EFA:

Should you incorporate Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) into your diet?

DO NOT fill out this questionnaire unless instructed by your Success Meals representative. This questionnaire is to be completed only when additional information is needed to help us further determine whether or not you require additional nutrients, additional ratio adjustments or additional caloric intake modifications in order to ensure that you get the most out of your Success Meals program.

Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), also referred to as the "good" fats, are essential or necessary fats that the body must have to sustain life, and can be attained only through the diet. There are two families of EFAs: Omega-3 and Omega-6. There is an Omega-9 as well however it is "non-essential" because the body can manufacture a modest amount on its own.

EFA deficiency is common in American, particularly Omega-3 deficiency. Gone are the days of eating simple diets full of fish, seeds and nuts. Today, diets are typically made up of high calorie, low quality, processed foods, which contribute little to no nutritional value. Accordingly, essential fats have since been replaced with unhealthy saturated and trans fats.

Essential fatty acids aid in a number of health benefits, such as. Supporting the cardiovascular, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Essential fatty acids must be present in the diet in order for the body to manufacture and repair cell membranes, thus enabling the body's cells to obtain optimum nutrition and expel harmful waste products. EFAs also produce a hormone that helps regulate major body functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood clotting, fertility and conception, as well as playing a role in immune function by regulating inflammation and encouraging the body to fight infection. EFA's aid in lowering LDL's, the "bad" cholesterol", reduces the risk of developing type II diabetes and heals skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema. Essential fats also contribute to a healthy diet and weight loss by stabilizing blood sugar levels, which promotes fat burning, whereas high blood sugars promotes fat storage. In addition stable blood sugars provide satiation, as a result you get full by eating less, which inhibits food cravings and prevents overeating.

Because of society's fear of fats or uncertainty of which fats are ok to eat, many people attempting to lose weight avoid fats altogether. Not getting enough fat in the diet can be as damaging as getting too much. EFA deficiency is linked with serious health conditions, such as heart attacks, cancer, insulin resistance, asthma, depression, accelerated aging, stroke, obesity, diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer's disease just to name a few.

You need not worry about gaining fat by including essential fats in your diet. When these good fats are metabolized in the body they behave more like a carbohydrate then a fat. Essential fats do not go through the lymphatic system rather they're absorbed into the bloodstream bypassing the digestion process that longer chain conventional fats go through. From there, they're transported directly to the liver where they're metabolized and released to meet the body's energy demands, much the same as the process in which carbohydrates are converted into energy.

A diet that's deficient in EFA's can compromise ones health and weight loss objectives and, over time even result in the contraction of a major illness or subsequent disease. Complete the "Deficiency Questionnaire" to see if your diet may be deficient in essential fatty acids. If you answer "true" to 6 or more of the 10 questions there's a good chance that your diet is lacking in essential fatty acids and therefore you should incorporate foods yielding high amounts of essential fatty acids (walnuts, almonds, oily fish) into your diet or purchase an essential fatty acid supplement at your local health food store.

This questionnaire is to be completed only when specified by your Success Meals ™ representative. The sign up questionnaire has specific questions designed to indicate whether or not there's a possibility that, for example, your body is deficient in essential fatty acids, you're carbohydrate sensitive or that you may struggle with adhering to the Success Meals program due to signs indicating that your reasons for doing this program may not be valid. As a result you may lose your motivation and consequently fail to comply to the structure of this program in the upcoming weeks.

If your answers to the sign up questionnaire indicate one or more of the above outcomes you will then be asked to complete one or more of the subsidiary questions.

EFA deficiency Questionnaire

Listed below are ailments indicative of a diet that is deficient in essential fatty acids.

Because the majority of these symptoms are on the vague side, and because there are often other explanations for them as well, diagnosing an EFA-deficiency can be tricky. However, it is not uncommon for someone who notices even a few of these symptoms cropping up to start looking and feeling a lot better just a few short weeks after incorporating EFA-rich foods or supplements (i.e. flaxseed oil) into their diet.