There is an age old saying that goes along the lines that if you eat fat you will get fat so it really should not be that hard to understand that if you want to lose weight and not look fat then you simple need to eat less fat. There are various physiological reasons for this including factors like: fat containes more calories (9) per gram than protein or carbs, fat provides less of a feeling of fullness so more is eaten, and the way that your body is able to store fat much more easily than protein or carbs that all adds up to one important truth for weight loss; eat more fat and you will store more fat on your body. Of course you can put on weight by eating too much protein or too many carbohydrates but it is much more difficult for your body to convert protein or carbohydrates to fat for storage than it is fat so if you are overweight it is most likely because you eat too much fat. Numerous research studies have documented this fundamental principle for weight loss however some people continue to debate about how much fat is appropriate in the diet.^1,2 Part of the problem may have to do with the fact that there are different types of fat and some are good for you and can actually help you to lose body fat. However most of the dietary fat that people consume from food is saturated fat which is the bad kind of fat and should be reduced as much as possible if you want to lose weight. It will probably be much easier for you to substantially reduce the fat in your diet than you may think. For instance Milk is available in several versions with the amount of fat being the only difference. Skim Milk contains zero fat while 2% Milk is actually about 30 percent fat and whole milk is half fat in terms of calories. Just switching from drinking whole milk to skim can make a big difference in the amount of fat you consume each day if you drink a lot of milk. Start making the same kind of change with other foods that you eat and you can drastically reduce the amount of fat you are eating which will make losing weight much easier and your likelihood of success much greater.