Want to know the best way to sabotage your weight loss goals? Start adding a bit of olive oil to your salads.

Whether the oil in question is cold pressed or not doesn’t make much difference.

The average American consumes 60 grams of added fat from oils, or an incredible 500 calories a day (1). If they simply stopped eating oil of any type, they’d lose one pound of fat a week.

Olive oil is very concentrated in calories, much more so than sugar. White sugar only contains 50 calories per tablespoon, whereas olive oil contains 120!

While most whole foods -even fatty ones like avocados, nuts, and seeds – contain a lot of calories, oil is 100% fat because all of its carbohydrates and protein have been removed, along with the valuable fiber, minerals, and vitamins it once had, making it a poor food choice.

Olive oil goes straight from your lips to your hips

Protein and carbohydrates both contain 4 calories per gram, while fat provides 9 calories per gram, which means that just a tablespoon oils packs in an incredible 119 calories. At 4,020 calories per pound, oil beats out even butter, which has only 3,200 per pound.

Most people don’t realize that even olive oil contains almost 15% saturated fat. This fat, consumed in excess, not only increases your weight, but it also contributes to a host of health issues, including arteriosclerosis and heart disease.

What about essential fats?

One of the bigger threats to our wellbeing is eating the wrong type of fat.

We do need some fats for good health (we’d die without it), but it’s critical that consume the right amounts of fats and in the right form.

Ideal health is achieved when we obtain a relatively equal balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats.

Unfortunately, our high intake of oils in its different kinds, along with animal products and processed foods, skyrockets our omega 6 intake, an issue that contributes significantly to the prevalence of inflammatory diseases and other serious health issues.

All plant based whole foods contain essential fats to a certain degree, and in the perfect omega 3/6 ratio.

Additional fats should come from whole foods sources such as: nuts, seeds, avocados, or fresh, young coconut meat that will satiate you, without compromising your health.

I don’t know about you, but before I adopted my diet of raw foods, I used to eat oil-based dressings on all my salads.

That is to say, I mostly ate dressings and very little salad. I never once added just a tablespoon. 5 to 6 tbsp. of oil was my minimum on any given salad.

What I ended up with was perhaps 100 to 200 calories of low fat, nutrient dense greens and 4 to 8 hundred calories of nutrient-depleted, high fat, high calorie processed oils.

I might have thought of that salad as healthy, but I was fooling myself.

These days I love eating plenty of greens with my salads and the right type of oil-free dressings that only use tasty, low-fat whole food ingredients that don’t leave me feeling bloated afterwards. I hardly use vinegar either.

Homemade salad dressings are also surprisingly easy to make, just get out your Vitamix out and mix it up.

Dressings can be prepared in a couple of minutes and you can store them and keep them in the fridge them for a few days without losing the flavour.

Nothing beats the taste of real, fresh salad dressings.

Eat Better, Feel Better

Are you looking for easy ways to boost the nutrition power of your meals? Check out our exclusive “no-oil” meals in the essential guide: Raw Dinner Recipes – Made in 5 minutes or less.

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