Help understanding carbs...?

Why are you eliminating added sugars? What is your definition of low carb? Only your own reasons will determine the answers to the rest of your questions.

Unless you have been given specific instructions the general rule of thumb is to subtract fiber from the total carbs to get the net carbs which count towards whatever limit you either have made for yourself or your doctor has made for you.

However, if you are medically restricted I strongly suggest you get your doctor to refer you to a registered dietitian to go over these things with you.

If you are doing this for weight loss carbs are not a factor unless you are having trouble controlling your hunger and you believe limiting them will help you stay satiated. With weight loss only total calories matter.

femininevenom wrote: »

Hello! Hoping someone can help me understand how to watch carbs in MFP. I am on a low-carb, no added sugar diet. MFP accepts nutritional data for carbs, dietary fiber, sugars, added sugars, & sugar alcohols. So far I haven’t seen added sugar & sugar alcohol auto-import when I scan a bar code, but hopefully soon with new legal requirements on the way! Anyhoo, here’s my example. I ate a bunch of snow peas. Carb breakdown is 27 carbs, 9 g dietary fiber, 14 grams of sugar (obviously no added sugar, & sugar alcohol who knows). So for those of you who are experts on this, can you help me understand which of those items are the things I care about trying to stay low carb & no added sugar? Since I didn’t add sugar I’m good there—but should I concern myself with sugar alcohols? Should I be concerned about the 27 g of carbs, or only net carbs, & if it’s net carbs I should be watching, which of these items do I subtract?
I know this is a lot, so thanks in advance to anyone who takes this on! I could get a lot of info in general online, but I’d like to hear from folks who are using this app to monitor their carbs & sugar to see how you’re doing it!
Thanks so much!
Jess

People doing keto usually try to stay under a net carb goal, perhaps 25 g net carbs, although for most it could be higher. For that you would care about total carbs and fiber, and your peas would be 18 g net carbs (27-9). (That's about 350 g of snow peas.)

If you are just keeping carbs somewhat lower than you were before, people typically use a total carb goal. At one point I was aiming for around 100-120 g carbs, although I decided there was no real need to count carbs for me. That goal was total, so all I would care about would be the 27 g carbs.

I don't care about total sugar. I think about added sugar, but I know what foods it is in, and it's not hard to avoid excess added sugar just by hitting my other goals (cals, protein, healthy fats, fiber) and limiting foods that have added sugar. I've done no added sugar from time to time, but I don't tend to eat a lot of it anyway, so that didn't have any benefits for me. I think it can be an interesting experiment if you want to try it or if you eat too much and think it might be one way to break the habit.

I generally don't eat foods with sugar alcohols, and I don't really think most should be eating so much that it's a meaningful factor. In theory you can subtract sugar alcohols too when doing keto, but I think some labels already control for that, so I personally don't recommend it. If one is eating tons of protein bars with sugar alcohols or something, I suppose one could figure out the right way to subtract. But it doesn't seem like you are doing keto anyway.