Tracked as a goal
Fat tracking
- Unit
- g
- Default goal
- 70 g
- Direction
- Reach
What it is, and why people track it
Fat is the most energy-dense macronutrient at about 9 kcal per gram, carries the fat-soluble vitamins, and is the single largest source of hidden calories in home cooking — because the oil in the pan does not appear in a photograph.
AIM keeps total fat and saturated fat apart. Total fat is a goal; saturated fat is a cap. Collapsing them loses the distinction that most dietary guidance is actually about.
Setting your number
AIM starts at 70 g a day, around 31% of a 2,000 kcal day. Adjust it alongside your carbohydrate number rather than in isolation — they trade against each other at a fixed calorie target.
How good is the estimate?
The weakest of the three macros from a photo, for one specific reason: cooking fat is invisible. A chicken breast pan-fried in two tablespoons of oil looks identical to a grilled one. Saying how it was cooked is the single highest-value correction you can make.
Questions
- Does AIM count cooking oil?
- It assumes a typical preparation and prints that assumption. If the assumption is wrong, say so — “fried in butter”, “no oil” — and it revises the meal.
Also in this group
Protein
Protein is the metric most people open a tracker for. AIM estimates it per ingredient rather than per meal, so a swap of chicken for tofu shows up where it happened.
Carbs
Carbohydrate, broken out per ingredient, with fiber and sugar tracked separately so “carbs” does not have to mean three different things at once.
Fiber
Fiber is the nutrient most people are short on and least likely to have a field for. In AIM it is a standard metric with its own goal and its own color on every chart.
Sugar
Sugar is a cap in AIM, not a goal — a number to stay under, with a warning at the meal that takes you past it rather than a bar that keeps cheerfully filling.
Track fat without a database search
AIM estimates it on every meal from a photo or a sentence, and lets you correct anything it got wrong just by saying so.