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Calories vs. Grams of fat
I know that to lose weight you can decrease your amount of calories. What if someone only ate 1000 calories a day, but had 50+ g of fat?? Would they gain weight or lose weight?? That is just an example. I'm just not sure how it works. Should you be more concerned about your calorie intake or your daily grams of fat?? Thanks!!
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Maybe give some free advice about: Nutrition?
You should be concerned about both, but in different ways. From a purely weight loss perspective though (not taking general health into account), then calories are more important.
Fat does have a tendency to be stored as bodyfat more easily than other nutrients. However, as low or no carb diets have shown, you can lose weight and still eat a lot of fat. The problem there is that eating too much fat is generally unhealthy. Similarly, too little of the right kind of fat (i.e. mono and polyunsaturated fats) is also very unhealthy.
Another issue is that if you are eating with reduced calories, and if a lot of those calories are fats, then your meals are not giving you the proper nutrition. You will have used up a great deal of the calories that might be more useful as protein or even carbs. This will leave the body either with less energy, or with less of an ability to "repair" itself after workouts and such.
Now, regarding calories, you do need to eat less than you burn to lose weight. There is no getting around that really, and this can either be done by decreasing ones food or increasing ones exercise. The composition of what one eats determines what fuel the body has to run on. A calorie split of 40- 40- 20 (protein- carb- fat), or 40- 30- 30 is what one often sees recommended these days (note that these percentages are based on the calories in 1 gram of each nutrient).
Ok, hopefully you can use this, I know it is a little muddled. Basically just remember that total energy intaken vs total energy used is key in determining weight loss. However the general composition of the nutrients one intakes is key in determining health, performance, effectiveness of weight loss efforts, etc.
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I'd be more concerned about fat. Calories are a source of energy and you NEED them. Unused calories can possibly turn into fat. But fat is FAT. It can be used for energy as well, but usually it gets stored somewhere on your body first. I don't really think you have to worry about fat vs. calories because most foods that are very high in calories are high in fat too. (Example: Pizza) Most general nutrition plans recommend between 55-70 grams of fat per day.
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