Carbs may steal the spotlight when it comes to providing energy for your rides, but without fat in our diets, we wouldn’t have the fuel we need for slower, steady-state efforts—let alone the energy we need for daily life. While dietary fats also tend to get left off the podium when it comes to healthy foods, this macronutrient serves up much-needed nutrition, flavor, and the ability to leave you feeling satisfied after your meals and snacks.
Research has even shown that the healthiest diets, including the Mediterranean diet, MIND diet plan, and the DASH diet, include healthy fats. But what are good fats and are there bad ones to avoid? We break down what to know about choosing and consuming dietary fats throughout your day.
What are good fats?
There are four types of dietary fat: monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated, and trans. Each type has its own chemical structure and physical properties.
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Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are often liquid, such as olive oil and the oils in fatty fish like mackerel. In general, these are considered healthier than saturated and trans fats, like butter, which frequently become solid at room temperature.
“Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats should be emphasized over saturated fats,” Namrita Brooke, Ph.D., R.D.N., a sports nutritionist and USA Cycling level 2 coach in Pensacola, Florida tells Bicycling. These fats offer benefits like improved immune function, hormone support, and lower inflammation, says Brooke.
Foods with monounsaturated fats include avocado, nuts, and olives, while polyunsaturated fats include nuts, seeds, and fish, such as tuna and salmon.
In addition to offering energy, you need fats in your diet for many reasons, another being that they help us absorb essential vitamins, like A, D, E, K, and beta-carotene. Our bodies also use fat to build nerve tissue and to produce hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone.
To understand more about the role different fats play in the body, let’s break it down further.
The types of fat, in more detail
Unsaturated fat
There are two types of healthy unsaturated fats and they both come from plants and fish. They slide through your arteries without gunking up the works.
Monounsaturated fat
Consider this your number-one unsaturated fat choice. These fats lower LDL cholesterol while raising or maintaining HDL cholesterol (the “good” one). Great sources of this fat include nuts, avocados, olive oil, and canola oil.
Research backs up the benefits of adding more of these fats to your diet. For example, one study in the Journal of the American Heart Association found a link between eating two or more servings of avocado per week and lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Another research review calls out a monounsaturated fat-rich diet as one for providing more physical energy, as compared to a diet higher in saturated fats, and says these types of unsaturated fatty acids can improve insulin sensitivity.
Polyunsaturated fat
This choice is also generally healthy, but they slightly lower HDL levels, so they’re considered a small step down. Prime sources include seeds, most vegetable oils (corn, sunflower, soy) and fatty fish, such as salmon.
Research, also from the American Heart Association, shows that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats, particularly vegetable oils, can reduce risk of heart disease. Omega-3 fatty acids are also a type of polyunsaturated fat and these have been associated with reduced inflammation, which can offer particular benefits for cyclists, as anti-inflammatory foods can help you recover from a workout.
Saturated Fat
These fats are less healthy than unsaturated kinds, but newer research points to the fact that consuming some saturated fats isn’t as bad as previously thought. As mentioned, swapping unsaturated fats for saturated fats have been linked to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in some studies, but other research says there’s not sufficient evidence to prove that.
The bottom line is to eat these types of fats in moderation.
Mainly sourced from animal products, saturated fats are found in meats and dairy foods, such as burgers, butter, lard, and cheese.
Trans fat
Trans fats, for the most part, come from food processing that solidifies vegetable oils. Trans fats are found in fried, processed, and packaged foods, including crackers, cookies, pastries, and chips. They have been linked to heart disease and early death, as well as cancer. Because of these associations to poor health, the World Health Organization is on a mission to eliminate trans fats from our diets.
Read your labels and steer clear of buying or eating foods with the words “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” on the ingredient list. As a general rule, avoid eating these foods as much as possible.
What about when we were told to avoid fat?
Weren’t we told in the 1980s and 90s that high-fat foods made us fat? Aren’t fatty foods high in calories? Well, yes and no. Fat has nine calories per gram, while carbs and protein have four calories per gram, but fat is more filling, so we tend to eat less of those foods when they are eaten in their natural state.
“Endurance athletes, such as cyclists, are very efficient at using the fat stored in their muscles, so keeping those stores stocked is essential for performance and recovery,” says sports nutritionist Kathy Zawadzki, coauthor of Food for Fitness: Eat Right to Train Right. But, she says, you don’t want to eat so much calorie-rich, fatty food that your body has to store too much of the extra fats.
Your goal: Eat enough of the right kinds of fat to stock your muscles, without clogging the arteries. That means focus on unsaturated fats, have a little of the saturated kind if you want, and stay away from trans fats.
A daily approach to fat intake
Because fat is calorie dense and stores easily, a little goes a long way. To get the benefits, experts recommend capping your daily fat intake at about 30 percent of your total calories. So an active cyclist eating 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day can eat up to 600 to 750 of those calories from fat. That’s about 65 to 80 grams, one-third to one-half of which should come from plant foods, with the rest coming from lean meats or dairy.
Here’s a snapshot menu of a good fat day:
Breakfast
6 ounces orange juice (0g)
2 eggs, scrambled (10g)
2 pieces toast with 2 pats butter (3g)
Mid-morning snack
8 oz. low-fat yogurt (3.5g)
Lunch
1 can tuna with 1T light mayo (21g)
Salad with 1T olive oil and vinegar (7g)
8 oz. skim milk (0.56g)
Mid-afternoon nibble
1 oz. nuts (14.5g)
Dinner
4 oz. chicken breast (4g)
1-2 to 1 cup mixed vegetables (0g)
3 to 4 small roasted potatoes (1g)
After dinner treat
2 tbsp. peanut butter on 1 piece toast (16g)
Grand total: 71.5 grams
Donna Raskin has had a long career as a health and fitness writer and editor of books and magazine articles. She bikes in a nearby county park, lifts weights, takes Zumba, and loves to walk/run with her dog, Dolly.
