Eating Fat Won't Make You Fat but These 10 Things Will

Eating fat won't make you fat. Too many calories can, but most "low-fat" or "fat-free" foods actually have just as many calories as their full-fat versions.Health has collected a list of 20 bad habits that can actually add to your weight. Here are 10 of them:

1. Eating "low-fat": Low-fat or fat-free foods replace harmless fats with low-performing carbohydrates that digest quickly, causing a sugar rush and, immediately afterward, rebound hunger.
2. Sleeping too little or too much: Dieters who sleep five hours or less put on 2 and a half times more belly fat, while those who sleep more than eight hours pack on only slightly less than that.
3. Drinking soda -- even diet soda: Drinking one to two sodas per day increases your chances of being overweight or obese by nearly 33 percent. And diet soda is no better.
4. Eating too quickly: It takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it's had enough.
5. Watching too much TV: A study found that overweight participants who reduced their TV time by just 50 percent burned an additional 119 calories a day on average.
6. Eating off larger plates: One study found that when given an option, a whopping 98.6 percent of obese individuals opt for larger plates.
7. Taking big bites: Research shows that people who take large bites of food consume 52 percent more calories in one sitting.
8. Not drinking enough water: Adequate water intake is essential for all your body's functions, and the more you drink, the better your chances of staying thin
9. Eating too late: A recent study found that those who ate after 8 PM took in the most daily calories and had the highest BMIs.
10. Drinking fruity beverages: All juice is high sugar, and the ones that use viscous syrups made mostly from high fructose corn syrup and thickening agents are even worse.

To see the rest of their list, you can click on the link below. Another reason you may want to be sure your diet includes healthy fats? A recent study investigated the effects of dietary medium-chain triglycerides on liver fat accumulation in growing rats with protein malnutrition. Weaning rats were fed either a low-protein diet or control protein diet, either in combination with or without medium-chain triglycerides.

After four weeks, liver fat increased in the low-protein groups compared with the control groups. However, the liver fat content in the low-protein group fed medium-chain triglycerides was significantly decreased compared with that in the other low-protein group.

According to the study:

"These results suggest that ingestion of a low-protein diet caused fatty liver in growing rats. However, when rats were fed the low-protein diet with [medium-chain triglycerides], hepatic triglyceride deposition was attenuated, and mRNA levels encoding CPT1a and CPT2 were preserved at the levels of rats fed control protein diets."