I need your suggestions for evening "Carb Cravings"

Hi mate,

Like you, I am on a low-carb diet and finding it hard to suppress carb cravings, but I have this advice for you: make sure you are eating enough calories and not skipping meals during the day - when a person's calorie intake is too low, the brain senses "famine," sending a stong signal to the body which encourages a person to eat carbs.

I eat a lot of protein and also fats during my day and am seeing great results.... who knew that you had to consume fats to lose fat!! :-) But I won't complain because I love cheese, olive oil and nuts!

By the sounds of it, you might be under-eating, especially if you are getting headaches for not succumbing to your cravings. If you aren't eating enough, your blood sugar will drop causing a spike in insulin levels which stimulates the cravings for carb rich foods.

I would recommend you do your workout in the evening (if possible), giving you a much needed distraction from your carb cravings. Once you are finished your workout, have a banana with a protein shake - a medium sized banana contains 27g of carbs and the protein shake will trick your body into burning off the carbs while using the protein to repair the muscles - this works best with weight lifting.

Let us know how you get on and good luck!

We can't see your food diary so I can't comment much on that, but bear in mind that the cravings diminish if you're truly in ketosis (your metabolism is fat-adapted instead of glucose-adapted), but not necessarily if you're just "low-carb".

Ketosis is a binary state, you're either in it, or you're not. There is no "somewhat" to it. It's all or nothing.

As such if you're eating low-carb - and your intake is too low to properly fuel what's still a carbohydrate-metabolism, but not low-enough to be ketogenic, your body will still use glucose as it's "preferred" source of fuel, and you'll get those cravings if calorie/carbohydrate-restricted.

The key to a ketogenic diet, whether Atkins, Paleo/Keto or 'generic' LCHF (low-carb/high-fat) is a macronutrient profile of "very low carb" (usually 10% or less of calories from carbohydrate), high-fat (usually 65-70% calories from fat) and moderate protein (20-25%). Higher protein or carbohydrate concentrations will often keep people OUT of ketosis.

If your goal is simply to reduce carbohydrate but NOT to the point of ketosis, I would recommend you simply eliminate refined carbohydrate (flours, sugars) from your diet and eat a good variety of fresh vegetables and moderate amounts of fruit for your carbohydrate.