How do people go on a "no carb" diet?

baconslave

I could be wrong but I thought the body needed at least 50g/day to survive and actually function? Again, I may be wrong but that's what I've heard from my low-carb friends.

On average, my net carbs are 30, sometimes under 20. I'm still alive.....I think.

Thanks for that! I have learned something new today! I never did the research myself, just was going off of what I heard. I believe you unless you're a zombie or something.

Zombie! :laugh: I guess I'm a zombie too then because I too mostly do under 20 but occasionally go as high as 25 (or 30 when I have some fresh veggies that are too delicious to resist.) I've been doing this since June 1st. Exercising 5 days a week. Feeling great! Brains prefer to run on ketones, btw, which is something I learned recently.

baconslave

My husband occasionally goes zero carb for a week or two. He basically consumes only items that specifically say 0% carbs and 0g carbs. He can drop up to 20 pounds when he does it.

Not sure what the point is since he doesn't maintain the weightloss but hey...different strokes.

Eww...Yeah. I did very low-carb, like less than 10g/day, for awhile. You really begin to appreciate veggies more once you can finally have them again. :laugh:

Technically, it's almost impossible to consume no carbs at all. Even eating just meat and fat, you're unlikely to really be consuming absolutely none. Throw in organ meats or brains, and you'll get a "bunch" [relatively speaking]. Lots of shellfish have carbs, too. Then your eggs and high fat dairy will have some trace amounts. Still, for all intents and purposes, when you're below 5g a day (not net... that's total), you can safely consider yourself no carb.

Someone mentioned nuts. Generally, those are considered non-approved food items by truly no carb people. Even around an oz of macadamia nuts will have more total carbs than no carb people eat in a day.

How is it done? Basically, just eat meat. The eating plan itself is extremely simple (meats, eggs, high-fat dairy). What vegetables are allowed are trace amounts of spices. That's just about it.

While the eating plan is simple, following such a plan is often extremely hard (if not impossible) for most people. The idea that a salad is a "bad" food is shocking. The thought of 0g of fiber is terrifying. The concerns about deficiancies like scurvy (although unfounded) can drive one to a panic. If you are asking this because you know someone who eats that way, ask them how they do it.

I did this by accident a couple of months ago :blushing:

I'm not new to keto & had been using it to keep my BG low. What I hadn't realized is, the longer you keto, the better your BG's trend (if you have an issue to begin with).

For BG's I needed to watch my total carbs but for keto I needed to watch net. So I ignored net and went with gross at some point to make things simpler. Looking back at my diary, I saw there were days when I only got 20-30 gross carbs per day & when the fiber was subtracted...well...it was waaay low :noway:

I increased my carbs to about 70 g and some days as much as 100 net & stayed within my BG targets but the waay upper limit (as in 90-100 mg/dl for fasting & 120-140 mg/dl post meals).

I've moved back down the to < 30 g per day after a few weeks and my FBG is reliably in the 80's and post meal BG's are < 110 mg/dl.

Nuts are my downfall. Cashews specifically, for 8 g of carbs for a small handful, it's too expensive for me to spend on a snack unless it's close to bedtime -___-

I try to save the lion's share of my carbs for meals.

Oh I love cashews. That's why I don't eat them. I love them wayyyyy too much. I could eat the whole can in one sitting..trigger food, no bueno! So I eat almonds instead. I could take or leave them, but if I need a fat and cal boost at the end of the day, I go to them.

lolabluola

yeah I did do the 20g carb thing - but that's just cause if there are breads / bagels / pasta / cookies / muffins / pizza / sugar ETC I have totally no will power so atkins style was a good stepping off point for me cause it's a lot harder to over eat on salad. So you do get a lot of carbs from veggies and stuff because it allows you to subtract the Fiber from the Carbs to get 'net carbs'. I was strict at 20-90 grams of carbs for about a year - now i can focus more on just healthy eating and if I want a sandwich I'll have it because The LOW carb helped me learn how to eat my starches and grains in moderation.

So yeah when people say no carb - they totally mean low carb (eek I hope!)
I think I was totally addicted to sugar and bagels and mmm bread I could eat by the loaf - I would actually get cravings for bread.
Just made a nice starting point to re-learn moderation for me


does that make any sense?

baconslave

Do you cry when you think about bread? I do

and pasta

Nope. Don't cry when I think about bread or pasta. I'm completely satisfied with all the foods I eat. Sweets either. I haven't touched one since I started. Or cried over one. Which is miraculous considering what a carb addict I once was.

So ummm....


:laugh: :laugh: :laugh::

refuseresist

Mmm. Bacon and eggs. ON toast. Mmmm


I think I might be being an idiot. Sorry

baconslave

Mmm. Bacon and eggs. ON toast. Mmmm


I think I might be being an idiot. Sorry

:laugh:

Poo on toast. But put some sour cream and some cheese in those eggs...yum. Or a quiche. I still have a piece of a sausage, cheese, and mushroom one I made earlier in the week. De-frickin-licious. It needed bacon, though. Mmmmm....bacon.

rprussell2004

Gonna try this pizza crust tonight:

http://imgur.com/a/dT5I2

baconslave

Gonna try this pizza crust tonight:

http://imgur.com/a/dT5I2

Bookmarked that sucker. Looks pretty NOM-worthy.

refuseresist

OMG I love quiche

La5Vega5Girl

my husband is on one. he has lost almost 20 lbs. he eats less than 10g/carbs per day.
it's easy for him. he doesn't even count calories. he eats mushrooms, olives, lettuce with fattening dressing (<2 carbs per serving) with meat, cheese.

it's very easy for him. sometimes, I just have to eat fruit! LOL

La5Vega5Girl

When diabetics count carbs we remove the number of fiber from the number of carbs in the food. So if it says 2g carb. and it has 1g fiber. We count it as 1g carb.

^^ yes ^^

persistentsoul

I stick to under 40g total carbs under 20g net carbs most days with no problems. I see no reason to aim for no carbs at all though. As someone else said the only way to eat no carbs at all would be to exist on meat and fat alone which although might be doable, I doubt it is advisable. I see no benefit for a zero carb diet unless there is some unusual medical necessity for it or there is no other food around. Veg has lots of vitamins and fiber in it and is low calorie so get a lot for not many calories used up.

Toblave

Groups of people (Inuit are a popular example) have and do eat little to "no" carb (from vegetable matter) but I couldn't think of a reason to do it unless you had to. You body doesn't require carbs to function. The brain (and a couple of other organs) require glucose which can be synthesized from dietary protein, or muscle tissue in the absence of sufficient dietary protein, and the balance of the fuel could be provided in the form of ketones, which are produced by the metabolism of fat (dietary and otherwise).

However, that being said you would have to make some other significant changes to your modern life and diet. For starters, you would need to get far more sunlight to synthesize vitamin D than most currently do and you would also need to consume the offal or risk significant deficiencies in vitamins and minerals that are otherwise provided by fruits, vegetables and nuts. One could argue that a good multivitamin would fill in but I wouldn't trust it.

Lastly, fruits and vegetables are tasty.

baconslave

Brains do need glucose, which they can get by having the body convert protein, but they also run well on ketones.

As far as food goes, the brain is a fairly picky eater. Like a young candy-craving child, it prefers simple sugar molecules — glucose to be specific — and when the brain doesn’t get glucose, it gets crabby and distracted. Since the body most easily creates glucose by metabolizing carbohydrates, it stands to reason that limiting carbohydrates could dampen cognitive function.

When consuming low-carb diets in the short term, this is certainly true. In a 2008 study, psychologists placed 19 women on either a calorie restricted low-carb diet or a calorie restricted high-carb diet for 28 days. Throughout the study, participants’ memory, reaction time, and vigilance were tested at regular intervals. While those on the low-carb diet enjoyed a slight boost in vigilance, they suffered impaired reaction time and reduced visuospatial memory.

“The brain needs glucose for energy and diets low in carbohydrates can be detrimental to learning, memory, and thinking,” lead investigator Holly A. Taylor, a psychology professor at Tufts University, explained.

But the short-term isn’t the long-term. Though the brain prefers to compute on glucose, after about four days of carbohydrate deprivation it sates about 70% of its hunger on ketone bodies, the byproducts produced when fatty acids are broken down by the liver. And by most accounts, the brain can run pretty efficiently on this fuel once it grows accustomed to it after a few weeks.

In fact, researchers have shown that low-carb diets can bring about improvements in cognitive functioning in both aged humans and rodents compared to traditional diets. Writing at Psychology Today, psychiatrist Emily Deans accounted for how this might happen.

“When we change the main fuel of the brain from glucose to ketones, we change amino acid handling,” she says. This reduces the levels of glutamate in the brain, an amino acid and neurotransmitter that can cause harm in excessive amounts. Less glutamate leads to “a lower seizure risk and a better environment for neuronal recovery and repair.”

In adults, low-carb diets have no adverse cognitive effects in the long-term. A well-executed, year-long study published to the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009 found no difference in cognitive functioning for subjects consuming either a low-carb weight loss diet or a high-carb weight loss diet. Both actually enjoyed improvements to working memory and speed of processing, a result presumably attributed to weight loss.

This was taken from here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2013/11/12/do-low-carbohydrate-diets-make-you-dumber/

The studies referenced are here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211112014.htm
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1108558

Just a friendly FYI, for those actually interested in the internal processes going on.

ashlivesjk

.

MelRC117

A "low-carb" diet generally means no junk food (cookies, chips, pretzels, cake, etc.), and minimal grains (bread, cereal, pasta, white rice).

The best thing about this diet is that it means no giant bags of chips or boxes of cookies or loaves of cinnamon raisin bread sitting in your kitchen cabinets, calling out your name, tempting you to eat the entire bag or box or loaf.

And since you can eat all the veggies you want, a "low-carb" diet doesn't really have to be a "low-carb" diet.

"Junk" food means different things to different people. That's YOUR defintion. I eat low carb and I think to others, I probably eat junk. (Atkins Bars, bacon, diet soda, etc).

OP - This reminds me of the people that say they eat "no sugar" but they'll eat fruit, veggies, etc.

Iwishyouwell

I've lived, thrived, and had plenty of energy on large stretches of time on a very low carb diet. If it wasn't for my massive sweet tooth that's how I'd eat, voluntarily, for the rest of my life as my off/on years of low carbing killed my cravings for bread, pasta, pizza, chips, crackers, and most other high carb foods. I can, and have, gone years at a time without consuming some of those foods, and not because they were off limits, just because I almost never actually think about having them.

But "no carb". The closest you can get to that is basically an all meat diet. And yes, it's possible. I use to read a low carb board with a woman who lost 50 lbs eating low carb and then at some point, during maintenance, settled into eating one large steak a day plus water. That's it. Once in maintenance she just kept eating like that. She loved the freedom of not having to ever make any other food choices, said that eating zero carb satiated her immensely and she apparently never tired of her steak. She was a short, small framed woman whose caloric necessities were covered by one huge, thick, fatty cut of beef. I haven't been there in years but at the last time I saw her post she'd been maintaining for over 5 years and claimed to be in excellent health.

There are a few other boards online with sections dedicated to the "zero carb" approach.

You won't find a lot of people doing it, but like all things there are aberrations.