This article has been Fact-Checked by Kendall Kennedy MS, RD, RYT
Losing weight can be a strange journey. One day you hear you have to avoid fat to lose weight, the next day fat bombs help you lose weight.
Fat bombs can help some people with long term weight loss but most people should avoid them when trying to lose weight.
Find out who could benefit from fat bombs when trying to lose weight, how it works, and when you should eat them.
What are fat bombs?
Fat bombs are the name for easy to consume snacks high in fat and low in carbs. Consequently, they are also high in calories without being that filling. They are mainly popular for people on the ketogenic diet.
To make a fat bomb you need ingredients with the right nutrition values. Some common ingredients are chocolate low in sugar, nuts, nut butters, butter, coconut oil and other coconut products.
To add a sweet taste to these fat bombs some recipes also use other sweeteners.
Depending on the ingredients fat bombs can help you increase the amount of healthy fats in your diet.
How fat bombs can help you lose weight
One of the benefits a lot of people experience on the ketogenic diet is feeling less hungry. With the common modern-day habits hunger is a big struggle point for many people. Their hunger system is deregulated.
When these people have less hunger they start to consume a lot less calories. This can be good but only up to a certain point.
By not consuming enough calories you can slow down your metabolism, you lower the amount of calories you burn each day. Consuming a low amount of calories can benefit your weight loss in the short term but sooner or later your metabolism will become slower and slower.
For long term weight loss it’s beneficial to lose weight at a healthy rate. That sometimes means consuming more calories even when you’re not hungry.
This is how fat bombs can help you lose weight in the long term. By increasing the amount of calories you consume to make sure your metabolism doesn’t slow down too much.
How fat bombs make you gain weight
If you are not part of the small group of people that needs more calories fat bombs will most likely not help you lose weight. Often they even make people gain weight.
Many people on the ketogenic diet think that calories don’t matter anymore. This is a common mistake. You can be in ketosis and gain weight if you overconsume on calories.
Fat bombs are usually high in calories and they don’t fill you up that much compared to many other foods. This makes it very easy to overeat on them.
You can certainly eat fat bombs and lose weight but they most likely don’t help.
How many fat bombs can you have on keto?
How many fat bombs you can have on keto depends on a lot of factors. Some of these include the rest of your diet, how many calories you burn each day and the recipe of the fat bomb.
In theory you could calculate all these numbers and see how many fat bombs you can have.
In reality this is hard to do and a lot of work. If you are easily losing a lot of weight on keto you can have a few fat bombs every day and see how that impacts your weight loss. If you are barely losing any weight it might be smarter to stay away from fat bombs.
Should you eat more fat bombs?
Fat bombs are only good for weight loss for a very small group of people.
Most people would benefit more from foods that are lower in calories and higher in nutrients.
This is all very situation-specific of course, it depends on what you compare with. If your choice is between a fat bomb, with nuts and black chocolate, and a snack full of added sugar with the same amount of calories, the fat bomb is most likely the better choice.
Some of the ingredients in fat bombs contain a nice amount of nutrients and the healthy fats will help you feel full for longer than the sugary snack. This goes for all people, not just low carb dieters.
That being said, there are better foods for weight loss than fat bombs, even on the keto diet.
