Is Peking Duck Healthy? (3 Tips for Weight Loss)

Every time my Chinese extended family gathers for a heart-warming family reunion, the only place we can all agree to celebrate is in a restaurant with Peking duck.

Originating in Beijing, China, Peking duck is the most famous duck dish in the world and rightfully so.

With a unique way of preparing and serving the meat, Peking duck is super delicious and combines spring onions, a sauce, and a wrap to complete the overall dish. 

Peking duck is great and celebratory food, but is it healthy to eat on a diet? 

Peking duck can be a great food to eat when you are on a diet but can also become detrimental to your goals if you do not take certain precautions. Depending on the additional foods you eat it with and which parts of the duck you eat, Peking duck can become a very high caloric dish or an excellent source of protein!

In this article, we will discuss tips on how you can incorporate Peking duck into your diet while still reaching your goal of weight loss.

 Here are the 3 tips:

1. Understand the Nutrition behind Peking Duck

2. Watch Your Wrap

3. Understand How Many Calories You Need To Lose Weight

Tip 1: Understand the Nutrition behind Peking Duck

Duck is an interesting source of protein that is not commonly sold at your local grocery store, but you can easily find a Peking duck restaurant all over the states.

When going out to eat Peking duck with friends or family, if you are trying to stay on track with your goal of losing weight it is important to watch your caloric intake. 

To understand how to incorporate Peking duck into your diet, you should get familiar with the nutritional information behind a serving of Peking duck.

Let’s take a closer look at the calories and macronutrients: 

For every serving size of Peking duck, which is around 100 grams, there are 340 calories with 28 grams of fat and 19 grams of protein and no carbohydrates.

One serving of Peking duck is very high in fats making it not the ideal food to consume when you are trying to lose weight.

However, the reason why Peking duck is so high in fat is because of the duck skin.

If you were to remove the skin of the Peking duck, it becomes a very lean source of protein that is comparable to chicken breast!

It is true that the duck skin makes the Peking duck taste very delicious overall, but you probably want to reduce the amount of skin you end up consuming. 

To put into perspective how much fat and calories you will deduct for eating just skinless duck, one serving of skinless duck (which is 85 grams) has 120 calories with 24 grams of protein and only 2 grams of fat!

This dramatically reduces the calories to almost a third which gives you way more room to eat other foods. 

To limit the amount of fat consumption you have in a meal with Peking duck, I recommend that you reduce the amount of duck skin you eat.

Pecking duck is usually served in thin cuts, so you might want to choose pieces that do not have skin or minimal skin. 

Tip 2: Watch Your Wrap

Peking duck is famously served with sauce, spring onions, and a wrap to complete the overall dish.

Depending on which restaurant you go to, they may serve different types of wraps.

In this section, we will discuss the nutritional information behind the wraps and how you can still enjoy Peking duck while still being aware of how many calories you are consuming in the meal.

Mandarin Pancake Wrap

Mandarin Pancake is the most popular wrap used to pair with Peking Duck. Similar to a tortilla skin, Mandarin Pancakes are thin, opaque round sheets that are made of flour and sesame oil. These are super delicious but are they ideal to eat on a diet?

The typical Mandarin Wrap is around 50 calories per wrap with 4 grams of fats, 4 grams of carbohydrates, and 1 gram of protein.

Although 50 calories may not seem like a lot, eating four or five can quickly add 200-300 calories into your meal and putting you in a surplus. 

Since Mandarin Wraps are so thin, it is really easy to eat many of these wraps with your Peking duck.

I recommend that when eating these Mandarin wraps, stick with around skins to pair with your duck. 

What makes Mandarin Wraps different than tortilla skins is that they are mainly high in fats rather than carbohydrates.

As we examined earlier, Peking duck’s skin is also very high in fats, so eating it with the Mandarin skin can easily put you over the amount of fats you should be eating per day.

Every gram of fat is approximately 9 calories compared to carbohydrates and proteins which are just 4 calories per gram.

This is why foods that are high in fats tend to be much higher in calories because there are more than twice the amount of calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and protein! 

Steamed Chinese Bao Bun

Another popular way to eat your Peking duck is with the Steamed Chinese Bao Buns.

These tiny buns are designed so that you can conveniently put in your meat and green onion into the opening and make it into a delicious sandwich-like dish. 

One Steamed Chinese Bao Bun is approximately 120 calories with 23 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fat, and 3 grams of protein.

One bun is way higher in calories compared to the Mandarin Pancake so you definitely do not want to overeat on these!

Although the Steamed Chinese Bao Bun is more fulfilling than the Mandarin Pancake, I highly recommend just eating one or maybe two when you are trying to lose weight.

These Bao Buns are very calorically dense and very high on carbohydrates.

The Bao Buns are relatively low in fat, making the macronutrient distribution different than the Mandarin Pancake, but at the end of the day, to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit.

Regardless of what macronutrient you are consuming, as long as you are eating fewer calories than you are burning you are guaranteed to shed off fat.

Tip 3: Understanding How Many Calories You Need to Lose Weight

As we observed earlier, Peking duck is a dish you can easily fit into your diet depending on how you eat it.

However, if you really value eating the skin of Peking duck you can definitely do so!

All you need to be aware of is how much you are eating. 

When trying to lose weight, it is not so much about which foods you can eat or which foods you can not eat, but how much you can eat of each food.

If you want to eat Peking duck with the skin, you surely can, you just have to eat less of the duck overall to make sure you are in a calorie deficit. 

The only way to lose weight and shed off fat is to make sure you are consuming less food than your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure, which is a combination of your resting metabolic rate (calories burned at rest), your calories burned during daily activity, and finally the calories you burn when consuming and digesting food.

As long as you eat less than this number than you are guaranteed to lose weight.

You may be wondering how to figure out your TDEE.

Simply search up a TDEE calculator which will ask you to input your gender, weight, and height, and they will automatically calculate your calories for you!

Keep in mind that this number is a general estimate and it will be up to you to make tiny adjustments as you continue your diet. 

I recommend starting off in a 300-400 calorie deficit to make sure you are steadily losing weight and will prevent you from being overly hungry.

If you do not see any results within a week or so, try reducing your calories by 100 and keep doing so until you start seeing progress!

Now that you know how to eat delicious Peking duck while you are on a diet, you can easily enjoy this meal with your friends and family without letting it hinder your progress! 

CONCLUSION 

Remember, although nutrition is a huge factor that influences weight loss, it is important to pair this journey with exercise as well.

Especially strength training.

Several years of research on the benefits of weight training have shown that individuals that do some sort of consistent resistance training at least 3-5 times a week have shown not only a great amount of weight loss but are also able to keep the weight off! 

The secret to this phenomena is that strength training leads to a build-up of muscle.

Not only does your body recomposition into a more fitting and athletic-looking aesthetic, but having more muscle also increases your resting metabolic rate which essentially means you burn more calories at rest! 

Now that we know the importance of muscle we need to make sure we stay on track with our workouts.

Consistency and longevity are the two key factors when building muscle so there will be some commitment involved.

We understand that not everyone has access to a gym membership or feels comfortable starting off in such an intimidating environment.

Although I would strongly recommend that everyone should get a gym membership, don’t worry we got your back!

You can either go to the gym or build one for yourself.

It really just comes down to 3 pieces of equipment that you need to do most workouts. These three are the workout bench, dumbbells, and gym flooring. Check out our recommended gear page to see our best picks for these pieces of equipment here. 

https://www.aspirefitnesswalnut.com/home-workout-equipment

If a home gym is not for you then getting a membership somewhere works too.

As long as you are starting your muscle-building journey, we’re happy! 

Stick with it for the long run and you’ll see how amazing the results can be. 

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