The Truth about Dietary Fat and Water Intake

Flex sorts out the legit nutrition “rules” from the nonsense

Flex sorts out the legit nutrition “rules” from the nonsense

April 28, 2011

FLEXONLINE.COM

High-Fat Diets Make You Fat

FACT. When you compare carbohydrates, protein and dietary fat calorie for calorie, fat is more “fattening” because it’s less thermic then carbs or protein. The term thermic describes the “cost of digestion” of foods. When you eat 100 calories of protein, 20% or more of that 100 calories is burned away thru the digestion process. With carbs, it’s 7%-12% (depending on how empty or full your muscle glycogen reserves are), and with dietary fat, that number decreases to 4% or less. Moreover, the storage form of protein is muscle tissue. When you eat excess protein, it’s turned into muscle (provided you’ve trained hard enough); any further excess, of course, will be stored as body fat. The storage form of carbohydrates is muscle glycogen. If glycogen stores are close to full, again, the excess will then be stored as body fat. With dietary fat, however, the first place it’s stored is in the midsection, glutes, thighs, etc.
But let’s be clear here: We’re saying that high-fat diets make you fat, not that eating any amount of dietary fat will. Healthy fats in the form of egg yolks, nuts and oils like olive and fish are without question beneficial to a bodybuilder’s diet. Just make sure your daily intake of fat doesn’t exceed 20%-30% of total calories.

Drinking Water Can Help You Burn Bodyfat

FICTION. Granted, dehydrated individuals show a compromised metabolism – somewhere around 2%. This means a person who’s dehydrated will probably burn 2% fewer calories a day than someone getting plenty of H2O. “So if you consume 4,000 calories a day,” says Chris Aceto, author of Championship Bodybuilding and Everything You Need to Know About Fat Loss (purchase at Nutramedia.com), “2% of that is only 80 calories. That’s nothing. Yes, nutritionists like to harp on staying hydrated – and for a number of other reasons you should – but it does NOT play a significant role in burning more bodyfat.”

Great article & maybe this can help out many people who were curious about this. I'm always learning something new. 

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