Lets talk about dietary fats
Today we’re going to talk about another macronutrient which is known as fat. Last time we talked about protein, which is pretty much the most important macronutrient when it comes to fat loss, muscle building etc.
When we say macronutrients we mean big nutrients and they’re the nutrients that we need in large amounts compared to vitamins and minerals which we need in small amounts which are called micronutrients.
So what foods have fat in them?
We’re looking at foods such as - olive oils, sunflower oils and other oils too, as well as avocados, butter, nuts, some meat and dairy products as well as other fats that are in processed foods too.
The functions of fat -
Fats are a large energy store as they contain 9 calories per gram - This is one of the biggest reasons why people tell you to have a low-fat diet when you’re trying to lose weight simply because, for every 1 gram of fat, you could actually have 2 grams of protein or 2 grams of carbohydrates
It provides insulation (brown fat) - So many years ago we didn’t used to live in houses all of the time so we needed to stay warm and brown fat was particularly important at producing heat in order to keep us warm
It’s protection but not just padding, it’s also an immune function role
It provides the building blocks for our sex hormones so for males and females to some respect so that’s with Testosterone, Oestrogen, Estrogen, Libido, Body composition. Males with low testosterone have been shown to have higher rates of depression. Oestrogen also has a huge impact on our mood. All of these also have huge overarching complications in terms of your functioning
Fat helps us to absorb certain minerals. There are fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K that we literally cannot absorb without fat and we actually store them within our fats so it’s important that we actually get a good spread of them
People also often forget this but it’s that fat is important when it comes to diet and they’re tasty too! There’s a thing about the palatability of fatty foods that’s just tasty to people such as foods like bacon
They can also help to provide you with some good level of satiety, not as much as protein but probably a little bit more than carbohydrates
How much fat should we have?
Well again, because fat plays such an important role, fats are what we call essential so you have to eat fats within your body otherwise they cannot function. The essential amount that we need is a tiny amount but that’s just enough to survive and not enough to thrive. I would recommend having somewhere between 0.5 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight and it’s kind of based on your preference but if you’re in that range then you’re going to be healthy and strong.
Now, there may be times when you’re looking to diet really hard and then actually you may take it below that 0.5 but not for too long of a period because that’s when there’s a possibility of some problems occurring.
For a 70kg female, it would be between 35 - 84 grams of fat per day so that’s quite a big spread and remember level 1 of our nutritional pyramid is Adherence so often at times if you like fattier foods we’d try to give you higher fats or if it’s more carbohydrates that you like then you’d have lower fats because at the end of the day it’s your calorie balance that’s important so it has to be right but if we’re looking at using the Pn portion control guide then it’s the one thumb of fat that’s classed as a serving of fat.
With fats, some are essential so you have to have them within your diet and there are some fats that aren’t essential so with them other fats we can synthesise them through other parts of our diet but there are some that are essential.
We have 3 main broad categories of fats which are -
Saturated fat - foods such as your cheeses, red meat, dairy, coconut oil. Saturated fat got a really bad reputation in the ’70s and ’80s and it was basically seen as the devil when it came to health and that has kind of been disproven over the years and almost where it’s gone too far and to the extent that people are thinking that coconut oil is this magic oil where we’re going to put it in our coffee or we’re going to cook with it and it’s going to help us lose weight and of course just because you eat more fat doesn’t mean that you’re going to lose body fat but know that they’re not the devil
Mono-unsaturated fat - these are what you find in the Mediterranean diet, the well celebrated Mediterranean diet and these are unsaturated. These are foods like avocados, almonds, olive oil. Normally saturated fat is solid at room temperature and mono-unsaturated fat will be more liquid
Poly-unsaturated fat - found in foods like salmon which has got a really important omega 3’s in and if you don’t eat that much fish or you don’t eat fish on a weekly basis then you might want to consider taking a fish oil supplementation which you might want to talk to your coach about. Poly-unsaturated fats are also in vegetable oils, nuts and seeds
Realistically we should be aiming for a good mix of all 3 of these fats and then we’ll be doing pretty well, in which normally we will get that from eating a nutrient-dense, varied diet. Remember when we think back to food quality and our micronutrients we’re looking for roughly 70% of our foods to come from natural and unprocessed foods and if we do that with good variety we’re going to probably be hitting these 3rds of each one.
Eat to burn fat?
This has been pretty popular as there has been this idea about which is that you can eat fat to burn more fat and this implies that because I’m not eating fat that my body just holds on to all of the fat that it’s got and so then if I eat more fat then my body knows that it’s getting fats in so it will then allow me to release fats from my fat stores. However, when you eat more fat you just burn more dietary fat so what I mean by that is if I eat more butter then my body will just naturally process and use more butter, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to the fat that’s within my body as they are 2 separate things. Although when people just say to eat more fat to burn more fat it makes it seem like because you’re eating more butter then you’re going to burn more body fat but this is just not the case.
If you burn more body fat then that will depend if you’re in a calorie deficit or if you’re in a surplus so if you eat more butter and that puts you into a surplus as in you are consuming more calories than you are burning then you are going to gain fat, however, if you decide to cut out all of your carbohydrates but slightly increase your fats that will mean that you’re eating more fat but you’re eating more fat in a calorie deficit and you’ll lose weight so there is no real magic to this idea of eating more fat to burn more fat.
What are our fat takehomes?
Fat plays a number of vital roles in the body and it is absolutely essential if we want to thrive
It is energy dense so we should be aware of our intake of it and again if you want to use a very rough guide then use the portion control guide or you can use the somewhere between half so 0.5 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of your body weight
Very low fat intake should be avoided, they may be necessary for short periods of time but they will not be healthful in the long run
Aim for a ‘balanced’ or varied fat intake so as long as you are getting a varied diet of fairly unprocessed foods then you’re going to do pretty well there
Eating more fat doesn’t mean that you use more body fat, again it all comes down to energy balance
Dietary fat, if you’re within your 40’s, 50’s or 60’s then you likely used to think that dietary fat was the devil because that was what people was brought up on, which is some now very misunderstood work that came from a gentleman called Ancel Keys and basically dietary fat was demonised but we now know that that is simply not the case