Hiya, i try to follow my fitness app with regards to calories and macros, my calories and carbs goals I manage to meet fine but i really struggle to have high protein and low fat. I should have 45% carbs, 25% fat and 30% protein but i am normally around 45 carbs, 40 fat and 15 protein 😱 give or take. (It's down to my sweet tooth!)
Any high protein, low fat suggestions would be greatly appreciated please.
What are your goals? Weight loss? Muscle gain? Cardiovascular fitness?
I would try to focus more on eating good food rather than percentages of this and that (which are actually quite irrelevant anyway, because your body deals with macros in very different ways depending on how they're presented). Make sure you're preparing wholesome, filling meals from veg, meat, eggs and dairy and you'll be just fine.
Since you seem to naturally gravitate towards high-fat foods I would suggest winding down your carbs (ie., avoid things like bread and rice ... and sweets!), replacing them with veg or animal products according to taste.
Reducing dietary fat has no physiological benefits, and can actually disrupt your appetite and micronutrient absorption. 25% fat would be dangerously low. Your protein looks in the right ballpark (about 1g/kg, assuming you're of average weight and are eating average-sized meals) unless you're doing a lot of weight training.
Thank you. My aim is to try and reduce my belly ready for summer. I dont really eat bread but yes i do like my chocolate esp with easter! I do do cardiovascular exercise about 2 hours a week but not do much weights
OK, understand. You don't really have much need for protein - a high protein diet is only necessary if you're doing intense work with weights.
Bear in mind that these software packages are written by Dilbert-shaped guys who know next-to-nothing about exercise or nutrition (ask me how I know!). All those charts and analyses may look snappy, but they have little relevance to your progress, because the designer's intent is simply to sell software, not to make you slimmer.
A realistic minimum for protein is 0.6g/kg (ie., multiply your weight in kilograms by 0.6, and that's how much protein you need). A little more is helpful (0.8-1.2g/kg) if you're doing cardio, but it's not enormously important. If you want to continue using your app, I'm guessing it can only cope with percentages, so scale grams back to a percentage. For example if your total calories is 2000/day, then a 50g protein requirement would be 50g x 4kcal/gram=200kCal, or 10% of 2000.
A simpler approach would be to just let your body manage its own protein requirement, which it's quite capable of doing. However you can use that calculation to check that all is well, if you wish (it will be - our bodies aren't as dysfunctional as the nutritionists would have us believe).
If you're aiming specifically to lose weight then remove starchy foods from your meals - flour, rice, pasta, potatoes - and make up the calorie deficit with dietary fat. It sounds like your tastes are already pointed in that direction, so you'll probably find this suits you well. Get your fat from healthy, real-food sources like butter, coconut oil, olive oil, avocadoes, eggs, cheese, yoghurt, meat. You don't need to go overboard on fat - just don't avoid it. Fill up your plate with non-starchy vegetables (they're a good vehicle for the fat, and they'll help you feel full). Add animal products to complete the meal.
If you eat this way, your appetite will start working properly again and you won't need to count or calculate anything. If you're hungry (as you will be after a workout), just eat. But eat something that doesn't make you fat - that is, something that isn't starch-based. A cheese omelette always works for me, but YMMV.
As a bonus, your sweet cravings should disappear.
Your performance will be slightly off for the first few days of eating like this, but after a few weeks you'll find an energy reserve you never knew you had. You'll feel like you can keep going forever! And you will lose weight without fretting about eating "too many calories". As your excess fat disappears you'll find that your body naturally re-calibrates its desire for starches and dietary fat. Just go with the flow. You'll end up basically eating "normal food", except without the customary mountain of chips or mash or pasta.
You might like to read up on Dr David Unwin's common-sense approach, which basically involves eating proper food such as our grandparents ate. Unwin is the NHS GP famous for treating diabetes, but his diet works well for fat loss too (obesity and diabetes are just two aspects of the same metabolic problem).
Thank you so much, that is fantastic advise, and yeah i do tend to load up on pasta!
How do you know??!! 😂
Because they sit at the desk next to mine 
I work in the fitness industry. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain what a calorie is to the app/desktop developers. At least they ask. The salespeople don't even care.
Ah I see 😳 you would assume that they would need a basic understanding of nutrition to make the programme make sense, but as always you should never assume 🤣 that's good to know 😊
A persistent problem in the diet/exercise industry is that people think nutrition is easy. They pick up a few memes about calories or protein or whatever from fitness magazines, and they think they're experts. What your body does with food is unbelievably complicated, and I'd say barely 1% of the people in this industry would be able to describe in outline - say - the Krebs cycle, or how insulin regulates blood glucose.
The software engineers do actually try. They're smart people and they want to know this stuff. However since many of them have no background in biology or physics, they don't get very far. If you don't know a bit about mechanics and thermodynamics, you won't really grok what a calorie is. My job involves writing low-level software that communicates with motors and brakes and sensors on one side and the UI (the stuff you see on the screen) on the other. I made the decision long ago to put the calorie computations into my own software, so that the front-end guys could simply pull the numbers out without needing to understand the details.
The worst ones are the managers and the salespeople. They're completely clueless. Their job is simply to come up with plausible-sounding buzzwords and get customers to fork over their cash. They often tell the engineers: don't worry about that, just do this, because that's all we need to do to sell the product. In other words, the person who specifies the software functionality knows less about nutrition than the person who writes the code.
Because the average man in the street doesn't understand the science either, there's no pressure on sales & marketing to get things right. Even worse, there are few people in consumer-watchdog organisations who understand this stuff, so nobody ever gets hauled up for promoting their products on the basis of untruths or inaccuracies.
I have learnt lots since being here, but it's barely scratched the surface for sure ☺️
There are so many 'untruths' which are peddled as being gospel - it's not surprising people don't know how to go about eating the right things - it does make me cross 😤
Why do you think you should have those ratios, Fatburn? Have a look at this phcuk.org/wp-content/upload...
Your sweet tooth could be curbed by eliminating sugar from your diet and reducing the amount of high GI/high on the insulin index foods
insulinandmore.com/2018/01/...
High protein, low fat is not the best way to go.
One of our favourite recipes for children and those with a sweet tooth is pancakes. So easy to make and they can be pre prepared to save time and eat on the go. We simply mash a small ripe banana, add two eggs and then ‘fry’ in a pan on medium heat using one cal spray. Hope this helps. WellWeightKids 😊
Love this, thank you going to have it now!
You’re very welcome. People doing strength training often add a scoop of good quality whey protein to the mixture for an additional protein boost.
Broccoli has more protein than meat.. apparently
Damned if you do, damned if you don't…
Low Carb on Prednisone for weight loss
Daily Diary for Tuesday 5th October 2021
Calorie counting or low fat? 
