veggies

maggiegbrown

Hey everyone I am trying to keep my carbs under 15 and I love my salad, and it seems my lunch salad takes up all my carbs. How do you get in your veggies and still stay low carb? help!!!!

Sajyana

I love veggies too. I don't miss fruit at all but I love veggies. These are my low carb veggies.

Avocado (almost every day - I love it with bacon and eggs for breakfast)
Cherry Tomatoes
Lettuce
Celery
Mushrooms
Spinach (baby spinach is great in a salad with dressing)
Bok Choy
Chinese cabbage
Green cabbage
Cauliflower
Zucchini
Green Beams
Broccoli
Olives

There are probably quite a few more but these are what I regularly use.

oyadancing

In addition to many above, I also have kale, brussels sprouts, or collards at least twice a week.

judiness101

Are you counting your net carbs or total carbs?

maggiegbrown

Does MFP count net carbs. if not how do I do it?

maggiegbrown

When I record a half a red pepper that is 5 carbs. That is a third of what I can eat all day. Same with cucumbers. yikes....... so if I eat them together there sure isn't enough for supper. ; (

Dragonwolf

maggiegbrown wrote: »

Does MFP count net carbs. if not how do I do it?

MFP doesn't do it natively, but you can do one of two ways:

1. Manually -- track both carbs and fiber, then in your head subtract fiber from the carb number to get your net carbs.
2. Automatically, with a little extra setup and a browser addon -- the launch pad post provides the details under "Setting up MFP to track Net Carbs," but basically, you install an extension to your browser that can run a script that will do the total carbs - fiber equation for you and add a column that displays it (it also displays percentages of each macro on a total and per-meal basis, and gives you a lovely pie chart of your total macro breakdown for the day)

I don't go as far down as 15g total carbs, but from what I've seen, there seem to be two main approaches to handling it:

1. Use that 15g as net carbs, which gives you considerably more veggies for 15g, due to the fiber content.
2. Don't eat (many) veggies. You can actually get all the nutrients you need from meat and some dairy, making veggies not actually required in the human diet. Whether that's sustainable for you, specifically, is a different matter, but it is a valid option.

icrushit

Track the net carbs. There is some little add-on I think around the web that will do it for you on your MFP food diary page, but it's simple enough - just subtract the fibre from the carb count. Just be careful though, sometimes when you look at nutritional information it's already been done, other times no. It's something that drives me nuts.

If you have a little flexibility in your overall carb level, and don't want to calculate net carbs for everything, you could simply adopt a higher carb level (to compensate for the fibre element) and figure that it will all balance out. This approach would be too loose if ketosis is your aim I suspect, but if your aim is somewhere like 50- 100 grams of carbs a day, it should work handily enough.

FIT_Goat

Dragonwolf wrote: »

2. Don't eat (many) veggies. You can actually get all the nutrients you need from meat and some dairy, making veggies not actually required in the human diet. Whether that's sustainable for you, specifically, is a different matter, but it is a valid option.

Fixed that for you.

While dairy and eggs are fantastic, and I do include them, they're not required for nutritional completeness. You can get all the nutrients you need from meat. Dairy tends to be a source of extra fat more than anything for me. Still, unless you're intolerant or have an allergy, dairy is fine and something you can keep.

I think 15g is probably not significantly better than 20-25g (net, of course), which seems to be easier for most people to stay under while eating a fair amount of veggies. I think that once you hit 20-25g net a day you start getting diminishing returns from going any further. Of course, everyone is free to set their goal to whatever they think will benefit them. I just think, if someone was to test, there would be little to no difference between 20-25g net carbs and 15g net carbs, aside from the former being significantly more forgiving when it comes to big piles of vegetables.

maggiegbrown

Thanks you guys. I went to Atkins and put in what I have been eating and my net carbs are way under. So I can eat way more veggies!!!!!YAY for Maggie!!!!! ; ) Happy girl. Thanks for all the help, you guys are great!

Dragonwolf

frob23 wrote: »

Dragonwolf wrote: »

2. Don't eat (many) veggies. You can actually get all the nutrients you need from meat and some dairy, making veggies not actually required in the human diet. Whether that's sustainable for you, specifically, is a different matter, but it is a valid option.

Fixed that for you.

While dairy and eggs are fantastic, and I do include them, they're not required for nutritional completeness. You can get all the nutrients you need from meat. Dairy tends to be a source of extra fat more than anything for me. Still, unless you're intolerant or have an allergy, dairy is fine and something you can keep.

I think 15g is probably not significantly better than 20-25g (net, of course), which seems to be easier for most people to stay under while eating a fair amount of veggies. I think that once you hit 20-25g net a day you start getting diminishing returns from going any further. Of course, everyone is free to set their goal to whatever they think will benefit them. I just think, if someone was to test, there would be little to no difference between 20-25g net carbs and 15g net carbs, aside from the former being significantly more forgiving when it comes to big piles of vegetables.

Lol, I think I included the dairy as it's a common staple in LCHF, pretty much no matter how low you go. You are right, though, of course. :drinker: