No carbs?
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They do contain a lot of empty useless calories, and if you are sticking to counting calories alone, I'd try to avoid eating them often.
But you can't avoid them all together forever. Well I'm convinced I can't anyways. lol
Empty and useless? You do realize that Carbs are a macronutrient, right?
Macronutrient? No I didn't realize that. What does that mean exactly?
"Macronutrients provide the bulk energy for an organism's metabolic system to function, while micronutrients provide the necessary cofactors for metabolism to be carried out."
Basically its a essential nutrient to the human body. As well as protein and fat.0 -
I'm still eating veg and nuts, but i've been told to cut out things like bread, rice and potatoes?
"white" bread, "white" rice, and "white" potatoes
ezekiel bread is a good one if you love bread, quinoa is a good replacement for rice and sweeeeeeet potatoes!!! LOVE em
That's ricist.0 -
It works great for some people (not zero carb, that sounds nuts, but very low carb or even low carb) but as someone ON a low carb diet I would say that unless you have other outside factors that make low carb the best option for you (thyroid or endocrine disorders namely) then just a deficit should work too!0
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Well, I think what you are being recommended to do is cut your carbs down, not eliminate them. We are having a Biggest Loser competition at work as part of our One Wellness initiative. The male participant that is leading the way for his gender is only cutting out white carbs, such as potatoes, pasta, rice, white bread, refined sugar. He has won each week by percentage lost. It may work for you as well. However, no carb is not healthy. If you want to reduce how many carbs you consume to see if it helps you lose weight, do like he is and replace those foods with healthy vegetables and fruits. It is likely it will automatically drop your carb count, and it may result in weight loss. Whatever you do, good luck!0
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They do contain a lot of empty useless calories, and if you are sticking to counting calories alone, I'd try to avoid eating them often.
But you can't avoid them all together forever. Well I'm convinced I can't anyways. lol
Empty and useless? You do realize that Carbs are a macronutrient, right?
Not only that, they are huge in signaling muscle growth
and taste yummy...
So true!!
How could I forget0 -
My nutritionist told me that a person needs 130 grams or more of carbs a day for healthy brain function. I think it depends on what type of carbs you eat to be honest. Non processed food carbs are much better than junk food carbs. Carbs with high fiber are very good too like Quest bars. Most of the carbs are fiber carbs so that is good for you.
Good luck!
Your body pretty much processes carbs the same way.....0 -
Unless you are trying to accomplish something specific along with weight loss, such as messing with colesterol, Blood sugar, need energy for an event or what ever I would not worry about how much carbs or protein etc.
If you main concern is weight loss, then all you really need to worry about is calorie count. Consumed vs burned.
Does not matter if yo are eating Roasted Grass hoppers with boiled sea weed or Cake and Pizza. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight.
I do not see anything wrong with a little carbs, but just remember, foods like pasta and breads are high calorie so you get less full. I would eat lots of low cal food to fill you up and just a little carbs / goodies to go along with that to get that mental satisfaction.0 -
They do contain a lot of empty useless calories, and if you are sticking to counting calories alone, I'd try to avoid eating them often.
But you can't avoid them all together forever. Well I'm convinced I can't anyways. lol
Empty and useless? You do realize that Carbs are a macronutrient, right?
Macronutrient? No I didn't realize that. What does that mean exactly?
"Macronutrients provide the bulk energy for an organism's metabolic system to function, while micronutrients provide the necessary cofactors for metabolism to be carried out."
Basically its a essential nutrient to the human body. As well as protein and fat.
I already posted a link showing people that were quite healthy and had almost no carbs. How can you say carbs are essential?
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox0 -
No carbs = No life.
Threads like these bring out the rabbid, dogmatic masses.
The facts are that eating carbs is not required for a healthy life. Period. Countless numbers of people in controlled experiments and whole ethnic societies have lived quite well eating proteins and fats and essentially no carbs. There are "essential" fats and "essential" amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). There are no "essential" carbohydrates. The body can manufacture what little carbohydrate it truly needs from the backbone of fats (gylcerol) and from some amino acids.
We also know that, at least for certain sub-groups, weight loss is facilitated by a low carb approach as opposed to alternatives. Particularly if you are less sensitive to the hormone insulin. These people on a low carb diet seem to be able to control their appetite better.
We also know that athletic performance, particularly short duration efforts, are negatively impacted by the depleted glycogen from a low carb diet. So if you are competing for some reason, may not want to be low carb!
The bottom line is you can lose weight going low carb or low fat: as long as you are in a deficit, yo will lose weight. SOme people do better on one approach as opposed to the other.
Peace-out0 -
No. It's not healthy or particularly safe. Carbs provide fast energy to feed into cellular respiration. Just eat at deficit and balance your nutrition.
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My white bagel for breakfast was yummy...
My nutritionist told me I can't have less than 250 grams of carbs a day, but I'm an endurance athlete.
Find what works for you. I'd rather run 40 miles a week and bike 100 miles a week (which I do) than give up carbs. I can't imagine "no carb" or very low carb being healthy for anyone, for any reason, but I'm not a nutritionist. Everything else has already been said 0 -
The amount of carbs you eat is a personal choice.
I personally have to eat lower carb because of insulin resistance and hypoglycemia. Unless you have an endocrine disorder, you do not NEED to eat low carb to lose weight.
If you want to cut rice, bread, couscous, etc. from your diet, that's perfectly fine. It's your decision.
Just know you don't have to cut rice, bread, couscous to lose weight.
Weight loss comes from a caloric deficit. Calories in vs. calories out. When you expend less calories than you consume, you lose weight.0 -
No. It's not healthy or particularly safe. Carbs provide fast energy to feed into cellular respiration. Just eat at deficit and balance your nutrition.
Do you have proof of your claims? I've been eating low carb since July of last year. Still alive and I feel wonderful.0 -
Lol, you're right, I think I just was! (two above)
Using the quote function below each post would really help us to follow your conversations. I'm going to assume that this is in reply to the user suggesting you would be insulted on this board? If any user has personally insulted you then you should use the report function at the bottom of the insulting post so that the mods can remove it. However, in this case, I don't think this would qualify.
Ok, just figured out the quote thing before I saw your post. However, it would take a lot for me to ever report someone. I was trying to make light of the reply, not being mean spirited. Obviously there are a lot of snarky comments here...0 -
I've been told that no carbs are a good way to go for losing weight..
No bread, rice, pasta, cous cous etc...
Is this a healthy idea, if so what are good replacements?
There is no minimum daily requirement of carbs.
There is no reason to eliminate them - you won't lose weight any faster or be any healthier.
If you don't like carbs or they don't make you feel satiated, then eliminate them. I'm not sure what you'd replace them with...non-starchy veggies and meat, I guess.0 -
I'm still eating veg and nuts, but i've been told to cut out things like bread, rice and potatoes?
"white" bread, "white" rice, and "white" potatoes
ezekiel bread is a good one if you love bread, quinoa is a good replacement for rice and sweeeeeeet potatoes!!! LOVE em
That's ricist.
I giggled.0 -
Do you mean me, Hawaii? It's not personal, its biochemistry.
I just don't want people trying anything dangerous.
It's a good thing you "fell off" zero carbs after only 3 weeks. If you want to go ultra-low carb, try 20g/day as your target (no obvious carbs, only the hidden ones in veggies). Not only is it safer and easier to stick to than attempting the potentially-lethal zero-carbs, but you should get better weight loss because you have the chemistry on-hand to mobilize your fat.
No, I wasn't referring to you, but thanks for all the info, good to know!0 -
By cutting out all carbs, you are limiting your body's ability to properly utilize the protein you eat. If, hypothetically, you only had protein to burn, your body would strip the carbon skeleton from the protein's amino acids and use that for energy. You'd still get fuel, but this would make the protein unusable for its primary function: building and repairing muscle tissue. Thus, carbohydrates are considered "protein-sparing" because, if they are present, they will be burned as fuel while protein will be used for cellular repair. Put simply, carbohydrates conserve muscle tissue.
Now, consider that nutrition can be seen as a continuum. Your total calorie intake is a product of the protein, fat, and carbohydrates you eat. It's not a separate measurement but more of a total. For every gram of protein and carbohydrates you eat, that contributes four calories to your total, while every gram of fat contributes nine. Simplified: TotalCalories = FatGrams*9 + CarbsGrams*4 + ProteinGrams*4.
Regardless of your macronutrient breakdown, if your total daily intake is less than you've burned that day, you will lose weight because you'll have made up the difference by burning stored energy. Conversely, if you eat more than you burned, your body will store the excess as fat.
Low/no carb alone doesn't contribute to the weight loss seen in diets like Atkins - it's the total calorie deficit. Conversely, the amount of protein you'd have to eat on such a diet would go up exponentially to compensate for both tissue repair AND protein being used for fuel, which would also increase hydration requirements exponentially and also greatly increase blood urea due to the waste product of the amino acids after the carbon skeleton has been stripped.
tl;dr: Cutting carbs alone won't contribute to fat loss. Maybe muscle loss.
No offense, but I think you're a bit confused on this subject and what you're saying is all but unsupported by all the leading literature on the subject; at a minimum, you're forgetting about a little thing called fat and how your body burns it for energy. Protein is a horrible source of energy, no doubt, but your body can pull energy from dietary fat and its own fat stores quite well. I have yet to see anything though that suggests your body is going to start breaking down protein to try and fuel a workout when there is ample dietary and body fat available and simply because there are not sufficient carbs available - nor would that make a lot of sense for your body to do so. If that were the case, your body would eat into your dietary protein/lean mass stores every time you do not have sufficient carbohydrates in your system, and it'd be pretty difficult to ever lose fat since your body prefers protein as an energy source in this fictional world. Add to that your body will have a decreased need for gluconeogenesis on a very low carb diet due to the higher concentration of ketones in your blood stream and what you're saying simply does not make sense. That is, due to the higher concentration of ketones, your body's needs for glucose are reduced to essentially only the organs that require glucose and cannot run on ketones. Given that your need for glucose is reduced, the potential amount of glucose your body would have to produce from protein is relatively small (and this amount will almost certainly be satisfied by even the low amount of carbs in a low carb diet anyways). Simply put, you do not need to eat massive amounts of protein simply because you're reducing your carb intake, nor will you suddenly lose massive amounts of muscle with a lower carb intake.
Now, low carb diets certainly can have a negative impact on anaerobic performance (although there are ways to mitigate that impact) and they are undeniably restrictive diets, but I really wish people would stop spreading the "muscle loss due to low carb diets" myth. They aren't for everyone and I would say they're not the right choice for the majority of people, if for no other reason than many people do NOT do well with restrictive diets. And this assumes we're talking a low carb or even ketogenic diet, not a "no carb" diet as stated in the OP. But at least criticize them on the merits; suggesting that your suddenly body will begin preferring protein as an fuel source in the absence of large amounts of carbs is just silly.0 -
soooooo much derp here.0
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By cutting out all carbs, you are limiting your body's ability to properly utilize the protein you eat. If, hypothetically, you only had protein to burn, your body would strip the carbon skeleton from the protein's amino acids and use that for energy. You'd still get fuel, but this would make the protein unusable for its primary function: building and repairing muscle tissue. Thus, carbohydrates are considered "protein-sparing" because, if they are present, they will be burned as fuel while protein will be used for cellular repair. Put simply, carbohydrates conserve muscle tissue.
....
Sorry partner. Absolute hogwash. Taking in no carbs, your body switches to using fatty acids and ketones as its primary energy source. The body manufactures some glucose from glycerol and can make additional glucose from some amino acids. Before the modern era of effective medications for severe epilepsy, epileptic children were treated with ketogenic diets and did just fine. There are countless studies on low carb dieting. But probably the most convincing and a useful one to start with (has lots of additional references) is the real world study of popular diet programs; the A to Z study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
JAMA, March 7, 2007—Vol 297, No. 9 969
Lo carb is not a problem. If it works for you and certainly if you are insulin resistant; you should not be concerned about a low carb approach.0
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