Carbs out of whack

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  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    JBanx256 wrote: »
    I enjoy carbs & consume them throughout the day! You don't have to totally forgo something that you enjoy. Some people love keto, some people don't. It's not for me. I like being able to have pasta or rice or bread or whatever. If you want to keep carbs in your diet, there's no reason you can't.

    But how do I fit carbs into my lifestyle? I am tracking but is it that easy?

    Carbs aren't anyone's problem unless they're diabetic. Too many calories are a problem.

    Accurately tracking is all you need to do at this point.

    Here are two threads on that subject:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101/p1

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,988 Member
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    U lost 90lbs?? congrats! How did you do it? I need to lose at least 100lbs. Ive been practically starving myself x 2weeks. I don't know how to manage anything.
    Kimma41 wrote: »
    No reason restricting carbs except to lose my addiction to them. I was hungry tonight Ive been so strict x 2weeks.

    You probably under-ate the past two weeks, which triggered a binge.

    I used to think there was something wrong with me and carbs, but it turned out I just needed to up my protein and fruit a little, decrease foods like baked goods and ice cream, and get into a moderate exercise program, starting with walking at lunch time, and I no longer have the cravings I used to.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited December 2018
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    U lost 90lbs?? congrats! How did you do it? I need to lose at least 100lbs. Ive been practically starving myself x 2weeks. I don't know how to manage anything.

    Yeah -- I started at 1200, and gradually increased to 1600 as I got more active. I think 1200 can be too low and don't really recommend it, but it happened to work okay for me.

    I promise you will figure it out. I find structure really helpful, do you have a set meal schedule (certain # of meals) that you know work for you? For me having an every day breakfast made it easier, then I cooked dinner and usually made enough to use as leftovers for lunch, and also sometimes just made a few days lunches when cooking dinner.

    Easy dinner template for me was meat/vegetables (I'd eat a lot, and it filled up my plate) plus starch (pasta, potatoes, rice, etc.) -- amount of starch and fat content depended on calories, but I found more fat and less carbs was easier for me personally.

    If not a preplanned lunch I usually buy a salad with protein on it, and make sure the calories are right.

    Very helpful was getting active -- when I first started I got a Fitbit and decided to walk as much as I possibly could (I am lucky since I am in a city so can walk a lot). I also went to the gym and did extra walking and easy biking and some swimming, but told myself 30 minutes and kept it easy and read fun books or listened to podcasts. Quickly I got more fit and started wanting to compete with myself, and then I planned to enter a 5K and got started running again, and so on. Exercise goals were really important to me since I'd been active in the past and they helped motivate me to eat better.

    I was a HUGE emotional eater and found that having a personal journal where I wrote about how I wanted to eat if I did and to analyze what was up was REALLY helpful. I'd also write about what I was craving and how I'd satisfy those cravings with my (low cal) dinner plans. Getting more mindful was enormously helpful, and exercise also was, as it somewhat worked off the emotions I'd been eating over.

    Early on I discovered a challenge where we posted monthly goals and then reported weekly on them. I also did that in my journal -- would identify something to work on during the week (hitting calories, meditating, exercise, easing veg, really variable), and then report daily. I think this is related to my structure comment! ;-)
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,182 Member
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    @Kimma41, spend some time looking at the Success Stories. Very many of the women posting beautiful trim photos of themselves started just as confused as you are and hoping to lose just as much weight as you do. You are not the first to do this. You will not be the last, and soon you will be helping new noobs too!
  • Kimma41
    Kimma41 Posts: 46 Member
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    Thanks everyone for your insightful and kind words. Hope I lost some lbs on the scale tomorrow..
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,978 Member
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for your insightful and kind words. Hope I lost some lbs on the scale tomorrow..

    Please keep in mind that with a high carb meal you may have a bit of water retention, especially if you've been restricting for the past two weeks. So don't be upset if the scale hasn't moved a lot or is up a bit. It's a perfectly normal water weight fluctuation that will even back out.

    And, please report back if you do have any more concerns or need some reassurance. There is great advice here. All of which helped me when I started out years ago.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,737 Member
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    Kimma41 wrote: »
    U lost 90lbs?? congrats! How did you do it? I need to lose at least 100lbs. Ive been practically starving myself x 2weeks. I don't know how to manage anything.
    Kimma41 wrote: »
    No reason restricting carbs except to lose my addiction to them. I was hungry tonight Ive been so strict x 2weeks.

    You probably under-ate the past two weeks, which triggered a binge.

    I used to think there was something wrong with me and carbs, but it turned out I just needed to up my protein and fruit a little, decrease foods like baked goods and ice cream, and get into a moderate exercise program, starting with walking at lunch time, and I no longer have the cravings I used to.

    Your so right that I under ate for 2 weeks and I binged. Not that its ok but I logged it and I'm moving on.

    It's really not "not OK", either. It's not a huge big deal, and it's now in the past, so you did the perfect thing by logging it; spending no more than a couple of minutes thinking about what you might learn from it, as you have done; then moving on with life. Perfect!
    Kimma41 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for your insightful and kind words. Hope I lost some lbs on the scale tomorrow..

    Some days the scale will be down from the day before, sometimes it will be up, sometimes it will hold steady for a bit - that's 100% normal. Water weight fluctuates from day to day for everyone, especially for premenopausal women. So do digestive system contents still in transit. Neither of those is fat gain/loss, so nothing to worry about.

    The normal pattern is for daily weight to fluctuate up and down through a range of several pounds, but if you stick to a sensible calorie deficit, that range gradually moves downward over the weeks and months, until you're fluctuating a few pounds up and down around your healthy goal weight.

    Best wishes!
  • JBanx256
    JBanx256 Posts: 1,477 Member
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    Kimma41 wrote: »
    But how do I fit carbs into my lifestyle? I am tracking but is it that easy?

    IMO...and this is what has worked for me but I'm not saying it's the gospel.

    First and foremost, get an idea of what your daily calorie intake is now vs what it needs to be. Good place to start - track for a week or so, making NO changes to what you normally eat. You want that 10th Oreo? EAT IT! But track EVERYTHING; if it passes your lips, log it! Do that for about a week & get an average, so you can have a ballpark of your current intake. From there, reduce. You may have mentioned previously but I'm 11.5 hours into a 12-hour shift and have been up since 2am, so forgive me but I've forgotten...how much weight do you have to (reasonably) lose? Running a deficit of 500 cal/day is more than likely safe & a decent starting point, but adjust that number up or down depending on how much you have to lose & how aggressive you're going to be with your diet (other ways of determining a general calorie goal but I'm going for fairly simple here)

    Calories overall is your #1 priority and #2 priority is gonna be your macros.

    Figuring out macros - first, make sure your bases are covered for your protein consumption. For the sake of argument (and easy-to-work-with numbers), let's say you're gonna be consuming 1600 cal/day. If you want 40% of your calories to come from carbs,then, taa-daa, you get 640 cals worth of carbs per day, which is 160g. That's quite a bit to "play with" and you've got some wiggle room to consume foods that you actually WANT to eat.

    Once again, keeping this simple but it's a good starting point & get you in the mindset of you don't have to eliminate carbs if you don't want to.

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