Questions about Low Carb Diet

I am eating low carb. The key is to exercise on top of the change in your diet (I use the word diet to mean the food you eat, not a "diet"). When I don't exercise as much, I plateau, if I keep the carbs low and keep a high level of activity, the weight comes off.

I had really good progress and have lost 14 pounds, but am plateaued. I need to mix up my workouts, but for a couple weeks it was so hot out I couldn't do much. On the weekends I went to the mall to walk. I have had a hard time getting back into the level of exercise I had before the heat wave.

My doctor told me that he used to recommend that people do 60 carbs a day, but that felt too much like being deprived, so he said do a max of 200 carbs a day, and drop it if you feel you can do it. He emphasized that you have to count it. I was keeping track in my head each day and thought I was doing OK. I did lower my carbs a lot. I found MFP and when I entered my carbs it was like 400 or more a day. I started tracking on MFP and kept it under 200 and the weight started coming off. With that and exercise, my body has changed shape, and I am sure that some of the plateau is muscle gain from all the exercise.

A pound is 3500 calories. The only way to gain a "real" pound in a day that is not water weight is to eat 3,500 calories more than your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) for the day. You would have to eat 8.7 King Sized Snickers to get that many calories AFTER you had enough to equal the amount of calories you used for the day. So yeah, you could gain a pound overnight that isn't water weight, but you'd have to be able to keep it down.

Carbs alone will not make you gain, it is your total caloric intake. If you eat more calories than you burn in your daily activity, then you gain, if you eat less, you lose.

The source and type of carbs is important. Carbs from processed foods, such as bread and pasta, cake and cookies, and sugar, simple carbs, is that they make your body think it is a diabetic the way it handles insulin. Prolonged diet like that and the weight gain of so many of us, leads to diabetes, high blood pressure and other metabolic disorders. However, carbs from fruits and vegetables and healthy fat and protein sources tend to be complex carbs and don't affect your body in quite the same way. (You should read up on this, as I may not be explaining it right, but how I understand it.)

Some buy proved that you can eat Twinkies and other junk and lose weight, but after being low carb, I find that while I can still eat a King Sized Snickers and be under 200 carbs, it does not taste as good and I don't really want it any more.

There are days I go over carbs, and if I am more active on those days, I can burn them off.

I have a genetic trait that after 30, now long after, carbs above 200 a day make me fat and miserable. It did not happen overnight, it took years to hit my high of 100 pounds more than high school/college. I had hit my high of about 285 and stayed there a few years, and have slowly worked it down to 265 when I started eating low carb and lost another 14. I will still indulge in things that sound good, but not on a consistent basis.

You know your body and your situation. Figure out what ratio of protein, carbs, and fat it takes for you to maintain your goal weight Once you hit your target, you may find that you are happy with 200 carbs a day, or you may find you can do 400, if your total calories fit the TDEE for your goal. It is all about smart choices and listening to your body.

If you want to be able to stop exercising so much, then you will want to stay low(er) carb. If you like working out and don't want to quit once you reach your goal, then you can probably handle more carbs on a consistent basis.

become Primal. and if you dont want to gain back the 3 lbs start adding more carbs in verrry slowly. and have them be clean carbs at first and then you can slowly progress to dirtier carbs. but i have a million recipes of "dirty" things that are modified clean

so protein ice cream and low carb cookies are my fortee
-Harper

so basically even one meal of bad carbs can make you gain all the weight back? to me that sounds a bit impossible but thats what people are saying :S

surely if I eat healthy so the same as my diet now but then once every few weeks add like a small portion of cake to my diet or something I won't gain it all back?

Generally, the people who are most successful on low-carb diets are sensitive to those "bad carbs" anyway. So it is not always a question of the food itself making you gain the weight back. You would also need to take into consideration if these foods cause insulin resistance, water retention, or inflammation in your body.

Personally, I can rarely have pasta or bread, because it makes me crave even more, but rice does not seem to bother me. So I try to stay away from them. Of course, I also have PCOS, which means I am insulin resistant. So I feel better not eating those foods anyway.

Usually, if you have none of the issues mentioned above, you can go back to a *small to moderate* amount of carbs with only a small weight gain. If you are still diligent with your calories and exercise though, this can drop again once your body gets used to metabolizing the increase in carbs.

You aren't going to gain all your weight lost by eating a bowl of pasta. I have lost all my weight eating low carb and eating a bowl of pasta does not make me gain 40+ punds; I eat 5 or so days with my carbs fairly low (between 30-40 normally), then a day or so of "splurge eating". After my splurge, I am normally up 2-3 pounds, which goes away within a couple days.

Bump

ADD ME~ I could use more friends! I am to goal but now to stay there... Still will have to stay in check!

I'm doing my own version of Low Carb / Atkins... and down to goal... but I am always needing more ideas with food and drinks. My latest drink if Crystal Light's *Margarita* powder mix! Oh my gosh! Yummm~ I use the vita mixer and make a slush with it. NO CARBS! Does have 5 calories per 1/8 of the packet. Can't find them in all stores but they have them out there.

With HONEST keeping track of the carbs, keeping that alone under control, I don't have a thought or a want for junk food. If anything I feel I've gone back to the REAL foods without all the sauces on them, and all the CRAVING for JUNK...chips, crackers, french fries, hamburgers, whip cream, ice cream... you name it... is GONE! Noooowwww I have the control I never had. I am a carb junkie to the worst degree and I know that touching that junk is poison for me. Now to not let any of it slip into my diet.

I am around 50 to 60 carbs a day and maintaining now...

You want to weigh 80 lbs? How tall are you? If you're over 4 feet, then you need professional help that we can't give you.

If this is all in error and you're not an eating disordered teen, low carb is something you need to sustain. Sure, you can probably add some carbs back once you go into maintenance, but you can't go back to a high carb eating lifestyle without gaining a bit back. I do keto and I plan to eat this way for life. I like eating this way.