Healthy and Unhealthy Fats

I had a surprisingly low fat day yesterday. As I’ve mentioned before, I am trying to get about 30% of my calories from fats. I thought the peanut butter, gluten free bread (with 5g of fat per slice), protein bar and chilli would be sufficient sources of fat, but apparently I was wrong. Especially the chilli, which has about 9g of fat per 300g serving, but over half of that comes from the vegetable (canola) oil used to cook off the beef and vegetables, not from the extra lean beef. This is an important point as I want to keep the amount of saturated fats I eat down, and beef mince can be really high in saturated fat.

One of the reasons we are encouraged to get more of our foods from plant sources than animal sources is that animal products (like red meat and butter) and processed foods tend to be high in saturated fats. These are the ones that raise your cholesterol and clog up your arteries. Even worse for us than saturated fats are man-made trans fats, found in many processed and fried foods in restaurants. However, unsaturated fats lower cholesterol, help improve immune function, reduce joint pain and inflammation, and are necessary for the absorption of several key vitamins such as A, D, E and K. This is why it is dangerous to go on very low fat diets where all types of fat are eliminated or severely restricted. Unsaturated fats usually come from plants sources such as nuts and seeds (like olive oil or peanut oil) and some vegetables like avocados. We also need essential fatty acids, such omega-3 and omega-6, which our bodies can’t make for themselves. Omega-6 is found in nuts, seeds, avocados and corn oil, while omega-3 is found in fish like salmon and flaxseeds.

Going over my diet, you’ll notice that while it can be 30 to 35% fat, most of that comes from plant sources such as the nuts and seeds I have for snacks, the sunflower seeds in my morning muesli, the olive or canola oil we use for cooking, and oily fish like salmon and mackerel. So while I do get plenty of my calories from fats, they are actually ‘healthy fats’.

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1836.77	101.25g	237.44g	41.21g	15.5g	30.38g
	22%	52%	20%	6%
Calories burned through exercise:		422

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
08:30	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Gluten Free fruit muesli	70g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's orange, mango and passionfruit juice	150mL
09:30	Black Tea	500mL
11:00	Easy run, 30 minutes
11:30	Lemon-Lime Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
12:00	Sponser Chocolate Recovery Shake	30g
	in Skim milk	225mL
13:30	Heinz Beanz, reduced sugar and salt	175g
	Genius brown bread	2 slices
	with Sun Pat Peanut butter	14g
	and Honey	7g
14:00	Green Tea	250mL
18:30	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
20:15	Red Wine	150mL
21:00	Home-made chilli	300g
	on long grain and wild rice	50g (dry)

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.