As you start formulating your diet for proper health and nutrition, one key element that you must be sure not to leave out are healthy fats.
Far too many people are under the impression that fats are bad for us and will only cause us to gain weight, but the fact of the matter is that if you're choosing healthy fats, this isn't the case at all.
Instead, you'll be left with top-notch nutrition that will contribute to a healthy body and can help promote higher satiety from your meals.
But, before you go adding fats to your diet, there are a few important things that you must know so that you can do this correctly.
Let's have a quick look at the top points to consider.
Monitor Serving Sizes Carefully The very first thing that you must make sure you're doing is monitoring how much healthy fats you're consuming.
It's very easy to add a little too much fat to your meal and if you do so, you could very well end up taking in hundreds of calories more than you should.
For example, an extra tablespoon of peanut butter on your morning slice of toast, a little too much olive oil based salad dressing on your lunch-time salad, and then an extra handful of nuts that you eat that afternoon at work could mean 300 additional calories added to your day, canceling out any weight loss progress you were making.
If you monitor your serving sizes, then you can feel confident you're eating the perfect amount to maintain your current weight or reach your goal weight.
Time The Fats Second, it's also critical that you learn to time your fats as well.
Ideally you want to include the most fats in your diet later on in the day when you are starting to cut back on the carbohydrates that you're consuming.
The worst thing to do is add too many fats right before or after your workout session, as this will only slow the digestion process down, which is precisely what you want to avoid.
By timing your fats correctly, you can be sure that they are working for you, rather than against you.
Know Which Fats To Avoid Also important is to make sure that you fully understand which fats to avoid.
Trans fats are the really bad fats and must be avoided at all costs, so any time you see the ingredient 'partially hydrogenated vegetable oil' on a product, which means that it will contain trans fats, back away immediately.
These will only cause long-term health problems and there is no need for them in the human diet.
Saturated fat is another fat that you should aim to reduce and is often found in fattier cuts of meat as well as higher-fat dairy products, but note that you don't have to eliminate it entirely like you do with trans fats.
As much as 15% of your total fat intake can come from saturated fat and you'd still be considered to have a healthy intake, so just keep that in mind.
Some saturated fat is okay, but the focus should be on monounsaturated fats and unsaturated fats.
So there you have the main points to remember about adding fats to your diet.
If you can keep these in mind while you do so, you can feel confident that you're right on track to the perfect diet set-up.
Far too many people are under the impression that fats are bad for us and will only cause us to gain weight, but the fact of the matter is that if you're choosing healthy fats, this isn't the case at all.
Instead, you'll be left with top-notch nutrition that will contribute to a healthy body and can help promote higher satiety from your meals.
But, before you go adding fats to your diet, there are a few important things that you must know so that you can do this correctly.
Let's have a quick look at the top points to consider.
Monitor Serving Sizes Carefully The very first thing that you must make sure you're doing is monitoring how much healthy fats you're consuming.
It's very easy to add a little too much fat to your meal and if you do so, you could very well end up taking in hundreds of calories more than you should.
For example, an extra tablespoon of peanut butter on your morning slice of toast, a little too much olive oil based salad dressing on your lunch-time salad, and then an extra handful of nuts that you eat that afternoon at work could mean 300 additional calories added to your day, canceling out any weight loss progress you were making.
If you monitor your serving sizes, then you can feel confident you're eating the perfect amount to maintain your current weight or reach your goal weight.
Time The Fats Second, it's also critical that you learn to time your fats as well.
Ideally you want to include the most fats in your diet later on in the day when you are starting to cut back on the carbohydrates that you're consuming.
The worst thing to do is add too many fats right before or after your workout session, as this will only slow the digestion process down, which is precisely what you want to avoid.
By timing your fats correctly, you can be sure that they are working for you, rather than against you.
Know Which Fats To Avoid Also important is to make sure that you fully understand which fats to avoid.
Trans fats are the really bad fats and must be avoided at all costs, so any time you see the ingredient 'partially hydrogenated vegetable oil' on a product, which means that it will contain trans fats, back away immediately.
These will only cause long-term health problems and there is no need for them in the human diet.
Saturated fat is another fat that you should aim to reduce and is often found in fattier cuts of meat as well as higher-fat dairy products, but note that you don't have to eliminate it entirely like you do with trans fats.
As much as 15% of your total fat intake can come from saturated fat and you'd still be considered to have a healthy intake, so just keep that in mind.
Some saturated fat is okay, but the focus should be on monounsaturated fats and unsaturated fats.
So there you have the main points to remember about adding fats to your diet.
If you can keep these in mind while you do so, you can feel confident that you're right on track to the perfect diet set-up.