading it. I hate long posts but I really wanted to really get this point across so take a second and read it. It will really help to understand the why's and how's of fat in our diet's.
Fat by Fit4yournutrtion.com
Fat does not make you fat (unless you eat it with lots of carbs). Fat consumption whether saturated or unsaturated, causes no release of insulin and as a result promotes the burning of both dietary and stored fat as fuel (however you need to teach your body to do this and this can only happen if it is forced to rely on fat as a source of fuel ie sufficient fat is consumed while carbs are kept to a minimum). There’s no possibility of storing fat in fat cell unless insulin opens the receptors, and only eating sugar (ie carbs) can make that happen. Not only does it not make you fat, it is extremely important for several reasons:
When exercising at a high intensity level, your body needs to be able to burn something. You don’t want to be burning protein so you need to ensure that you have adequate carbs/fat in your system and since I am recommending restricting the amount of carbs you eat, fat needs to be there to provide a fuel to burn. Dietary fat is the most concentrated source of food energy providing more than twice the number of calories per gram than carbs or protein. Fats act as a lubricant for your joints and is key to reducing inflammation, maintaining mobility and preventing friction that would otherwise lead to injuries. Fat is a building block for cell membranes and hormones and is needed to absorb fat soluble vitamins. The glycemic index of any food can be altered by combining it with fats. Remember, the higher the glycemic index, the faster sugars enter your system and the higher the insulin response. You can change the glycemic index of any food by adding a fat to any carbohydrate such as almond butter to an apple (one of my favourite snacks ☺). This also means that you stay full longer. Another tip is to consume fish oil (see section 2.2) in divided dosages throughout the day with each meal to help stabilize insulin levels and control insulin spikes.
***If you do not eat enough fat or cholesterol, the body increases the production of cholesterol in the liver. The body interprets the reduction of fats or cholesterol in the diet to a time of famine or starvation. This causes insulin to activate HMG CO-a reductase, an enzyme in the liver, to manufacture more cholesterol than is required by the body from sugars and carbohydrates.
However, not all fats are good. Hard and fast rule-if it was created by nature eat it, if its processed don’t.
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