Switching to Coconut Oil

Recently I picked up a book called the coconut oil miracle.  It starts out talking about how coconut oil has been demonized in the past, which was news to me since all I've heard recently is how coconut oil is a healthier cooking oil and all the healthier recipes are made with coconut oil, but anyway, apparently coconut oil was demonized for being high in saturated fat.  The whole first part of the book is about debunking all of the previous myths about coconut oil and establishing a new fact which is coconut oil is actually the healthiest oil for you due to medium fatty acid chains and the way that they are digested in your body.  It claims that these chains are converted to energy instead of stored as fat, and you also get slightly fewer calories per gram of fat than with other fats (typically you get 9 calories per gram of fat and coconut oil is 8.6 calories per gram).  Not much of a difference, half a calorie but I'm more interested in the other aspects of coconut oil anyway. 

This week I am still hanging out around 145 and so I am tweaking my diet again trying to get my body to go down and head into the 130s.  Every one of these last six pounds I have lost (taking 144.2 as my lowest weigh in) has been a hard fought battle.  So this week I am increasing the number of calories per day back to 1700, but not adding in any of my exercise calories.  I am wondering if eating 1400 calories for a prolonged period of time is doing more harm than good since my body might think that it is starving.  Also, in the interest of making healthier food choices, I am going to start cooking more with coconut oil instead of canola oil.  I'm also eradicating my kitchen of trans fats such as crisco.  I never used margarine, so that isn't a problem.  With all of the information bombarding us about what to eat and what not to eat, I do think that eating natural foods is the best way to go.  You can't win them all, and we can only do the best we can.  So I'm going to give coconut a try.  I'm off to pick up some coconut milk to mix in with my smoothies. 

For the weight loss side the author does talk about how coconut oil actually boosts our metabolism for 24 hours after we consume it.  Therefore we are burning calories at a higher rate and we also receive an energy boost from it.  All good things in my book.  Whether or not the whole scandal about how the soybean industry demonized coconut oil to boost their own profits is true, I think that there are some great health benefits to be gained from switching to coconut oil from soybean oil.  I have no particular attachment to canola oil and I am ready to branch out and try something new!  And if it helps me in my weight loss while getting healthier all the better.