Managing the carbs

wfte

I was hoping people might be able to throw up some ideas for lowering my carb intake. Most of the time Im hitting 50%, maybe upwards.

To me it just seems a natural part of the diet, a sandwich as a snack sized meal, toast for breakfast, and surely most "full" meals is meat/fish with veg and potatoes or rice (or carb of choice)

At the moment my carb levels are probably a little elevated as it seems the easy option to bump up the calorie total ( don't want to go adding in too much extra fat, often tight on this too) so when I go on cut those portions will be reduced right away, but I still feel I'll be regularly hitting over 40%.

I'm good on most foods, only major dislike is nuts. Don't really want to go down the route of protein shakes either. (Due to cost and I'd rather stick to taking in foods rather than supplements)

amberaz

I sometimes have an issue with carbs, too. I'm getting better though. The best thing I have done is basically cut out eating bread...no toast at breakfast, no sandwiches for lunch, no rolls at dinner. I eat fruit instead of toast, salads instead of sandwiches and usually just extra veggies at dinner. I will have rice, sweet potato, granola bars or cereal a few times per week, though. Doing this has made it easier to stay within my carb range without giving up things I really enjoy. Like you said, bread is just kind of neutral and it doesn't add a whole lot of flavor to your meal usually. It helps me too because I have a tendency to overheat bread, especially fresh, soft yummy bread :laugh: it seems like the less often I have it, the easier it is not to over eat it.

Edited to add: feel fre to check out my diary, it's open. I have been doing decently well on my cabs lately

wfte

I was off bread for a while. I was eating very little due to calories and finding it going off so quick (even freezing half a small loaf at a time) that I stopped buying for this reason. But then I just substituted toast for ryvita at breakfast (still carb).

Although bread may add little in ways of a sandwich it acts as a good "vehicle" for protein. Stuff it full with cheese and ham. Doesn't seem right just eating the cheese and ham alone.

I dunno, just a slab of protein with a huge pile of veg just doesn't seem to be right. Also I'd start to struggle hitting calories. That's a lot of veg needed to compensate for 200 calories of potatoes!

amberaz

You are definitely right about having to eat a lot of non-starchy veggies to make up 200 calories! I eat a lot of fat, so I usually don't have a problem there :devil: I think, as Americans (are you in the US?), that we are so conditioned to have meat, veggie, and carb at dinner that is seems weird not to. I really had to break out of that habit and start filling in with veggies instead of carbs at dinner. Maybe having half of a carb serving at dinner in addition to an extra veggie would help. You could put butter, olive oil, cheese or another fat source on your veggies to help make up the calories, too. If you really want to still have bread, you could try some of the low carb ones, or maybe find a wrap that you like to use for your sandwiches instead of bread, they sometimes have lower carbs. I have never had any of the low car bread, so I'm no help at that end.