Good fats on a low calorie diet

jos28

I'm trying to lose 5kg and finding it really hard to make the scales move.
Female - 5ft zero - 60kg and want to get to 55kg.
I'm currently on 1200 calories per day and using MFP to keep track. I'm being good and weighing/recording everything and not 'eating' my exercise points.
Lots of the info I'm reading stresses the need to eat healthy fats such as avocado/nuts etc. My problem with this is the high calorie count of these foods.
If I eat an avocado that's a huge chunk of my 1200 daily allowance gone.

For example, today I did a 10k hike and was really tempted to bring nuts/dried fruit as my snacks but nuts are seriously high in calories. I ended up bringing rice cakes, apple, homemade protein balls (58 cals) and lots of water
Any advice much appreciated

rowanh

Fat has 9 calories per gram, where protein and carbs have 4. So all foods with a lot of healthy fat are going to have lots of calories.


If you are eating 1200 calories with a 30/30/40 macro of protein/carb/fat you need 360 calories from fat which is 40grams. So for one day you could have,

23 almonds has 14 grams of fat and 160 calories
100 grams of avacado has 15 grams of fat also 160 calories
1 Egg 11 grams fat 155 calories

40 grams of fat, also 21 grams of protein, thats 475 calories out of your 1200.

20 grams chedder cheese 6.6 grams fat, 80.4 calories
1 tablespoon olive oil 13.5grams fat, 119 calories
14 green olives 4 grams fat, 40 calories
10 grams chia seeds, 3 grams fat, 48 calories
2 tablespoons peanut butter 16 grams fat, 200 calories

43.1 grams fat, 488 calories

zbluebirdz

rowanh wrote: »

Fat has 9 calories per gram, where protein and carbs have 4. So all foods with a lot of healthy fat are going to have lots of calories.


If you are eating 1200 calories with a 30/30/40 macro of protein/carb/fat you need 360 calories from fat which is 40grams. So for one day you could have,

23 almonds has 14 grams of fat and 160 calories
100 grams of avacado has 15 grams of fat also 160 calories
1 Egg 11 grams fat 155 calories

40 grams of fat, also 21 grams of protein, thats 475 calories out of your 1200.

20 grams chedder cheese 6.6 grams fat, 80.4 calories
1 tablespoon olive oil 13.5grams fat, 119 calories
14 green olives 4 grams fat, 40 calories
10 grams chia seeds, 3 grams fat, 48 calories
2 tablespoons peanut butter 16 grams fat, 200 calories

43.1 grams fat, 488 calories

1 large egg has approximately 5 grams of fat and 77 calories. The figures quoted above is for 100g of egg.

Mellor

rowanh wrote: »

If you are eating 1200 calories with a 30/30/40 macro of protein/carb/fat you need 360 calories from fat which is 40grams. So for one day you could have,

23 almonds has 14 grams of fat and 160 calories
100 grams of avacado has 15 grams of fat also 160 calories
1 Egg 11 grams fat 155 calories

40 grams of fat, also 21 grams of protein, thats 475 calories out of your 1200.

That kind of approach is what leads people to over shoot their targets. By snaking exactly the fat they need.
by the time they have the other 800cals, they've taken in more fat. They've 50-60 grams of protein to go, which will likely come with some fat (if its a whole food source).


@jos28
The 1200 calories target is the most important number. Don't stress too much about snacking on nuts and avocado. As you pointed out they are high in calories. Just try to include some fat in your diet, and make sure you count it.
Eggs, some avocado in a salad, butter with veg on the side of dinner.

jos28

Thanks for all the advice folks. I think I'm just struggling with the numbers game. As Mellor suggests, I can easily keep track of the 1200 calories, I just get bogged down with the macro breakdown. At the moment MFP is showing an average calorie intake for the week of 1195 per day and 55% carbs/23% fat/22% protein.

I'm not body building or triathlon training, I'm just a middle aged woman trying to shift 5kg. I suppose it's difficult to get my head around the macros as I'd normally use the old fashioned approach and cut back on the bread/potatoes/pasta and up the exercise to shift weight. The scales are just not moving this time and it's doing my head in. Exercise wise I'm cycling 60-80km and doing 3 fast walks of 30 mins during the week. At the weekends I'll do one bigger activity such as a 10km hike or cycle over Howth Head. Maybe I need to up the exercise ?

conzy

That is a decent amount of activity and you absolutely do not need to add more to achieve your goal.

From what you have laid out you should be in a large calorie deficit. As frustrating as it can be to hear you are most likely under reporting your intake. Or eating additional calories from oils / sauces and meals out etc. Because your are light and need to eat a relatively low amount of calories, any slip up will punish you more. i.e its a bigger percentage. 25g of olive oil may only be 7% of my calories but would be nearly 20% of yours

You are also very light as is and are trying to lose an arbitrary 5kg of weight. What is the ultimate goal here?

I would worry less about the composition of your diet and worry more about creating an environment where you can comfortably hit your calorie goal each and every day.

Most important is total calories.

Then make sure you eat adequate protein. 1.5g per kg would be a decent figure for someone with your goals to eat. That would be 90g of protein.

After that the rest will just fall into place. Obviously vegetables and higher fibre foods are going to need to make up a large proportion of your diet for satiety reasons.

Another technique you can look at is intermittent fasting, this can be as simple as pushing your first meal out to lunchtime or not eating after 7pm. Or having a larger deficit on work days where its easier to manage etc etc. While this isnt magic it can be a powerful tool for controlling hunger and cravings

The calories consumed over a week / month / quarter determine your progress, not what you eat in a given day

Golfwidow

Apparently, we shouldn't be eating a whole avocado in one day!!

bee06

Golfwidow wrote: »

Apparently, we shouldn't be eating a whole avocado in one day!!

According to who? And why are they saying this?

jos28

conzy wrote: »

That is a decent amount of activity and you absolutely do not need to add more to achieve your goal.

From what you have laid out you should be in a large calorie deficit. As frustrating as it can be to hear you are most likely under reporting your intake. Or eating additional calories from oils / sauces and meals out etc. Because your are light and need to eat a relatively low amount of calories, any slip up will punish you more. i.e its a bigger percentage. 25g of olive oil may only be 7% of my calories but would be nearly 20% of yours

You are also very light as is and are trying to lose an arbitrary 5kg of weight. What is the ultimate goal here?

I would worry less about the composition of your diet and worry more about creating an environment where you can comfortably hit your calorie goal each and every day.

Most important is total calories.

Then make sure you eat adequate protein. 1.5g per kg would be a decent figure for someone with your goals to eat. That would be 90g of protein.

After that the rest will just fall into place. Obviously vegetables and higher fibre foods are going to need to make up a large proportion of your diet for satiety reasons.

Another technique you can look at is intermittent fasting, this can be as simple as pushing your first meal out to lunchtime or not eating after 7pm. Or having a larger deficit on work days where its easier to manage etc etc. While this isnt magic it can be a powerful tool for controlling hunger and cravings

The calories consumed over a week / month / quarter determine your progress, not what you eat in a given day

Thank you SO much for putting it all into perspective for me (and calling me light ). I reckon I could definitely be a bit stricter on recording the food diary. I want to lose the 5kg for several reasons, I feel healthier and more confident at the lower weight. I'm only 5ft zero and there is no where to hide the extra pounds (currently around my middle). I'm intrigued about this intermittent fasting - I could easily manage that on a couple of my busy work days. Not eating after 7pm would be easy enough too. Would do that twice a week help, do you think. 1 morning and 1 seperate evening perhaps ? I'm also happy to up the protein intake to see if that helps.

conzy

It's totally up to you how you structure it. Again you need to hit a certain calorie target over a week. I find it easy to be strict Monday to Friday. Weekends are more challenging because of social situations and boredom.

You could eat 800 calories on Tuesdays and Thursdays for example. And leave the rest of your week pretty much untouched and that would create a large deficit. Obviously you should eat around training etc. But you get the idea. 1500 a day for 7 days could be miserable.. but 800 two days and and 1780 every other day is the same calorie defecit and potentially more manageable

jos28

Definitely up for that, it would fit in well with my schedule. For example I do yoga on Mondays and never eat a big dinner that day. I could easily do 800 another day and it would certainly make the rest of the week easier to handle.
Cheers !

jos28

conzy wrote: »

It's totally up to you how you structure it. Again you need to hit a certain calorie target over a week. I find it easy to be strict Monday to Friday. Weekends are more challenging because of social situations and boredom.

You could eat 800 calories on Tuesdays and Thursdays for example. And leave the rest of your week pretty much untouched and that would create a large deficit. Obviously you should eat around training etc. But you get the idea. 1500 a day for 7 days could be miserable.. but 800 two days and and 1780 every other day is the same calorie defecit and potentially more manageable

Smiley face update !
I've taken the approach you recommended and the scales finally moved. I've lost 2kg since I last posted here.:D:D. I upped the calories to 1250 per day and (changed my activity level on MFP) I have 2 days per week where I'm way under that and then go over at the weekends. I'm still doing the same level of exercise and averaging around 1200 per day throughout the week. Absolutely chuffed that I'm finally seeing results. 2 down, 3 to go ! Cheers.

learn_more

All fats are good to me. I'm on Keto Just not the hydrogenated ones.

conzy

jos28 wrote: »

Smiley face update !
I've taken the approach you recommended and the scales finally moved. I've lost 2kg since I last posted here.:D:D. I upped the calories to 1250 per day and (changed my activity level on MFP) I have 2 days per week where I'm way under that and then go over at the weekends. I'm still doing the same level of exercise and averaging around 1200 per day throughout the week. Absolutely chuffed that I'm finally seeing results. 2 down, 3 to go ! Cheers.

Great to hear. I need to implement that myself now and lean out a bit for the summer

j@utis

you're already on very low-fat diet, why would you want to cut it down even more? It's recommended to eat 1g of fat per 1kg of body weight, that's to stay healthy, esp important for women. At the end of the day is the energy in/energy out game but certain nutrients might affect your weight loss more than others, e.g. less carbs in most people' diet would result in fat loss.