Manage Your Fat Calories and Reach Your Goals!

Saturated and Unsaturated Fats

You've probably heard about the detrimental effects of fat calories. But now you can use them to your advantage! The key is to moderate your intake of fats.

If you remember nothing else from this page, remember this...

Fats store more than twice the energy of any other macronutrient!

In fact, fats store about 9 calories per gram while carbohydrates and proteins contain about 4 calories each. So how does this work out if you're counting calories?

Let's say your average diet consists of about 2,000 calories per day. Since you should be taking in 30% of your calories from fat, that's...

2,000 Kcal/day x .30 = 600 fat calories/day

Since 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories, you can say that…

(600 fat calories/day) / (9 calories/gram) = 67 grams fat/day

This means that if you're eating an average of 2,000 calories per day, 600 of them should be from fat (30% of your caloric intake). By extension, it's also recommended that you get about 67 grams of fat/day from this 2,000 calorie diet. Remember, most of this fat should come from mono- and poly-unsaturated fats to keep your heart healthy!

Too many people out there make the mistake of misinterpreting these recommendations, claiming that 30% of what they eat should come from fat. Do not do this!

Energy supplies are not created equal!

Like I said earlier, nine calories can be harvested from fat, while only four can arise from carbohydrates and proteins each. As you can see, fatty substances are more "concentrated" with calories.

In contrast to dietary fat, carbohydrates and proteins use much more energy in their conversion to triglycerides (storage form of fat). In other words, it's easier to burn off calories from carbohydrates than from fats! Here's what I mean...

A study has been conducted at the University of Vermont comparing the differences in weight gain with respect to different diets. One group was given a high carbohydrate diet (high calories) with a modest amount of fat. Another group was given a higher fat diet with fewer total calories. Both groups gained 30 pounds.

But, under the higher fat diet, it only took 3 months to gain the 30 pounds while it took a whopping 7 months to gain 30 pounds under the high carbohydrate diet!

It took twice as long to gain the same amount of weight under a higher carbohydrate diet!

This means that the body burns calories more efficiently when subjected to a higher carbohydrate diet. On the other hand, the body is able to store fat more easily and is less conducive to burning calories.

Even though excessive consumption of carbohydrates and proteins can result in fat storage, a diet rich in fat (especially saturated fat) is more likely to result in weight gain. This is simply due to the increased concentration of energy stored in each fatty acid chain!

Use this information to manage your dietary fat. This alone can dramatically help you reach your strength training goals!

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