No carbs?

No carb isn't realistic -- vegetables are carbs. I don't think anyone with an ounce of sense is going to tell you to cut vegetables out of your diet.

Low carb is good for some people. Not a catchall solution, but certainly it works for some people, especially people who have certain medical issues (diabetes, PCOS, some thyroid issues, etc.). I don't think there's a lot of harm in trying it for a while to see if it works for you, but I'd also recommend talking to a registered dietitian before doing something like going below ~100g carb per day.

My nutritionist told me that a person needs 130 grams or more of carbs a day for healthy brain function. I think it depends on what type of carbs you eat to be honest. Non processed food carbs are much better than junk food carbs. Carbs with high fiber are very good too like Quest bars. Most of the carbs are fiber carbs so that is good for you.
Good luck!

Quest bars are very processed.

I would suggest anyone planning to make radical dietary changes to do it based on a bit more than vaguely hearing someone say something about it. Calorie limiting is sufficient. Low card is a specific strategy that you need to research to see if it might help your specific situation. It is not a panacea.

No carbs = No life.

I'm still eating veg and nuts, but i've been told to cut out things like bread, rice and potatoes?

"white" bread, "white" rice, and "white" potatoes

ezekiel bread is a good one if you love bread, quinoa is a good replacement for rice and sweeeeeeet potatoes!!! LOVE em

That's ricist.

Well, I think what you are being recommended to do is cut your carbs down, not eliminate them. We are having a Biggest Loser competition at work as part of our One Wellness initiative. The male participant that is leading the way for his gender is only cutting out white carbs, such as potatoes, pasta, rice, white bread, refined sugar. He has won each week by percentage lost. It may work for you as well. However, no carb is not healthy. If you want to reduce how many carbs you consume to see if it helps you lose weight, do like he is and replace those foods with healthy vegetables and fruits. It is likely it will automatically drop your carb count, and it may result in weight loss. Whatever you do, good luck!

My nutritionist told me that a person needs 130 grams or more of carbs a day for healthy brain function. I think it depends on what type of carbs you eat to be honest. Non processed food carbs are much better than junk food carbs. Carbs with high fiber are very good too like Quest bars. Most of the carbs are fiber carbs so that is good for you.
Good luck!

Your body pretty much processes carbs the same way.....

They do contain a lot of empty useless calories, and if you are sticking to counting calories alone, I'd try to avoid eating them often.

But you can't avoid them all together forever. Well I'm convinced I can't anyways. lol

Empty and useless? You do realize that Carbs are a macronutrient, right?

Macronutrient? No I didn't realize that. What does that mean exactly?

"Macronutrients provide the bulk energy for an organism's metabolic system to function, while micronutrients provide the necessary cofactors for metabolism to be carried out."
Basically its a essential nutrient to the human body. As well as protein and fat.

I already posted a link showing people that were quite healthy and had almost no carbs. How can you say carbs are essential?

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox

No. It's not healthy or particularly safe. Carbs provide fast energy to feed into cellular respiration. Just eat at deficit and balance your nutrition.

The amount of carbs you eat is a personal choice.

I personally have to eat lower carb because of insulin resistance and hypoglycemia. Unless you have an endocrine disorder, you do not NEED to eat low carb to lose weight.

If you want to cut rice, bread, couscous, etc. from your diet, that's perfectly fine. It's your decision.

Just know you don't have to cut rice, bread, couscous to lose weight.

Weight loss comes from a caloric deficit. Calories in vs. calories out. When you expend less calories than you consume, you lose weight.

Lol, you're right, I think I just was! (two above)

Using the quote function below each post would really help us to follow your conversations. I'm going to assume that this is in reply to the user suggesting you would be insulted on this board? If any user has personally insulted you then you should use the report function at the bottom of the insulting post so that the mods can remove it. However, in this case, I don't think this would qualify.

Ok, just figured out the quote thing before I saw your post. However, it would take a lot for me to ever report someone. I was trying to make light of the reply, not being mean spirited. Obviously there are a lot of snarky comments here...

I'm still eating veg and nuts, but i've been told to cut out things like bread, rice and potatoes?

"white" bread, "white" rice, and "white" potatoes

ezekiel bread is a good one if you love bread, quinoa is a good replacement for rice and sweeeeeeet potatoes!!! LOVE em

That's ricist.

I giggled.

By cutting out all carbs, you are limiting your body's ability to properly utilize the protein you eat. If, hypothetically, you only had protein to burn, your body would strip the carbon skeleton from the protein's amino acids and use that for energy. You'd still get fuel, but this would make the protein unusable for its primary function: building and repairing muscle tissue. Thus, carbohydrates are considered "protein-sparing" because, if they are present, they will be burned as fuel while protein will be used for cellular repair. Put simply, carbohydrates conserve muscle tissue.

Now, consider that nutrition can be seen as a continuum. Your total calorie intake is a product of the protein, fat, and carbohydrates you eat. It's not a separate measurement but more of a total. For every gram of protein and carbohydrates you eat, that contributes four calories to your total, while every gram of fat contributes nine. Simplified: TotalCalories = FatGrams*9 + CarbsGrams*4 + ProteinGrams*4.

Regardless of your macronutrient breakdown, if your total daily intake is less than you've burned that day, you will lose weight because you'll have made up the difference by burning stored energy. Conversely, if you eat more than you burned, your body will store the excess as fat.

Low/no carb alone doesn't contribute to the weight loss seen in diets like Atkins - it's the total calorie deficit. Conversely, the amount of protein you'd have to eat on such a diet would go up exponentially to compensate for both tissue repair AND protein being used for fuel, which would also increase hydration requirements exponentially and also greatly increase blood urea due to the waste product of the amino acids after the carbon skeleton has been stripped.

tl;dr: Cutting carbs alone won't contribute to fat loss. Maybe muscle loss.

No offense, but I think you're a bit confused on this subject and what you're saying is all but unsupported by all the leading literature on the subject; at a minimum, you're forgetting about a little thing called fat and how your body burns it for energy. Protein is a horrible source of energy, no doubt, but your body can pull energy from dietary fat and its own fat stores quite well. I have yet to see anything though that suggests your body is going to start breaking down protein to try and fuel a workout when there is ample dietary and body fat available and simply because there are not sufficient carbs available - nor would that make a lot of sense for your body to do so. If that were the case, your body would eat into your dietary protein/lean mass stores every time you do not have sufficient carbohydrates in your system, and it'd be pretty difficult to ever lose fat since your body prefers protein as an energy source in this fictional world. Add to that your body will have a decreased need for gluconeogenesis on a very low carb diet due to the higher concentration of ketones in your blood stream and what you're saying simply does not make sense. That is, due to the higher concentration of ketones, your body's needs for glucose are reduced to essentially only the organs that require glucose and cannot run on ketones. Given that your need for glucose is reduced, the potential amount of glucose your body would have to produce from protein is relatively small (and this amount will almost certainly be satisfied by even the low amount of carbs in a low carb diet anyways). Simply put, you do not need to eat massive amounts of protein simply because you're reducing your carb intake, nor will you suddenly lose massive amounts of muscle with a lower carb intake.

Now, low carb diets certainly can have a negative impact on anaerobic performance (although there are ways to mitigate that impact) and they are undeniably restrictive diets, but I really wish people would stop spreading the "muscle loss due to low carb diets" myth. They aren't for everyone and I would say they're not the right choice for the majority of people, if for no other reason than many people do NOT do well with restrictive diets. And this assumes we're talking a low carb or even ketogenic diet, not a "no carb" diet as stated in the OP. But at least criticize them on the merits; suggesting that your suddenly body will begin preferring protein as an fuel source in the absence of large amounts of carbs is just silly.

By cutting out all carbs, you are limiting your body's ability to properly utilize the protein you eat. If, hypothetically, you only had protein to burn, your body would strip the carbon skeleton from the protein's amino acids and use that for energy. You'd still get fuel, but this would make the protein unusable for its primary function: building and repairing muscle tissue. Thus, carbohydrates are considered "protein-sparing" because, if they are present, they will be burned as fuel while protein will be used for cellular repair. Put simply, carbohydrates conserve muscle tissue.

....

Sorry partner. Absolute hogwash. Taking in no carbs, your body switches to using fatty acids and ketones as its primary energy source. The body manufactures some glucose from glycerol and can make additional glucose from some amino acids. Before the modern era of effective medications for severe epilepsy, epileptic children were treated with ketogenic diets and did just fine. There are countless studies on low carb dieting. But probably the most convincing and a useful one to start with (has lots of additional references) is the real world study of popular diet programs; the A to Z study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association


JAMA, March 7, 2007—Vol 297, No. 9 969

Lo carb is not a problem. If it works for you and certainly if you are insulin resistant; you should not be concerned about a low carb approach.