Healthy Fats for Weight Loss:
Why It's Important to Add Fats to Green Smoothies
Healthy fats for weight loss? Yes, it is a thing, and you may be surprised to learn what they are.
I coach clients on this topic in depth in my coaching program Real Food Reboot (which you can check out here.)
Read on for an important dose of clarity and myth-busting on the topic of healthy fats for weight loss…
At some point you may have downloaded my free guide, the 7 Day Green Smoothie Meal Plan.
If not, what are you waiting for? Take a second to grab your copy here then come back and finish reading…
You might have noticed that the Day 1 green smoothie recipe calls for adding in a coconut product as a source of healthy fat.
For the last 50 or so years, our society has been so fat-phobic that you may be wondering why I would be recommending fat at all.
Or you may have embraced "good" healthy fats for weight loss like olive oil and avocados, but still have your reservations about "bad" saturated fats like coconut oil.
The Truth About Dietary Fats
The truth is, we desperately need fats in our diets to serve many critical roles, including:
- Providing a source of stable energy throughout the day. This helps to avoid afternoon energy slumps or post-meal food comas, among other benefits.
- Acting as building blocks for cell membranes and hormones. This in turn affects how well virtually every other function in our body runs, including weight loss, detoxification, mental clarity, and more.
- Slowing the absorption of food into the bloodstream, especially meals or snacks that are higher in sugar or refined carbohydrates (more on this later).
- Increasing satiety, making it less likely that you will be constantly hungry, mindlessly grazing or thinking about food too much throughout the day.
- Managing inflammation of all types including chronic pain and the chronic out-of-control inflammation that underlies most chronic disease including heart disease.
- Making food taste good, which is especially important as you work to break up with processed and packaged foods. Those foods have been engineered to be hyper-palatable and basically addictive thanks to chemical additives, sugar etc.
Why Healthy Fats for Weight Loss In Smoothies?
It’s important to note that while smoothies are free of refined carbohydrates, the sugar content can be rather high due to the natural sugars found in fruits.
Fresh and frozen fruits contain plenty of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients which our bodies need, so I’m not saying fruit is bad.
We’ll dive into the topic of natural fruit sugars in a bit more detail in future content I plan to create to expand on this topic.
However, for now just know that adding a fat source to your smoothies can be helpful in order to slow the absorption of these natural sugars and provide you with more stable energy.
This all directly spills over into improving inflammation, metabolic function, and in turn promoting sustainable healthy weight loss while improving health at a deeper root cause level.
But Aren't Coconuts a Saturated Fat and Bad For You?
Now you may be sold on the benefits of healthy fats for weight loss but still be wondering why include saturated fats like coconut oil?
Truth: no source of fat found in nature is either good or bad. It’s simply a matter of being in or out of balance.
Different types of fats play different critical roles in the overall process of managing inflammation in the body, and that includes saturated fats.
Franken-fats like hydrogenated fats, partially hydrogenated oils, and refined seed oils such as soybean oil, canola oil and corn oil are not found in nature and wreak havoc on the body!
But we are not talking about those processed/refined oils.
Saturated fats like unrefined coconut oil are traditional fats that can be obtained in nature without the use of high-heat processing, chemical solvents and all kinds of other nasties that go into refined oils.
You have likely heard of one or more of the studies published that vilified saturated fats.
However, a number of more recent resources have been published dissecting some of the previous studies that have been done that portrayed saturated fat in a bad light.
The short answer is that those older studies used a combination of flawed research methods, cherry-picking data, and overly relying on observational or epidemiological studies.
Coconuts Have A Place On The Table (Or In The Blender)!
The evidence that "saturated fat is bad for you" does not hold up to scientific rigor.
If you would like to do a deeper dive into dissecting these specific studies, send me a DM on Instagram and I can send you a handout that goes into more detail on these studies.
I also recommend the following books on this topic:
Key takeaway: Inflammation is the root cause of heart disease, and a mix of healthy fats (including some saturated fat) can help manage inflammation!
There are a number of well-documented health benefits of coconut oil specifically, including anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial effects and promoting weight loss, just to name a few.
Ali Miller RD published a great discussion on this specific topic including links to studies to back up these claims. Check it out here.
Ready to Try a New Coconut Product?
If you haven’t already done so, now would be a good time to buy or order one of the coconut products listed in the 7 Day Green Smoothie Meal Plan free guide.
These go great in smoothies and can help round out your collection of other healthy fats for weight loss.
Here are links to my favorite sources for these products:
- Coconut butter/coconut manna - Amazon
- Coconut cream - I usually buy the cans from Trader Joe’s but I have heard good things about this brand which you can buy on Amazon
- Coconut milk (full fat) – Same brand as above on Amazon
- Coconut oil - Amazon or buy any unrefined coconut oil from Costco/local store
- MCT oil - Amazon
- Whole coconut chunks – you can sometimes buy these in the freezer section of Trader Joe’s.
- Or if you live somewhere where coconut is in season locally, perhaps experiment with buying whole fresh coconut and processing it manually!
Next Steps: Reboot Your Health With Holistic Nutrition
That’s it for today’s mini holistic nutrition lesson!
I know we barely scratched the surface of this topic which entire books have been written about, but I hope this gives you a better idea of the reasoning behind including some fat in your smoothies….as well as other meals and snacks, as part of the real food balanced plate meal formula I advocate.
Ready to go deeper and use holistic nutrition to achieve health goals? I can help you with that!
You need to join my coaching program Real Food Reboot.
The program includes a mix of 1:1 coaching, customization and support along the journey, with my powerful step-by-step process, unique framework and everything you need to be successful on the journey.
To get started your next step is to submit your super quick application which you can find on this page here.
There is no obligation to join after applying. After you apply I will send you a brief video that has all the details and next steps to connect with me and make your final decision to enroll when ready.
Take a second to apply here now…or you can send me a DM on Instagram to let me know any questions you would like to ask me before applying.
