Sugar and Fat Goals

HG93022

Curious... if calories put in and taken out of your body are the direct relation to weight, then what does putting in fat and/or sugar directly relate to? These two areas seem to be my challenges.

JeffArmstrong112

fat and/or sugar are used by the body as calories and calories are calories (units of energy). If you ingest more calories than your body consumes then you put on weight.

It so happens than foods high in sugar are also high in calories, similarly, food with high fat content are high in calories.

For example, broccoli is a healthy food that is high in nutrients but low in sugar and fat, hence 1 cup in about 58 calories. 1 cup of walnuts is a food that is high in fat (healthy fat but fat nonethless) and has about 700 to 800 calories. 1 cup of maple syrup, which is mostly sugar is about 800 calories.

There is no easy way about it.

The added stress of high fat and high sugar is also implicated in the progression of type II diabetes which see onset after the age of 40 in most cases.

juggernaut1974

HG93022 wrote: »

Curious... if calories put in and taken out of your body are the direct relation to weight, then what does putting in fat and/or sugar directly relate to? These two areas seem to be my challenges.

Fat and sugar contain calories (9 cal per gram and 4 cal per gram respectively). You can't separate the two

lemurcat12

Those are nutrition goals. They aren't related to weight loss (except that what you eat might make it easier or harder to make your calorie goals or affect how you feel).

With the macro goals (fat, protein, and carbs), there are minimums that are important to hit for fat and protein, but MFP's defaults aren't that special -- there's a huge range of healthy macro breakdowns (which is why you can find some people doing well on low carb and some doing well on high carb and lots of us doing something like 40-30-30). Some will suggest that watching type of fat matters (the AHA still recommends keeping sat fat down, basically everyone recommends avoiding artificial trans fats), but on the whole macros is something I'd worry about once you have calories down and want to start experimenting with what makes you feel best.

Sugar is a problematic one because there's no actual recommendation for total sugar (which is a subset of carbs). There are recommendations for added sugar (either 5 or 10% of calories), but that's based on the idea that most added sugar will come from foods with not many nutrients but calories (like sugar added to beverages or sweet treats). The MFP goal is higher since there's no way to separate out intrinsic sugars in fruit and vegetables and dairy. So I always think it makes more sense to understand where your sugar is coming from and adjust if too much is from lower nutrient foods rather than worry about the specific number. (Many will say track fiber instead, as that will be a good way to see if your carbs are largely from nutrient dense sources like whole grains or beans or fruits and veg.)

HG93022

Wow, that is a lot of information. Thank you all! I will continue to take in the fat and sugar as data to compare with how I feel while keeping the calories at or below goal.