CRAZY CARBS!!

sthreat

I need helpful tips on how to control my carbs! Someone help! After recently looking at my diary I noticed that my carb intake is very high..any ideas on how to handle the carbs without feeling like I'm missing out on something?

taso42

eat more non-carbs?

bcattoes

Without seeing your diary I can only offer generic suggestions. Eat less bread, pasta and desserts. Those are usually the biggest culprits. Substitute whole grains for non-whole grains. Eat more lean protein and vegetable fats to fill full wihout carbs. Load up on veggies. The more tha merrier when it comes to vegetables. Stay away from food and drinks with added sugar. Many dairy products contain a lot of sugar, check those labels!

mermx

What carbs will you be missing out on exactly???

Am only asking cos your post gives limited information

Sunny_Lexie

I would say, eat more veggies! with some good spices you can make great meals

momma3sweetgirls

Eat a measured amount of carbs. I LOVE mashed potatoes and could easily eat a quart of them in one sitting, however, I measure 1/2 cup and that's it. I do the same with rice and pasta (side dish 1/2 cup, main 1 cup). If bread is a weakness for you, make sandwiches with one slice and twice the filling, switch to whole grain or use a wrap (most are around 100 calories and are huge). I try to limit fruit and I know a lot of people will say 'but fruit is a good carb'. A carb is a carb is a carb to me.

luvlite2

Eat more protien...eggs for example make you feel full longer. Find veggies that you like and keep them handy for quick snacks if you have the urge...Just Say No! Carbs are like crack! Good Luck! I personally don't eat very many carbs at the moment but I feel full all day. If you "must" have them try to eat them for lunch and not dinner. Hope that works for ya!

Qarol

eat more non-carbs?

I usually get in trouble for providing this kind of advice...

missikay1970

eating carbs makes you crave carbs. stop eathing them COMPLETELY for a week. then incorporate very small amounts. you will soon find that even eating a little will make you feel heavy and "yuk" it's difficult to do, but once you stop, it gets easier as time goes by. now, even if i have a half peanut butter sandwich, that small amount of bread makes me bloated. i used to be able to eat a dozen donuts no problem!!! but after that, i would crave even MORE!

slbeutler

go for low glycemic carbs. I try to eat 6 meals a day that contain a protein the size of your fist, a good carb (which sometimes is just fruit) the size of your palm and a fat the size of your thumb. I got that from a book called the 'Game ON Diet" You can google it and it has all the food lists on the website.

sc1572

skinnytaste.com She has a section on low carb!

ProTFitness

Eat like me. Or at least when I am eating the right choices of foods. :-) Which is 89-90% of the time

joejccva71

Get your carbs from fruits and veggies. Stay off the breads, pastas, and rice if possible...or limit them. That should help some.

bcattoes

eating carbs makes you crave carbs.

I see people post this all the time but it is definitely not true for everyone. Unlike what seems like most people on this site, I strive to eat the recommended allowances (without alteration). But I find it hard not to go over on protein and under on carbs. I try very hard to only eat healthy carbs - whole grains, fruit, veggies - but I still almost always come up short on carbs.

I think this statement may be true for sugar (sugar makes you crave sugar) but I all but gave up non-food sugar so long ago that I'm not even sure if that is true.

taso42

eating carbs makes you crave carbs.

I see people post this all the time but it is definitely not true for everyone. Unlike what seems like most people on this site, I strive to eat the recommended allowances (without alteration). But I find it hard not to go over on protein and under on carbs. I try very hard to only eat healthy carbs - whole grains, fruit, veggies - but I still almost always come up short on carbs.

I think this statement may be true for sugar (sugar makes you crave sugar) but I all but gave up non-food sugar so long ago that I'm not even sure if that is true.

eating food seems to lead to more food cravings. i ate some food yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. it goes back as far back as i can remember. i even ate food this morning and i'm already thinking of eating more food again this afternoon. what a hassle eating all this food.

jjs22

Well, its kind of hard to offer advice in general, because some people seem to really CRAVE carbs more than others. I didn't have such terrible cravings. Once I realized how worthless carbs are (especially refined stuff like soda, white flour, pasta,...) I just decided that was the easiest stuff to cut out of my diet to meet my calorie target.

But, it does seem to be true that cabs have an addictive quality.

One of the best descriptions of addiction that I ever heard was that the substance you abuse (alcohol, heroin, crack, ...) sets off a biochemical response in your brain that you experience as intense pleasure. So you use some more. Duh !!! And so on. What happens is that this big jolt of pleasure causes your brain to re-adjust. The extreme, almost unbearable pleasure of the new substance starts to seem "normal", and all the ordinary things in your life that used to bring you pleasure (spending time with a friend, the love of family members, satisfaction with your job, sunshine, fresh air,...) hardly even register any more. None of those things can come close to the response your brain has come to expect from your drug of choice.

So I've never gone through the whole addiction thing myself, but in the case of carbs (especially refined sugar), I think that the addiction description rings very true. When I cut out refined sugar "cold turkey", before too long I did start to notice a few things I wasn't expecting. First of all, I didn't feel like cr^p all the time. But also, I noticed that other food started tasting a lot better than it used to. I never would have described an apple as satisfying a desire for something sweet. And I started noticing that things like roasted beets or carrots, steel cut oats, cherry tomatoes and so on are actually kind of sweet. All the foods I might once have thought of as ordinary or even boring, began to be interesting and satisfying.

When people talk about why people today (and Americans in particular) are so overweight, I have to think some of it is that we have become "addicted" to sugar and carbs in the sense I mentioned. The outrageously high concentrations of carbs that modern society is able to produce have completely blown away our ability to find pleasure in all the "old" foods that used to to provide pleasure enough to keep humans satisfied (and at reasonable weight levels !) for millennia.

So, as far as advice goes, I'd say that if you are at all able to cut out refined sugar and refined carbs (bread, pasta, etc.) from your diet, then make a genuine effort to do that. At least for a "trial period" of a couple of weeks. And while that is going on, see if you can re-connect with all your old "friends an family" (vegetables, whole fruits, and small amounts of unprocessed grains) that you may have shut out of your life. They miss you (sniffle, hug) and they want you back !

fanceegirl75

I just started a low carb diet last week. Love it. But there are sooo many foods that even fall into the healthy category that are high in carbs. If you eat yogurt, fresh fruit, cereals you should cut back. Add in more veggies, protein & legumes/beans. Legumes/beans are carbs too...but depending on which ones you eat and what you eat them with your body will digest and treat them as a good fiber source verses a more starchy carb (potato or pasta).

melaniecheeks

We can't see your diary.

But YOU can - have a look and see where the big culprits are; Are you eating 2 slices of toast and some cereal at breakfast time? Sandwiches for lunch? And potatoes or rice for dinner?

Do some analysis and see if you can come up with alternatives, or look at just cutting the portion size (one slice of toast instead of 2)

ImperfektAngel

I have pretty had to stop eating, rice, breads and pastas. I eat enough carbs without these already

souki19

i am reading this postt aboutt not eating carbs at all and i am lik waaaaaaaaat!!!! everyone needs carbs to survive , if you're body don't get enough carbs it is going to start using muscle , speacially when excerciising. eating protein will fill you up , but too much protein might damage a ones kidney. for most people, the setting for carbs should be 50%, protein 20% and fats 30% in order for your body to function properly.......... just go online annd read little bit more about carbs, there are not as bad as people make them to be. according to what i learned, they are good

hpsnickers1

I cut out all grain, legume, and sugar carbs. Best thing I have ever done. Protein will not harm your kidneys unless you have kidney problems to begin with. The body DOES NOT NEED carbs to survive. My carbs are at 10% and my fat is at 70% and I'm thriving - the best health in my entire life and I'm 40. The body will make glucose when it needs glucose (will pull fat from storage and convert it). As long as you are getting good protein the body will not use muscle for fuel. Excessive cardio will eat up more muscle mass than giving up on carbs. There is no such thing as an essential dietary carbohydrate. They are used as immediate fuel and nothing more. The brain and heart will run better on ketones than glucose. My body uses fat for fuel when I exercise. And it uses fat for fuel for everything, now.

souki19

I cut out all grain, legume, and sugar carbs. Best thing I have ever done. Protein will not harm your kidneys unless you have kidney problems to begin with. The body DOES NOT NEED carbs to survive. My carbs are at 10% and my fat is at 70% and I'm thriving - the best health in my entire life and I'm 40. The body will make glucose when it needs glucose (will pull fat from storage and convert it). As long as you are getting good protein the body will not use muscle for fuel. Excessive cardio will eat up more muscle mass than giving up on carbs. There is no such thing as an essential dietary carbohydrate. They are used as immediate fuel and nothing more. The brain and heart will run better on ketones than glucose. My body uses fat for fuel when I exercise. And it uses fat for fuel for everything, now.

i see where you coming from , however , i don't think( this is an opinion) to from eating so much carbs to none. a person has to give the body time to adjust. i am just wondering, how do you manage to eat 70% fats and 10% carbs? what do you eat all day? and since not all fats are created the same ( saturated vs. unsaturated), how do you manage it? i am not nutrient person , but i am studying science as a major, so just curious

jjs22

Its true - there are no essential carbs. Carbs are like fuel; if you can toss it on the fire and it burns, that's good enough. And most of us on this site already have plenty of fuel in our bodies sitting around ready for use ! The body stores a few of its own carbs mixed in with our muscle fibers, and another stockpile in our liver. And "fat cells" are over-full of "fat molecules" just waiting to be burned as needed. And there are plenty of ways the body has for converting carbs to fat, fat to carbs, and burning protein or fat instead of carbs. So as long as you are not starving (consuming too few calories overall), there is absolutely no NEED for carbs. Some people strive to eliminate them altogether(almost), and some of us just cut back on them since they add nothing useful to the diet beyond (excess) fuel.

Protein molecules are the bricks and mortar of our body. From a nutrition standpoint, though, protein is fairly generic. All protein molecules are long strings of small-ish "beads" called amino acids. As long as you get a decent amount of protein from a variety of sources, you probably have a decent supply of the 22 different amino acids you need to maintain and rebuild your body. If you eat lots of protein (amino acids), they can be used as fuel. It's a little more complicated than carbs, and your kidneys do extra work. There is a "conventional wisdom" that says this extra work is bad, but I don't thin k there is any evidence of this, just conservatism. But it is true that amino acids have nitrogen, and in order to burn them up you have to get rid of the nitrogen. Mostly this is in the form of (odorless) urea in the urine, but you do end up with a certain amount of amonia in the urine, sweat, and even breath.

The big (IMO) scandal in the diet and nutrition world is misinformation about fat. Fat is GOOD. You NEED fat. Every cell in your body has outer and internal membranes which are constructed of fat. And among the wide variety of fats your body must have are the super-stable, non-oxidizing fats called saturated fats. If you don't eat enough fat, your body will create it : from carbs. And if you eat more carbs than your body needs right now, the carbs are turned into fat anyway. Every fat molecule (fatty acid) that exists in nature can be used in your body, and your body is very, very good at selecting from the 100-ish natural fatty acids to find the best one suitable for every purpose (cell membranes, nerve linings, 70 % of your brain !, creating hormones, etc.) If you eat more fat than your body needs (and again, your body NEEDS fat for IMPORTANT things), then it can be burned quite cleanly as fuel.

Why worry about fat ? If it comes from nature, you don't have to. But the fats you find in supermarkets and especially fast food joints doesn't come from nature so much any more. Instead they begin with vegetable oils, and run them though chemical plants to create molecules that do not exist in any naturally occurring food. These "trans fats" often look very similar to naturally occurring ones, except they tend not to work quite as well as the real thing : people get unpleasant little conditions like cancer, stunted development of the nervous system, and others that are just being discovered. And apart from fast food and nearly all pre-fried and pre-baked packaged foods, one great place to find this sludge is in products called "diet", and "low fat", and "lite". The idea of using (cheap) vegetable oil just sounds so much more appealing than the supposedly evil alternatives of butter or (gasp) lard. So what if you have to run it through a chemical factory first, and pretend it won't harm anybody ?

Oops ! Sorry for the soap-box moment, folks. But the take-away from this is that if you eat "honest" fats that come from naturally edible things like plants and animals, your body can and will use them. Just like human bodies have done for millions of years. The scary stuff to look out for is not "saturated" fats, which your body needs and which have never been shown by a scientific study to cause heart attacks, but "hydrogenated" vegetable oils and "trans fats", which have been scientifically shown to cause very serious harm, and which are aggressively pushed not just to fast-food eaters, but also to people who are sincerely trying to eat healthy.

AmeChops

I cut out all grain, legume, and sugar carbs. Best thing I have ever done. Protein will not harm your kidneys unless you have kidney problems to begin with. The body DOES NOT NEED carbs to survive. My carbs are at 10% and my fat is at 70% and I'm thriving - the best health in my entire life and I'm 40. The body will make glucose when it needs glucose (will pull fat from storage and convert it). As long as you are getting good protein the body will not use muscle for fuel. Excessive cardio will eat up more muscle mass than giving up on carbs. There is no such thing as an essential dietary carbohydrate. They are used as immediate fuel and nothing more. The brain and heart will run better on ketones than glucose. My body uses fat for fuel when I exercise. And it uses fat for fuel for everything, now.

i see where you coming from , however , i don't think( this is an opinion) to from eating so much carbs to none. a person has to give the body time to adjust. i am just wondering, how do you manage to eat 70% fats and 10% carbs? what do you eat all day? and since not all fats are created the same ( saturated vs. unsaturated), how do you manage it? i am not nutrient person , but i am studying science as a major, so just curious

My percentages are about the same - 65% fat, 30% protein and 5% carbs. Feel free to browse my diary if you like :-))

Sunny_Lexie

skinnytaste.com She has a section on low carb!

Love that website!!