Outside of being high in calories, what else is bad about fat?

I've been having a hard time keeping my fat intake to 30-47g a day (which is what I should have given my calorie amount). I'm just curious: what's the harm of too much fat in your diet, outside of it being high in calories? For example, if I stay under my calorie limit all week, but I have around 80g of fat every one of those days, what would be the harmful effects?

I'm not trying to get out of keeping my fat intake down. I'm just curious.

Thanks for any input! :)

I believe that, in the long term, a diet high in fat increases your risk of cancer, heart disease and probably other diseases.

Also, high-fat foods tend to be low in nutrients like vitamins and minerals (obviously not all of them, avacados, coconut, etc., are high fat and also in nutrients), so if you are habitually eating high fat foods you would run the rist of nutrient deficiency. Basically, if you are at your caloric goals, but high in fat, theoretically anyway, you are eating low-nutrient high-fat foods instead of low-fat high-nutrient foods, and therefore missing out on key nutrients.

But don't forget that fat is also a vital nutrient, you need to have enough of it in your diet for you body to function properly.  It is best not to go below 20% intake of any one of fat, protein, or carbohydrate.

Actually nothing wrong with fats. They all got lumped in together in initial studies, but the ones that actually are linked to the kinds of illness bethym mentions are transfats and hydrogenated fats (found in processed and packaged foods).

The body can readily handle saturated fats in coconuts, avocados, meats and dairy just fine and it breaks it down into poly-unsaturated fats quickly. But it does seem to struggle with the fats found in processed food.

Whether to have a diet high in unsaturated and saturated fats is good for you or not actually has a lot to do with your genetic origins.

The Inuit (northern aboriginal people of Canada) have a natural diet extremely high in animal fats. When the Inuit move to western diets full of processed fats and sugars, they develop obesity and heart disease in astounding numbers. Yet on a traditional diet of primarily seal meat, no such health issues arise.

For most of us however, access to fats was limited for our ancestors so we are naturally selected to have an optimal intake of 30-40% of our calories coming from all fat sources.

Because fats and sugars were hard to come by in a natural diet, we are built to seek both of these items out. This is problematic in our industrial eating age where we can have both these things in overabundance. The industrial food chain has stuffed processed foods with both fats and sugars to plug in directly to our brain's predilection for them.

And this is why we now live this strange existence where we actually have to limit intake of certain foods to protect our overall health.

So long explanation for you and the conclusion is: choose unprocessed food sources of both saturated and unsaturated fats and try to have it form about 30-40% of your calorie intake.

And one final caveat: if you are looking to eat a diet high in fats because it means less actual food you have to consume (because fat has more calories per gram then say carbs or protein), then you need to address the underlying eating disorder. 

Wow, thanks for the in-depth replies everyone!

Hedgren: What would happen if I am eating non-processed foods (which I am currently trying to focus on) and still am going 10g or so over my 30-40% of fat? I guess that would be pretty hard if I'm eating right.

Really, all you'd need to watch out for is trans fat. Since this doesn't occur naturally, our bodies can't handle it. But we can process saturated and unsaturated fat. If you have an overall healthy and balanced diet, you should be getting a reasonable amount of healthy fat.

Try not to base everything on the numbers. You will have days that you go a bit over, and you will have days where you go a bit under. For my 2500-3000 calorie diet, I eat anywhere between 70g - 90g of fat per day. Most days I'll be pretty close to the middle of that range. But sometimes, like for a special occasion, I'll be in the higher end of the range, or even more...

You shouldn't notice any health effects from occasionally going over your normal fat intake. It's like when you eat over your calorie limit for 1 day. Do you honestly notice any weight gain from just 1 day of overeating?? Nope..

You know what? I was about to look over my journal and reply that I'm always going over a little bit, but I'm actually not. I actually AM going under some days, and pver on others, so I guess I really am not doing that badly! :)

I really don't count grams of fat. Instead, I focus on the % of my calories that come from fat and try to keep it between 20-30%. I know that 1 gram of fat has 9 calories so if I'm eating something that has 100 calories, I try to make sure it doesn't have much more than about 3.5 g of fat which would make 31.5 calories from fat. I also try to ensure that the trans-fats are kept to a minimum.

Original Post by trustymutsi:

I've been having a hard time keeping my fat intake to 30-47g a day (which is what I should have given my calorie amount). I'm just curious: what's the harm of too much fat in your diet, outside of it being high in calories? For example, if I stay under my calorie limit all week, but I have around 80g of fat every one of those days, what would be the harmful effects?

I'm not trying to get out of keeping my fat intake down. I'm just curious.

Thanks for any input! :)

 

Very little!

The only bad fat is transfats or hydrogenated fats which are only present in certain processed foods and overused/reheated cooking oil. They are the only type of fat which is both bad for you and easily avoidable if you eat real foods!

Short of that, fats may be high in calories, but they offer LOADS of nutrition, keep you full, prevent your body from thinking it's being starved, regulate blood sugars and taste good. So embrace your fats even whilst losing weight, just keep it to smallish portions, several times a day - like a handful of nuts/seeds, some PB, half an avocado, a drizzle of flax oil ect x

So the bottom line is if I'm eating healthy non-processed foods for the most part, I shouldn't be too concerned if my fat intake is a little more than 30-40% of my calorie intake once in a while?

Yeah!