how much fat/protein is too much?

[Carbaholic]

quick question - how much fat/protein is too much?


I am getting mixed messages from this board: some people are counting their fat and calories.
Personally I am going with percentages, and I read somewhere that you can work it out by multiplying the amount of calories you should be having (for arguments' sake, lets say 1800) by the percentage of fat you'd like to be eating (65% = 0.65) and then dividing by 9 (1800x0.65 =1170, divided by 9 = 130) and this will tell you how many grams of fat per day you may eat. Any wisdom in this - as I do tend to panic a bit when my fat goes over 70g. then on another site I read that the amount of fat you should eat is half your weight in pounds - very confusing. I thought we could eat until we were satisfied - what if that takes us into high amounts of fat and protein but percentages fairly accurate?

Also, I read somewhere on this forum that you can eat too much meat/protein - is this true? what are the adverse effects of this?

[meena-beena]

Re: how much fat/protein is too much?

I think the general population here uses fitday.com to keep their percents in the right ratio. It's too much work for me to count all that stuff everyday. I'm not big on keeping track of every gram of xyz I eat. lol. Fitday is good at doing all that stuff for me automatically.

As far as protien goes, you have to keep yourself in the right percentages because too much protien turns to sugar, or so I've read around this board.

[not2late]

Re: how much fat/protein is too much?

I don't follow the percentages, count calories, count fat grams, etc. I just count my carbs and eat to satisfy my hunger, but not stuff myself like a Thanksgiving turkey. I cook my vegetables in oil and I use olive oil as my salad dressing. So that amount of added fat is more than enough to "make the percentages". It takes very little added fat to make your meals "high fat" (over 50%). The folks who have their vegetables swimming in dressing or eat 1/4 cup of butter are going overboard. In fact, depending on the foods you choose to eat, you might not need to add extra fat. Yesterday, I had 1 cup steammed green beans with an ounce of roasted almonds and a fried pork chop. The percentages for that meal was about 60%/33%/7%----for OWL that is perfectly okay. The fat from the walnuts and from the pork chop were enough to make my meal 60% fat without adding butter or oil or cheese, etc.

As for protein.....when I was reading DANDR and deciding to go on this diet, I wondered what exactly Dr. Atkins meant by "liberal amounts". So I looked through the sample menues and went through the recipes in the back of DANDR. 1 serving of meat was anywhere from 4-6 ounces. 1 serving of egg was 1-2 eggs. So I stick to those amounts: I don't eat more than 3-5 ounces of meat (or protein equivalent) or 2 eggs per meal. While the protein is filling, it's the fat that keeps you from being hungry between meals and it's the fat-carb ratio that determines your ketosis/lipolysis, not your protein-carb or fat-protein ratio.

[2big4mysize]

Re: how much fat/protein is too much?

I think you are confusing their water recomendations as 1/2 your body weight as the amount to drink.

I was like you how much was too high protein and how much was too low fat. since those words are subjective to the readers concepts I called the Atkins med center and ask one of Dr Atkins nurses to be sure. I also plugged some of those menus in the book into a nutritional calculator and saw the percents for them. at that time the atkins center was recommending 4-6 ounces of protein per meal to star with and adjusting for your body's needs as your induction progressed.

Yep what you are doing to calculate it is correct. BUT since we are only supposed to eat enough food to satisfy our hunger determining how much fat to have based on your cals for the day could have you eating too much food or too little. once you have been doing Atkins for a while you can get darn good at knowing how much fat you need each meal to be in the Atkins high fat zone.