Healthy fats can help you burn more calories than eating carbs

Can’t shake your fear of eating fat? It’s true that fat has more calories per gram than either carbs or protein. So why doesn’t eating less fat — and therefore fewer calories — help you lose weight?

It may be because we often replace the missing fat in our diets with sugar. (Remember, our body converts all processed carbs, even wheat bread, into sugar.) When blood sugar rises, insulin spikes and drives all our body’s fuel into fat cells, especially around the belly. This triggers more hunger, cravings and overeating. Replacing the sugars with fats can be healthy and beneficial, and many resources such as keto calculators already exist to keep you on top of the calories from what you’re eating.

Surprisingly, new research shows that eating healthy fats can help you burn more calories than eating the same amount of carbs. It does this by shutting off hunger and cravings in your brain.