How important is counting fat grams?? Can you still lose weight with high calorie but low fat grams?

I remember reading a book years ago (early 90's) that basically claimed that men who want to lose weight should just eat less than 30 grams of fat per day, and women should eat less than 25 (I think?) grams.

I'm wondering if any of you focus on fat grams at all. There are days when I will over-do the calories but my fat grams are very low. It makes me feel better, but I don't know how accurate or safe low-fat gram weight loss is.

I did lose a lot of weight when I cut back fat grams after reading that book 20 years ago, but I was 20 years younger, with a much better metabolism.

Replies

unknown

Thanks for the replies everyone. It's nice to see such an active community

unknown

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How is the food more important than the calories?
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I just explained this.

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katem999 wrote: »

I'm not sure I can fit popcorn into my cals today

Well, apparently calories don't matter anymore. So, you might as well sit in the corner with me and share.

unknown

For me, it's calories first, macros a close second.
FTR eating fat doesn't make you fat. Cutting it to the bare minimum is not a good idea.

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Alatariel75 wrote: »

Weight Watchers had a whole program dedicated to that in 1995, the Fat n Fiber programme. You were supposed to eat under 20g of fat a day, and more than 20g fiber.

Given that pasta, bread, gummi bears etc are all low in fat, I never lost any weight on it. It was one of their shorter lived programs, thats for sure.

I managed to miss Fat n Fiber, thank god. The programme I started on (Quick Success I think?) was pretty low fat though, only 15g of added fat per day, and you had to count peanut butter as a fat and a protein

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BILLBRYTAN wrote: »

I just explained this.

That was the explanation? That our body can't use the galore in some food and it automatically gets stored as fat? Please state what foods those are and the science behind how they don't get used and immediately become fat.

unknown

There are high carb raw vegans who eat thousands of calories a day. They lose weight and maintain their weight. So I think calories is a tricky thing and it may depend on what your eating. So losing weight isn't always about calories. I have friends who eat over a thousand calories per meal and they eat three or four times a day and they are ridiculously fit.

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shelbelle1001 wrote: »

There are high carb raw vegans who eat thousands of calories a day. They lose weight and maintain their weight. So I think calories is a tricky thing and it may depend on what your eating. So losing weight isn't always about calories. I have friends who eat over a thousand calories per meal and they eat three or four times a day and they are ridiculously fit.

get them to weigh and log - they are eating at a calorie defecit if they are losing weight - because science

unknown

shelbelle1001 wrote: »

There are high carb raw vegans who eat thousands of calories a day. They lose weight and maintain their weight. So I think calories is a tricky thing and it may depend on what your eating. So losing weight isn't always about calories. I have friends who eat over a thousand calories per meal and they eat three or four times a day and they are ridiculously fit.

Yeah, because they are burning a huge number of additional calories with exercise.