🥜Nuts will KILL your fat loss…

That’s something I've mentioned to a lot of people. Some agreed, some didn’t. Whatever your stance is on nuts, give this short post a read...you might be surprised!

Here’s my argument for both sides! 👇

Nuts are good for you. They are full of ‘healthy fats’. What does that mean? Why should I avoid them if they are good for me?

Well i’ll be honest, the title of this email was meant to be attention-grabbing (it must have worked if you’re still reading!😉). There are however good grounds to suggest dropping nuts from your diet will actually aid fat loss!

What is the ‘good’ fat contained in nuts that people always talk about?

Dietary fat is made up from two main sources; Triglycerides (about 90% of the total), and nutritions bad boy: cholesterol (i’ll go into more detail on cholesterol in a future weekly email).

Triglycerides are split into four types; trans fats, monounsaturated fats, saturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. I will be doing a full article about each of these types of fat which will be available soon. For now we will be discussing the ‘healthy’ fats which are found in nuts- monounsaturated fat.

Monounsaturated fat is usually what we mean when we refer to ‘good’ fat, with the primary source being oleic acid. Nuts are high in monounsaturated fat, however...so are most foods high in fat.

Most people will, whether accidentally or intentionally consume at least 20% of their total calories from dietary fat, unless most of this is margarine (which is high in trans fat) then chances are you’re probably getting a good amount of monounsaturated fat in there anyway. This means that the ‘healthy’ fats in nuts don’t actually mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things- people on the whole get enough of it anyway!

So why shouldn’t I eat nuts?

They are very high in calories and are very easily over-consumed! Have you ever seen a serving of nuts? 30g (usually a serving size) will be around the size of a golf ball. I.e about 4-5 Brazil Nuts or 12-15 almonds.

They aren’t actually very high in protein (around 580 calories to get 21g protein, as opposed to cod loin for example which would net you 22g of protein for a mere 100 calories: almost SIX times less calories!

They’re actually pretty expensive, especially if you’re using them to top-up your protein intake. You could get whey or vegan protein for much cheaper per gram of protein.

So there we have it. If you’re looking to gain weight of course then you probably should eat nuts seeing as they’re so high in calories!

Thanks guys!

Head Coach Andy