Healthy Fats for Weight Loss After 30: What to Eat & What to Avoid

Healthy Fats for Weight Loss: What to Eat (and What to Avoid)

If you're trying to lose weight and feel better in your 30s, 40s, or 50s, you’ve likely been told to cut fat or choose low-fat options. Maybe you’ve swapped butter for margarine, or ditched red meat and full-fat dairy in favor of “heart-healthy” vegetable oils like canola or soybean oil.

Maybe you're avoiding fats because you think it's good for your cholesterol. 

But here’s the truth: healthy fats are essential for weight loss and overall health, especially when they come from whole, real, minimally processed foods.

In fact, your body thrives when you include the right kinds of fats in your meals.

Why Healthy Fats Matter for Weight Loss

• 🧬 Build healthy cell membranes
• 🍽️ Keep you full longer (especially 2–3 hours after a meal)
• 🔄 Balance hormones that control metabolism, energy, and mood
• 🌞 Help you absorb fat-soluble vitamins like Vitamin D, K, A & E

On the flip side, when you go too low-fat for too long, your body can feel drained, your hormones can become unbalanced, and your metabolism may slow down.

If going low-fat worked when it was all the rage in the 80s, then it would have solved the cholesterol issues. Yet, it hasn't. 

Which Fats Should You Eat—and Which Should You Skip?

Saturated Fats

Solid at room temperature, found in coconut oil, butter, meat, and cheese. These fats are vital for your cell structure, brain health, and hormone production.

Omega-3s

These inflammation-fighting, heart-healthy fats are a type of polyunsaturated fat found mostly in seafood like wild-caught salmon. They support blood flow, brain function, and a healthy response to stress and exercise.

❌ Industrial Seed Oils: Fats to avoid for inflammation

Canola, soybean, sunflower, grapeseed, cottonseed, and corn oils are highly processed and rich in omega-6 fatty acids, which drive inflammation when consumed in excess. Ditch them when you can. 

These fats also go through a heap of processing to get a vegetable into an odorless, tasteless, and colorless oil, which can leave a chemical residue and potentially increase the body's toxic load, driving down cell health, and bogging down the system. 

7 Healthy Fat Sources For Metabolism That Actually Help Burn Fat

🥩 Red Meat & Whole Eggs

Don’t fear these! They contain saturated fat, cholesterol, and omega-3s, especially when pasture-raised. These are the building blocks of hormones and cell membranes. 

The cholesterol found in food has been shown not to create a significant rise in blood cholesterol. Yep, even whole eggs daily. 

The liver pumps out most of the cholesterol in our body despite what's coming in from food. A sure-fire way to clean up cholesterol numbers is to reduce refined flour and added sugar. 

If you focus on a whole food, minimally processed diet 90% of the time, and include fats from real food sources, you don't have to worry about beef and eggs. 

🐟 Wild-Caught Salmon & Seafood: Some of the best fats to eat for fat loss

Packed with omega-3s, these fats help your body recover, reduce inflammation, and support your heart and brain.

Keep in mind, you'll typically get more omega-3s from seafood or pastured meat and dairy compared to plant sources like chia, hemp, and flax. The type of omega-3s in plant sources has to undergo a conversion process in the body, and many of the omega-3s won't be absorbed as optimally. 

There is no conversion process necessary with omega-3s from animal sources. 

🥛 Full-Fat Dairy

Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, heavy cream, butter, cheese, and ghee. These foods are rich in vitamins, minerals, and beneficial fats. If you can find “pasture-raised” or “grass-fed” options, even better—but not required.

Pro Tip: Add 1 tbsp of heavy cream to your coffee or tea if you’re low on fats that day. It contains choline, a brain-boosting nutrient that helps with focus and memory.

🧈 Real Butter & Ghee

Forget the fake, processed margarine. Butter has butyrate, a compound that supports gut health and reduces inflammation. Ghee, or clarified butter, is great for those who are lactose intolerant.

🫒 Olive Oil & Avocado Oil

Perfect for roasting veggies or tossing into a salad. These oils are minimally processed and high in monounsaturated fats, which support heart health and stable energy.

🥥 Coconut Oil & MCT Oil

Coconut oil and MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil are two of the most efficient fat sources for quick energy and mental clarity—especially useful if you’re following a low-carb or intermittent fasting lifestyle.

Coconut Oil is rich in lauric acid, a type of fat known for its antimicrobial properties and ability to support immune health. It's great for sautéing or baking thanks to its high heat stability. 

MCT Oil is a concentrated form of medium-chain fats extracted from coconut or palm. These fats bypass regular digestion and go straight to the liver, where they’re quickly converted into ketones—an efficient fuel source for the brain and body when you're low-carb.

📌 Pro Tip: Add 1-3 tsp of MCT oil to your Moontower Coffee or add it to smoothies for a clean energy boost without the crash. Just start slow if you're new to it—too much too fast can cause stomach upset.

A unique advantage of coconut-derived fats is that they have been shown to help with feeling fuller between meals. This is particularly helpful when you're dieting. You can find MCT oil in Moontower's Adaptogen Coffee Creamer. 

🥜 Nuts, Seeds & Nut Butters

Each one brings something unique to the table. Rotate them freely:

• Nuts: Macadamias, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pecans, cashews
• Seeds: Chia, pumpkin, hemp, flax
• Nut Butters: Just check the label to avoid added seed oils and sugars

Roasted nuts tend to have added oils, so check the ingredient list for soybean and canola oil as top offenders. 

When it comes to nuts, the best has to be Macadamias. They have the highest amount of protein, but the main benefit is that they have close to a 1:1 ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats in them. 

Yes, nature does have omega-6s naturally, and they're fine when they're from whole, real food as part of a balanced diet. But when you're concentrating omega 6s into highly processed oils, as Joel Salatin would say, "Folks, that just ain't normal." 

Final Thoughts: Fats Aren’t the Enemy—Inflammation Is

It’s time to reframe how we think about fats. The fats that come from nature—meat, eggs, butter, seafood, dairy, nuts, seeds—are not only safe, they’re necessary for sustainable fat loss, energy, mental clarity, and hormone balance.

What hurts our progress are ultra-processed, highly refined seed oils and artificial fat replacements that disrupt our metabolism and fuel chronic inflammation.

And when you add refined carbohydrate and added sugar on top of this, that inflammatory pathways and cholesterol numbers go haywire. 

You can eat real fat, feel full, and lose weight.

When you nourish your body with whole, minimally processed foods, you’re stacking the odds in your favor to feel good, think clearly, and thrive.

The body's natural state is health, and it's a master at homeostasis. It will fight to get back to a place of balance. We just have to get out of the way and provide the right inputs.

Including moderate fats from whole, real, and minimally processed foods is one way to get back to the natural state. 

Looking for more real-food nutrition tips?

Check out our blog and explore our line of functional drinks designed to support gut health, metabolism, and energy—without fake ingredients or artificial junk.