Why no/low fat diets don't work

In the past few years, I have been far more conscious of my diet and have noticed that when I got it under control with specific meals and a manageable plan I was able to accelerate my health and fitness goals quicker than when I was just freestlying with my diet.

Whilst planning my new workout scheme through reading The New Encyclopaedia of Body Building by Arnold Schwarzenegger I came across the comment regarding the 80/80/20 protein/carbohydrates/fats diet guideline. Within these guideline was the suggestion that eating less than 20% fats in your diet is pointless. This comment got me thinking as I had heard many times of no and low fat diets being the rage for those losing weight.

Fat contains approximately 9 calories per gram so it would be common sense that eating too much fat would end up with too many fat gains. The issue with weight gain primarily comes from eating too high carbohydrate meals, where your insulin spikes and your blood sugar plummets, leading to further hunger. This is why people crave more carbohydrates and sugar resulting in people eating more. Insulin also boosts your fat storage hormone, leading your belly to store more fat.

Recently, The Lancet released an article on the The Effect of low-fat diet interventions versus other diet intervention on long-term weight change in adults. Over a one  year period, they trialled low and higher fat diets and their findings indicated that lower carbohydrate diets resulted in better weight loss results than lower fat diets. In fact, lower fat diets did not show any improvement in weight loss compared to higher fat diets and only lead to a weight loss when compared to a standard diet. Overall, the low fat diets did not produce the same weight loss results as the higher fat diet when the participant was in a weight loss phase of their diet. The findings seem to suggest that the use of low fat diet does not produce the same results as a higher diet diet providing the diet is of a weight loss variety (lower calories, appropriate and sensible food portions and choices).

So next time someone tells me that they're gunning for super low fat percentages, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that is a rubbish idea and fats aren't a big problem but rather increased carbohydrate intake due to insulin spikes.