Salads = low carb killer. Could it be?
sasaar
Posts: 36 Member
This may sound crazy but...has anyone found that cutting out salads has helped them hit their macros? I'm in induction so I'm at 20g carbs and found that when I focus my meals on protein and my oils, I just hit the mark. The second I start logging a big leafy green salad with broccoli and cauliflower and string beans, my carbs sky rocket and I wake up with a lighter read on my ketostix and a higher number on the scale ....
I'm extra perplexed by this because my entire diet pre going keto has been composed of large salads and roasted veggies with clean protein
For lunch and dinner, and I have maintained a weight 10-15 lb above my lowest.
I'm extra perplexed by this because my entire diet pre going keto has been composed of large salads and roasted veggies with clean protein
For lunch and dinner, and I have maintained a weight 10-15 lb above my lowest.
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Replies
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As the resident carnivore, I would fully agree with this conclusion. Salads are pretty full of carbs. But, you should be able to keep the serving size down and stay under your carb goal. I've had salads and stayed under 20 grams of carbs (net).2
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You can do salads and stay under 20 net for the day, but it has to be the salad bar with some judicious selections.0
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Staying under with net is possible with a decent size salad with variety. If you want to use total, which is what Atkins actually used, then you really have to keep it to a small salad of basically just the greens. That is just because there are so many hidden carbs or carbs in places you probably didn't notice before.
It is easier to stay low the cleaner you eat. For instance, avoiding processed meat like sausage will save you some carbs.
There are even some trace carbs (usually rounded down to 0) on labels in meat. After all, a cow stores carbs in the form of glycogen in their muscles just like we do.
If you like salads, and you are using good foods, I wouldn't worry too much about going over a little with them. However, if you are eating salads because you have it in your head you need to eat them to be healthy, you can drop them. Made right, they are not unhealthy, but most people need the fiber in them because of all the junk they eat that backs them up. If you don't eat the junk (mostly processed carbs like bread, crackers, chips, etc.), your body won't need that added fiber.2 -
This may sound crazy but...has anyone found that cutting out salads has helped them hit their macros? I'm in induction so I'm at 20g carbs and found that when I focus my meals on protein and my oils, I just hit the mark. The second I start logging a big leafy green salad with broccoli and cauliflower and string beans, my carbs sky rocket and I wake up with a lighter read on my ketostix and a higher number on the scale ...
Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and string beans should not jack up your net carbs to a huge degree.... unless, perhaps, they're escorted by maple syrup. ??5 -
If I want salad or vegetables with dinner, I do have to eat more fatty stuff for lunch. I'm also not too worried about getting exactly 70/25/5 anymore though.1
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Keto killer? Maybe? Low-carb killer, no.
I eat a huge margarine-tub full of salad every day for lunch. Meat and dressing included, 10g net carbs. But my dressing is about 1g per serving. Some are carbier. Romaine, broccoli, celery, cuke, onion, 2oz deli ham.5 -
I always seem to do better with more salads not less, but I drench them in awesome fatty dressings like bleu cheese and caesar...
fyi...salads are high in water, so a lighter ketostix read is to be expected due to the water content, not necessarily carb content...4 -
Related thread on ketostix:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10402282/those-useless-ketostix-or-are-they0 -
I'm able to eat a nice sized salad regularly on keto. I generally weigh my salad contents since it is basically carbs. For about 10 total carbs, I can usually fill a 20 ounce bowl with various veg. The trick for me is to not get too many carbs from random other things like HWC, Half and half, cheese and processed meats.2
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Heavy whipping cream, AKA the nectar of the gods.0
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(I had to look it up, too.....
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Not to dent your heavy, creamy bubble, but there are carbs in HWC. The trick is, the "serving size" is measured in micro-thimbles, so they get away with rounding down to zero.
FYI, there's an entry for "Horizon Organic - Heavy Whipping Cream (Including Trace Carbs)" in the database that will let you stay at 0 for 1 tbsp., but if you dare add an entire ounce, you get 1g carb. Drink 2 cups with 2 oz. each, and you'll have splurged for an extravagant 4g jolt.
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Mine (hwc) generally shows <1 or zero on the carton for a one tablespoon serving. Because I drink so much coffee with cream throughout the day and I enter it as 8,10,12 tablespoons, it shows up as 3 or 4 carbs (as an example) on my diary depending on the # of tablespoons entered in a single entry. It is true...often 400 (or more) of my 1500 daily calories are decaf with "cream".
I guess perhaps I should have left HWC or half and half out of my personal list. I minimize stuff like cheese and pepperoni. I'm reluctant to part with my decaf and cream.
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If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels0
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If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels
I know this goes against everything you have ever been taught (as does most of the info here), but you don't need fiber to flush things through. If you have adequate fat and magnesium in your diet, things will move along just fine.
In terms of magnesium, just think about milk of magnesia which utilizes the laxative effect of magnesium.
Also, try downing a large amount of coconut or mct oil and NOT having a bathroom emergency.2 -
If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels
I think it might be more accurate to say that some LC diets are also HF. There are those who, for various reasons, tend to think of their particular LC diet as HP, where however much fat you get is whatever has piggybacked on the protein.
For sure, they're higher fat than the bloody LF diets many of us older ketophiles stubbed our toes on for decades.2 -
cstehansen wrote: »If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels
I know this goes against everything you have ever been taught (as does most of the info here), but you don't need fiber to flush things through. If you have adequate fat and magnesium in your diet, things will move along just fine.
In terms of magnesium, just think about milk of magnesia which utilizes the laxative effect of magnesium.
Also, try downing a large amount of coconut or mct oil and NOT having a bathroom emergency.
How about Potassium? I am struggling with all the comments suggesting that vegetable carbohydrates should be cut out. Where do you get the nutrients - that meat and fat do not provide?0 -
You'll get all sorts of viewpoints on this one!
For those who do not tolerate fiber, advice to eat a lot of plant fiber is completely misdirected. Obviously people can live without much fiber, whatever benefits it ideally bring others for their gut microbiome, etc.
For those of us
who tolerate fiber well and have been persuaded by Phinney and Volek (Art & Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, New Atkins for a New You) or others to eat a substantial amount of LC vegetables every day, especially leafy green ones, the answer would be "nowhere." 2 -
Different foods require different enzymes & bacteria in the microbiome to properly digest them. Some people do not have enough of certain enzymes to do this efficiently and it causes malabsorption and intestinal distress. partial quote:
Microbial degradation of complex carbohydrates in the gut
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463488/
"Mammalian genomes do not encode most of the enzymes needed to degrade the structural polysaccharides present in plant material. Instead a complex mutual dependence has developed between the mammalian host and symbiotic gut microorganisms that do possess the ability to access this abundant source of energy. Herbivorous mammals rely on resident gut microorganisms to gain energy from their main food sources, and this has entailed major changes in digestive anatomy and physiology that allow efficient microbial fermentation to take place alongside the recovery of dietary energy by the host.1 Ruminants (foregut fermentors) benefit from microbial protein as well as the absorption of energy that is released by anaerobic microorganisms in the form of fermentation acids. Other herbivores and omnivores derive varying amounts of energy from microbial fermentation in the hind gut of those carbohydrates that are not digested in the upper gut. Interestingly, molecular profiles for the gut microbiota have been shown to group together for animal species that share similar nutrition and digestive anatomy.2 While humans derive a relatively small fraction (perhaps 10%) of their dietary energy through the activities of intestinal microorganisms,3 the microbial communities of the human intestine have important consequences for health and their composition and activities are known to be strongly influenced by the carbohydrate content of the diet."
Others of us do fine with lots of green leafy plant food.
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I really like greens like collards or kale cooked with a smoked ham hock or similar. Net carbs are very low, and I am getting a few things that I don't get in bacon, eggs, chicken, etc. I don't have issues with the fiber, and I am quite happy to eat a cup with breakfast when there are some left over from the night before. I stay under my carb target.
As usual, YMMV.2 -
Just the lettuce with lots of oil and vinegar, with the protein added does well for me. If I add a bunch of cheese and nuts, it goes over the induction levels. At first, I could not add any thing else on my salads. Over time, as my body adapted, I am now able to add a little cheese and tomato, (around 100 grams of lettuce).
I can't do my old method of loading up a huge bowl with cabbage, broccoli,& cauliflower etc. I can get away with a few shreds of one of those added to the above style salad. Just can't pile them all into the same bowl.
I am so lucky because I LOVE vinegars. I only occasionally use any other dressing, I often even skip the oil on a basic salad. Blue cheese can call my name from time to time.
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Also this is an interesting read on vitamins and our body storing them:
http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/nutrition-food-safety-health/fat-soluble-vitamins-a-d-e-and-k-9-315/
Don't forget meat and fish are how we get all the B vitamins and many minerals we need. Oily fish does double duty by providing Vitamin D, hard to find in foods unless it has been added after processing.1 -
cstehansen wrote: »If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels
I know this goes against everything you have ever been taught (as does most of the info here), but you don't need fiber to flush things through. If you have adequate fat and magnesium in your diet, things will move along just fine.
In terms of magnesium, just think about milk of magnesia which utilizes the laxative effect of magnesium.
Also, try downing a large amount of coconut or mct oil and NOT having a bathroom emergency.
How about Potassium? I am struggling with all the comments suggesting that vegetable carbohydrates should be cut out. Where do you get the nutrients - that meat and fat do not provide?
Meat actually does provide all the nutrients you need.
It's actually vegetables that don't.
But nobody is saying for you not to eat them. Some of us don't. I don't eat them because the fiber is inflammatory in my gut and creates pain and gas and constipation even in very small amounts.
But you gotta realize that meat in fact does provide every essential nutrient. Im missing nothing by not eating vegetables. And I don't need magnesium or doses of fat to go to the bathroom. I DID need those when I still ate veg though...1 -
Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »
Meat actually does provide all the nutrients you need.
Sunny_Bunny - I am not trying to be difficult, but didn't the sailors of yore get scurvy from no vitamin C when on an all-meat diet?
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cstehansen wrote: »If you don't eat leafy greens where are you getting your nutrients and fiber to flush out the fat and protein? The low carb diet is a high fat diet not a high meat diet. You are good with eating dark greens they will not spike insulin levels
I know this goes against everything you have ever been taught (as does most of the info here), but you don't need fiber to flush things through. If you have adequate fat and magnesium in your diet, things will move along just fine.
In terms of magnesium, just think about milk of magnesia which utilizes the laxative effect of magnesium.
Also, try downing a large amount of coconut or mct oil and NOT having a bathroom emergency.
How about Potassium? I am struggling with all the comments suggesting that vegetable carbohydrates should be cut out. Where do you get the nutrients - that meat and fat do not provide?
According to an Internet search, my 8 oz steak covered in blue cheese had close to 1000 mg of potassium.
There was additional potassium in the Himalayan sea salt I put on it as well.
Also, research shows most leafy greens today do not have as much magnesium or potassium as it did 50 years ago due to these being depleted from the soil.0 -
Just had a big bowl of salad with tomatoes, avocado, and mozzarella cheese tossed with a sugar free raspberry vinaigrette and thought of this thread 0
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Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »
Meat actually does provide all the nutrients you need.
Sunny_Bunny - I am not trying to be difficult, but didn't the sailors of yore get scurvy from no vitamin C when on an all-meat diet?
No problem. It's a common question.
Vitamin C and glucose compete for uptake into cells by insulin. Yes, insulin is required for vitamin C to get into cells. Vitamin C is an anti-oxidant but if you eat very low carb, the lower the better, you naturally eat a low oxidative diet and automatically your need for C is dramatically reduced. And when blood glucose is lower, there's less competition for uptake into cells so you absorb the C that you can actually get from meat quite easily. Eating zero carb without plants has a lesser need for C than even a keto diet that includes them.
Meats really do contain everything you need in sufficient amounts. And plants have defenses against being eaten that create a lot of trouble for some people. Others don't seem to notice any issues but this is just another way people vary from one another.
Here's a great presentation from Georgia Eades that explains the possible problem with eating plants.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/52606062
And a good history of all meat diets from her blog.
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/all-meat-diets/1 -
@FIT_Goat anything to add about the scurvy question?0
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