Lose Weight by Consuming a Fat-Rich Diet

It will sound like juxtaposition if we will tell you that certain type of fat could help you lose weight but researchers have observed it to be true. The new research have suggested that consuming a diet rich in certain kind of fat may actually boost your metabolism and help you shed those extra kilos.

The discovery by Texas Tech University nutrition scientists could suggest a diet regime that will increase metabolism and muscle fatigue in humans. Genetically modified mice have already been studied. The scientists were inquisitive about why skeletal muscles of obese people contained a particular kind of enzyme that breaks down saturated fat.

To test what that enzyme did, Paton's lab and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin - Madison genetically modified mice so that their muscles would constantly produce the enzyme.

"We used a transgenic mouse model, and we took the gene that makes the enzyme that's not normally expressed and took away it's regulation to make it active all the time," Paton said.

"What we found in those animals is they had a hyper-metabolic rate compared to the wild mice, increased energy consumption and greatly increased these animals' exercise capacity, said Paton.

Saturated fat is converted into monosaturated fat, which is easier to metabolise by the enzyme called SCD1. This enzyme is produced by the liver, depending on the fat content in the food consumed. Fatty adipose tissue produces it all the time as a way of regulating itself. Only in heavily exercised muscle tissue or in the case of obesity does skeletal muscle produce the enzyme, said Panton.

"We found in the genetically modified animals that they had a hypermetabolic rate," he said. "They were increasing their energy consumption, and they experienced greatly increased exercise capacity. For example, on the exercise wheels, normal mice fatigue after 7 to 10 minutes. The study was published in the Journal of Lipid Research.

Read more Health News.