High fat diet

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Being a child of the 80's, I am trying to get past to "fat is bad" mentality. I love high fat foods & I always believed that was why I was fat. I've always been one to eat high fat foods over sweets. My question is - for those of you that have your fat macros set fairly high (say 40% or over; I am trying p25/f40/c35), what do you eat? Do you still stick with what most consider healthy fats - olive oil, avocados, nuts, etc? Do you watch saturated fats? When you do buy things like ground beef, do you go for the high fat version or the leaner? How do you keep within your daily calories? I have my calorie goals set at 1600 + most exercise calories. Since high fat foods have higher calories (ex. 75/25 ground beef compared to 93/7) I reach my goal quicker & feel like I can't eat as much, especially on days I don't exercise. Thanks for any advice!

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  • Red_Sparrow
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    I do a high fat diet, but not for more than several months at a time. I do try an include "healthy" fats, but I'll also drop a few frozen sausage patties and a pat of butter in my eggs in the morning, and if I'm coming up short for the day I'll put a tablespoon of coconut oil in coffee or tea in the afternoons.

    Keep in mind, fat is more calorically dense than protein or carbs, so 40% of your daily calories in fat is a lot fewer grams than 40% in protein. I figure you know that already but it's worth mentioning in case you're not tracking by calories and are trying to get 40% by weight. :D


    e - is there a reasoning behind the macro breakdown? When I've done a high-fat diet, it's been low-carb, moderate-to-high protein cyclic ketogenic diet, which is why I don't do it for too long. Just curious, I'm not familiar with other high-fat diet plans - but my recommendation when people say that they're hungry but are meeting appropriate caloric intake is, "eat more of your calories as protein".
  • jbwork
    jbwork Posts: 9
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    Well, saturated fat isn't good for you, but with the calorie restrictions you put on yourself, it will be hard to make those fat numbers really bad. Generally speaking, when you deal with macro breakdown, protein is the harder, and more important number to hit. That obviously helps with muscle growth/repair. I personally try to hit that number, and then fill in the gaps with whatever I want, staying within my calories limit. To me its like a game, I can spend my calories on boring chicken breast and green beans to help me hit my protein intake, and then have whatever else I can fit in, cookies, fruit, beer, chicken nuggets etc etc. You might check with your physician but I think the numbers for saturated fat are supposed to be less than 20g a day sat fat, and 0-ish trans fats.

    Thats the thing with all these "diets", its really about how you spend the calories, so if you eat high fat proteins, you're obviously going to be eating less food volume wise, and may stay feeling hungry. ex A whole can of green beans vs a mini-baby ruth candy bar, you'll likely feel fuller after the vegetables, :)