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Minimum fat grams?
Replies
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Since this is "Nutrition Debate"...
Can the next person who posts a minimum amount include a medical journal or something substantive to corroborate the number or one that shows deleterious effects of having a fat intake as low as a certain number?
That's what we need to know: what's the minimum amount for hormonal function, vitamin absorption, etc.? Too many responses about personal preferences.
For example, if I said I highly prefer carb sources for satisfaction and wanted to lower my fat intake to 10% make room for them, could you say with confidence that it would be self-sabotage to my hormones and would you have a source for it?
I'm genuinely curious. The question about min. fat has always bugged me. I'm at ~25% for the fat macro but would lower it if I knew there were a lower floor.
I have been searching for some kind of medical journal for awhile on what is the actual gram or percentage to sustain hormonal regulation. I have never found a good source. Most source, like below suggest a range based on caloric intake.
http://www.usfsa.org/content/Fat_How Low.pdf
https://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2002/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Energy-Carbohydrate-Fiber-Fat-Fatty-Acids-Cholesterol-Protein-and-Amino-Acids.aspx
Yeah, believe me - I've looked around with an honest effort too and my findings can be summed up similarly to yours. None are really thorough enough to inform me through baselines and numbers what happens with hormones when they're compared with different thresholds.
Ah well. Thanks.
Unfortunately, I don't think you are going to find a precise answer to this. There is no baseline because there is just varying degrees of badness when fat intake goes lower than ideal.
When you get down towards the low end of recommended fat intake, you are already compromising your systems, and things just progressively worse as you go lower. For example, testosterone production scales roughly linearly for a broad range of saturated fat intake:
http://www.anabolicmen.com/fats-and-testosterone/
If you need to go low fat, then I think it is best to start with the expert's recommendations in the 20-25% of total calorie intake (usually in the 0.4-0.5 g/lb range), then experiment if you want to see how your body responds:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/fat-loss-for-athletes-part-2.html/
If you need to cut fast for a short amount of time, the lowest I see bodybuilders recommend is typically about 15% of total calories (or about 0.3-0.35 g/lb) before you start dropping a lot of lean body mass:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4033492/
If you don't care about preserving lean body mass that much, you can go a little lower before you start running into serious absorption and deficiency issues:
http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/05/vitamin-d-e-k-how-much-and-what-type-of.html
Are the grams per pound ranges that you're estimating above based on lean body mass or total body mass?0 -
ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/3/550.full?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1097233292054_2953&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&volume=80&firstpage=550&resourcetype=1&journalcode=ajcn
^ There's a surprising lack of research on fat minimums.
Lyle McDonald's recommendation from his Rapid Fat Loss diet seems to be that 3 grams of EPA+DHA is optimal.
http://www.lylemcdonald.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7360
To what extent do you mean avoid health issues? I'd believe that to some extent some hormones are going to be produced less in a deficit no matter what your actual dietary fat intake, which could be a form of health issue. On the other extreme to avoid dying, 0 is possible for a while if fat stores are sufficient, though not recommended. In between the two, hormone production and health related effects would vary based on a combination of current fat stores and dietary intake. The leaner the individual, the higher the total deficit, and the less the dietary fat, the more overall chance an appreciable decrease in fat synthesized hormone production.
I was thinking of some of the health issues that have been mentioned in this thread:
- vitamin deficiencies
- loss of lean body mass
- hormonal function
- formation of gallstones
- impacts on hair/skin/nails
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IDK...all I know is that when I went very low fat (because I didn't know better) I went for about two weeks or so before I started having all kinds of whack *kitten* happening with my body...for one thing, a lot of neurological type of issues like major mood swings, migraines (which I never had before), depression, I had a hard time thinking and problem solving and analyzing, tired and fatigued, I had a difficult time driving because I just couldn't stay alert, etc...I bumped my fat back up and all of that stuff went away.0
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DoctorShock wrote: »Since this is "Nutrition Debate"...
Can the next person who posts a minimum amount include a medical journal or something substantive to corroborate the number or one that shows deleterious effects of having a fat intake as low as a certain number?
That's what we need to know: what's the minimum amount for hormonal function, vitamin absorption, etc.? Too many responses about personal preferences.
For example, if I said I highly prefer carb sources for satisfaction and wanted to lower my fat intake to 10% make room for them, could you say with confidence that it would be self-sabotage to my hormones and would you have a source for it?
I'm genuinely curious. The question about min. fat has always bugged me. I'm at ~25% for the fat macro but would lower it if I knew there were a lower floor.
I have been searching for some kind of medical journal for awhile on what is the actual gram or percentage to sustain hormonal regulation. I have never found a good source. Most source, like below suggest a range based on caloric intake.
http://www.usfsa.org/content/Fat_How Low.pdf
https://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2002/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Energy-Carbohydrate-Fiber-Fat-Fatty-Acids-Cholesterol-Protein-and-Amino-Acids.aspx
Yeah, believe me - I've looked around with an honest effort too and my findings can be summed up similarly to yours. None are really thorough enough to inform me through baselines and numbers what happens with hormones when they're compared with different thresholds.
Ah well. Thanks.
Unfortunately, I don't think you are going to find a precise answer to this. There is no baseline because there is just varying degrees of badness when fat intake goes lower than ideal.
When you get down towards the low end of recommended fat intake, you are already compromising your systems, and things just progressively worse as you go lower. For example, testosterone production scales roughly linearly for a broad range of saturated fat intake:
http://www.anabolicmen.com/fats-and-testosterone/
If you need to go low fat, then I think it is best to start with the expert's recommendations in the 20-25% of total calorie intake (usually in the 0.4-0.5 g/lb range), then experiment if you want to see how your body responds:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/fat-loss-for-athletes-part-2.html/
If you need to cut fast for a short amount of time, the lowest I see bodybuilders recommend is typically about 15% of total calories (or about 0.3-0.35 g/lb) before you start dropping a lot of lean body mass:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4033492/
If you don't care about preserving lean body mass that much, you can go a little lower before you start running into serious absorption and deficiency issues:
http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/05/vitamin-d-e-k-how-much-and-what-type-of.html
Are the grams per pound ranges that you're estimating above based on lean body mass or total body mass?
Most are based on lean body mass.0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »IDK...all I know is that when I went very low fat (because I didn't know better) I went for about two weeks or so before I started having all kinds of whack *kitten* happening with my body...for one thing, a lot of neurological type of issues like major mood swings, migraines (which I never had before), depression, I had a hard time thinking and problem solving and analyzing, tired and fatigued, I had a difficult time driving because I just couldn't stay alert, etc...I bumped my fat back up and all of that stuff went away.
@cwolfman13 I'm curious what levels you saw these effects at.0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »IDK...all I know is that when I went very low fat (because I didn't know better) I went for about two weeks or so before I started having all kinds of whack *kitten* happening with my body...for one thing, a lot of neurological type of issues like major mood swings, migraines (which I never had before), depression, I had a hard time thinking and problem solving and analyzing, tired and fatigued, I had a difficult time driving because I just couldn't stay alert, etc...I bumped my fat back up and all of that stuff went away.
@cwolfman13 I'm curious what levels you saw these effects at.
@auddii I don't really know because I was just getting started with things in an effort to try to clean up my blood work and hadn't discovered MFP yet...I was just keeping a paper diary of the things I was eating overall...basically I was eating primarily fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein...I made every effort to eliminate fat...I wasn't cooking with any oils at that time and was steaming everything or eating it raw...I also avoided high fat whole foods like nuts and avocados and basically only ate chicken breast for protein. I wasn't eating whole eggs either, just egg whites and totally eliminated all forms of dairy...so, it was pretty low I suspect.
When I went to my doctor with my symptoms I showed him my paper diary and he asked me where the fat was and told me that I did need to have good fats in my diet. I had been under the impression that I needed to eliminate fat from my diet in order to improve my blood work...
I'm sure that my calories were probably a lot lower than they should have been as well and when I increased my fat, that bumped my calories up too...so who knows...was it fat or just an overall lack of calories? My guess is probably a combination.0 -
DoctorShock wrote: »Since this is "Nutrition Debate"...
Can the next person who posts a minimum amount include a medical journal or something substantive to corroborate the number or one that shows deleterious effects of having a fat intake as low as a certain number?
That's what we need to know: what's the minimum amount for hormonal function, vitamin absorption, etc.? Too many responses about personal preferences.
For example, if I said I highly prefer carb sources for satisfaction and wanted to lower my fat intake to 10% make room for them, could you say with confidence that it would be self-sabotage to my hormones and would you have a source for it?
I'm genuinely curious. The question about min. fat has always bugged me. I'm at ~25% for the fat macro but would lower it if I knew there were a lower floor.
I have been searching for some kind of medical journal for awhile on what is the actual gram or percentage to sustain hormonal regulation. I have never found a good source. Most source, like below suggest a range based on caloric intake.
http://www.usfsa.org/content/Fat_How Low.pdf
https://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2002/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Energy-Carbohydrate-Fiber-Fat-Fatty-Acids-Cholesterol-Protein-and-Amino-Acids.aspx
Yeah, believe me - I've looked around with an honest effort too and my findings can be summed up similarly to yours. None are really thorough enough to inform me through baselines and numbers what happens with hormones when they're compared with different thresholds.
Ah well. Thanks.
Unfortunately, I don't think you are going to find a precise answer to this. There is no baseline because there is just varying degrees of badness when fat intake goes lower than ideal.
When you get down towards the low end of recommended fat intake, you are already compromising your systems, and things just progressively worse as you go lower. For example, testosterone production scales roughly linearly for a broad range of saturated fat intake:
http://www.anabolicmen.com/fats-and-testosterone/
If you need to go low fat, then I think it is best to start with the expert's recommendations in the 20-25% of total calorie intake (usually in the 0.4-0.5 g/lb range), then experiment if you want to see how your body responds:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/fat-loss-for-athletes-part-2.html/
If you need to cut fast for a short amount of time, the lowest I see bodybuilders recommend is typically about 15% of total calories (or about 0.3-0.35 g/lb) before you start dropping a lot of lean body mass:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4033492/
If you don't care about preserving lean body mass that much, you can go a little lower before you start running into serious absorption and deficiency issues:
http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/05/vitamin-d-e-k-how-much-and-what-type-of.html
Are the grams per pound ranges that you're estimating above based on lean body mass or total body mass?
Those are for total goal bodyweight (can use athletic range for males of 6-13% according to ACE). In other words, what your total bodyweight would be if you were in the 6-13% bodyfat range. You need a decent idea of your current LBM to calculate this, but even if you are off by a little bit, you won't get a huge range in the number you calculate here.
The McDonald and Helms links I posted above only calculate fat as a percentage of total calories in caloric deficit, which usually works out to about the same g/lb ranges I posted. For direct references to the g/lb figures, they come from the bb.com macro sticky:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=156380183
and Aragon:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/553149-healthy-eating-101-improve-your-fat-loss-and-muscle-gain/
(note the gray sidebar labelled "The Eating Guide").
As I already mentioned, these lower limits will be highly dependent on individual response, so it is best to start conservative and experiment to see how your body responds. I would avoid pushing the lower limits unless you have a good reason.0 -
DancingDarl wrote: »Just want to note there is a huge difference between fat from say overdoing the oil,butter,fatty meats and something wholesome like avocado for example. I just don't like the idea that fat will make you fat. To be honest I do not pay attention to how many grams I take in but if I could take a stab in the dark I would say about 80g. That would be attributed to the fact that I eat avocado cheese and I avoid meat, in favour of lentils beans eggs, and I do not use oil in my cooking.
I do not like the fad of the 98% fat free dairy. It is nonsensical!
You are adding more sugar in replace of less fat, not to mention assuming the normal full fat yoghurts are bad which I actually think they are better on the whole.
Sugar is not added to dairy. When you remove fat you end up with a higher proportion of sugar. Because math.
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FunkyTobias wrote: »DancingDarl wrote: »Just want to note there is a huge difference between fat from say overdoing the oil,butter,fatty meats and something wholesome like avocado for example. I just don't like the idea that fat will make you fat. To be honest I do not pay attention to how many grams I take in but if I could take a stab in the dark I would say about 80g. That would be attributed to the fact that I eat avocado cheese and I avoid meat, in favour of lentils beans eggs, and I do not use oil in my cooking.
I do not like the fad of the 98% fat free dairy. It is nonsensical!
You are adding more sugar in replace of less fat, not to mention assuming the normal full fat yoghurts are bad which I actually think they are better on the whole.
Sugar is not added to dairy. When you remove fat you end up with a higher proportion of sugar. Because math.
Some yogurt has added sugar, but I think it is more kids stuff now that more adults are conscious of the low fat isn't low calorie food industry truck.
For most of the yogurt I've bought lately it has usually been like milk - low or no fat is just that with protein and carbs being held the same.0 -
FunkyTobias wrote: »DancingDarl wrote: »Just want to note there is a huge difference between fat from say overdoing the oil,butter,fatty meats and something wholesome like avocado for example. I just don't like the idea that fat will make you fat. To be honest I do not pay attention to how many grams I take in but if I could take a stab in the dark I would say about 80g. That would be attributed to the fact that I eat avocado cheese and I avoid meat, in favour of lentils beans eggs, and I do not use oil in my cooking.
I do not like the fad of the 98% fat free dairy. It is nonsensical!
You are adding more sugar in replace of less fat, not to mention assuming the normal full fat yoghurts are bad which I actually think they are better on the whole.
Sugar is not added to dairy. When you remove fat you end up with a higher proportion of sugar. Because math.
Some yogurt has added sugar, but I think it is more kids stuff now that more adults are conscious of the low fat isn't low calorie food industry truck.
For most of the yogurt I've bought lately it has usually been like milk - low or no fat is just that with protein and carbs being held the same.
Also the added sugar issue has nothing to do with it being low or no fat -- indeed, often those have artificial sweetener if it's sweetened, since people buying them want low calories. You can get flavored yogurts with sugar added in full fat or no fat -- totally separate thing.
People claiming that no fat or low fat milk/plain yogurt/cottage cheese has sugar added is so weird and a pet peeve of mine. It's an obvious lie if you bother to read labels at all.0 -
Plain yogurt has no added sugar. It has plenty of sugar, because lactose.
If you buy any kind of flavored yogurt, there's a decent chance it has added sugar. That has nothing, zero, zip, nada to do with whether it is 0%, 2%, or full fat.
The only milk I've ever heard of with sugar added was chocolate or strawberry, which is generally understood to be a treat and more often than not for kids (well, prior to the chocolate milk as recovery drink thing). The idea that skim milk has sugar added is so bizarre.0 -
I think plain Fage 0% or 2% is delicious.0
This discussion has been closed.
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