28 Sep Are you getting fat?

Posted at 14:44h in diet, eating, overweight, weight loss by
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Alright, here is another one on the list of debunking some of the so called nutrition facts. Fat is not the big evil nutrient that packs on the pounds. It also plays a vital role in our health.  Like everything, please use in moderation.

Please be aware that fat is important but that most of us take in way too much of it and of the wrong kind. Most Americans take in 35% fat in their diet which is plenty (too much). Taking in that amount of fat blows any calorie intake up and makes weight loss almost impossible.

What are “healthy fats”? Healthy fats are usually mono- and polyunsaturated fats that you can find in vegetable oils. Saturated and considerably more unhealthy fats are connected to higher cholesterol levels and are usually found in animal fats, chocolate candies, fried foods and high fat dairy products.

Facts about Fat:

  1. Your intake should be around 15-30% of your daily intake
  2. Your fat metabolism is dependent on carbohydrates to complete the metabolic cycle. That tells you: Keep eating carbohydrates to lose weight!
  3. Fat supplementation in athletes does not benefit performance, quite the opposite it reduces performances significantly. Add fat only if the food intake should be >4000 kcal/day!
  4. Omega -3 and -6 fatty acids help with healthy skin, neural functions and reduce the risk for heart attack and stroke. You can find these fats usually in cold water fish (salmon, albacore tuna, atlantic herring)
  5. The average person has at any time roughly 50 000- 100 000 kcal of fat stored. That would allow that person to walk 500-1000 miles
  6. There are an additional 2000-3000 kcal of fat stored in muscle tissue.

Let me know if you have any questions regarding this. If you are interested in getting lean, flat abs and toned. Check out our personal training and our boot camps.

Michael

2 Comments
  • Ted Hessing
    Posted at 15:34h, 30 September

    Great post, Michael.

    What do you think about the recent Paleo diet movement? They seem to be fairly carb-adverse.

  • MichaelAnders
    Posted at 16:28h, 30 September

    Ted, that would be correct at first glance. But what they really restrict is not necessarily a certain macro nutrient but eating grains and processed foods. They stick primarily to meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, vegetables, roots, fruit, berries, mushrooms, etc.
    The diet even finds support within the athletic community. The diet is overall pretty healthy since it emphasizes organic and unprocessed foods. Depending on the training amount there might be a problem in eating enough carbohydrates via fruits, etc in order to refill the glycogen depots (especially in endurance athletes), but I don’t have an independent study on hand that compared this diet with others and their impact on performance. I disagree on the fact that fat should be unlimited, if it is coming from healthy sources. The difference in our society, we don’t hunt or gather our food ergo we burn considerably less calories doing it and the readily available nuts and meats from the supermarket will still lead to a fat gain if the calorie intake exceeds the expenditure. Overall it is a pretty healthy diet and I do not have a problem with it.