Good Fat, Bad Diet?

December 3, 2008 7:43 PM

I’d like to lose 15 pounds in the next year. In addition to jogging, I plan on altering my already somewhat healthy diet because I worry I’m eating too much (good) fat.

I recently decided I need to drop the 15 pounds I've gained since graduating college, so I can go back down to 115 at 5'2". I’m halfway through the Couch to 5K program, and that’s going well. In the past few years, I’ve become a much better eater than I was in high school and college, when my diet consisted of grains and beer. However, after tracking my meals on FitDay, I realized I might have a too-high fat intake (in addition to too much sugar), or a too-low vegetable intake. I’m a vegetarian, though I ate fish until very recently.

Breakfast:
-medium coffee with soy milk
-2% strained Greek yogurt, mixed with honey or fruit.

Lunch is usually
- baby spinach salad with walnuts, crumbled feta, and shiitake sesame vinaigrette dressing
or
- (less frequently) Amy’s spinach and feta pocket.

Afternoon
-I have a terrible sweet tooth, and will generally crave something from the office candy jar around 4ish, usually 1-3 mini York peppermint patties, and depending on my mood, will repeat again when leaving work. I'm cutting back severely on this habit as well.

Dinner
- almost invariably I come home from work and dive for two big, high-fiber Swedish wafers that I dip in hummus, or a handful of roasted almonds/cashews

this snacking is followed by one or two of the following:
- 2 cups’ worth of microwaved Amy’s organic butternut squash/cashew carrot ginger soup.
or
-two eggs fried in olive oil
or
--baby spinach salad, same as lunch


Alcohol
- 1-3 glasses of whiskey, imbibed between 0-3 times a week

Exercise
- Jogging 3x a week for 35 minutes.


See, this all seems healthy to me, but I tend to default to a "It's organic! It must be healthy!" mentality. I'm slowly realizing that just because I can read all the ingredients on the packaging doesn’t mean they’re all good for me in that quantity. I know I need to cut down on the processed sugar and whiskey, but I also worry that the processed veggie foods (Amy’s soups and vegetable pockets) don’t offer much nutritive value if I’m zapping them in the microwave first. I’ll cruise Ask.Me for specific directions for healthy breakfasts, how to easily eat more vegetables, etc, (though feel free to post any advice here!) but is there anything in those foods that jump out at you as red flags? Anything I should tweak, cut back on, or cut out to make my diet healthier and suitable for losing weight?

posted by Viola to health & fitness (16 comments total)

If each "glass" of whiskey you drink has 1 jigger of whiskey in it and you drink an average of 2 glasses twice weekly, cutting that out alone will cut 6 pounds off over the course of a year if my math is right.

If you eat an average of 2 Peppermint Patties a day, just cutting those out of your diet without substituting other calories will ultimate cut about 29 pounds off in 1 year. Those little devils each have 140 calories I'm afraid.

Of course metabolic rate will also vary with weight and makes these somewhat overestimates but still, you get the picture.
posted by drpynchon at 8:02 PM on December 3, 2008

If you eat an average of 2 Peppermint Patties a day, just cutting those out of your diet without substituting other calories will ultimate cut about 29 pounds off in 1 year. Those little devils each have 140 calories I'm afraid.

No no, the little peppermint patties, that are about the size of a silver dollar. I am not eating 3-6 large peppermint patties a day!

Also, I'm cutting back on drinking, but I'm 25 and have no intention on quitting bars all together. I've decided to keep the socializing down to one night a week.
posted by Viola at 8:09 PM on December 3, 2008

I wouldn't be concerned with too much fat so much as not enough protein. Although it's hard to tell just from this. What are the macronutrient percentages that fitday is giving you?

I've got the sweet tooth as well, and I wouldn't worry about 3 mini york peppermint patties a day - they're actually 140 calories for three (and my current addiction). You need to live a little, right? I try to aim for 90% good nutrition and 10% "treats", which seems to help me keep on track overall. So if I eat 1500 calories in a day, 150 of those calories come from whatever the heck I feel like eating.

Nutrition is important, obviously, but mathematically it's not too bad for you to lose 15 pounds over the next year. If you're maintaining now, then you'd only need to cut out about 1000 calories per week to get there. If you're already losing on what you eat, then you'll get there for sure.
posted by smalls at 8:13 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If you're concerned about cutting down on fat, you could try:

-- lower fat or skim-milk yogurt (yogurt people seem to hate this stuff, though)
-- poach your eggs instead of frying them
-- go easy on the dressing for the salad

But really, I don't see what the problem would be. I may be the wrong person to ask. Are you drinking enough water?
posted by rossination at 8:35 PM on December 3, 2008

Oh -- on the salad, if you're gung ho about cutting down on fat in the dressing, find a vinegar that you really like (or just use lemon or lime juice) and try dressing the salad with just that. Very unexpected and surprisingly satisfying. I like apple cider vinegars and sherry vinegars for this (Trader Joe's has many).
posted by rossination at 8:36 PM on December 3, 2008

Seconding the not enough protein. And I'd be worried about too many carbs - those tend to trigger the sweet tooth in those of us prone to such things.

Would you consider eating fish again? Add some tuna, or a couple eggs, with that salad and I'll bet you won't have such a sweet tooth.

And yeah - veggie, organic, or not, processed foods are processed foods. The Amy's stuff is better than, say, Hot Pockets, but it's still not really "whole food" even if it's sold at stores named Whole Foods :)

I'd also switch from 2% to full-fat yogurt - fat isn't the demon it's been made out to be. It keeps you full, and full-fat dairy products are generally higher protein and lower sugar than the reduced fat ones.
posted by chez shoes at 8:47 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, what's the macronutrient (carbs, fat, protein) breakdown on FitDay? How many calories are you taking in? It looks like you aren't getting any protein at all, that's no good.
posted by schroedinger at 8:48 PM on December 3, 2008

Fat is not your problem, but a lack of protein might be, and the sugar isn't helping. You don't seem to be eating much at all from that list. How much fat do you think you are getting that is "too much"? Even with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil per salad you might be getting 60g a day. That is not too much unless you combine it with a lot of carbs, and frankly if you just cut out the candy you would be eating quite well, except again, probably too little protein.
Jogging for 35 minutes 3X a week is not much exercise, especially if you live an otherwise mostly sedentary life. Additionally, jogging + little protein + few calories means you are probably losing more muscle than fat. Remember that you probably do not actually want to lose "weight", you want to lose fat. I strongly strongly recommend adding resistance training of some sort even if it means jogging less. I have been where you are (approximately), and the only thing that got me out of the 10-15lbs over my ideal weight despite cardio and a low-calorie diet was heavy lifting.
posted by ch1x0r at 8:53 PM on December 3, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

OK I looked into what's on your list a little bit more. Those Amy's soups and pita pockets are pretty high in sodium. You could probably make a pita sandwich type thingy yourself and come out better nutrition-wise. Soups are pretty easy to make as well, and you can do a big batch of soup every Sunday that would get you through the week. You can even make hummus pretty easily in the blender. All this would probably save you money too, as an added bonus.

Other than that, maybe consider adding some legumes to your diet? They're going to get you some protein and also some fiber, which may help you feel more full throughout the day. Also consider adding quinoa, which is a most awesome source of protein for vegetarians. This is something else you can make a big batch of, and it goes well with veggies and beans.

And what about adding another two days of exercise per week? Do you have time for something like that? Because it could definitely give you some more freedom in your diet.

(and I guess I should tell you that I can relate to where you are, as a 5'0" girl who also had to drop 15 pounds at one point. I'm only a casual vegetarian though at this point).
posted by smalls at 8:57 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Watch out on the fat reduction, as a lot of products that are "low fat" simply replace the fat with something worse. Fat isn't that bad for you, aside from being a good way to get a lot of calories. It's more satisfying than carbohydrates, and shouldn't contribute to the afternoon/evening cravings.

If you want to reduce your caloric intake (which you do, if you want to lose weight), attack the sugar addiction first. That should be top priority.
posted by knave at 9:11 PM on December 3, 2008

I'd echo the others about the fat. Really, don't worry about it, especially since 1. you don't eat red meat and 2. you are eating good fats. The most success I've had losing weight was when I upped my vegetable and protein intake to about 8 servings a day of the former and 3-4 of the latter. Yes, that's a lot of veggies, but hey, you're a vegetarian.

BTW, FitDay scared me with the fat % too, but their guidelines seem outdated with all the stuff that's come out in the last few years about fat.
posted by lunasol at 9:29 PM on December 3, 2008

15lbs/yr is 1000kcal per week or 200kcal per weekday of caloric loss.

Eat well and walk more and the problem will take care of itself. What I've found is that regularly doing a blowout exercise event -- greater than 2-3 hours of exertion on a weekend really helps the metabolism and fitness level.
posted by troy at 9:48 PM on December 3, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

See The Hacker's Diet, as much for its lucid explanation of what's going on with intake, metabolism, and weight as for its very practical guidelines.
posted by eritain at 10:42 PM on December 3, 2008

I bike 2.5 hours to and from work a day. I eat McDonalds for lunch everyday and can barely maintain my body weight. I'm 6' @ 62kg (138lbs). I've been trying to gain weight for years but have weighed exactly the same for as long as I can remember.

Moral: eat whatever you want, exercise more. I wouldn't eat McDonalds though: bad for the arteries.

I'll start taking my own advice in January.
posted by BeaverTerror at 11:43 PM on December 3, 2008

Soups are a great way to sneak tons of veggies into your diet without a bit of blandness. Start with a vegetable broth base, add your fave veggies and go from there...you can add pasta to make it more filling, add lentils to hit that protein. Super simple.

My favourite breakfast is egg whites scrambled with green onions, spinach, cherry tomatoes and just a tiny bit of cheese...will help with both the veggies and the protein as well.
posted by kattyann at 6:29 AM on December 4, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Your meals seem like they're based mainly around one macronutrient. You might want to strive for more balance at each meal.

Breakfast - try adding a complex carb (something starchy, like toast, bagel, rice, whatever you like) with the yogurt and fruit.

Lunch - add protein and starch. A salad, even with nuts and cheese and other fats on it, is not providing you with much of, well, anything, except for the added fats and the vitamins in the greens. Not enough carb or protein to keep you energized through the afternoon.

Dinner - you only pick one of either eggs, salad, or veggie soup? Why not try smaller amounts of all three together to get a complete meal? I know it's more work, but it honestly will make you feel more satisfied, too.

There is nothing quite like the exquisitely cared-for feeling of having a meal that includes several food groups. Serious. Try it sometime and see if you feel different. Your skimpy meals likely explain why you have a "terrible sweet tooth" in the afternoon, and why you "dive" for your crackers and hummus when you get home. You're hungry.

I have no idea about your fat intake, but you need more satisfying, substantial meals. Very, very rough calculations (you don't state your age) indicate you need around 2000 kcals per day, maybe even a bit more with the jogging. If you lower the fat in your diet, I have no idea what's going to happen with your weight, if anything, but your BMI is currently 23.8, well within the "healthy" range. If your current fat intake is around 30% of total energy, that's also pretty normal and healthy.

Pursuing weight loss is a totally personal choice, but you may want to look into your reasons for doing so. Eating nourishing meals and doing regular exercise that you love is good for you at any weight. Best of luck.
posted by peggynature at 8:46 AM on December 4, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]