Fat Intake Calculator

How does this fat intake calculator work?

This is a health tool that accounts for personal data such as age, gender, height and weight in order to calculate the required daily fat intake. There are two tabs available, both for English and metric units for the height and weight measurements.

Fat is one of the necessary nutrients, along carbohydrates and proteins in the diet that sustains body processes. However, there is a fine balance between what is too little and what is too much fat.

Therefore, the fat intake calculator adapts the dietician recommendation to the personal type of lifestyle.

The levels of activity that the user can choose from are:

■ No or little exercise/ sedentary;

■ Easy exercise (2-3 times/week);

■ Moderate exercise (4 times/week);

■ Active exercise (5 times/week);

■ Very active exercise (5 times intense/week);

■ Day by day exercise;

■ Day by day intense exercise/ twice daily;

■ Daily exercise and physical activity/job.

Fats are sources of energy from the diet but also regulate processes that depend on the cholesterol fats, the lipid molecules such as those on the cell surface.

In order to compute the fat percentage from the whole diet, the calculator first computes the daily calorie needs using the Mifflin-St Jeor equations:

■ For women: BMR = 10 x [Weight in kg] + 6.25 x [Height in cm] - 5 x [Age in years] + 5

■ For men: BMR = 10 x [Weight in kg] + 6.25 x [Height in cm] - 5 x [Age in years] – 161

While the Institute of Medicine recommends that adults take 20 – 35% of their daily calorie intake from fat, this percentage actually varies depending on the type of diet adopted. Here are some numbers:

■ Moderate: 25%;

■ Moderate II: 20%;

■ Zone diet: 30%;

■ Low fat: 15%;

■ Low carb: 35%;

■ Very low carb – Ketogenic: 45%.

Healthy fats are the unsaturated fats such as fish and vegetable oils, fatty foods such as hummus, avocado, nuts and seeds.

Fat foods also help the body absorb vitamins, such as A, D or E. However, whatever fat is not converted into energy is absorbed by the body into body fat, contributing to weight increases.

Saturated fats coming from high fat meats and dairy should be avoided in large quantities.

A diet rich in excessive fat leads to a raise in cholesterol levels which is connect to an increase in heart disease risk, stroke, diabetes and obsesity.

Since 1 gram of fat has 9 calories, the average number of grams based on a 2000 calories/day diet would be of about 44 to 78 grams.

Example of a calculation

Let’s take for instance the case of a male aged 30, weighing 178 lbs at a height of 5ft 8in with an easy exercise lifestyle and 25% of diet comprising of fat.

His daily calorie intake and the fat intake requirement, for maintenance, weight loss and weight gain, if he eats 4 meals per day is:

References

1) Elmadfa I, Freisling H. (2005) Fat intake, diet variety and health promotion. Forum Nutr; (57):1-10.

2) Lichtenstein AH, Kennedy E et al. (1998) Dietary fat consumption and health. Nutr Rev; 56(5 Pt 2):S3-19; discussion S19-28.

3) Hooper L, Martin N, Abdelhamid A, Davey Smith G. (2015) Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst Rev.