i am counting calories but does the amount of fat grams u take in really matter if i stay within my bmr? why?

Question

i have been restricting badly some days..but i am out of that 'anorexic' stage. i am jsut counting calories..

Answer 1

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Aloha

Answer 2

I didnt really think about that. but maybe it would be good to just watch what you eat. eat healthier, more veggies and what not. Because than you dont have to do as much counting and you will just know you are eating healthier. Im starting a diet, today actually and im going to cut back on calories and fatty stuff. Soda, candy, hamburgers. ect... So good luck, I hope you stay motivated, I usually dont. : (

Answer 3

I read somewhere that you shouldnt cut fat completely out of your diet...But you dont want to focus your diet on foods that are high in it. A good standard is to look at the nutritional box on the food and if it says more than 15% by the fat then its too high.

Answer 4

Yes, it does. I found out today though that you can burn between 600-1000 calories in 30 minutes by sitting in a sauna....don't know if that's true or not, but that's what they said.

Answer 5

yes it makes a BIG difference. Make sure thay you are counting fat grams