Lose Weight Program > Carbohydrates and Fats

Most of us hold carbohydrates in high gustatorial esteem. A "sweet tooth" is common among the overweight.



Alcoholics who are on the wagon exhibit a pronounced craving for candy as a substitute for the cup that cheers, There is also such a thing as starch craving, often shown in the form of an exaggerated consumption of breads, pastries, and potatoes. Dr. Hugh Rony has reported the case of an obese laundress who had no liking whatever for sugars but who did manage to consume one pound of laundry starch a day.

Since excess carbohydrate is deposited as fat, you might think it would be forbidden in a reducing diet. All foods, however, can be converted into body fat under certain conditions. And you need a certain amount of carbohydrate because fat is not properly consumed in its absence. Fat is only half-burned unless there is carbohydrate present to fan it into a hot flame. Acid waste products accumulate with untoward results. When you reduce you are going to burn up and eventually lose all the excess fat that annoys you and you will require a reasonable number of carbohydrate calories to keep the home fires burning - your wicks trimmed to burn without smoking. Take some of these calories in the form of sugar for your coffee, or a lollipop, or a chocolate cream if you want to. It's better than an even - money bet that you will want to. You can still look a dessert in the face and you will be much happier about the whole thing if you wind up your meals with a modest sweet. Modest, we said.

A second kind of calories is furnished by fats. No need to dwell long on these. You know them all too well. Outside of your personal economy, they are abundant in cream, butter, bacon, lard, egg yolk, and other foods. The reason fats are abundant in you (we are assuming that you are really entitled to reduce) is that they represent the body's storage mechanism for surplus calories-about 250 of them to each ounce of fat.

Fats are essential to normal nutrition. In animal experiments, fat-free diets produce kidney diseases and an alarming disinterest in the opposite sex. Persons who are genuinely obese can cut fats completely out of their diets, however, since they have more than adequate reserves. Indeed, so unnecessary are fats to the obese that they are forbidden in reducing, diets calculated to cut down one's weight without temporizing. Willy-nilly, some slight amount of fat is likely to creep into the strictest diet and there's no point in deliberately allowing it. Practically, elimination of fat helps to make a reducing diet easier to stick to - you aren't likely to stoke away a gigantic baked potato without gravy, or snap at a half-dozen fresh rolls hot out of the oven if you can't put butter on them.

Scientists have learned new things about fats and oils (which are fats in liquid form) in recent years. Fats and oils contain molecules' known as fatty acids. Some of these fatty acids are said to be "saturated." They contain all the hydrogen they can hold. Others, such as linoleic acid, are said to be ''unsaturated'' or "polyunsaturated." These have unsatisfied chemical bonds and are more physiologically active in some respects.

All fats and oils contain saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in various proportions. It has been conclusively demonstrated that if fats or oils with a high content of unsaturated fatty acids are used to replace substantial amounts of other fats in the diet, high levels of cholesterol in the blood may frequently be reduced to some degree. However, mere addition of unsaturated fats or oils to fats otherwise consumed in accustomed diets usually will not lower cholesterol levels.


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