Hello. I had a question. I currently consume about 300g prot, 110g fat, and 200g carbs. I understand about healthy carbs and stuff, but I’ve read conflicting things about fats on here. Mainly, I want to know if saturated fat is bad for you. There was a thread here called “Why saturated fat”, and it had conflicting view points.
I’m trying to bulk, but I want to do it cleanly, and I understand the value of having fat in the diet. That’s why I wanted to clarify if I should be staying away from sat. fat. Most of my saturated fat intake comes from eating 8oz of ground beef.
Saturated fat is not bad, in moderation. Typically, we don’t need to go out of our way to get them in our diet (assuming you eat animal products).
For example, many people need to focus on eating more fish (salmon for example and other foods with omega-3s), but the vast majority get their fair share of saturated fat just from eating chicken, beef, eggs, etc.
Saturated fat is not bad. Most of saturated fat intake comes from palmitic (16 carbons) or stearic acid (18 carbons). These fatty acids have either no negative effects (palmitic) or slightly positive (stearic).
With ground beef, I would recommend lean over regular, but extra lean is only needed for those on lower fat diets or extreme cutting (contest).
The fat in ground beef is about half saturated and half monounsaturated with very little polyunsaturated. To balance, add a Tablespoon of ground flax to each 100g worth of ground beef and around 5-10g walnuts or 5mL walnut oil. This will lead to an optimal fat distribution of around 1/3 of each saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fat and an omega3:6 ratio of 1:1 or 1:2, which is perfect fat balance.
At 110g fat, you could eat up to 35g a day and still be fine, I would say 30+/- 5g per day is your target.
The fat in lean ground beef is around 40% saturated, with 22.3% as palmitic and 13.5% as stearic acid. That leaves about 4.2% of other saturated fat. There is also around 43% of the fat as monounsaturated which is very beneficial. Polyunsaturated fat is mostly linoleic acid and clocks in at 2.6%, so there is not very much POLY fat in beef, thus the flax and walnut recommendation to round this out while balancing omega3:6.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
Saturated fat is not bad, in moderation. Typically, we don’t need to go out of our way to get them in our diet (assuming you eat animal products).
For example, many people need to focus on eating more fish (salmon for example and other foods with omega-3s), but the vast majority get their fair share of saturated fat just from eating chicken, beef, eggs, etc.[/quote]
This all depends on the individual diet, however. Once you clean up your diet, you may find that you are getting far too many monounsaturated fats as compared to saturates, unles you’re eating full fat beef and plenty of eggs. Even then, I’d bet your monounsaturates are off the chart, especially if you’re using olive oil and other cooking oils.
Examine the sources of fat in your diet and try as best you can to balance them out. I actually cook with coconut oil because otherwise, my saturated fat intake would be next to nothing.
Edit: Yeah, what Peter Orban said.
My fat intake mainly comes from:
-8oz ground beef
-eggs
-fish oil
-turkey sausage
Then throughout the day I also consume:
-chicken breast
-cottage cheese
-whey protein
The additional foods don’t contain as much fat as the main intake foods. Anyways, how does that look for fat intake? I figure I eat relatively clean. My carb intake mainly comes from oatmeal and Surge, Surge PWO, oatmeal preWO. My protein is from a variety of sources, and it’s all pretty good.
That would lead to a quite balanced intake. Adding around 20-30g of ground flax would nicely complement that.
Taking NewDamage’s advice about coconut oil further, you could use butter and cocao butter as well for cooking sources of saturated fat, olive, macadamia, and avocado oil of mainly monounsaturated fat source, and walnut and grapeseed oil for omega6 heavier oils. Flax oil is omega3 predominant and should be used cold.
Most nut oils other than macadamia and walnut tend to be more evenly balanced between SAT, MONO, and POLY, with poor omega3 content and high omega6. This can be balanced by flax and fish.
Chicken also exhibits a fat profile like most nuts with a balance of fat types, but low in omega3. Pork is somewhere between chicken and beef.
In a diet that already has a varied fat intake, likely the SAT, MONO, and POLY totals will be roughly right with flax and fish oil intake correcting omega3:6 imbalances.
This would allow one to cook with different oils and fats throughout the day and keep in perfect balance the whole time.