In order to maintain your general health and fitness, you need only around 0.3 grams per pound of fat free mass per day. Your fat free mass is everything in your body that isn't fat. So for example muscle, water and bone. This translates to roughly 15 to 20% of your daily calories for most people, and is the target value that you should not undercut both when dieting to lose weight and when to build muscle. But as you know from the last section, what types of fat you eat is also important. Obviously, you want to limit your saturated fat intake and avoid artificial trans fats.
You want to favor monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. This approach is ideal both for health and body composition. Specifically, I recommend you get the majority of your dietary fat from mono unsaturated fats and that you keep your saturated fat intake at or below 10% of your daily calories. We will talk about which foods are perfect for this in more detail in the lesson on fed composition. So be sure to watch that one carefully. Now there's one more case we need to talk about where you want to further increase your unsaturated fat intake above 15 or 20%.
And that is when you're bulking. bulking is the term used for going into calorie surplus to ensure optimal muscle growth. skinny people looking to put on sighs often have a hard time with this when all carbohydrate, fat and protein needs are already met, but your daily calories are not yet filled. For example, imagine needing 3500 calories to gain weight, but you already met your macro needs at 2500 calories you have a choice to make. You can either choose to add protein, carbs, or fats or any combination of these three. In many cases, adding dietary fat is going to be a good option because of the following.
Taste fats tastes good for most people adding olive oil or avocado to something just makes it taste better. Very few People will complain when you add fats to their diet. health effects, mono unsaturated fats are some of the healthiest calories you can take him. This includes all of them canola oils, avocado, natural nut butters and almost all raw nuts such as peanuts and almonds. It is also possible that healthy sources of particular saturated fats, such as coconut oil and grass fed beef products can be consumed, but likely not in the same quantities as mono unsaturated fats. calorie density, well, proteins and carbs have four calories per gram fat contains nine.
This alone makes fat the top contender to use for a calorie buffer. Add to this the fact that fats tend to pack together tightly and the apparent density goes up even further. A tablespoon of olive oil has more calories than an entire banana. And this density is part of the ease of consumption or fats as well. If you're already full but still need more calories to meet your daily intake. extra fat is going to A lot easier to consume.
Cost effectiveness, not only are fat super calorie dense, they're usually very cheap. A large container of olive oil is a lot cheaper than quality protein. Taken together, these points highly support the role of fats as a default calorie buffer. Now in some cases, it can also make sense to consume additional carbs especially when exercising very intensively, however, then you need to make sure that these extra carbs come from quality sources such as rice or potatoes, and not from candy or junk food. Never consume too much simple carbs as they will keep your insulin levels up and can lead to pre diabetes, which is both harmful to your muscle gains and fat losses and your general health.