Eating Too Much Fat!

We're getting fat by eating too much fat and too much corn syrup.

Yesterday I came across this book: The Fat to Muscle Diet by Dr. Vash

I definitely recommend checking out this book! It's really inexpensive and contains a wealth of information. I never thought about how much fat I eat because I consider myself a fairly healthy eater. This book was an eye opener!

I'll admit I had low expectations of the book because the cover looked like a "fad" diet. And since I've mentioned I don't do "diets" but just try to eat a healthy diet of food I was just glimpsing at the book because in the introduction it had a way to measure your body fat. I've always wondered how to do that without one of those weird fat squeezing gauges they used in school.

It's very simple actually. The book contained a chart to calculate your body fat.

Here's the chart for women:



Here's a link for the Chart for Men

What you do is take a piece of paper and diagonally line up the size of your hips to your height in inches.

My starting hip measurement was literally off the chart - at 45 inches - and when I "drew" a line up to my height 67 inches it showed that I had a body fat of 40% - yikes! I never knew that.

To figure out your height in inches just do this:

12 inches (this is the number of inches in a foot)
x 5 ft (assuming you're at least 5 ft tall)
---
60 inches

then add the number of inches you are past 5 ft

For example I am 5ft 7 inches

so: 60 inches + 7 inches = 67 inches

If you're over 6 ft tall just replace 5 with 6 in your equation.

So with my height and hip girth I ended up having 40% body fat

What's interesting is that I lost 1 inch around my hips after 1 week of exercise - and that brought my body fat down a whole 2% to 38% body fat! I'm excited!

My goal is to get to 30% body fat or less - means I need a 40 inch hip girth. Normal body fat for a woman is about 25% body fat - for me that would be 38 in.

Now that I'm going to keep track of how much fat I'm eating each day I'm very aware of the grams of fat that I'm eating.

Today I charted as I went:

5 gm milk in my cereal
10 gm 1 tbsp mayo for my sandwich - I actually measured it!
7.5 gm 2 oz. ham in my sandwich
4.5 gm 1/2 oz. of cheese in my sandwich
----
27 gms so far today - and I haven't eaten dinner yet

so with my glass of milk for dinner I'm already over 30 gm!

So I need to try my best not to go too far over

For dinner I ate:
27 gm ate so far
6 gm Steak
0 gm Onions
11 gm Olive Oil they were fried in
0 gm Rice
5 gm Milk
----
49 gms - my current goal is to be under 50 during my 6 weeks - and I'm aiming for 30 but I don't know how I can possibly meet 30! At least I was still under 50!!! :)

I know that the majority of fat in my diet comes from mayo and margarine and occasionally red meat.

On pg. 29 It suggests not to eat fat before noon so you body has time to get your metabolism up - and since I normally eat cereal for breakfast this is no sweat.I guess it would only make a difference to people who eat bagels and cream cheese or bacon or eggs/ham cooked in fat.

Generally I'd have a potato with this dinner with 2-3 tbsp of margarine and on the broccoli I would add 2 tbsp mayo - but that would make it: 53 additional grams of fat!!!! - so if I hadn't watched the fat intake again today I would have consumed twice the amount of my daily requirements!

This is going to take some getting used to - my sandwich today tasted so dry I had to literally choke it down!!! I love mayo! And I won't touch mustard - yuck! So I guess for people who like mustard it wouldn't be too hard to avoid those fat calories from mayo.

I won't eat low-fat mayo either so I've gotta find a way to make my sandwiches more moist without adding more mayo!!! I just looked up alternatives to mayo and plain yogurt seems to be it - 3.5 gm of fat for a whole cup of it! Wow! So a few tablespoons would be no fat really - just wonder if I can stomach the taste??? I'll have to buy some and find out! I'll let you know. I wonder if I mix 1 tbsp of mayo with 2 tbsp of yogurt if I can "retain" that mayo flavor!!! I'm gonna try that! I love mayo!!! I don't want to give it up entirely - to me it's worth the 1/3 of daily fat gms!

It's now Sat and my measurement day is on Sun - so tomorrow I'll be able to see if I lost any more body fat! Yippee! I'm looking forward to it!

The diet found on pg. 28 in this book consists of eating daily:

2 servings protein - for me this is one for lunch and one for dinner 2 servings dairy
4 servings starches
4 servings veggies
3 servings fruit

Basically I get the top 3 but not the bottom 2 on this list. So I need to add 2 veggies to lunch and 2 to dinner (this is the biggest challenge for me) and add 1 smoothie for a snack - using 3 fruits: orange, banana, pineapple - easy and yummy - my favorite! Here's the recipe for the smoothie.

4 starches:

1 slice of bread for half sandwich for lunch
popcorn for lunch
rice or potato for dinner
1 dessert

The key to the diet according to the author is to exercise - because it's what keeps the body's metabolism up. Eating less calories without exercise results in "muscle loss and cause an imbalance in your body composition." pg. 23

So the body has to deplete the carb calories before it will burn the fat calories I ate for the day, then when it's done with those if it has any more energy left to burn calories it'll burn the stored fat calories. So obviously the less fat I eat during the day the faster my body can get to burning the stored fat calories.

Instead of your all that hard work I'm doing in my exercise being "wasting" on burning the fat I ate that day it can get to work burning my fat reserves!

On pg. 80 he says that cutting too many calories can cause us to "stop losing weight or to lose very slowly" because the metabolic rate drops. So it's imporyant not to eat too few of calories.

The goal is to lose fat weight. And since most obese people like me have more fat weight than muscle weight it's not a problem to gain weight by building muscle while exercising because the amount of fat weight lost will far "outweigh" the weight gained. Dr. Vash says:

"When you lose fat and gain muscle, you can weigh more than the Ideal Body Weight tables say is right for your frame...because muscle is heavier than fat...but with a lower percent of body fat, you'll be leaner and fit smaller sizes." pg. 99

You will notice the difference in how you look - this is true! After one week of exercise I could visually see the difference in how my body looked! And now almost two weeks into exercising (not changing my diet at all) I see a totally different body - it's really amazing! I mean I still have a gut that seems stubborn but the rest of my body really looks like a person who works out! hahaha!!

I can tell you just one day of eating less fat I can notice major differences - like I know this sounds weird but I feel lighter and trimmer and like my body is working more efficiently.

The goal is to "Plan realistic fat loss of 1 percent of your body weight per week. Remember: you are losing fat, not weight...that fat loss 'looks like' more weight loss than the scale will register." pg. 100

Here's the fat in the foods I eat:

5 gm Steak
21 gm Hamburger
1 gm Chicken
6 gm Pork chop
1 gm Tuna
7.5 gm 2 oz. Ham
4.5 gm 1/2 oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese
5 gm 1 cup 2% Milk
10 gm 1 tbsp Real Mayo
11 gm 1 tbsp Margarine
14 gm 1 tbsp Oil

So paying attention to the amount of fat calories I eat is important but I need to remember that "Anything eaten in excess will store as fat." pg. 22

Another important element is to make sure you eat enough protein, because "If your body does not get enough protein in your diet, it will go after the protein in your muscles to burn for energy." pg. 22

The book recommends we eat low-fat proteins like: fish low-fat milk chicken without skin eggs soy turkey

Instead of high fat proteins like: beef nuts cheeses pork

Many foods that we eat have fat in them, so we've got to read the labels because 30-50gms of fat add up quickly! Especially because I'd rather have a little bit of fat throughout the day with each meal rather than eating it all in one meal - because it's virtually impossible to eliminate all fat from a meal, so I need to make sure I allot some fat for each meal so I don't feel like I'm "giving" up anything.

So you can use this calorie/fat gram chart or you can get the grams of fat for the foods you eat right off the labels. Just remember the fat given is for the serving size listed.

I wrote down the amount of fat I eat on a normal day and it ended up being approx. 95 grams! Yikes! So that's twice the amount of fat I need daily!

Cutting back to under 50 should really make a difference in my fat burning results!

I was sitting here thinking about the amount of fat that probably exists in fast food when it occurred to me that one night this week I ate at a local hamburger joint.

I did not know that each french fry has 1 gm of fat! OMG! Yikes-a-mama! I know we all eat at least 50 french fries if not more when we eat them. So a order of fries would be the maximum amount of fat we should have in our ENTIRE day! Who knew? I certainly did not! I never would have given it a second thought! The place I ate at gives huge portions of fries and I ate probably about 100 without thinking about it!

And that's not all! Here's what I ate for dinner that night:

Fat:
21 gm Hamburger
4 gm Cheese (on the burger of course)
4 gm 2 slices Bacon (on the burger of course)
22 gm 2 tbsp mayo
100 gm French Fries
----
Total: A whopping 151 gms of fat just in my dinner alone!

Yikes - that's 3 times the amount of fat we should be eating each day! Thank God I only go to fast food once a month, I can't even imagine how much fat people are consuming who eat there once a week? every day? more than once a day??? An outrageous amount of fat!

And to make things worse I looked back at what else I ate that day in addition to my fast food dinner:

Fat:

14 gm 4 double stuffed oreos
6 gm 2 tollhouse choco chip cookies
15 gm 3 cups of 2% milk
44 gm egg salad with 4 tbsp mayo
----
79 gms of fat
+151 gms from my fast food dinner
----
230 gms of fat for one day! OMG! That is 4.6 times the amount of what a person should eat in one day!

I just read the label on a bottle of cinnamon pills and it said that taking 2 of those a day will help the body with sugar and fat metabolism! So I just took two. I'm gonna try this for a week and see if it seems to make a difference or not and then I'll report back.

Think about what we eat vs. what our ancestors ate.

They probably ate mostly:
Protein
Vegetables
Potatoes
Bread

Whereas what we mostly eat is:

Fat
Corn Syrup
Salt
Protein
Potatoes/Rice
Bread
And little or no fresh vegetables/fruits

How does it get into our diet?

Well Through:

Fat - oils, margarines, butters, cheeses, bacon, hamburgers

Corn syrup - nearly every product on our shelves

Salt - all the canned goods and condments we eat like soy sauce and ketchup

If we simply cut back on these things we'd be able to finally lose weight and get out of the obese level.

So the ticket really to burning stored fat is to simple eat only 30-50 grams of fat total for the day, and to exercise, and then the body will burn up that day's fat calories and get right to work on burning up the stored fat calories! Yippee!!

The book says that once you meet your goal you can maintain your fat loss by simply not eating more than 50 grams of fat per day. This takes diligence because fat is hidden in a lot of foods we generally eat - so an awareness of where the fats are located gives us the ability to select the sources of fat we want to eat. So I guess if I want a piece of chocolate cake I'll have to forgo my mayo for the day!