RawFitBitch

The fat you eat, is the fat you wear.

Howdy all. Lately I have been busy organising everything for our trip overseas. First stop will be
Asia for a few weeks to soak up some sunshine and scoff down some durian. After that we are heading to New York City to attend and be guest speakers at the Woodstock Fruit Festival. Boy I’m excited! Will keep you posted on the developments.

Over the past 2 weeks we have given two talks in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It was great to meet some of our facebook friends and fellow 30BaDers. Durianrider had people in stitches during his talk, you can download it here. We both learnt a lot of valuable lessons which we will be taking with us into our future talks.

So onto todays topic…OIL
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fats in the diet and especially oils. There is plenty of confusing (mis)information about oils out there. Some comes from well-intentioned folks and the rest from people and companies trying to make a quick buck off us, so we really have to sort through the rubbish to find the truth. I have gathered some pretty substantial evidence to support the exclusion of oil in our diet, both from experience and conclusive research.

Health food?
For a food to qualify as a ‘health food’ it obviously has to contain health-giving properties such as micro and macronutrients. Coconut oil is BIG in the raw food scene so I will likely put some noses out of joint focusing on it but here goes It contains nothing that humans need like carbohydrates, EFA’s, protein, vitamins, minerals and fibre. And plenty of what we don’t need ~ saturated fats.

Coconut oil is not only 100% refined fat that goes straight to the hips but it obtains over 90% of its calories from saturated fat, that’s more than butter! Honestly if you are trying to shed some lbs, eating pure fat (or oil) is the worst thing you can do for your ‘waste-line’. I have heard about the supposed miraculous ‘thermogenic effects’ of coconut oil on weight loss but all it does is create a carbohydrate deficit in the diet (carbs are replaced with fat) which then leads to temporary water-loss on the scales. High fat, low carb diets NEVER work long term and are very unhealthy.

Not only that, telling a fat person to eat more fat in order to get slimmer is like trying to put a fire out with petrol. Not Effective! Lets employ some common sense shall we? When you consume fat calories they go straight to your fat cells and do not change their structure, so much so that if we had your fat stores analysed in a lab we could tell what type of fat you eat.
Like bacon? That means your gut or butt is filled out with pig fat. Remember, the body always prefers to store fat calories and use carb calories for fuel. It’s not my opinion but how it works.

The Worlds leading authority on heart disease reversal – Dr Esselstyn has conducted the longest and most successful heart disease reversal program ever. Lets say the man knows ALL about oils and what they do to the body.

“They (oils) contain saturated fat which immediately injures the endothelial lining of the arteries when eaten. It doesn’t matter whether it’s olive oil, corn oil, or any other kind of oil.” ~ Dr Esselstyn

Fat chart

Olive Oil:
But olive oil is a health food I hear you crying!! Well is it really?? Or is that just what you have been aggressively conditioned to believe?

“There is a fairly recent study done on the Isle of Crete, where the original famous Mediterranean diet of the 1960′s came from. They looked at 304 patients In Crete, 152 patients with heart disease vs 152 without heart disease. The patients with heart disease had significantly higher daily intakes of monounsaturated fats (Olive Oil). The patients without heart disease had higher intakes of carbohydrates, fiber, folate & omega 3’s. The more mono unsaturated fat (olive oil) consumed, the more heart disease.” Jeff Novick, MS, RD

Here is an excellent video from Jeff Novick on Olive oil….

Contained within all whole foods (and oils) are 3 types of fats ~ poly unsaturated, mono unsaturated and saturated. Each food has different amounts of each fat. I don’t always look to ‘conventional wisdom’ when it comes to health recommendations but sometimes they get it right! For instance the American Heart Association says to limit our intake of saturated fat to no more than 7% of calories. Most people are going over this then wondering why they get fat and sick. Not surprisingly, the only scientific documentation available (that leads to the reversal of heart disease) has been demonstrated on diets that obtain less than 5% of their calories from saturated fat.

“A study on humans conducted by David Blankenhorn, M.D., and his associates compared the effects of different types of fats on the growth of atherosclerotic lesions inside the coronary arteries of people by studying the results of angiograms taken one year apart (JAMA 263:1646, 1990). The study demonstrated that all three types of fat–saturated animal fat, monounsaturated (olive oil), and polyunsaturated (EFA)–were associated with a significant increase in new atherosclerotic lesions. Most importantly, the growth of these lesions did not stop when polyunsaturated fats of the w-6 type (linoleic acid) and monounsaturated fats (olive oil) were substituted for saturated fats. Only by decreasing all fat intake–including poly- and monounsaturated fats–did the lesions stop growing.” ~ Dr McDougall

What about Omega 3′s?!
Oils do not contain the right balance of EFA’s, they have insufficient Omega 3′s and an oversupply of Omega 6′s. It is extremely easy to get sufficient fat calories on a high carb raw vegan lifestyle. The National Academy of Sciences says that an adequate daily intake of omega-3 fatty acids is 1.1 grams for women and 1.6 grams for men.  Which works out to between 1-3% of our daily calories or about ¼ to 1/3 of a teaspoon a day. Easily attained on a HCRV lifestyle or a high carb cooked vegan lifestyle like this one   We get all our EFA’s by eating sufficient calories from fruits and greens (or even just fruits if you choose).

Take a look at this fascinating short video of a Dr who raises his triglyceride levels almost instantly through ingesting olive oil and becomes a diabetic in 6hrs. Watch it to the end!

Cooking with oils?
I don’t recommend anyone uses oil when they cook (or to cook in general!),as it creates carcinogenic chemical compounds. Cancer causing substances such as 1,3-butadiene, benzene, acrolein and formaldehyde have been observed. Yes there are oils (such as coconut oil) that are stable at high heat during cooking due to its level of saturation. However, when the goal is to DECREASE the amount of saturated fats in the diet, consuming almost pure saturated fat in any quantity is of course counterproductive. So what do you use for high carb raw vegan cooking? Dr McDougall’s cook book may help you.

I recommend you do an experiment. Take all the oils out of your diet and replace those calories with high carb foods like fruit/grains/root vegies (depending on what lifestyle you follow) Go to www.cronometer.com and aim to eat a minimum of 80% of your calories from carbohydrates and a maximum of 10% of your calories from WHOLE food fat sources. Getting oils out of my life was one of the best things I’ve ever done! I didn’t realise how much I was holding myself back by including oil in my diet. Oil consumption can and does lead to all sorts of sugar metabolic problems because it basically turns our bloodstream into an oil slick and prevents the sugar in the blood leaving and entering the cells. Not to mention drastically increasing our risk of cardiovascular disease (the number one killer).

Coconut oil is great… ON your skin, it also provides an SPF of about 8, just remember a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!