What qualifies as low carb?

AlmostMrsP

I posted yesterday looking for low carb dinner suggestions after a trainer suggested I stop eating carbs later in the day (I'm not doing atkins or trying to cut them all together, just in the evening).

I realized - I don't know exactly what qualifies as a low carb dinner? I've obviously cut out starches from dinner (no pasta or rice), but my dinner tonight still comes to 14 carbs (turkey burger, quac, veggies and a piece of cheese). Is this low carb? Or can I get this lower?

Also, any suggestions for some high calorie low carb foods. I messed up this morning and didn't eat enough breakfast and lunch. Now I'm way under my calories and trying to make them up but not eat the carbs.

LuckyLeprechaun

Butters, fats oils are all high cal and low or no carb.

dlovesjimma

Carbs that naturally occur in whole foods are ok - processed carbs are what will get you, avoid bread - whole grain or otherwise (at dinner), no starches - potatoes, yams, rice, pasta. There are a few other vegetables that are good to avoid - carrots, corn, beets and radishes are high in carbs, but again they are not processed carbs so not as bad for you, but maybe skip them during dinner.

I put turkey burgers on a bed of lettuce instead of a bun, I also eat a lot of green vegetables for dinner.

pork_belly

I posted yesterday looking for low carb dinner suggestions after a trainer suggested I stop eating carbs later in the day (I'm not doing atkins or trying to cut them all together, just in the evening).

I realized - I don't know exactly what qualifies as a low carb dinner? I've obviously cut out starches from dinner (no pasta or rice), but my dinner tonight still comes to 14 carbs (turkey burger, quac, veggies and a piece of cheese). Is this low carb? Or can I get this lower?

Also, any suggestions for some high calorie low carb foods. I messed up this morning and didn't eat enough breakfast and lunch. Now I'm way under my calories and trying to make them up but not eat the carbs.

Go to the Atkins site and you can see what they suggest for low carb. 14g of carb is pretty good specially if thats all you had all day but in your case its probably a lot less than what you had in your other meals. On Atkins you are not restricted to no carbs. You start at a low amount and slowly start adding carbs until you stop losing weight. This number would be different for everyone. If you are lucky you can tolerate more carbs than others. Good luck!

lodro

Below 20 grams of carbohydrate daily is only used in Atkins' induction phase, and that only lasts for 2 weeks, ideally. After that, you start adding back carbs back into your diet, by adding sources of carbohydrate (from non starchy vegetables preferred, with the odd addition of grain - based carbs if that agrees with you) as you keep watching for weight gain. Once you've figured out at which level of carbohydrates you're able to maintain a healthy weight, that's the amount of carbohydrates your body can tolerate in your situation. You may end up at 40 g/daily, or 100g, it's different for everyone. Generally if you let your intake of carbohydrates drop to below 100 g daily you can consider that low - carb, especially if you watch the sources of carbohydrates: eat starchy vegetables, grain based carbs etc sparingly, and as a treat.

And to correct a commonly heard myth: your body doesn't process whole grain products very differently from refined carbohydrates. The fibre may suppress an immediate insulin response, but not by much.

And as a note, the standard diet may end you up with well above 250g of carbohydrates. If you set MFP preferences to about 30% of carbohydrates (or, below 100g as a percentage of your calorie goal) you should have a good notion of what to aim for. The whole issue about the timing of carbs (not after 2 PM) seems a myth to me.