Trouble keeping my daily fat content down?

haikuka

Heya! I'm hoping I could get some advice from someone who's done this before. I'm on a 1700cal daily diet with balanced macros (45% carb, 25% fat, 30% protein / 159g carb, 54g fat, 128g protein) and I'm having difficulty keeping my daily fats down. Primarily because there's fat in the proteins I'm eating such as chicken thighs. Or I've used a teaspoon of oil to cook something.

Any suggestions on how to keep this down?

SuzySunshine99

Do you have a medical reason to keep your fat numbers low?
If not, there's no reason you can't adjust your goals to make it easier and sustainable for you.

cmriverside

I lost a whole bunch of weight on 1600ish calories. My fats were generally high, in the range of 45-50% for the whole time. Eating low-fat doesn't agree with me, and I found I felt a lot better on higher fat and just a bit lower carbs. It won't affect weight loss.

Alternately, chicken breasts have more protein and less fat per gram weight than thighs.

neanderthin

Look for proteins that have a high protein to energy ratio. This can reduce carbs and fat or both while still maintaining your protein levels. Basically as it pertains to fats these will be leaner cuts of animal protein and for plant soy would probably be a better than most sources. Cooking methods can also reduce fats.

penguinmama87

I wouldn't worry about it unless you're consuming so much fat you can't hit your other targets and stay within your calories. Like @cmriverside mentioned my fat intake is usually a pretty high percentage, but I hit my protein target most days so I don't worry about it. The carbs are less important to me as long as I'm getting enough servings of fruits and vegetables, which may not have a high carb count depending on what they are.

You can also pick meats and protein sources that are higher in protein but lower in fat most of the time. Chicken and turkey breast are good choices. You can sub in lowfat dairy options for their whole fat counterparts. Some beans and legumes are relatively high in protein and have almost no fat at all.

tomcustombuilder

Your macros look fine. Do you think dietary fat makes you fat for some reason? It's necessary for proper hormone balance

kshama2001

haikuka wrote: »

Heya! I'm hoping I could get some advice from someone who's done this before. I'm on a 1700cal daily diet with balanced macros (45% carb, 25% fat, 30% protein / 159g carb, 54g fat, 128g protein) and I'm having difficulty keeping my daily fats down. Primarily because there's fat in the proteins I'm eating such as chicken thighs. Or I've used a teaspoon of oil to cook something.

Any suggestions on how to keep this down?

For 6 months in 2021, I made a concerted effort to keep my fat under 30% and was able to do this while eating chicken thighs and using moderate amounts of oil. I'd like to look at your diary to see if there are any entries with errors that are giving you more fat than they should, and to make suggestions for swaps. Please change your diary settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)