We have heard so many times that the way to lose weight is to limit our calories, fats, and carbohydrates. The bad fats are saturated and trans fats. The good fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats along with omega-3 fatty acids. If we eat too many bad fats we can be at risk for some diseases. While the good fats lower this risk. As weird as it may sound, our body needs some fat to work.

The good fats lower the bad cholesterol and raise the good cholesterol. Good fats can be found in a number of healthy foods. Monounsaturated fats are in nuts, avocado, olive and canola oils. Polyunsaturated fats are in salmon, corn oil. Saturated and trans fats raise your bad cholesterol. These are mainly found in animal products. Trans fats are found in commercially packaged foods.

How can we lower our bad fat intake and raise our good fat intake? When you use cooking oils use ones that are low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat; canola oil and olive oil are good alternatives. Even though saturated fats are found in animal products use low-fat dairy products and trim the fat and skin off meats. Also, by avoiding commercially packaged foods you can avoid trans fats.

We need the good fats in our diet. There are actually many health benefits. It has been recommended that we eat 7-10% of our calories in fat. We get important fatty acids, like omega-3 fatty acids which are found in fish, from the good fats. It is hard to get all of the omega-3 fatty acids your body needs from diet alone, taking a good supplement that include essential fatty acids is a good way of getting the proper amount. It is also important to take a sustained amount of omega-3 supplement, because it takes weeks for the tissues in your body to absorb the fatty acids.

The good fats also keep our skin soft, give us energy, and most importantly deliver fat-soluble vitamins. The fat-soluble vitamins include Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, and Vitamin K. These vitamins help your immune system, give you good eye sight, help build strong bones, and make sure when you are cut that you don’t bleed to death. Fat-soluble vitamins stay in your system until they are needed. Along with getting these important vitamins from foods, you can get them from a good multivitamin. Multivitamins give us the vitamins and minerals our bodies need that we don’t get from our foods. Essentially it fills in the gaps.

The best way of making sure you eat the good fats and avoid the bad fats is to read the nutritional label on the food. Look at the total fat on the label. Make sure it is low. The amounts of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated, and trans fats. By reading the label you can make sure you are cooking with the good fats and leaving out the bad fats. Here are three tips to cooking with the good fats. When you use cooking oils, use nonstick cooking sprays, and canola or olive oils. Also when you are cooking meat with fat on it, trim the fat off and grill or bake your meats. If the recipe calls for coating the meat use breadcrumbs and bake it.

Keeping the good fats and kicking out the bad fats will help your body to absorb essential fat-soluble vitamins found in our food and in multivitamins.