Dietary fat made simple: a complete guide for adventure-lovers
(10 minute read)
Are you trying to build a lean, muscular physique? How would you like to optimize your sex hormones, improve brain function and speed up your recovery?
Then I’d recommend eating the right amount of healthy fat.
Healthy fats are nutritious, satiating, physique friendly and pivotal in promoting hormonal health. But not all fats are created equal. There’s a huge difference between healthy fats and unhealthy fats.
In this compete yet simple guide, I’ll show you. .
Don’t worry. Your diet doesn’t have to take over your life. I’ll show you some simple skills that you can practice to start eating enough healthy fat.
Is it easy? Nope. This isn’t a hack. It isn’t fad dieting. It’s learning how to make evidence-based nutrition work for you in your unique circumstances.
This article is part of a series that covers the three macronutrients and veggies. You can check out the other articles in the series with the following links.
Ready?
Great, let’s dive in!
Why does healthy fat matter?
1) Consuming healthy fats can help you build muscle and lose fat.
If you grew up in the 80’s and 90’s this is going to sound silly, but healthy fats can help you lose fat and build muscle. And there are actually three different reasons for this.
First, healthy fats can optimize your sex hormones. For example, higher fat diets tend to increase your production of anabolic hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, growth hormone and IGF-1, while Omega 3 fatty acids (e.g. fish oil) can increase testosterone production.
This can benefit your sex life and overall health, but it can also improve your physique. As you increase your testosterone, you are likely to build more strength and muscle. This can happen even if you aren’t exercising. You can think steroids, except the effects are far more subtle, and they will take weeks if not months to kick in. Therefore, you need to be consistent, patient and trust the science.
Second, some studies have found that Omega 3’s can help you lose fat. They do this by increasing your rate of fat burning and increasing your metabolism.
Third, increased dietary cholesterol seems to cause increases in strength and muscle development.
Take home message: if you want a lean muscular physique, be sure to eat enough healthy fats.
2) Consuming healthy fats can improve your health, performance and recovery.
Consuming enough healthy fat will help you perform your best. Fats play a key role in absorbing vitamins, brain health and cell membrane function.
Here are some examples. First, consuming 30% of your Calories from fat can significantly reduce your injury risks as an athlete. Second, Omega 3’s can protect you against excessive muscle damage.
Fats can also help you recover faster. Consuming monounsaturated fat and Omega 3’s can lower chronic inflammation helping you recover faster.
Take home message: if you want to improve your health, recover fast and perform your best, healthy fats can help.
How much fat should you eat?
The US Food and Nutrition Board recommends a fat intake of between 20% and 35%. Consuming around 20% of your calories as fat seems to provide a minimum-effective-dose for many of the benefits listed above. While consuming more than 40% of your calories as healthy fats is likely overkill.
This means that a roughly balanced diet (eating about 1/3rd of your calories as healthy fat) is a solid strategy. You will get all the benefits listed above, and you’ll be within the general guidelines of a healthy diet.
Can you eat too much healthy fat? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be easy. For example, even high fat ketogenic diets have proven to be healthy. If you are eating lots of plants, eating your fiber, eating the recommended amounts of protein, exercising, avoiding unhealthy fats and living an otherwise healthy lifestyle, even very high fat keto diets are generally healthy.
Tracking fat intake using Precision Nutrition’s Hand-sized Portions
Counting, weighing and measuring your food can be cumbersome. Fortunately, for most people it isn’t necessary. Instead, I typically recommend using the Precision Nutrition Hand Portion system. It’s simple, doesn’t require any measurement tools and ensures that you’re getting plenty of healthy fats.
Here’s how it works:
First, stick out your thumb. One serving of fat equals the amount of fat that would equal the size of your thumb.
This means you always have a way to measure your fat intake. You don’t need scales.
Moreover, your hands match your body size. For example, a 6 foot 5 inch man has bigger hands than a 5 foot 4 inch woman does. This means the measure naturally adjusts to your unique requirements.
Here are some approximations for you, so you can get a feel for thumb-sized portions of fat.
For Men:
1 thumb = about 1 tbsp
Each Thumb contains about 2g protein, 2g carbs, 9g fat, 100kcal
For Women:
1 thumb = about 1 tbsp
Each Thumb contains about 2g protein, 2g carbs, 8g fat, 90kcal
Second, when you sit down to eat or prepare a meal, estimate how many thumb-sized portions of fat you have. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Close is close enough. You’ll get better with practice, and eventually it will just be routine.
Third, aim to eat about 1/3rd of your calories from fat. So in the course of a day, your total thumb-sized servings of fat would approximately match the total palm-sized servings of protein and cupped handfuls of carbs. For active men, this will be about 2 thumbs of healthy fat per meal. Active women should aim for about 1 thumb of healthy fat per meal.
After that, monitor your results and make adjustments if needed. For example, if you want to lose weight, you could reduce your total number of thumbs of healthy fat by one or two.
Depending on your level of activity, bodyweight, body composition, training schedule and goals the daily total can definitely vary. For clients I create individualized recommendations that take their specific goals and circumstances into account.
What kinds of healthy fats are best?
Healthy fats vs processed fats
Healthy fats are less processed, natural fats, and they come in three varieties. Monounsaturated (olives, nuts, eggs and avocado), polyunsaturated (present in most foods, just focus on fatty fish) and saturated (dairy, meat, coconut or dark chocolate).
Ideally, you would eat a roughly even mix of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats from whole foods, but it isn’t worth tracking. Just be aware and aim to eat from all three types of fat.
Keep in mind that many foods are rich in both protein and healthy fats. Examples include eggs, fatty meat and fish. However, for the sake of simplicity you would track those foods separately as protein.
Processed, industrial fats are widely regarded as unhealthy. Trans fats in particular are simply unsafe. It’s best to minimize unhealthy fats.
Examples include heat-processed vegetable oils, anything with rapeseed oil, canola oil, hydrogenated or (partially) hardened vegetable fats and artificial trans fats, including margarine and processed red meats (sorry bacon).
If most of your fat is processed, you do not need to immediately eat nothing but healthy fats. Consider what you are ready, willing and able to do. Small improvements create results, and they lead to bigger improvements down the road.
What fat sources would you like to eat less?
What fat sources would you like to eat more?
How will this affect your shopping, cooking and family?
Make substitutions: you can pick one or two places to make substitutions. For example, you can substitute margarine with real butter or canola oil with avocado oil.
To help you get started, here are 5 Ways to add healthy fat to your diet.
Adding nuts or seeds to smoothies or yogurt.
Trading your normal desert for some dark chocolate (75% cacao or higher is best).
Eating more fish.
Adding olives and avocado to your salads.
Eating more eggs.
Should you consume fish oil?
You want to consume a minimum of 1-2 grams of EPA/DHE every day. If you are training and have a low body fat percentage (athletic), I highly recommend 3 grams.
Benefits of EPA and DHE
Optimizes fat burning
Lowers inflammation
Helps build muscle
Good for joints
Good for your heart and brain
You have two options here. Ideally, you would source this from fish. You can think SMASH for some protein rich super food: Salmon, Mackerel, Anchovies, Sardines and Herring. As an example, six ounces of salmon will get you to three grams of EPA/DHE.
Alternatively, you can supplement with some fish oil. Quality is important. Many fish oils are rancid. I buy liquid fish oil. If you purchase pills, you can try breaking one open and smelling the contents. You will know if it is not fresh.
Which cooking oils are best?
Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a solid go-to cooking oil. You can use it for dressings, baking and cooking at low or moderate heat. Moreover, olive oil is full of healthy fats.
Extra virgin means it hasn’t been processed or refined. Be careful with labels, not everything marked as extra virgin actually is extra virgin. Here’s a list of reputable brands in the US.
Because of its low smoke point, avoid using olive oil for frying or cooking at high heat.
Avocado Oil is another great choice, but it’s more expensive. It’s full of healthy fats and has a high smoke point, making it a great option for cooking.
Coconut Oil is good in moderation. It has a high smoke point, so you can cook and even fry with it. (Frying should always been done in moderation.) It is sometimes sold as a superfood. It isn’t. Moreover, it has a high saturated fat content, so it’s probably best in moderation.
Highly processed and refined oils should be minimized. This includes most vegetable oils, canola oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil and corn oil. At best these oils are highly processed and low in nutrients.
Thanks for reading!
Would you like help mastering your diet?
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And for those who want more, you can learn to maintain visible abs year round while living a real life with real responsibilities.
