Nutrition Fundamentals: Fat Facts

Today, may athletes want to avoid fat both on their bodies and in their diet. All the gloom and doom written about fat implies there is nothing good about it. But fat does have benefits. In fact, as an athlete, you need fat -- both on your body and in the food you eat.

The goal is making sure you have the right amount of fat. Not too much and not too little. Once you achieve the appropriate amount of fat, trying to reduce body fat or dietary fat will not help. In fact, not having enough body fat or dietary fat can cause problems.

There is no such thing as the ideal percentage of body fat for a particular sport. Due to genetics and other factors, you may perform your best at a body fat much different than other athletes in the same sport. Athletes need to determine their ideal body fat levels based on their performance -- not on the levels of other athletes.

It is becoming more and more common for physicians and sports medicine professionals to not recommend a specific percentage of body fat, but instead, use a range or a sum of skinfold measurements. Genetics, age, and level of training influence your body composition. The best thing for you to do is determine where you perform your best and maintain that level. Striving for a body fat percentage that is too low can cause performance and health problems.

The Sub-Committee on Nutrition of the United Nations, of which the World Health Organization is a member, recommends that the lower limit of fat intake be 15% of calories for most adults. Women of reproductive age should consume at least 20% of their calories as fat. The upper limit of fat intake recommended for active people is 35%. It is important to understand that these recommendations are averages over the day or week, not for each meal or not an individual food.

Research shows that international elite athletes eat diets ranging from 15% to 49% of calories from fat or 1.1g to 4.3g per kilogram body weight. These wide ranges reflect the diverse needs and dietary practices of successful athletes.

By having adequate fat in the diet, athletes who expend a lot of energy can get the calories they need in less food. It can be difficult for an athlete who needs 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day to eat the large amount of food needed on a diet low in fat.

All types of fat, saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated, have this in common they have nine calories per gram. Although they are the same in calories, each type of fat is unique. It is important to include different types of fat in the diet because each type of fat has different functions in the body, such as hormone production and cell-wall structure.

Cholesterol is a fat-like substance found in blood and tissues in the human body. It is needed for many body processes. Cholesterol is also found in some of the foods we eat. The amount of cholesterol in the diet may have little bearing on the amount of cholesterol in the blood. The body makes about 80 percent of the cholesterol found in the blood. For the most part, it is genetics, the total amount of fat, and the type of fat eaten that determines our blood cholesterol levels, not how much cholesterol we eat. Some saturated fats tend to increase blood cholesterol more than other types of fats, so health authorities recommend that 10 percent or less of fat intake be from saturated fat. The remainder should come from monosaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat.

The chart below gives examples of total daily calories, the number of grams of fat per day needed to equal 30 percent of those calories and the number of grams of saturated fat needed to equal 10 percent.