This article contains the basics of eating a low-fat diet. There are a few ways to eat low-fat, some more sustainable and healthy than others. The diet is relatively simplistic in implementation but does require an understanding of the caloric content of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. This article is only a high-level overview for information only. Use it as a means to decide if further exploration into this diet is still of interest to you. There are many diets out there and this is just one of them. So, if after reading this, you don’t think that a low-fat diet is for you, that is perfectly acceptable. If you want more information, I’ve included some links to other sources on the low-fat diet.
History
Eating a low-fat diet for weight loss or weight control is not a new concept. It dates back to the late 1800s and early 1900s where people wanting to lose weight, would count calories. Keeping calorie intake lower than calorie expenditure leads to weight loss. Mostly inadvertently, this led to a lower-fat diet. Fat has more than twice the calories per gram (9 cal per gram) than either protein or carbohydrates (each at 4 cal per gram). Therefore, by weight, one could eat more carbohydrates and protein by weight and still have fewer calories overall.
It was in the 1950s when research really began on the relationship between low-fat diets and heart disease. Back then, heart disease was the biggest cause of death in the United States. And thus, the promotion of a low-fat diet to reduce the risk of heart disease started.
Once Obesity was identified as an independent risk factor for heart disease, the push to not just reduce the risk of heart disease through diet, but reduce body weight as well, took off.
What transpired from the ’70s till the present day is the subject of many controversies and arguments. I’ll sum up: Governments, Respected organizations and publications, and the entire food industry got involved, and the public was led to believe that eating fat made you fat.
Today, some still tout the health benefits of a low-fat diet. And many condemn it and even blame it for the obesity epidemic. I think the truth lies in between.
What is a Low Fat Diet, and How Does One Follow it?
There are both low-fat diets and Very low fat diets. What’s the difference? Low Fat diets tend to recommend that only 30% of your daily calories come from fat. Whereas very low-fat diets halve that recommendation or more, say 10-15% of daily calories from fat. Generally, a very low-fat diet also has low protein (also about 15% of calories from protein).
Math
Just doing some fast math for a low-fat diet here: Given an 1800 calorie diet, 30% of that would be 540 calories. That’s just 60 grams of fat. That leave 1260 calories to come from protein and carbohydrate. If you assume about 240 calories from protein (60 grams), then that leaves 1020 calories from carbohydrate (255 grams). That’s just over 55% of your calories from carbs and 13% from Protein.
Let’s look at the math for a Very low-fat diet: Take that 1800 calorie diet and 15% from fat. That would be 270 calories from fat (30 grams). And 1530 calories would be left for carbohydrate and protein. Again, assuming about 240 calories from protein (60 grams), the rest would need to be from carbohydrate. So, 1290 calories come from carbohydrate, that’s 322 grams (roughly).
Low Fat doesn’t mean NO fat. It means fewer of your daily calories should come from fat than carbohydrate and protein. Also, the type of fat may matter. It would be recommended to have more of your fat be polyunsaturated of monounsaturated fat than saturated fat.
Good Food Choices
In order to get protein without a lot of fat, one needs to pick lean proteins such as white fish, poultry, and very lean beef or game meats and of course plant-based sources such as soy, beans or legumes, and quinoa. Higher fat proteins like eggs and salmon should be consumed sparingly.
Good quality fats like olive or avocado oil should be used when possible. Lard and butter should be consumed sparingly or not at all. Consumption of nuts and seeds would need to be limited because of their higher fat content.
Carbohydrates should come from unprocessed whole foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains such as quinoa and steel-cut oatmeal. Refined carbohydrates (breads, pastas, and white rice) are ok but should be kept to a minimum to increase satiety.
Food “Gotchas”
I think it’s important to note that it’s very likely the low-fat diet fails for many because it’s too easy to think something being a low-fat food automatically makes it “healthy”. Food manufacturers have made many low-fat or fat-free versions of their popular foods. But if you check the label, you’ll notice that the calorie content is not necessarily that much lower. The thing is, if you remove fat from say, baked goods, in order to preserve taste, texture, and mouth-feel, other things must be added. Often sugar or some other higher-calorie sweetener is added. This is true even for savory foods like salad dressing. Also, fat has a very specific mouthfeel and some of the additives to foods are there to mimic that.
Also, keep in mind non-diet soda is fat-free. So are most hard candies like suckers or lollipops. Very few folks would argue that these are “healthy” even though they are fat-free. Calories from carbohydrates (and protein) will still make you gain weight if eaten in excess.
Read food labels.
Foods aren’t automatically calorie free, even if they are fat-free.
And foods that are made fat free when they generally wouldn’t be, often have other additives. So, know what you’re getting in the trade-off.
Benefits or Concerns
If done healthy, such as favoring whole foods over processed foods, a low-fat diet can work for weight loss. Eating fewer calories than one burns will result in weight loss, and eating less fat can make that easier because fat has far more calories than carbohydrates or protein. In order for this diet to be successful, one must restrict the caloric intake.
If your goal is not weight loss, a healthy low-fat diet could work for you without caloric restriction.
Note that when eating refined carbohydrates, it is easy to eat too many calories.
However, it should be noted that not everyone can tolerate a high-carbohydrate diet.
Additionally, some people don’t find low-fat food very satisfying making adherence a struggle.
Conclusions
In order for any diet to be successful for a person, it needs to be sustainable for that person. Consider whether you can eat like this forever or not.
If you are concerned about health risks like cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease, check with your doctor before changing your diet. It could be very beneficial to get a baseline test of health-markers before embarking on any diet and testing periodically to make sure your body is ok being on the diet.
Also, if you choose to try it, monitor your mood and feelings. If you can tolerate carbs well, you should feel energized and happy on the diet. If you are someone who doesn’t you may feel more sluggish, or irritable, of “off” in some way.
Are you still on the fence regarding a diet? Here’s my overview of popular diets. Or, you can choose to eat healthy without dieting.