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DESIGNING A DIET
Designing the fat proportions of your diet is a little easier said than done.
But essentially it all depends primarily upon the type of diet you are following.
Some diets require a higher proportion of fat than others. This is of course
entirely dependent upon the result that you are looking to achieve. You must
first assess and set your goals. Whatever the diet regime you are following
there is of course a cause for fat to be included in there - even in the lowest
fat type of diets. There are no no fat diets that make any sense for health
or results. There is no place for no fat diets on this website as fats are an
essential macronutrient. More essential than carbohydrates. Remember, at all
times, that for proper functioning of your system, body and brain, you are in
requirement of the essential fats LINOLEIC ACID and ALPHA LINOLENIC ACID. These
fats cannot be manufactured from any other substace or fat and cannot be produced
by the body itself. This is what makes them essential.
On the lowest fat diets you are still required to eat at least 20grams of fats
a day. These should come exclusively from these LINOLEIC ACID and ALPHA LINOLENIC
ACID essential fatty acids. Any diet where the fat content is required to be
higher - on most diets around 70grams for women and 100grams per day for men,
then you should still primarily seek to obtain your fat intake from these essential
sources. When you look further into ketogenic, higher fat types of diets, it
becomes virtually impossible to avoid some of the other forms of fats. In which
case you should aim to consume unsaturated, poly-unsaturated fats and these
essential fats ffor as much of your fat intake as possible. Although there is
some evidence to suggest on a ketogenic diet that you can get away with eating
more of the saturated forms of fats.
On a 15% fat diet (this means that the rest of your total daily calories would
come form protein and carbohydrate sources - making upto around 85% of the calorie
intake) we would suggest the following:
2 Tablespoons of Flaxseed oil per day
2 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil per day
1-2 GLA capsules per day
1 Fish oil capsule per day
2 servings of oily fish per week
Keep all other fats to a minimum by eating protein sources primarily from fish,
fowl and very lean cuts of meat. Aim to ensure that all such foods eaten contain
less than 20% calories from fats. Remember to calculate the water percentage
of foods. This is a very clever tactic of food manufacturers to increase the
water volume of their foods to make them appear to be lower percentage fat than
what they actually are. There is in fact no such food that is anywhere between
only 1 - 10% fat. This is not true. To determine the true fat contents of your
food you are going ot have to become very good at scrutinising your food labels
and have a little math ready in your head. First of all ignore the fat content
per 100 grams of product. This is how they determine the fat content of foods
and is misleading. You want to add up the weight of the carbohydrate, protein
and fat only. Do not include the water weight of the food source. Once you know
the combined total weights of your macro nutrients, you need to determine what
the percentage your fat content truly is. So say you buy a product that contains
40 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of protein and 6 grams of fat. This means
that in total you have 51 grams of calorie providing foods. Your fat content
of this food then is 11.8% fat. If the manufacturer of that food had added 50grams
of water to their product or meat and thus made your totals out of 100 grams
then your fat content would misleadingly look like only 6% fat. This is almost
half. Remember, this is only an example. Much worse actually goes on when you
look at food sources in the supermarket these days. Remember, also to keep your
eye on so called low fat alternative products. The ones that claim that they
are 95% fat free! These again, employ the wonderful water weight trick and a
little manipulation of carbohydrate and sugars to make a little difference in
their products. You will find that what that clever advertising package is actually
declaring is that that product is still 5% fat in total after manipulation of
the facts. Once you have re-analysed the labels for your own purposes, you will
generally find these very poor and high fat products that are grossly misleading
the consumer.
As a rule of thumb, your diet should contain no more than 0.75 gm's of fat
per Kilo of bodyweight, ie an 80Kg person should keep fats to no more than about
60gm's of fat, even if this results in fat being less than 15% of total daily
calories. Especially when you are combining your fats in meals with carbohydrates.
When you are consuming a diet that separates your carbohydrates and fat intake,
such as the principles outlined within the insulin index then you can generally
eat a much higher degree of fat.
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