Reducing Your Fat Consumption

Most people are well aware that excessively fatty foods are bad for them, but there are actually a couple of reasons for this. First off, fatty foods lead to weight gain, as they lots and lots of calorie in them- far more per gram than proteins or carbohydrates. Secondly eating some fatty foods can raise your cholesterol, particularly those that are high in saturated fats. A high cholesterol level can be very dangerous, dramatically increasing your chances of suffering a heart attack.

Whilst most people understand the risks of fatty foods, it can be hard to try and reduce your intake of them. Whilst limited amounts of fat are an important part of a healthy diet, most people eat far too much of it, so here is a list of great ways to reduce your fat consumption.

If you drink full fat or semi skimmed milk, then consider switching to skimmed. The fat content is appreciable lower (around 0.2% for skimmed and 3.6% for full fat milk) and after a while you don’t even notice the difference in taste.

Continuing with the dairy theme, you could try spreading a vegetable based spread on your bread instead of butter. Whilst these spreads still contain, they are generally much lower in saturated fat than butter, so will help keep your cholesterol level healthy.

Some meats are also pretty high in fat, but there are some really simple measures you can take to reduce this. For starters you can trim any excess fat of your meat, for example you can trim the rind and layer of fat of the outside of a piece of bacon. You could also invest in healthier cooking technology such as the George Foreman grill, which helps drain your food of any fatty oils that it produces when it is cooked.

You can also make really simple switches in your diet- spreads like mayonnaise and oily salad dressings have high fat levels, but other sauces such as mustard do not- a simple switch like this is really easy to implement.

Changing the way you cook foods is key and frying is probably the least healthy cooking method. Try steaming and baking more foods instead, and if you are going to fry, try and minimise the amount of oil that you use to cook with.

I really hope you found this tips healthy, and that you can use them to adapt a new, healthier lifestyle.