How much fat should you eat?
Is “healthy fat” a contradiction?
Far from it. Fat is crucially important for so many different aspects of your health.
But from a macros perspective one of the most important things to consider when it comes to fat is that it should be your body’s main fuel source for pretty much every daily activity under 70-80% exertion.
The most a human can store in glucose (carbs) is a few thousand calories, meanwhile the leanest human body on Earth has hundreds of thousands of calories in fat in storage.
The range of fat we can consume ranges from the super low 10-15%, for a super high carb low fat diet like a bodybuilder diet, all the way to the other end of the spectrum with 70-80% of cals coming from fat in a ketogenic diet. Both can work, it just depends what the goal is (weight loss, performance, health, etc.)
For most people just looking for general health and wellness somewhere between 40-60% of calories is a good place to start, which amounts to about 100-200g of fat a day for an average adult.
Remember that fat has roughly 9 calories per gram unlike protein and carbs which have only 4 calories per gram.
Assuming 3 or so meals a day this amounts to 1-4 tablespoons of fat per meal. Remember that there’s roughly 14g of fat per tbsp, and that your fat will be coming from the protein you’re consuming (e.g., ground beef) but also the oils you use to cook with (e.g., olive oil).
2019 09 25