Is Borek (Burek) Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss) 

Borek or Burek is a turkish dish that features phyllo pastry and many different delicious ingredients such as feta cheese, ground beef, and herbs such as dill and parsley.

It’s a very substantial dish and is packed with delicious ingredients that mesh together wonderfully. 

Although Borek or Burek is delicious, is it healthy?

Borek or Burek is definitely a dish that must be eaten in moderation as it is dense with calories coming from fats and carbs. If you look at the ingredient list, you can see many sheets of phyllo pastry and tons of different types of cheeses which are packed with calories coming from fats and carbs. 

If you want to eat Borek and stay healthy, then here are some steps you can take to make sure that you stay fit while eating your favorite turkish meal. 

1. Understand What Goes Inside Borek

2. Understand How Many Calories Are In Borek

3. Consistently Workout & Stay Active

Now that we know the three steps to eat Borek while staying healthy, let’s take a deeper look at the specifics at what we can do. 

Tip 1: Understand What Goes Inside Borek 

Borek is really a dish that has two main components which are the filling and the pastry that covers it.

Let’s take a look at some of the ingredients you can expect to find when you eat a typical Borek dish. 

The Fillings

The good part about the filling is that it contains a lot of different vegetables such as green onions and spinach.

Vegetables are always great for dieting as they contain a lot of fiber which helps us digest our food properly and keeps us fuller without the addition of too many calories. 

The bad part, however, is the huge amount of fat that you can get from the feta, parmesan, and mozzarella which comes in half cup portions for a serving of 6 slices.

Cheese is totally fine to eat in moderation; however, when you eat over a cup of cheese in one sitting, you can get a lot of fats in your diet which is really not ideal. 

I always instruct my clients to eat foods that are low in calories but filling such as chicken breast, fish, and a ton of fresh vegetables and herbs.

When you melt cheese, you get the exact opposite of a low calorie option that is filling.

You essentially get this really thin layer of cheese which reduces the volume of food but keeps its calories. 

You can also expect to find some ground beef seasoned with cumin, black pepper, salt, and garlic. This is what really makes this dish so delicious as it essentially a meat pie loaded with a ton of cheese. 

We’ll check out the calories later but, just by looking at the ingredients, we can assume that most of the calories will be coming from fats and carbs.

Moderation is key here and limiting yourself to a couple of slices will benefit your diet in the long run. 

The Pastry 

Phyllo dough is usually what you can expect to wrap around the fillings of Borek.

It’s a dough similar to many egg noodles as there is a lot of olive oil and egg that goes inside the mixture.

This means that, along with all the fats you get from the filling, you can expect fat to be in the Pastry as well. 

To top it off, Phyllo dough shines when it is brushed down with butter as it creates a crispy layer of dough when baked.

Once again, it adds on the calories but you’ll get an amazingly crispy and flaky pastry dough. 

Overall, this dish is pretty difficult to fit into a healthy diet.

It’s definitely a cheat day meal or on a day where you can afford to eat more than usual.

Let’s take a look at its calories and what its macronutrient ratios are. 

Tip 2: Understand How Many Calories Are In Borek

Now that we know what goes inside a typical Borek dish, let’s take a look at the nutrition label to see where most of the calories come from.

For a roll that weighs 80 grams, we can see that there are 194 calories which consist of 14 grams of fat, 10 grams of carbs, and 8 grams of protein.

This is not optimal at all for staying within a healthy range of macronutrients as there is more fat than any other macronutrient.

Here’s why that’s a problem. 

Fat is the highest of the three macronutrients and should be the lowest number of grams you should get at the end of your day.

You should see a macronutrient ratio of something like 25% fats, 45% carbs, and 30% protein.

We can see that, in a dish like Borek, the fats exceed this number immensely as most of the calories come from fat. 

The majority of our diets should come from protein and carbs as they fuel our workouts and movements while sustaining our body for it to properly function.

Fats have an important role in our diets as well but should be kept at a 22-25% range of our total intake.

This means that, when eating a dish that contains 14 grams of fat for 1 small roll, you’ll probably double or even triple that percentage. 

The trick here is to stay aware of how many grams of fat are in your food.

That goes for carbs and proteins too. The more you look at the nutrition labels of certain foods, the more you grasp how many calories you put into your body.

This, then, means you can grasp how you look and feel which is something that I believe we should all learn to do. 

You can totally enjoy foods like this on days where you need a break from dieting or if you need to satisfy a craving.

Just don’t make it a dish that consumes most of your diet as you’ll be getting too many calories from fat which can lead to many complications down the line.

Let’s take a look at why we need to be working out and staying active while eating our favorite Turkish meal.

Tip 3: Consistently Workout & Stay Active

Now that we know the importance of counting our calories and look at where those calories come from.

Let’s take a look at the importance of working out and staying active while we eat a hefty dish like Borek. 

There’s something that’s called TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) which is how many calories you are expected to burn in a day.

There are two factors that are in our control which is how much muscle we carry and how active we stay.

TEPA (Thermic Effect of Physical Activity) accounts for 15-30% of our daily calories burned which is a huge percentage when translated to calories. 

By staying active consistently, we can add more foods into our diet which is always the goal when dieting.

You want to eat as much as you can while staying lean and healthy as this will allow you to enjoy your food and get all the nutrition you need to have more energy throughout the day. 

Another factor is building muscle as the addition of muscle allows us to burn calories at rest.

This means that, as we continue to get stronger and more advanced in our workouts, we can build more muscle and burn more calories overall.

It can be a little intimidating to start as lifting weights and resistance training is hard to consistently get into. 

Our solution to that is creating a workout plan that is basic will give you a great workout while, at the same time, teaching you about all of the functions of each muscle group you should try and isolate.

Here is the workout plan down below. 

WOMEN 

Monday (Full Upper):  

• Seated Shoulder Press: 4x20 

• Lateral Raises: 4x15

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12

• Dumbbell Row: 3x10

• Dumbbell Fly: 3x10 

• Knee Push Ups: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

Wednesday (Back/Hamstrings/Biceps) 

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3x10

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12 

• Cable Row: 4x15

• Stiff Leg Deadlift: 4x15

• Hamstring Curl: 4x15

• Bicep Curls: 3x10

• Hammer Curls: 3x10

Friday: (Legs/Butt/Abs): 

• Squats: 5x5 

• Goblet Squats: 4x20

• Glute Bridge: 4x20

• Glute Kickbacks: 4x20 each leg

• Jump Squats: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

• Leg Lifts: 3x35

MEN 

Mon: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Abs (Push Day) 

• Bench Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Dumbbell Press: 4 sets 12 reps

• Shoulder Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lateral Raises: 3 sets 15 reps

• Triceps Rope Push Down: 3 sets 15 reps

• Cable Crunches: 4 sets 15 reps 

Wed: Legs & Abs

• Goblet Squats: 4 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Walking Lunges: 2 sets 20 steps

• Stiff Leg DeadLift (Romanian Deadlift): 4 sets 15 reps

• Glute Bridges With Weight: 4 sets 20 reps

• Jumping Squats With Resistance Bands: 5 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Sit Ups: 4 sets 25 reps

• Weighted Toe Touches: 4 sets 25 reps

Fri: Back & Biceps (Pull Day)

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets 12 reps

• Dumbbell Rows: 4 sets 10 reps (Each Side)

• Seated Cable Rows: 4 sets 15 reps

• Bicep Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

• Hammer Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

It will take some time to learn these movements but we have a great resource online to expand our knowledge on effective workouts such as these. 

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.

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. 

There It Is 

In this article we talked about what goes inside Borek and what you can expect to find when you look close at its nutrition label.

To sum it up, Borek is not the most optimal dish to eat when dieting as it contains way too much fat per serving. 

The way we combat this is to make sure to eat it in moderation and to make our days are filled with activity and movements that allow us to burn calories and stay healthy.

We also want to be working out and building some muscle as it will allow us to burn more calories which can help us enjoy our favorite Turkish foods like Borek. 

If you liked this article and want to know more about your favorite dishes, then make sure to check out our other articles where we talk about healthy tips and tricks you can implement into your life as well.

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