Cutting out the Fat

Trimming Fat from Your Diet

By Crystal Patriarche

Everywhere you look these days, you see low-fat or no-fat – cheese, ice cream, yogurt, snacks, dressing. Watching the fat intake in your diet can help you lose weight and eat healthier, but you have to know what to look for and how to be smart about trimming the fat in your diet.

"Most people think salad is a diet food, but they really underestimate the fat content in salad dressing," says Judith Levine, registered dietitian and nutritionist for the American Heart Association in San Francisco, Calif. "And Caesar salad has four huge fat contents – anchovies, parmesan cheese, olive oil and egg yolk. That's a quadruple whammy."

Before jumping into a diet you think is low fat or trying to cut out fat on your own, first be educated about the fat in your diet.

"There are good fats in the diet that help lower cholesterol," Levine says. "But too much can increase weight so you have to be careful." Good fats are called monounsaturated fats and they are found in olives, olive oil, canola oil, nuts and nut butters and avocados. Experts say that monounsaturated fats lower "bad" LDL cholesterol and leave the "good" HDL cholesterol the same.

"I actually encourage these foods in the diet since they're good for your heart and they let you have fat so that foods both taste good and make you feel full," says Toni Bloom, a registered dietitian and owner of Toni Bloom & Associates, a nutrition counseling and consulting company also in the San Francisco Bay Area. "I don't encourage a low, low-fat diet."

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