Have you recently started a low fat diet and noticed a reduction in your sex drive or stalled weight loss? Low fat diets can wreak havoc on your libido and halt weight loss. Your quest to shed pounds is doing just the opposite and killing your libido as well. You may not believe it, but is certainly true and has been validated by several scientific studies. Eating fats, healthy fats that is, are essential to having a healthy sex drive and sustained weight loss. You cannot enjoy a full sex life, nor have a sexy body, until your diet contains all the essential nutrients in sufficient amounts…including fat.
Considering fats a hindrance in the way to a perfectly shaped body is a fallacy that we have all been sucked into at some point. However, when it comes to fats; the logic is a bit counter-intuitive. Having no fat in your diet will do more harm than good to your body as it pertains to your libido and weight loss.
Hormonal factors are one of the most significant factors as it pertains to your sex drive. Sex hormones play a pivotal role in altering the intensity of libido. Testosterone is the main sex hormone that controls the libido in both sexes. But in women estrogen hormones level are also involved in triggering the sex drive. The higher the levels of these sex hormones, the stronger will be the sex drive. These sex hormones are secreted by testis in males and ovaries in females.
These sex hormones are nothing else but the derivatives of fats and cholesterol molecules. Fats are actually used in the synthesis of sex hormones. No fats mean your body won’t be able to synthesize the sex hormones. So eliminating fats in your diet will eventually diminish your sex drive.
Being weight conscious is good for health but strict dieting or fat restriction is not the solution. In addition to depriving your sex hormones of the nutrients they need to function properly, low fat diets impede your weight loss efforts. Many foods that have very low or no dietary fat contain higher amounts of carbohydrates. After you eat a high carb meal, your insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops. This triggers hunger and makes you crave more carbs. Dietary fats tend to satisfy you longer an equal amount of carbohydrate calories. For this reason higher carb diets (typical low fat diets), can lead to slow gradual weight gain because of the increase in appetite.
Dietary fat is essential for a healthy sex drive and sustained weight loss. What’s magic number of fat grams to be consumed…it all depends on you. You need to listen to your body. This is the case when entering any type of diet plan whether it is low fat, low carb, etc. Your body is much smarter than you are. It will let you know if your new and great detox, cleanse, or diet protocol is not working out by not functioning properly. By improper function I mean, weight gain, mood swings, libido loss, fatigue, etc. Also, most diets that completely look to eliminate one complete source of macro nutrients, fats, for example, should be taken under advisement.
Let me know what you think. Have you been on a low fat diet and loss your libido or failed to lose any weight?
Till next time…
Melinda