Does Eating Fat Really Make You Fat? Absolutely Not.

Posted on January 6, 2009 
Filed Under Weight Loss

One of the athletes my wife works with is a Gold-medal equestrienne who has ridden high-performance horses for years. Recently, after reading a story about horses running “cooler” with more fat in their diet, she conducted an experiment with two of her world-class horses – brothers with very similar physical characteristics. The results were interesting, to say the least; but one thing was certain – a high-fat diet does not cause weight-gain. Food, in fact, doesn’t cause or make us do anything; it is simply an experience that provides nutrients that we can use in any number of ways.

A horse’s natural diet does not include fat; horses eat grass just like cows. But high-performance horses are often fed high-performance diets – often including fat. In our friend’s experiment, she fed two horses the same high-fat diet and put them both through the same exercise regimen. After one-month, one of the horses was absolutely “glowing” and in excellent health; but the other horse on the high-fat diet had lost 150-pounds. That kind of weight-loss is unheard of in an otherwise healthy horse – and certainly not what one would expect after adding fat to his diet.

The interesting thing here is that these two horses responded differently to identical diets, living conditions, and exercise routines; but it isn’t so surprising that the fat in the diet would stimulate weight-loss. There are many diets that “trick” the body into burning fat by providing it with more fat than it needs; but the different responses to identical conditions adds to the evidence that diet alone doesn’t cause weight-gain. Food is used by the body to produce fat; but it takes something more than fat in the diet to cause weight-gain – or even the production and storage of excess fat.

Whether the differentiating factors were physiological or psychological was beyond the scope of this particular experiment; but there was no difference in the diet of these two horses. Both horses were given the same food with the same fat content; but the food didn’t do the same thing to their bodies. The food, in fact, didn’t do anything to the horses’ bodies; their bodies did something different with the food. This is an important observation; because, based on conventional beliefs about food, fat, and diet, most people would have expected the added fat in the horse’s diets to make both of the horses fatter. The reality, however, was that the added dietary fat apparently made one horse healthier, while making the other horse lose a significant percentage of his body-weight; but the fat was, in fact, not the active factor in either case.

Fat is a natural and necessary thing for the body to produce; and, when you have more than you need, a healthy body will naturally find a way to get rid of the excess – unless it has a reason to hold on to it. Fat and muscle are not made from fat and muscle; they are made primarily from Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, and Nitrogen – and these elements are readily available in any diet. The truth is that your body will find a way to make whatever it believes it needs – no matter what you eat – and then eliminate what it doesn’t need. Fat is indeed made from elements in the food we eat; but food does not make us eat, it does not make us convert the food we eat, store it, or eliminate it, and it definitely does not make us fat.

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