So you’re interested in losing some weight, or more specifically some fat. The first thing you usually hear mentioned is calories – the simple weight loss formula all dieters know is ['calories in' less than (<) 'calories used'] = weight loss. This really IS the "magic answer" and should be remembered at all times… But if you do investigate further: is a calorie a calorie no matter what? Protein, carbs, fat… they all contain calories, so if I only eat 1,000 calories worth of bread (a carbohydrate based food) most days I should be fine right? Not quite.

When you start to experiment with your diet, specifically restricting intake/calories, you soon learn that the type of food you're eating has significant effects on your body. When you're eating plenty (or overeating) you usually get enough of everything, so you have the protein to build and repair muscle, the carbohydrates to give you energy, the fat to… give you energy as well? I always considered myself pretty knowledgeable on foods and yet up until recently I had no idea what fats really did – just a vague idea that they stored energy? Something like that, right?!

It turns out fat is the energy your body turns to when your blood sugar dips below a certain level. What keeps your blood sugar above that level? Carb intake. If you have too many carbs they get converted to fat to be used at a later date, too few carbs and your body starts eating away at that fat. So if, like me, you're following a diet that's not particularly high in carbohydrates: fat becomes very important!

So when you're using up all your carb intake (which may be restricted by your diet) you're not storing any more fat and your body is running off your fat reserves; excellent – I'll just do this forever, no carbs and watch that stomach melt away right? Not necessarily. There are a few things to consider here: firstly you can't just avoid all food, you'll die of malnourishment – may seem like stating the obvious but some people haven't a clue! You can try to live on just protein and vitamins (trust me it works!) but with that there are pitfalls: your body does need energy, it does need fat (not only for energy: fat does a whole bunch of other things, more on that later!) and eventually it's going to try to be economical with the nutrients and fuels it isn't receiving on a regular basis… so if you aren't eating any fat, but you're being "powered" by it, your body is going to try and "drive economically" and not burn off or use anywhere near as much of your stored fat as it could. This can make losing those last few vanity pounds extremely difficult – not good for the abs chasers amongst us!

The solution? You're going to need to need a small but frequent amount of fat in your diet. Now this is where the headaches start: not all fat is the same, there are saturated and unsaturated fats… Traditional advice has been to avoid saturated fats as much as possible (it's said to have various negative effects on the body) but more recently there's been some argument that a small amount of saturated fat, at least specific "cholesterol neutral" saturated fats, may be useful/acceptable. Either way you should do your best to stay with a larger portion of unsaturated fat – and if weight loss is your goal you ALWAYS need to remember that magic formula of putting less calories in your body than the number you use!

Now then some might want to go the supplement route for their fats and I'm definitely one of these people. One of the latest things I've been investigating is fish oil. I've often seen it mentioned on websites or health magazines – "make sure you're getting your omega 3 essential fatty acids", but it's usually without too much detail or simply a rather vague suggestion that it's "good for you". So I did a bit of research, stocked up on the softgels and started trying it. Firstly, here are the main things (well the ones I'm interested in) that intake of omega 3 fatty acids is actually *proven* to help with:

Optimal Fat Loss (for reasons including those outlined above)
Relieves/Prevents Joint Pain (Runners!!)
Improves Mental Health and Helps Counter Depression / Anxiety
Improves Skin
Lowers Cancer Risk Significantly
Improves Heart/Cardiovascular Health
Improves Brain Function

There are a whole bunch of other proven benefits (masses! all proven!! I find this extraordinary, hence double punctuation ) but those are the most impressive ones. Fish oil usually contains about a 1:2 ratio of saturated to unsaturated fat so it's a fairly good balance considering all the benefits and just as importantly you're taking in that essential fuel source REGULARLY so your body can cut away those last few stored pounds if that is your goal.

For me I'd say I'm already seeing the benefits: my stomach certainly looks leaner, my general sense of wellbeing is improved, my mood is pretty stable hahaha… it's also meant to make sticking to a diet easier as your stomach tells your brain that it's full when working with these fats – inclined to say I agree, though one day I'll have to write about my diet too… it's a mixture of the principles in Atkins, South Beach and mostly the recently popular Doukan diet – I'm not following any one of them and sort of figured things out myself but having read up on those diets they do have interesting nutritional basis. Just never believe the "you can eat as much as you want" line anywhere – sure it'd be hard to eat 3,000 kcals of salad (mostly carb based btw) but if you can manage it you're always putting on weight… unless you burn more calories than you eat of course. A calorie is always a calorie… but not every calorie is the same!