Need some LCHF help please

curlyblue21

Hi, have been doing low carb for about a month, cut out the obvious bad snacks,pasta,rice,bread have had potatoes a few times, I'm not doing it because I have to, just want to loose weight and be more healthy, it was meant to be a week long experiment but I really want to keep on going, I don't really feel as energetic as I thought but not sure if I should be eating more fat or more calories to help this, I'm finding it hard to stop counting calories as it is something I had done for two months before, so basically just wanted to know if I have days where I have over 150g of carbs should I make sure I have less fat?

Dragonwolf

When you decrease your carbs, you must increase your fats, otherwise you deprive your body of the energy macros (the body doesn't do well when it has to rely on protein for fuel).

If you're planning for a 150g+ day, then it probably would be a good idea to plan to decrease your fat intake, otherwise you risk overeating in general, because the carb+fat combo is a common hunger trigger. One or the other is often pretty satiating, but the combination doesn't exist in a single source in nature, so it's highly favored by the body (great in times of starvation, not so good in our time of perpetual plenty).

wabmester

The main reason most people do LCHF is to become ketogenic. Any day of 150g of carbs would knock you out of ketosis for at least a few days.

If you're not doing it for ketosis, then just watch your calories, and you should do fine. Any low-carb diet tends to reduce your hunger signals and make it easier to eat at a calorie deficit.

curlyblue21

On average I'm having about 80g a day of carbs, I think I need to have more fat in my diet, how much would be enough? Thanks for the help! I'm not doing it for ketosis just to lose weight really, I need to lose another 3 stone, maybe I should go back to eating normally, it's all getting abit confusing

KnitOrMiss

@curlyblue21 The general rule is that carbs are a limit, protein is a minimum range, and fill in the rest with fats to satiety.

Your carb levels are higher than mine, so my numbers probably won't mean much to you, but I'll include them for point of reference.

I'm at 25 grams of carbs, 80-125 grams of protein, and usually 125-250 grams of fat, depending on hunger. That comes out to roughly 5% carbs, 10-15% protein, and the remaining 80-85% in fats. This is a healthy balance for my particular needs.

So once you figure out your protein needs, set your carb limit, fill in your meals with fats of all kinds (on your meat, bacon, butter, cream cheese, heavy cream, avocado, sour cream, coconut oil, etc., etc., etc., these are just the fairly common ones I thought of immediately).