How to eat more calories and stay in carbs

mimi4boys

I have the worst time trying to eat all my calories and stay within my carb, fat, protein parameters. Any suggestions appreciated

AnnPT77

What's your goal? For weight management, it's calories that matter directly. (Nutrients can matter indirectly, if sub-par nutrition causes fatigue, makes a person move less; or if under-nutrition causes cravings that make it hard/impossible to stay with a calorie goal long enough to lose a meaningful amount of weight. (Those cravings aren't always for the nutrient one is short on!))

Nutrition is important for health, of course. For nutrition purposes, close to macro goals is fine, especially if a little under on something one day, over on the same thing another day, so it averages out close to the goal value over a few days.

Personally, I consider protein and fats minimums, fine to be over them, but not good to be under either of those goals day after day. I don't really care one way or another about carbs, just use them to balance calories where I want them. (Some people need to manage carbs, such as those who are diabetic. Some people find that carbs above some level spike their appetite, others that carbs below a certain level tank their energy. Any of those folks may need to stick closer to carb goals. None of that applies to me.)

So: Close is good enough, and "on average over a small number of days" is OK. Humans have been selected over many millennia of mostly food scarcity to be adaptable omnivores. Many nutrients can be retained by that body for a bit - full digestive transit can take 50+ hours per research, among other factors. We don't reset at midnight for sure.

One note: If you consume any alcohol - which I'm not condemning - and use a correct database entry for it, you'll find that it adds calories but no macronutrients. Alcohol is its own sort of pseudo-macronutrient, in that it has calories (about 7 per gram) but isn't protein, carbs or fats.

But I'm not a registered dietitian. These are just my opinions and understanding, as someone interested in getting good nutrition, and managing my weight.

Bridgie3

Hi there,

You can always change your goals to more realistically match your desired macros. I am diabetic, so have chosen low carb as a safe way for me to look after my blood sugar.

So to do this I sat around working out percentages till the machine said a number of carbs under 50g a day; then I worked out how much protein I need per day and fiddled with the percentages till that number was good based on standard requirements for protein per day; and then the rest of the calories for my daily calorie amount had to be fat. What else could they be?

And that's put me at 10:20:70 carb, protein, fat. I imagine this will change as I get thinner and my protein requirements reduce, but my calorie requirements may also reduce.

I stick with fat as the 'go to' extra add it all up figure, because fat is a safe food for me. Carbs are not safe for me. As a diabetic my kidneys are already under pressure, I don't want to add overeating protein (and the terrible thirst that comes with that, too, as any extra is turned into carbs) to that problem. Your body can't store excess protein; it turns it into carbs.

So fat is safe. By fat, and being safe, I of course mean natural fats. No margarine, no weird hydrolised seed oils. Just the kinds of fats you would have met in your daily life 300 yrs ago. Butter, cheese, meat fats, olive oil, avocado fat. Not really into coconut fat but that's because I don't like the flavour - it's still a safe, natural fat.

Fat follows a diff pathway in your body and it's not demanding to manage or use. it floats around the blood, goes into cells when required, gets parked at the Adipose parking lot when not required. This is going on all the time in your body, it's not getting detoxified in teh liver, or dealt with in the kidneys; so it's relatively safe to have in the system. I'll say it's inert, and this is what I mean; it is what it is, it doesn't have to go through long chemical change processes like protein. It doesn't trigger insulin.

Ultimately though, just set one goal for diet: say, for the first month, just stay inside your calories. Then the second month, look at your protein figures. How can I up that (or down that). Then the third month; maybe I should look at low carb alternatives to this or that.

Humans can go 100 days without food, and that means you can be off on your macros for a little while, without too much going wrong.