Low-fat diets and weight loss or weight

A diet that is generally low in fat can help you to lose weight, or to maintain a healthy weight. Maintaining a healthy weight will reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke, diabetes and certain types of cancer. There are other conditions in which a low-fat diet is of use, such as gallstones

If you want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories per day than you burn off in exercise. Foods which are high in fat contain a lot of calories, so cutting down on fatty foods is one way of losing weight. Very sugary foods also contain quite a lot of calories, but fat contains about twice as many calories as sugar per 100 g.

See separate leaflets called Healthy Eating for a more general overview of food and health, and Weight Reduction - How to Lose Weight which gives advice if you are planning to lose weight.