You can eat like a bird, eat totally fat-free, cut out all carbs, or one of many other extreme dietary measures. And many of them work.....for a while. But one of the easiest ways to speed up your results is to sift through your food choices and look for hidden fat. Now the fat is not truly hidden, it's just that we often don't think of the food as having much fat. Or sometimes, we even categorize a given food as primarily protein or carbohydrate, when it's really basically a load of fat.
A classic example of miscategorized food is cheese. A one-ounce slice of cheddar cheese has 113 calories, 82 of which are fat. That means about 3 out of every 4 calories in that cheese are fat. Yet many of us would classify cheese as a protein. In reality, only 28 out of those 113 calories are protein. So it's hardly "basically a great source of protein."
Not all cheese is created equal, and there is some variation between cheeses. Low-fat cheeses, and even non-fat options are available. That's where your choices can make a big difference.
Another big mistake is in thinking of lots of sugary sweets as being primarily carbs. Sure, if something is sugary, it will definitely have a good dose of carbs. But with things like pastries, cookies, candy, and even some baked goods not often thought of as "junk", there are far more calories of fat than carbs. Check your labels, and look up anything you can't find a label on.
A great experiment to try, is to see if you can pick through your protein and carb choices and find the "hidden" fat content, and see if you can find other options with less fat. A great number to shoot for is to try to keep fat to less than 30% of the calories in any given food. Some foods will be more, most should be less. But if you stick to an average of 30%, then your total daily calories won't exceed 30% in fat, which is a great target to shoot for.
