Dietary fiber and macros (you may know this if you do keto)

VictorSmashes

I'm a little confused about how dietary fiber factors into total macros. Do they count as carbs, even if we can't get energy from them? (Do we get energy from some fiber or is that inherently what fiber means... indigestible?)

I'm trying to eat less carbs and until I've decided fully what I want to do with my dietary habits, I'm trying to roughly do 1/3's "diet" (1/3 calories from protein, carbs, and fat ~equally).

My main question is: Do you subtract the dietary fiber from total carbs or just count total carbs as they are given?

cmriverside

People who want to stay in ketosis try to keep their carb grams at a particular set number of grams. So they subtract the fiber from that number.

If you're doing 33/33/33, then just try to make sure

For adults 50 and younger you need 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men

...for your health. Don't worry about counting it or subtracting otherwise.

https://www.webmd.com/diet/eat-this-fiber-chart

And yes, it's indigestible.

lemurcat2

It's kind of complicated. If you are in the UK or elsewhere in Europe or in Australia, or many other places, fiber is not included in the carb count, so if you log entries from those countries (such as packaged items), then no, fiber is not going to be counted. If you are in the US or Canada and log entries from here, including our packaged items or sources taken from the USDA, then it will include fiber. Sort of. Except that the cal count includes only a portion of the cals that the fiber would account for (and there are some cals that some fiber contributes although I think the USDA overcounts them).

Anyway, like the prior poster said, if doing a diet where having a really low number of carbs matters and fiber does not (i.e., keto), then most track fiber and subtract. For overall macros for people eating more (including 33/33/33), then most just use total carbs.

I personally don't worry about carbs (I care about protein and let fat and carbs fall where they do), but I certainly make an effort to get in lots of fiber from food (as well as good sources of healthy fat daily). Nutritionally that foods contribute carbs or fats alone doesn't mean much, so I care about cals for weight and nutrition otherwise, but I know some find watching macros more specifically helpful.