Do peanuts keep us fat?

YEAP, apparently peanuts keep us fat…. to my dismay!

I LOOOOOVE peanuts!

I missed them in the first 14 years of my life because they were not available (for my family and me) during communism time in Romania.

When they became available, I was hooked!

I adore them! 🤷🏻‍♀️

No, I won’t start the counting calories nonsense; we are NOT doing this under my roof!

It’s not because of the calories that the peanuts keep us fat, the mechanism is way more interesting than this.

HOW?

1. They are sooo damn delicious, and we tend to overeat them. They flood our brains with dopamine, and we don’t stand a chance in front of them. The crunchiness, the flavor, the saltiness will contribute to this. 🥜🤪

I can’t tell you how often I hear this from my clients: “Oh, I just ate a banana/ an apple/ a pear with PB. They are healthy, right?” And usually, “with PB” means at least 3-4 tablespoons fully loaded with it. 🤓 Especially after an already satisfying dinner/lunch.

If peanuts/almonds/nut-butter is a constant after your meals, ask yourself what’s going on there.

Do you REALLY need it?

Or is this a way of eating your negative emotions away and/or a way of eating waaaay above the comfortable fullness of your stomach?

1. Nuts in general, but peanuts, in particular, are extremely rich in omega-6 fatty acids. More than that, the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids is 1:5320!

There is nothing wrong with the omega-6 fatty acids, but the modern West-European/ North American -diet became extremely unbalanced regarding the ratio between omega-3/omega-6.

The latest studies have shown that our cell walls need a 1:1 or max 1:4 ratio. Our current diets provide at their best a ratio of 1: 15 to 1:25 in favor of omega-6 fatty acids.

This is another recently discovered mechanism for keeping the weight set point in the hypothalamus at a higher number.

Remember when I talked about the weight set point and that lowering our insulin/ becoming insulin sensitive will help us reset it at a lower weight?

Add to this the omega-3: omega-6 ratio as well!

The cell membranes are more “rigid” when they are built with the omega-6 fatty acids, and the insulin receptors are hard to expose on the surface of the cells.

More insulin resistance will result in a higher weight set point.

The problem, as you see, it’s not necessarily the lack of omega-3 fatty acids abundantly found in fish, green leafy vegetables, meat from pastured-fed animals but the imbalanced ratio between those two competitive molecules in our diets.

We EASILY get a LOT of omega-6 fatty acids, and the omega-3 are diluted and pushed away from the cell membranes.

So, yeap! Eating peanuts regularly will keep our natural weight at a higher number.

To my dismay. 😫

How is it for you?

Do you like peanuts?