Testing the Fat Burning Theory

when we eat nuts we lose some fat in our feces and have our appetite suppressed, but studies suggest that this just accounts for about 70% of the disappeared calories in nuts. Unless all the calories are accounted for, then we still should gain weight after nut consumption, especially in the long term. But that's not what the studies show. So what happens to that last 30%? Nuts appear to boost our metabolism, meaning that when we eat nuts, we burn more of our own fat to compensate.

And indeed, in this study, those on the control diet were burning about 20 grams of fat overnight within their bodies on average. Not bad, that's like burning off 5 pats of butter. But the walnut group, eating the same number of calories, the same amount of fat, same everything, burned more like 31 grams of fat a day—7 or 8 pats of butter's worth. Not too shabby, or should I say, flabby. So the hard to crack nut of a mystery appears to have been solved...of all the calories you eat in nuts, about 70% of them apparently disappear through dietary compensation mechanisms, 10% are flushed away, and 20% may be lost due to increased fat burn, leaving us with no calories to pack on any pounds; just a whopping load of nutrition...and our risk of dying from heart disease cut in half.