Is This the Perfect Fat for Weight Loss?

Last week, I showed you how to discover the optimal amount of carbs you can eat.

This week, let me give you an easy trick to drop pounds fast. It has to do with what I think of as the perfect fat.

This perfect fat is none other than coconut oil. Yes, the oil that was ostracized decades ago because it’s a saturated fat is the perfect fat. In fact, one study showed that coconut oil can help to cure many cases of obesity. In this study, researchers at the Obesity Research Center at the Boston University School of Medicine looked at the effects of two different kinds of fats, medium chain fats (MCTs) like coconut oil and long chain vegetable fats (LCTs) like safflower, peanut, and corn oil, on 24 obese, nondiabetic men.

The researchers split the group in two. They gave half a diet high in medium-chain fats. They gave the other half a diet high in long-chain fats.

The study only went on for three months. Here’s what the authors concluded: “Consumption of a diet rich in MCTs results in greater loss of adipose tissue compared with LCTs, perhaps due to increased energy expenditure and fat oxidation observed with MCT intake. Thus, MCTs may be considered as agents that aid in the prevention of obesity or potentially stimulate weight loss.”

What can explain this remarkable result?

First, the researchers noticed that the people eating the MCTs had less hunger. As a result, they unconsciously ate less than their LCT counterparts. This hunger-decreasing effect is due to ketones. MCTs produce ketones, while the LCTs don’t.

Ketones are appetite-suppressing. Researchers have noted this hunger-reducing effect in other reports, such as the one published in the medical journal Experimental Clinical Cardiology. In that paper entitled “Long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients,” the researchers noticed that even when following patients over long periods of time (in this case six months), ketones still caused them to eat less food.

Listen to what the authors of this study concluded: “The present study shows the beneficial effects of a long-term ketogenic diet. It significantly reduced the body weight and body mass index of the patients.

“Furthermore, it decreased the level of triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and blood glucose, and increased the level of HDL cholesterol.

“Administering a ketogenic diet for a relatively longer period of time did not produce any significant side effects in the patients. Therefore, the present study confirms that it is safe to use a ketogenic diet for a longer period of time than previously demonstrated.”

So if you want to lose weight easily, there’s no better way to do it than by avoiding LCTs and instead relying on coconut oil. Yes, you can eat regular coconut and see some results. But because it’s the fat that has this effect, it’s better to cut to the chase and just eat the oil. It’ll work faster, and it’s easier (eating that much coconut is difficult).

However, you can’t just eat any coconut oil and see results. That’s because not all coconut oil is the same. There are two kinds of coconut oil. The one you want is organic virgin coconut oil. Organic virgin coconut oil comes from fresh coconuts with minimal processing. You can tell the difference just by the taste. It retains a slight coconut flavor and aroma. Organic virgin coconut oil is the highest-quality coconut oil available and has the best medicinal properties. But be careful.

The other form of coconut oil comes from dried coconuts, not fresh ones. The dried meat of the coconut is called copra. Manufacturers make copra from smoke drying, sun drying, kiln drying, or any combination of the three. And most commercial-grade coconut oils come from copra. When manufacturers start with standard copra, the coconut oil they extract is not suitable for consumption and must be purified or refined. This is because the way most copra is dried is not sanitary.

The standard end product made from copra is called RBD coconut oil. RBD stands for refined, bleached, and deodorized. They use high heat to deodorize the oil. Then they typically filter the oil through (bleaching) clays to remove impurities. This process removes the coconut taste from the oil. Then they use sodium hydroxide to remove free fatty acids and prolong shelf life. This is the most common way to mass-produce coconut oil.

But RBD oil or copra oil is not the one you should take. So, make sure you take organic virgin coconut oil. I love this type of oil – and so do my patients. You can eat as much of it as you want, but make sure you eat at least three tablespoons each day. I love it in my coffee.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD