Research
Energy balance
The magnitude of weight loss from reducing fat intake is dose-dependent: greater reductions in fat percentage lead to greater weight loss.
If you want to lose weight by cutting fat, you need to make a substantial cut (more than 5% of your total calories from fat) to see a noticeable difference. Small tweaks to fat intake may not result in weight change. The bigger the cut, the more weight you are likely to lose.
WeakQualifiesHIGH confidence
Greater fat reduction and lower baseline fat intake were both associated with greater reductions in weight... subgrouping supported the presence of a dose response gradient in that studies that altered the total fat intake between intervention and control by less than 5% of energy had a negligible effect on weight, while greater differences in total fat intake were associated with statistically significant differences in weight.
Why this rating
Supported by meta-regression and subgrouping of high-quality RCTs.
Source
Effects of total fat intake on body weight
Lee Hooper et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2015
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd011834
Meta-analysis · 57 studiesCited 160×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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