Читать книгу The Big Healthy Soup Diet: Nourish Your Body and Lose up to 10lbs in a Week - Linda Lazarides - Страница 10

Beware of trying to cut corners by cutting the oils out of the recipes in this book. It is tempting to think you might lose weight faster if you do, but there are several special reasons why you actually need these ingredients.

Fats or oils slow down your digestion and absorption of other food ingredients. This is why they help to control your appetite—food takes longer to get through your system when it contains a little fat or oil. Most importantly, fats or oils slow down your absorption of starches and sugars (carbohydrates). This makes you produce insulin more slowly. Insulin is a hormone that carries out many tasks in the body. It is essential to help you turn carbohydrates into energy, but you don’t want to have too much of it hanging around. High insulin levels occur when you eat too much carbohydrate. They

 Raise your cholesterol levels

 Slow down your loss of body fat

 Encourage your body to turn calories into fat

 Encourage water retention (by slowing down your excretion of sodium)

Can you see why it is positively beneficial to have some fat or oil in your diet? But if your thoughts are now wandering towards a bar of chocolate, try to stop them. It is your meals (soup) that must contain the oil. Your meals must be as satisfying as possible so that you won’t crave sugar and high-calorie snacks between meals. The fats or oils must also be nutritionally useful, providing monounsaturated or essential polyunsaturated oils, and the retinol (true vitamin A) and vitamin D that your body cannot get elsewhere. The meal must also be free of sugary items, since these will push up your insulin levels regardless of how much fat or oil you eat.

I hope it is becoming clear that there is a lot more to fats and oils than just calories. In fact, used in moderation as suggested in this book, oils should really be applauded because of their ability to control appetite and prevent excessive insulin surges. In moderation, some oils (such as olive oil) are also very healthy in their own right.