To monitor how much fat I eat each day, which should I focus on ?

opnion2013

All three are useful for determining the amount of fat (and total calories) you're eating, but if you want to use just one method then tracking fat grams is probably the easiest.

Dietary guidelines suggest that healthy adults generally limit dietary fat to no more than 20 to 35 percent of total daily calories.

To figure out how many fat grams or calories that means for you, start with the number of calories you normally eat or want to eat a day. Multiply that number by the recommended percentages to get the range of fat calories you can eat each day.

Here's an example based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Multiply 2,000 by 0.20 (20 percent) to get 400 calories
Multiply 2,000 by 0.35 (35 percent) to get 700 calories
How many fat grams is that? There are 9 calories in a gram of fat, so you divide the number of calories by 9.

Divide 400 calories by 9 (calories a gram) to get about 44 grams of fat
Divide 700 calories by 9 (calories a gram) to get about 78 grams of fat
So if you're on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, 400 to 700 calories can come from dietary fat, which translates to between 44 and 78 fat grams a day.

Fosterdog

It's great that you've worked all of that out and provided an example but in the real world people don't really have the time to have to calculate everything they eat like that. Especially with all the things you need to calculate in everything you eat (calories, fat, salt, sugar, correct vitamins and minerals)

Joining my fitness pal or other similar sites/apps will do the work for you and make it easy to monitor your whole diet at a glance, also giving daily and weekly amounts making easier to get a balanced diet over a week instead of trying to get a perfectly balanced day every day.

HappyMJ

opnion2013 wrote: »

All three are useful for determining the amount of fat (and total calories) you're eating, but if you want to use just one method then tracking fat grams is probably the easiest.

Dietary guidelines suggest that healthy adults generally limit dietary fat to no more than 20 to 35 percent of total daily calories.

To figure out how many fat grams or calories that means for you, start with the number of calories you normally eat or want to eat a day. Multiply that number by the recommended percentages to get the range of fat calories you can eat each day.

Here's an example based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

Multiply 2,000 by 0.20 (20 percent) to get 400 calories
Multiply 2,000 by 0.35 (35 percent) to get 700 calories
How many fat grams is that? There are 9 calories in a gram of fat, so you divide the number of calories by 9.

Divide 400 calories by 9 (calories a gram) to get about 44 grams of fat
Divide 700 calories by 9 (calories a gram) to get about 78 grams of fat
So if you're on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, 400 to 700 calories can come from dietary fat, which translates to between 44 and 78 fat grams a day.

If you're on a diet you also need to monitor carbohydrates to make sure that isn't too high either. Carbohydrates tend to be in higher concentrations in processed foods and they should be avoided when dieting.

If you aren't on a specific diet then any amount of fat or carb's is OK. There is no real need to limit it to an exact percentage.

WantToBeSE

Isn't it easier just to eat properly..everything in moderation?

want_to_save

sorry i have done most diets around and you will always get people saying - avoid carbs they are evil. I have to agree everything in moderation. If diets worked then we would all be slim and the diet industry would not make any money.

I have crohns and tried (yet again) to do SW from home and cant due to too much fruit/fibre/veg. So i have to eat reasonably healthy and exercise and try to consume less than i burn but i do not avoid carbs... life is tooo short!

theoretica

Fosterdog wrote: »

It's great that you've worked all of that out and provided an example but in the real world people don't really have the time to have to calculate everything they eat like that. Especially with all the things you need to calculate in everything you eat (calories, fat, salt, sugar, correct vitamins and minerals)

Joining my fitness pal or other similar sites/apps will do the work for you and make it easy to monitor your whole diet at a glance, also giving daily and weekly amounts making easier to get a balanced diet over a week instead of trying to get a perfectly balanced day every day.

But he hasn't worked it out - merely cut and paste from a website.

Why?

badly_dubbed

its fairly simple....

whole un-processed foods, single ingredients (i.e cabbage only contains cabbage...)

limit sugar and different types of it.

eat essential healthy fats, saturated fat is VITAL for a healthy hormonal system, endocrine system despite what the greater knowledge will have you believe...some really awesome (and very cheap!) fats are: lard, butter, ghee, dripping.

carbs arent evil...to most...a diet high in veg and some starches is great. you dont need as many carbs as you may think however...

dont forget a generous helping of protein.

just eat, real, whole unprocessed and NOURISHING foods, and you wont go far wrong....

i lost just over 10st just switiching to this basic concept, you could label it "paleo" if you wish (paleo imo is great, i just cant stand the paleo elitist that want to murder you for eating more than 50g of carbs)....i just tended to call it nothing...

CallaVandy

Ideally we should consume no more than 30% of calories from fat. Suppose you have a box of cookies with 6 grams of fat and 130 calories per serving:
Look for the number of calories from fat. You’ll find it on the nutrition facts label, but here’s how that number is calculated: Fat contains 9 calories per gram, so:
6 grams of fat x 9 = 54 calories from fat.
Divide fat calories by total calories, then multiply the result by 100.
So:
54 divided by 130 x 100 = 41.5 % calories from fat.
If we are monitoring our fat intake, we can exceed the 30% figure in some of our food choices so long as we try and compensate elsewhere, by picking a snack that is much lower in fat later—say, a piece of fruit or a fat-free yogurt.

heartbreak_star

Problem with fat-free stuff is it's full of sugar which is worse.

HBS x

NigeWick

badly_dubbed wrote: »

you could label it "paleo" if you wish (paleo imo is great, i just cant stand the paleo elitist that want to murder you for eating more than 50g of carbs)....i just tended to call it nothing...

:beer: I eat potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans & peas too! I call my version Primal Lite and I'm happy as a pig in the proverbial.

Have you read Perfect Health Diet by Paul Jaminet PH.D and Shou-Ching Jaminet Ph.D? Scientific approach that makes sense IMHO.

badly_dubbed

I have heard of Paul Jaminets stuff, havent looked into it bar hearing about the odd snippets from others, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain etc

Recently I have been listening to Ben Coomber's podcast as for the masses its alot less "sciencey" in its approach (Phil Learney on the occasion too he is really awesome in the training aspect).....Sweet pots and Parsnip are a fairly hefty staple for me to with the amount of cycling and resistance work I do.