What the heck?!! How am I eating that much fat???

174 pounds and on a 1250 cal goal, cardio and weight training, wanting to drop to about 150 lbs, day 3 on my program and my Macros says over half my diet is fat!!??!! I am eating fresh, and still don't get it! Help!!
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Replies

  • juggernaut1974
    juggernaut1974 Posts: 6,212 Member
    Look at the individual food items and see which ones are high in fat.

    We can't see your diary (unless you want to make it public), so we can't point to specific items.
  • BuddhaB0y
    BuddhaB0y Posts: 199 Member
    Fresh doesn't mean fat free.... If you use oil and butter you can easily increase your fat intake.

    But without seeing your diary it's impossible to tell what you are eating
  • flaminica
    flaminica Posts: 304 Member
    Look at the individual food items and see which ones are high in fat.

    We can't see your diary (unless you want to make it public), so we can't point to specific items.

    QFT. The freshness of the food is irrelevant. The best farm-fresh grilled cheese and bacon on artisanal sourdough is never going to a low-fat lunch.
  • BuddhaB0y
    BuddhaB0y Posts: 199 Member
    flaminica wrote: »
    Look at the individual food items and see which ones are high in fat.

    We can't see your diary (unless you want to make it public), so we can't point to specific items.

    QFT. The freshness of the food is irrelevant. The best farm-fresh grilled cheese and bacon on artisanal sourdough is never going to a low-fat lunch.

    That does sound delicious though! Lol

  • flaminica
    flaminica Posts: 304 Member
    BuddhaB0y wrote: »
    flaminica wrote: »

    QFT. The freshness of the food is irrelevant. The best farm-fresh grilled cheese and bacon on artisanal sourdough is never going to a low-fat lunch.

    That does sound delicious though! Lol

    *sigh* Does it ever. :persevere:
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    edited January 2016
    It's pretty easy to do. On Monday I ate eggs, milk, cucumbers, kohlrabi, cottage cheese, avocado, butter, chicken (boneless skinless rotisserie), and sweet potato. 90 grams of fat. 810 calories.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    174 pounds and on a 1250 cal goal, cardio and weight training, wanting to drop to about 150 lbs, day 3 on my program and my Macros says over half my diet is fat!!??!! I am eating fresh, and still don't get it! Help!!

    Please go to http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings and change your Diary Sharing settings to Public.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    edited January 2016
    Off topic: is 1250 your net calories (eating back exercise calories) or no?
    Because either way, that sounds like too few for someone 176 pounds.

    ETA: such a low calorie count may be your issue.
    If you get enough fat for your size (60 grams would be healthy) that's 540 calorie. Not quite half but pretty close. And that's not an excessive amount of fat.
  • sullus
    sullus Posts: 2,839 Member
    It's easy to eat that much fat. 80-85% of the calories in a green salad with a standard vinegarette dressing are fat ...
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,159 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    174 pounds and on a 1250 cal goal, cardio and weight training, wanting to drop to about 150 lbs, day 3 on my program and my Macros says over half my diet is fat!!??!! I am eating fresh, and still don't get it! Help!!

    Replacing carbs with fats is the best way to lose for some of us. We just have to eat half the volume of fats to get the same number of calories as from carbs. In my case one carb begs for three more whereas one fat calorie does not beg for another fat calorie.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
    edited January 2016
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    174 pounds and on a 1250 cal goal, cardio and weight training, wanting to drop to about 150 lbs, day 3 on my program and my Macros says over half my diet is fat!!??!! I am eating fresh, and still don't get it! Help!!

    1. Fresh doesn't mean low fat
    2. Is fat a real goal for you or are you just concerned because MFP gave you a number and you're over?
  • Marilyn0924
    Marilyn0924 Posts: 797 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    Off topic: is 1250 your net calories (eating back exercise calories) or no?
    Because either way, that sounds like too few for someone 176 pounds.

    ETA: such a low calorie count may be your issue.
    If you get enough fat for your size (60 grams would be healthy) that's 540 calorie. Not quite half but pretty close. And that's not an excessive amount of fat.

    Speaking from a personal level, being a woman around that 176 pound mark and 'near' 50, at 5'3" and a TDEE of 1700 - 1800, with a sedentary job and overall sedentary lifestyle, trying to lose 1 pound per week, yeah, 1250ish is a reasonable deficit. OP is 57 and is just starting out, so is most likely to be in a similar position activity-wise. Making blanket statements without knowing a person's overall stats can be confusing for someone new to MFP...just saying.
  • jeriflyme2
    jeriflyme2 Posts: 6 Member
    I am a over weight by 25 lbs but carry it well. I have always had an active life style and built muscle mass 30 years ago as an athlete and spent 3 hours a day in the gym. Now at 57, starting back, with old habits( wine in the eveing) nothing excessive, but a glass or two. I am learning that I guess I don't eat as healthy as I thought I did, if it says over half my diet is fat!! I need to know some things to eat to jump start my weight loss besides scrambled eggs and salmon, which btw, I eat almost every day! I am happy that some of that old built muscle mass is starting to get its memory back though! Do love that IAM back at it
  • jeriflyme2
    jeriflyme2 Posts: 6 Member
    sullus wrote: »
    It's easy to eat that much fat. 80-85% of the calories in a green salad with a standard vinegarette dressing are fat ...
  • jeriflyme2
    jeriflyme2 Posts: 6 Member
    Ok changes out my setting! Ck out my meals and tell me what the heck IAM eating that's killing me!! After last night, the wine, IAM sure , is what killed me and put me .5 up on the scale this morning!! Ugh!!!!
  • besee_2000
    besee_2000 Posts: 365 Member
    Just because you are eating fat does not mean you'll get fat. You are still under 1250cal? Low-fat diets can easily gain weight if you miss your calorie target entirely. Maybe your diet style is just more satisfying with higher percentage of fat than say carb or protein. Some people thrive on it. It is true 1g of fat has more calories than 1g carb or protein but if you stick under your 1250 cal goal in the first place you'll be fine. Its like saying a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat. High fat does not always mean unhealthy, fyi.
  • DaddieCat
    DaddieCat Posts: 3,643 Member
    You're logging is spotty at best. Sure, you are logging things and seemingly weighing things, but many of your entries have empty macros. For example, you logged some 0 Protein bacon. I'd recommend attempting to find better entries to log.
  • vismal
    vismal Posts: 2,463 Member
    Just looking at two days, Several things jump out. First, on Thursday, you logged 1 cup of whole eggs. I would personally never measure eggs by the cup, I would measure them by the egg. The calories are roughly equivalent to 5 whole eggs. Did you eat 5 whole eggs? If you did, that's a ton of fat right there. Add to that avocado and full fat cheese and you've got a 50 gram of fat breakfast. Looking at the day as a whole it lacks vegetables, contains only 1 serving of fruit, and you use just about the same amount of calories for wine as you do for protein... I would increase protein, increase fruit and vegetables, and use lower fat options. Also, the options you pick in your food diary do not make sense. You log bacon by the gram. You surely didn't eat 3 grams of bacon. You maybe meant 3 pieces? Make sure what you log matches what you eat. The same is true for Wednesday when you logged nuts. You logged 1 gram of pecans. 1 single pecan may be more than a gram... so you need to pay closer attention unless of course you are eating just 1 nut and a tiny fraction of a piece of bacon. While there is nothing wrong with wine now and again, it should not make up 25% of your total calories as it did on Wednesday. If you drink wine daily, try and limit it to 1 glass a day.
  • jeriflyme2
    jeriflyme2 Posts: 6 Member
    Thanks! Learning ! Ok next question, how much protein do I need at one setting, and how much will that weigh? IAM I looking at 5 oz per meal of protein?? Don't know what the scale should be weighing, sorry if I sound stupid, just have never weighed my food!!
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    Off topic: is 1250 your net calories (eating back exercise calories) or no?
    Because either way, that sounds like too few for someone 176 pounds.

    ETA: such a low calorie count may be your issue.
    If you get enough fat for your size (60 grams would be healthy) that's 540 calorie. Not quite half but pretty close. And that's not an excessive amount of fat.

    Speaking from a personal level, being a woman around that 176 pound mark and 'near' 50, at 5'3" and a TDEE of 1700 - 1800, with a sedentary job and overall sedentary lifestyle, trying to lose 1 pound per week, yeah, 1250ish is a reasonable deficit. OP is 57 and is just starting out, so is most likely to be in a similar position activity-wise. Making blanket statements without knowing a person's overall stats can be confusing for someone new to MFP...just saying.

    Did I make blanket statements? I just said it sounds too low. Didn't say it was. That was also after I asked whether those were net calories or not (which was my main concern).

    I also didn't know the OP is female. For some reason I thought I was addressing a male (probably got confused about which thread I was in).

    Either way, 540 calories from fat out of a 1250 calorie budget shouldn't be cause for alarm.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    As some others have pointed out, you're using some odd units of measure (cups of eggs) and some entries that don't have accurate information. But if you look at your nutrition breakdown, you can see the foods that contain fat. Things like eggs, avocado, cheese, and (regular) salad dressings are high in fat. This doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad, but if you want to limit your fat, you will have to limit your consumption of these items.

    Are you weighing items? When I see things like 1 gram of pecans, that seems really, really low. It's possible that you ate 1 gram of pecans, but it seems unlikely.
  • jeriflyme2
    jeriflyme2 Posts: 6 Member
    The pecans where in the chix salad so not like a hand full of pecans , but I wanted to add the cal content
  • catt952
    catt952 Posts: 190 Member
    heck, i had a day the other week where i ate 214 grams of fat. if fat is 8 grams a calorie.. then that's like 1712 calories from fat. but i think in total i consumed 4000+ calories that day.
  • neohdiver
    neohdiver Posts: 738 Member
    The scale should be weighing everything you eat so you can enter accurate quantities. So when you have bacon and eggs, weight the bacon before cooking, choose the 1 gram serving size and enter the weight as the number of servings. Put your mixing bowl on the scale, tare it (set the weight back to zero) then crack your eggs into the bowl so you get the weight of the eggs. If you are adding more to the eggs, you can tare the bowl + eggs (weight goes back to zero) then add the next ingredient.

    For each ingredient, select a 1 gram serving size, and the weight of the item (in grams) is the number of servings.

    If you don't have a scale, use old fashioned measuring spoons and cups or the counted quantities and select those measurements for your serving size.

    As others have noted, some of your measurements are off. 2 g of bacon would be about an inch of a slice of raw bacon (Just as a ballpark so you know how much a gram is, a single almond weighs about a gram). The package will tell you the nutrition information for a slice (I'm suspecting you had 2 slices, or 3 slices on the days I looked at rather than 2 or 3 grams. (Each slice weighs around 28 grams).

    If you want to enter the pecans in the salad and you can't weigh them, count them. Each pecan half is about 1.4 grams. So if there were 5 pecan halves, you would add 7-1 gram servings of pecans (5 x 1.4 = 7)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    The pecans where in the chix salad so not like a hand full of pecans , but I wanted to add the cal content

    The amount on the salads I've seen is usually around 1/8 to 1/4 cup. 1/4 cup is around 25 grams. This would be around 171 calories and 18 grams of fat. That's fine if you log it, but I am quite confident that you had more than 7 calories worth of pecans on your salad. 7 calories of pecans wouldn't even be visible on a salad, I don't think.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    The pecans where in the chix salad so not like a hand full of pecans , but I wanted to add the cal content

    I don't have pecans on hand so I used almonds for this. Keep in mind that pecans are a bit higher in calories than pecans, at 6.9 calories per gram versus 5.8 calories per gram (USDA info.)

    First row, right to left: 1 gram of almonds, 36 grams of almonds (a scant 1/4 cup which is a serving per the nutrition label), 28 grams of almonds (serving size per weight based on nutrition label.)

    Second row, left to right: side view of 36 grams in the 1/4 measuring cup so you can see it wasn't stuffed to the gills, side view of 28 grams so you can see how much space was left in the cup. Note the difference in calories.

    wgicz5jq7g84.jpg
  • holothuroidea
    holothuroidea Posts: 772 Member
    As long as you're meeting your requirements for other nutrients and you feel good, there's nothing wrong with having a high fat diet.

    If you want to reduce the fat in your diet, though, when you create your meals only include one or two foods that are high in fat.

    So, for example, there is one meal in your diary where you had eggs with avocado, cheese and bacon. All four of those foods are good sources of fat. Try eating your eggs with salsa and spinach instead.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    Thanks! Learning ! Ok next question, how much protein do I need at one setting, and how much will that weigh? IAM I looking at 5 oz per meal of protein?? Don't know what the scale should be weighing, sorry if I sound stupid, just have never weighed my food!!

    Do you mean 5 ozs of meat or fish ? About 20-30 grams of protein per meal would be ok, which would come in 4-5 ozs of high protein food.
  • MlleKelly
    MlleKelly Posts: 356 Member
    Yeah, it looks like you're eating a lot of fat. Fast food scrambled eggs, avocado, caesar salad, bacon, cheddar cheese...None of these things is inherently bad on its own, but when you eat them all in the same day, you're going to have a high fat intake. I'm curious, though. What kind of bacon are you eating that has ZERO grams of fat?
  • loulamb7
    loulamb7 Posts: 801 Member
    jeriflyme2 wrote: »
    ... my Macros says over half my diet is fat!!??!!

    You seem to think that because you're trying to lose weight that eating fat is bad, it's not. You do not need to eat low-fat to lose weight, you just need to eat at a calorie deficit. Eating fat does not make you overweight, eating to many calories does.

    If you're eating 1250 calories with a 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat breakdown. That would be
    • 500 calories from carbs
    • 375 calories from protein
    • 375 calories from fats

      The protein and fat numbers should be considered minimums. Going over on proteins and fats is okay as long as your overall calorie count is at goal.