There are signs in research papers and some recent diet books that a new approach to healthy eating will meet your needs if you are concerned about weight control. The principle is: count fat grams, not calories. Since new food labels are in use, it is now easier to track fat, and if you eat a variety of foods the calories can take care of themselves.

Why does it work?
There is ample evidence that the main source of stored body fat is fat from your diet. In that case the first step to prevent excess fat storage is to eat less fat.

It is easy to eat too much fat. Many foods you love contain loads of fat, and are high in calories: cheeseburgers, hot dogs, pizza with all the trimmings, ice cream, potato chips, and more. If you find it easy to eat more fat than your body needs, then you need to count grams of fat.

It is hard to eat too much high carbohydrate food. Why? Because carbohydrate foods usually contain plenty of water, have a low density, and therefore are very bulky, and are lower in calories than fatty foods (four calories a gram from carbohydrate, nine calories a gram from fat). A normal appetite will control your total calorie intake as long as you eat high carbohydrate low fat. In other words, if you take care of your grams of fat, your appetite will take care of your total calories. We don't say you can pig out on carbohydrate foods just because they're okay. We say if you eat reasonably and keep down your fat intake, you can settle to your natural bodyweight and not be hungry from calorie restriction.

But, you may ask, if I don't track calories and eat as much carbohydrate as I like,suppose I eat too much carbohydrate? As we said, normally you can't eat too many carbohydrate calories because you won't have the capacity. But even if you did it wouldn't matter. If you've heard and read that excess carbohydrate can be turned into fat. Well, it can, but only under very unusual conditions that are miles away from reasonable eating.

Here are the well-documented facts about excess carbohydrate. If you eat more carbohydrate than usual, the first thing that happens is your carbohydrate store increases. This, after all, is the principle of carbohydrate loading, and folks don't get fat on carbo loading. Suppose you have a super-human appetite and you eat more even though your muscles and liver are chock- full of stored carbohydrate, what then? The answer is the rate at which your body burns carbohydrate increases. Only a tiny amount is turned into fat. A series of studies measured conversion of carbohydrate to fat when people ate large amounts of carbohydrate. As much as 2,000 calories of carbohydrate yielded not more than 9 grams of body fat, that's less than 2% of the weight of the large amount of carbs.

Researchers were curious to see if they could force people to turn carbohydrate into fat and store it like hibernating bears. Well they did, but only by massive overfeeding and cutting their fat intake to 3% total calories.

If your body is getting enough fat to supply its needs for essential fat tissues, then it is satisfied and doesn't need to turn carbohydrate into fat, so it doesn't except to a very small extent, and only after it has increased carbohydrate stores and increased the rate of burning the stuff as much as possible. If your body is being starved of fat and is not getting enough then it will begin to convert carbohydrate to meet its needs, but it takes very large amounts of carbohydrate, because the conversion is a long, inefficient process.

The bottom line is that given good health, a normal metabolism and appetite, if you limit fat, you don't need to count calories. There have been a couple of studies on controlled low fat, but unrestricted calorie diets. The total calories automatically stayed in a reasonable range to provide energy, and folks who were overweight slowly lost some.

How much fat?
We will take the guidelines for athletes proposed by the American and Canadian Dietetic Associations and make the calculations for you.

For a 115 pound women with a sedentary job, running 20 miles a week, her calorie needs are about 2,000 per day. With 20% to 25% from fat, the range of fat intake should be 45 to 55 grams per day. If you are a heavier women you can increase this in proportion to your bodyweight. If you run more than 20 miles a week, or are more active at work, eat more carbohydrate, not more fat

A 150 pound man with a sedentary job, running 20 miles a week, needs about 2,700 calories a day, with 60 to 75 grams of fat per day. You can scale up the fat if you are heavier, but for a more active job or more exercise push up the carbs, not fat. An even simpler way to tailor your fat needs to your bodyweight is to convert your weight to kilograms (pounds x 0.454 = kilograms). This number matches your suggested daily fat intake in grams, says Editorial Board Member Jack Daniels, Ph.D.

We've put in the calories to let you see where the fat estimates came from, but now you can forget them and concentrate only on fat grams.

Where's the fat?
To achieve low fat intake you don't have to avoid fat foods, but you have to take care how you combine portions. If you eat a 3.5 ounce T-bone steak with 25 grams of fat and eat a salad with tablespoon of regular dressing with nine grams of fat, that may be more than half your daily target. That's okay, but it means that you may have to avoid a cheese or ham sandwich snack that could add up to 20 grams more of fat, unless you're an over- average heavy woman or a man.

It is good to eat meats, poultry, and seafood, they contain essential nutrients such as iron and zinc, but you must control the amount. You simply cannot afford to tackle one of the huge steaks showcased by some restaurants. The right serving of meats, poultry, and seafood is three to four ounces. If you are served anything larger than a deck of cards, cut it down to size and take the rest home. A restaurant meal of meat, classic sauce such as bearnaise, salad with house dressing, is going to give you about 60 grams of fat. That's over the top for most women, and gets into the daily range for many men. It's okay to eat that meal, but you've got to cut out any fat in breakfast, lunch and snacks.

Similarly, if you get into a fast food group for lunch and feel the temptation of a Big Mac (35 grams of fat) and regular fries (11.5 grams of fat), you can have them. But you'd better have pasta and a regular vegetable-tomato sauce for dinner, not meat, sauce, and salad with dressing.

You can widen your choices by switching to nonfat and low-fat choices for many foods. For dairy products this is relatively easy. Try skim and low-fat milk, nonfat or low-fat ice cream, cheese, and yogurt. They taste different at first but your palate will adjust. After six months, or maybe longer for some people, they will taste good, and you won't miss the creamy taste of the higher fat varieties (in fact, you may no longer like them). There are also many prepared foods in low-fat versions, such as dressings and sauces. Learn to enjoy them.

You can slowly (quick changes in diet may upset your stomach and lower intestine) learn to eat as many fruits and vegetables as you like. They provide plenty of vitamins and minerals, are bulky to satisfy your appetite, and are relatively low in calories. Best of all, you can forget their fat content (except avocado and olives: these pack in fat).

Breads, cereals, pasta or noodles, and prepared grain products are relatively low in fat, but you need to check the labels because fat grams add up. A slice of whole wheat bread sounds innocuous with one gram of fat. But if you eat three sandwiches, the total of six grams of fat from the bread is significant.

It's easy to keep fat down at breakfast. Cereal and skim milk with fruit, toast and preserves, juice, and coffee with skim milk are filling, and keep fat to not more than three grams of fat.

Lunch on fruits, whole grain bread, and soup is bulky and nutritious, and you can hold fat to seven grams.

With meat, poultry, and seafood portions of three to four ounces, fat is variable but can usually be kept to about 25 grams. Check sauces carefully or make nonfat versions from wine and herbs. You can eat vegetables without restriction. Enliven your palate with a variety; it is much more interesting to pop half a dozen veggies into a steamer, rather than a larger amount of one or two.

Make salad an important part of your meal plan. Use your imagination to use the largest possible variety of ingredients; not only vegetables, but pasta and fruits can add to your enjoyment. In fact, with a large enough variety you may not need a dressing, or at least can cut it to a tablespoon of olive oil (13.5 grams of fat) and vinegar or lemon juice with herbs.

Many people who eat breakfast, a large lunch and a large dinner, as in the European tradition find less need for snacks. If you begin to switch to limiting your fat intake to the guidelines suggested here and allow yourself unlimited carbohydrate, snacks will be less of a problem except when faced with unusually high energy demands for long endurance workouts. When this happens you will need to avoid many traditional American snack foods, such as chips and dips, and hot dogs. Instead concentrate on breads and bagels, nonfat yogurt, fruits or vegetables and juices, and don't forget energy bars, and high carbohydrate sports drinks.

If you count grams of fat, and gradually switch to a high, unrestricted carbohydrate diet, you should get plenty of energy for your activities and workouts, and your weight and body fat should settle to where your genes want them. If you try it for a while and it doesn't seem to work as expected (bearing in mind George Sheehan's "Every patient is an experiment of one"), check with a registered dietitian to help you count fat grams.

Copyright, The American Running Association.

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