The reason for this is obvious - we have been in a state of complete media overload, hammered with messages about how bad fats are for us, on a daily basis for many years now. Bodyfat, cardiovascular disease, diabetes... You know the list. This have given fat a rep at about the same level as Attila the Hun in a finer cocktail-lounge: Keep'em out, and make'em stay out.
Two words: Chill out.
Fat isn't the devil. In fact, you'd get sick, malnourished, and eventually die if it wasn't for the fat in your food. You need it, period. Like with everything else, it's only a matter of keeping things in a proper perspective, and maintain a healthy balance.
One thing that is true about fat is that it is the biggest bandit around when it comes to packing calories. For every gram of fat you eat, you get more than twice as much calories as a gram of protein or carbs. Fats have 9 calories per gram as opposed to 4 calories per gram for the others. Alcohol places somewhere in-between, at 7 calories per gram.
Keep things in perspective!
Now, what these figures doesn't tell you, is that there are different types of fat, with different properties. Likewise, it doesn't tell anything about the effects alcohol has on your hormone levels, nor the impact the carbs may have on your insulin levels.
Alcohol will put your testosterone and growth hormone levels out of whack for a good while (depending on how much you drink, of course), which could put your fatburn-capacity back for several days. If the carbs happen to consist of simple sugars, especially if taken on an empty stomach, you're setting yourself up for a major insulin-boost. Insulin effectively stops the possibility of effective fatburn, and instead opens the floodgates to fat STORAGE.
Bottom line: Facts taken out of it's proper context are misleading, to say the least.
"Bad" fat
You have to look at the big picture when you review your fat intake. What does it consist of? Saturated, unsaturated, or polyunsaturated fat? If there's plenty of the first, and little of the two latter, it's time for you to consider your eating habits. As a rule of thumb, it's the saturated fat that causes most of the trouble for people. Granted - all three categories yields the same number of calories - but they are very different when it comes to what they do once inside your body.
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