How Low Carb Is Lchf?
How low carb is LCHF? Eating a low carb high fat diet has been very popular in Sweden since about 2008. But how low carb, and how high fat? There are no generally agreed exact levels. This is a debate that flares up repeatedly. Some people think that only ultra-strict low-carbers should be allowed to use the term LCHF (people eating below 10 – 20 grams or carbs per day, for example). Others, who eat a more liberal form of LCHF – with a bit more carbohydrates – feel that strict LCHF is too extreme, and that they should use another term. To me the answer is clear: No one has the exclusive right to decide what the concept LCHF means to others, exactly how many carbohydrates can be included. One has to accept that others choose to eat LCHF in their own way. Some people need to eat very few carbs for a maximum effect. This includes many people with big weight issues, diabetes (mainly type 2) and food/sugar addiction, for example. One example is Tommy Runesson, pictured above, who lost more than half his body weight when starting on a strict LCHF diet many years ago, and still sticks to a strict variant. Others – less carb intolerant people – do great on a more liberal LCHF. A third group of healthy, lean, active people may not even need to eat low carb at all, as long as they mainly eat unprocessed slow carbs. My definition Here’s my view on different levels of LCHF: Strict LCHF <20 gram carbs per day Moderate LCHF 20-50 grams per day Liberal LCHF 50-100 grams per day The above numbers discount the fibre – you can deduct them from your carb counts. But don’t be fooled by the label “net carbs” on processed products. That’s usually just a way to trick you and I’d go so far as to suggest not eating anything with the words “net carbs” printed on it. I Continue reading >>
A Keto Diet For Beginners
A keto or ketogenic diet is a very low-carb diet, which turns the body into a fat-burning machine. It has many proven benefits for weight loss, health and performance, as millions of people have experienced already. 1 Here you’ll learn how to eat a keto diet based on real foods. You’ll find visual guides, recipes, meal plans and a simple 2-week get started program, all you need to succeed on keto. Get even more, custom meal plans, ask the experts and low-carb TV, with a free trial. 1. Introduction: What is ketosis? The “keto” in a ketogenic diet comes from the fact that it makes the body produce small fuel molecules called “ketones”. 2 This is an alternative fuel for the body, used when blood sugar (glucose) is in short supply. Ketones are produced if you eat very few carbs (that are quickly broken down into blood sugar) and only moderate amounts of protein (excess protein can also be converted to blood sugar). Ketones are produced in the liver, from fat. They are then used as fuel throughout the body, including the brain. The brain is a hungry organ that consumes lots of energy every day, 3 and it can’t run on fat directly. It can only run on glucose… or ketones. On a ketogenic diet, your entire body switches its fuel supply to run almost entirely on fat. Insulin levels become very low, and fat burning increases dramatically. It becomes easy to access your fat stores to burn them off. This is obviously great if you’re trying to lose weight, but there are also other less obvious benefits, such as less hunger and a steady supply of energy. When the body produces ketones, it’s said to be in ketosis. The fastest way to get there is by fasting – not eating anything – but nobody can fast forever. A keto diet, on the other hand, can be eaten indefinite Continue reading >>
How Many Carbs Should You Eat On A Ketogenic Diet?
If you’re considering going “keto,” keep in mind you’ll need to consider everything — worked out down to the last gram — regarding how many carbohydrates you can consume. One thing’s for sure: the statement “low carb” isn’t open to interpretation. This isn’t a quick fix “fad” diet; it’s meant to promote real and lasting change for your body — change that’s ultimately going to help you become less dependent on glucose and able to melt through fat for energy instead! You need to actually cause a metabolic shift, and just simply guessing if your carbs are low enough isn’t going to be the most efficient way to do that. While you’re on the ketogenic diet, you absolutely must keep your carbohydrate count within the specified range your body operates in — at all times. If not, you won’t reach a state of ketosis, thus rendering the entire program null and void. With that in mind, it’s important to realize you’re doing this as a more long-term process for lasting results. No matter what your goals or desired outcome, eating a lower carb diet than you are now is certainly going to benefit you in the long run. So, How Many Grams of Carbs Should I Have? If you’re a “normal” person — and by normal, we simply mean “non-athlete” — then you’ll be alright following the standard ketogenic dietary ratios. (And we use the word “standard” here because there isn’t just one version of the ketogenic diet — but more on that in a bit.) You can enjoy fantastic benefits going keto, including effortless fat loss, increased lifespan, improved energy, and sharper mental focus. Everyone responds differently to different amounts of carbohydrates, but there are some general starting points. But to achieve those, you’ll need to make yo Continue reading >>
How Many Carbs Can You Eat On A Low-carb Diet?
Source If you've chosen to embark on a carbohydrate-controlled diet, then you may be wondering how many carbs in a low carb diet? The answer, in large part, depends on the diet you have selected as well as how far along you are into the diet plan. It also depends on factors unique to your body type and body chemistry. Low Carbohydrate Diets There are a large number of different low carbohydrate diet plans. Some of the popular low carbohydrate diet plans include Atkins, South Beach and the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. While the details of each of these diet plans differ, they are all based on a common principle - to limit the amount of carbohydrates you eat in order to control the amount of insulin released into your bloodstream. According to low carb diet proponents, insulin plays an important role in weight fluctuation. When there is sugar in your blood, your body releases insulin to neutralize the effects of sugar on the body. Blood sugar rises when you eat carbohydrates - especially refined and simple carbohydrates like white flour and sugar. While insulin plays an important role in neutralizing spikes in sugar, it is also the primary mechanism by which fat is escorted into the fat cells. It also prevents fat from being released from your fat cells to be used as fuel. Low carbohydrate diets limit the amount of insulin released into the bloodstream, which allows your body to rely on its own fat as its primary source of energy. The byproduct of burning fat as your primary energy source is known as ketosis, which can aid in satiating hunger and keeping your energy levels high. How Many Carbs in a Low Carb Diet? Limiting dietary sources of carbohydrates is what starts the whole process of ketosis. Determining how many carbs in a low carb diet depends, to some extent, on y Continue reading >>
How Many Carbs Should You Eat Per Day To Lose Weight?
Republished with permission from our friends at Authority Nutrition. Original article here. Sign up for updates to receive one week FREE of my low carb and gluten free meal plans: Check out some of my other favorite low carb keto resources: Reducing the amount of carbohydrates in your diet is one of the best ways to lose weight. It tends to reduce your appetite and cause “automatic” weight loss, without the need for calorie counting or portion control. This means that you can eat until fullness, feel satisfied and still lose weight. Why Would You Want to do Low-Carb? For the past few decades, the health authorities have recommended that we eat a calorie restricted, low-fat diet. The problem is that this diet doesn’t really work. Even when people manage to stick to it, they don’t see very good results (1, 2, 3). An alternative that has been available for a long time is the low-carb diet. This diet restricts your intake of carbohydrates like sugars and starches (breads, pasta, etc.) and replaces them with protein and fat. Studies show that low-carb diets reduce your appetite and make you eat less calories and lose weight pretty much effortlessly, as long as you manage to keep the carbs down (4). In studies where low-carb and low-fat diets are compared, the researchers need toactively restrict calories in the low-fat groups to make the results comparable, but the low-carb groups still usually win (5, 6). Low-carb diets also have benefits that go way beyond just weight loss. They lower blood sugar, blood pressure and triglycerides. They raise HDL (the good) and improve the pattern of LDL (the bad) cholesterol (7, 8, 9, 10). Low-carb diets cause more weight loss and improve health much more than the calorie restricted, low-fat diet still recommended by the mainstream Continue reading >>
How Many Carbs Should You Eat For Weight Loss
Cutting down on carbohydrates can help you lose weight fast. It can be easier than the strict portion control and counting calories, which many people find hard to maintain. Reducing the amount of carbs in your diet can reduce your cravings for food and automatically help you lose weight. What is a Low-Carb Diet? There are lots of diet fads out there. For decades, so-called health authorities have suggested that you eat a low-fat, low-calorie diet in order to lose weight. That might sound like a great diet plan, but people rarely stick to it. (1, 2, 3) A more effective solution is the low carbohydrate diet. If you cut down on sugary foods and starches such as breads, rice and pastas, and replace them with veggies, meats and fats, then you will see lasting results. Researchers for Duke University Medical found that a low-carb diet stimulates your body’s urge to stop eating. When you feel full, you consume less calories and shed more weight.(4) When compared to low-fat diets, low-carb diets tend to be more effective without the need to actively restrict caloric intake.(5, 6). Low carbohydrate diets aren’t just for weight loss either. Some auxiliary benefits include a rise in good cholesterol (HDL) and lower blood sugar, triglycerides, lower blood pressure and lower levels of bad cholesterol, so-called LDH. (7, 8, 9, 10). The science is clear. Low-carb diets improve overall health and stimulate weight loss. This is superior to calorie-restricted, low-fat and low-protein diets that are so popular in the mainstream media. (11, 12, 13). Conclusion: Scientific studies support the value of low-carb diets over trendy, low-fat diets. Figuring Out Your Optimum Carbohydrate Level A person’s ideal caloric and carbohydrate level varies from person to person. Some influential fa Continue reading >>
How Many Grams Of Carbs Keep The Average Person Out Of Ketosis?
I realize that this is highly variable, but what number of grams have you guys found to be the threshold? I suppose if you are right at the threshold, you'll be passing in and out of it, so maybe we'd want a 10g buffer or something? Personally, I'd like to stay outside of it, but only just, and am wondering what the general rule of thumb is these days. I do strength-increasing workouts and walk around a lot, but I avoid what most consider to be "exercise." 1 Worst Carb After Age 50 If you're over 50 and you eat this carb, you will never lose belly fat. HealthPlus50 I was at 3 servings of fruit a day for a while (roughly 75g of carbs) but feel like I might be able to go a little lower. I think the 3 cups (pre-cooked) of steamed spinach would add a largely negligible amount. The 50g of natto per day has something like 5-7g. No other beans or legumes to speak of. Continue reading >>
5 Most Common Low-carb Mistakes (and How To Avoid Them)
A few months ago, I read a book called The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living. The authors are two of the world's leading researchers on low-carb diets. Dr. Jeff S. Volek is a Registered Dietitian and Dr. Stephen D. Phinney is a medical doctor. These guys have performed many studies and have treated thousands of patients with a low-carb diet. According to them, there are many stumbling blocks that people tend to run into, which can lead to adverse effects and suboptimal results. To get into full-blown ketosis and reap all the metabolic benefits of low-carb, merely cutting back on the carbs isn't enough. If you haven't gotten the results you expected on a low-carb diet, then perhaps you were doing one of these 5 common mistakes. There is no clear definition of exactly what constitutes a "low carb diet." Some would call anything under 100-150 grams per day low-carb, which is definitely a lot less than the standard Western diet. A lot of people could get awesome results within this carbohydrate range, as long as they ate real, unprocessed foods. But if you want to get into ketosis, with plenty of ketoness flooding your bloodstream to supply your brain with an efficient source of energy, then this level of intake may be excessive. It could take some self experimentation to figure out your optimal range as this depends on a lot of things, but most people will need to go under 50 grams per day to get into full-blown ketosis. This doesn't leave you with many carb options except vegetables and small amounts of berries. If you want to get into ketosis and reap the full metabolic benefits of low-carb, going under 50 grams of carbs per day may be required. Protein is a very important macronutrient, which most people aren't getting enough of. It can improve satiety and incr Continue reading >>
A Breakdown Of The Fat/protein/carb Ratio For A Ketogenic Diet
When on the ketogenic diet, one of the most important things you’ll have to pay attention to is your macronutrient breakdown. This means you’ll be getting a certain portion of your calories form carbohydrates (a very small portion) at 5%, a larger portion of calories from protein (35%), and the largest number of calories from fats (65%). There are many online sites that can help you figure out how many calories you need on a daily basis, based on your height, weight, measurements, age, gender and level of activity. From there, you can also use online calculators to help you figure out the proper breakdown, in grams, for each macronutrient percentage you’ll be eating. You’ll multiply your total daily calories by each percentage to get the grams of each macronutrient that you’ll need. For example, if you need 1200 calories per day, and your carbohydrates are 5% of that total, then multiply 1200 by 5% to get the number of grams of carbohydrates you’ll be allowed to eat each day. In this case, 5% of 1200 calories is 60 calories. You then divide the calories by the grams per unit of carb, protein or fat. Carbohydrates and proteins both have 4 calories per gram and fats have 9 calories per gram. Again, in this example, 60 calories divided by 4 grams per carb leaves you with a total of 15 grams of carbs per day. There are several great phone apps that will do the calculations for you. My personal favorite is Carb Counter. This also makes restaurant eating a breeze. One last note on food and nutrient tracking applications—you can typically also use these to plan your meals ahead of time. Just plug in the proposed foods for the day to see where your calorie and macronutrient values will lie, and make adjustments from there. Then, you build your meals around those n Continue reading >>
How Low Carb Is Low Carb?
How few carbs are there in a low-carb diet? It depends. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve and who you are. Generally speaking, the fewer carbs the more effective it will be. Faster weight loss without hunger. More rapid and powerful reversal of type 2 diabetes. But also more restrictive and possibly more challenging. Here are three examples of how a low-carb meal can look, depending on how many carbs you eat per day (the yellow stuff is delicious herb butter). Some people need to keep the carbs very low for maximum effect – a strict low-carb diet. This includes many people with significant weight issues, diabetes (mainly type 2) and food or sugar addiction, for example. Others – less carb-intolerant people – do great on a more liberal low-carb diet. This also minimizes the risk of any side effects. A third group of healthy, lean, active people may not even need to eat very low carb, as long as they mainly eat unprocessed slow carbs. If you want to start doing low carb, I suggest starting out on a strict version, just to experience the power of it. Later, as you hopefully approach your weight and health goals, you can try adding more natural carbs to see how much you tolerate. Here’s a two-week guide to a strict low-carb diet. Meal plans Get lots of weekly low-carb meal plans, complete with shopping lists and everything, with our premium meal planner tool (free trial). More Low-carb recipes – marked strict, moderate or liberal A keto diet for beginners (strict low carb) Low-carb basics videos Continue reading >>
Patients Share: “a Low-carb Diet Improved My A1c & Blood Sugars…”
The amount of carbohydrates you eat can have a huge impact on your daily blood sugar levels and your A1C levels, but the “jury” is still out on just how many carbs a person with diabetes “should” eat. Additionally, what one person considers “low-carb” can differ greatly compared to what another person considers low-carb. At DiabetesDaily, we define a “low-carb” diet as fewer than 100 grams of carbs per day, and a very low-carb diet as fewer than 50 grams of carbs per day. We asked our Facebook audience: Do you follow a “low-carb” diet or a diet consisting of a certain number of carbohydrates? How has it helped your A1C and overall blood sugar levels? “Low carb… not sure how many, but since ‘everything’ has carbs I just stay away from the obvious like pasta, rice, bread, potatoes etc … and my A1C went down from 10.1 to 5.2 after 3 months doing this… and my last one (another 3 months) was again 5.2 . And I’m feeling great.” - Ingrid “There are only 2 things that I do without counting carbs…for some reason when I check after alcohol or pizza I’m low…otherwise I keep meals to 40 grams of carbs a meal…when I was diagnosed in February my A1c was 9.2 and now it’s down to 4.5.” – Eric ”Yes!! I try my hardest. So I have no more than 40 carbs per meal. And my A1C was 13 and now its 8.3. Still high but im working on it. My sugars were in the 500, now it’s in the 100 or less.” – Tracie “Dr. Bernstein’s Diet recommends cutting all carbs and replace with fat to feel satisfied…it works awesome! You don’t crave any carbs!” – Melinda “Yes I do. I don’t count grams total per day but I watch each meal. It has helped me to drop by A1C down to 6.2 and maintain that for 6 months. And helped me lose a significant amou Continue reading >>
How To Find Your Ideal Carb Intake
Low-carb, high-fat diets have a number of known benefits for your body and mind. They keep you lean, support your hormones and brain, regulate your blood sugar, stop food cravings, keep you full for hours, and give you license to put bacon on everything. For the vast majority, a low-carb, high-fat diet is miles ahead of a low-calorie, low-fat one. But within the realm of low-carb, there is no one-size-fits-all. Instead, it’s important you find your body’s sweet spot for carb intake and timing. Tailoring your nutrition to your unique biology helps you perform even better. This guide will show you how. Let’s break down how to hack your carb intake, step-by-step. Find the Goldilocks zone of carb intake: not too low, not too high This is where you get to do some personal experimenting. Most people do best eating somewhere between 30-150 grams of net carbs daily. “Net carbs” means you can subtract fiber and sugar alcohols (like xylitol) out of your daily carb count – they don’t affect your blood sugar or get stored as glycogen. Here are three different low-carb approaches within the 30-150 gram range: Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Eat high fat, very low carb (<50g net carbs/day) 6 days a week, then have a carb refeed on day 7 (~150g net carbs). This is what the Bulletproof Diet is based on. Here’s why : Some people (Dave included) have thyroid issues when they do very low carb with no carb refeed [1]. For some people, chronic low-carb eating can lead to low mucous production, which disrupts gut bacteria [2] and causes dry eyes. A cyclical ketogenic diet works very well for a lot of people. On the other hand, re-upping on carbs once a week will keep you out of deep ketosis, which may cause carb cravings (Brain Octane helps with that). Try a weekly carb refeed and se Continue reading >>
How To Get Into Ketosis Faster On A Low Carb Diet
This post may be sponsored or contain affiliate links. We may earn money from purchases made through links mentioned in this post, but all opinions are our own. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliates sites. Want to be a fat-burning machine without having to count calories? Here’s a few ideas on how to get into ketosis faster on a low carb diet. Do you want to look leaner for bikini season? Yoga pants starting to feel a little tighter? One way to burn fat fast is to go on a ketogenic diet. The physiological process of burning stored fat instead of sugar, can be achieved within a short amount of time after following a strict keto diet. It is possible to get there in a day. In fact, some people show you how to get into ketosis, this fat burning state, in 24 hours. Do you need to fast? Becoming keto adapted where the body burns fat rather than sugar isn’t as hard as you might think. And, you don’t have to starve yourself to get there quickly. The great news for those who want to know how to get into ketosis faster is, well … you don’t have to fast. Fasting has been used for thousands of years by virtually every religion and traditional society. There are some people who think that a complete fast (not just intermittent fasting) is a way to get into ketosis faster. But the great thing about following a ketogenic diet is that you can eat until your heart—er, stomach—is content. You just have to eat enough of the right foods. And, of course, eat very little of the wrong foods. Is getting into ketosis safe without a doctor? Before reviewing how to get into ketosis quickly, let’s take a look at a quick background: T Continue reading >>
Ketones And Carbohydrates: Can They Co-exist?
For reasons I’m still struggling to understand, the idea of “nutritional ketosis” (NK, to be distinguished from starvation ketosis, SK or diabetic ketoacidosis, DKA) is often discussed and debated in much the same way as religion or politics. Perhaps this can be said of all nutrition, which is a shame. Nevertheless, in my continued defiance of such sensitive topics, I’d like to add another layer of complexity and nuance to this discussion. The “rule of thumb” for NK is that caloric intake is determined as follows (this excludes a subset of ketogenic diets known as calorie-restricted KD which, as the name suggests, is specifically restricted in calories): Carbohydrate (total, not “net”): less than 50 gm/day, but ideally closer to 30 gm/day Protein: up to 1 to 1.5 gm/kg, but ideally below about 120 gm/day Fat: to satiety Let me illustrate what this looks like for Joe (left), Jane (middle), and Jeff (right — an example of a calorie restricted KD), three hypothetical people in NK — but each with different caloric requirements. As a general rule, as caloric requirement increases the proportion of calories derived from carbohydrate and protein decreases (and the contribution of dietary fat increases), even while absolute intake of carbohydrate and protein increases. Anyone who has bought a blood ketone meter knows how tough it can be to get “into” ketosis by carbohydrate restriction (since everyone asks, I use the Abbott Precision Xtra meter which uses two different strips: one for glucose and one for beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB). Most practitioners consider the minimum threshold of NK to be a fasting serum level of BHB above 0.5 mM. I’m a bit more stringent in my practice and like to see fasting BHB levels above 1 mM. To give you a sense of one per Continue reading >>
How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?
A perennial question, argument and debate in the field of nutrition has to do with how many carbohydrates people should be eating. While the nutritional mainstream is still more or less advocating a large amount of daily carbohydrate (with fat being blamed for the health problems of the modern world), groups often considered at the ‘fringe’ of nutrition are adamant that carbohydrates are the source of all evil when it comes to health, obesity, etc. They advocate lowering carbohydrates and replacing them with dietary protein, fat or both. This is a topic that I discussed in some detail in Carbohydrates and Fat Controversies Part 1 and Carbohydrate and Fat Controversies Part 2 and I’d recommend readers take a look at those for a slightly different look at the issue than what is discussed here. Arguments over recommended carbohydrate intake have a long history and it doesn’t appear to be close to ending any time soon. Typical mainstream recommendations have carbohydrates contributing 50% or more of total calories while many low-carbohydrate advocates suggest far fewer (ranging from the 40% of the Zone diet to close to zero for ketogenic diets). This article looks at the topic in detail. And while I originally wrote it quite a while back (some of you have probably seen it before), it was nice going over it with fine toothed comb for an update. While the majority of it stands up well over time, I was able to make some slight changes to the values, along with removing some original stuff that wasn’t really relevant. Enjoy. Introduction It’s safe to say that most carbohydrate recommendations that you will see are put in terms of percentages, you should be eating 45% of your calories as carbs, or 65% or whatever number is being used. As I discussed in Diet Percentag Continue reading >>
