Do you loose weight faster when you don’t consume carbs?

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I heard diets which involve strictly meat and vegetables helps you shed pounds faster but on my fitness pal everyone says as long as you are in calorie defecit you will continue loosing. So does eating carbs have any affect on how much weight u loose or how fast if you are in a calorie defecit?

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  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,618 Member
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    Not for me. They're just easy to eat, so, just like any food, you'll go over your calorie limit and gain weight if you eat too much. How much is too much will vary person to person, which is why mfp calculates your calorie needs, and that dictates how much you can eat.
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
    edited February 2021
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    Nope. You will lose fat at the exact same pace as if you eat all your calories in carbs, but carbs cause water retention, so your scale weight will be a little lower - TEMPORARILY - on a low carb diet. The instant you go off a low carb diet, the water retention kicks into gear and the scale goes up.

    This is why keto is a Cargo Cult diet. There's just enough correlation of keto with good scale readings, as well as correlation of going off keto with bad scale readings, for people to assume causality between keto and fat loss, but that causality doesn't exist.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    Ashlove5 wrote: »
    I heard diets which involve strictly meat and vegetables helps you shed pounds faster but on my fitness pal everyone says as long as you are in calorie defecit you will continue loosing. So does eating carbs have any affect on how much weight u loose or how fast if you are in a calorie defecit?

    All diets work the same...low carb or whatever...a calorie deficit is what creates weight loss...weight management in general is ultimately about calories. Calories are the unit of energy that your body runs on...you require XXXX energy in a day to maintain the status quo. When you consume energy (calories) in excess of what your body needs, that energy is stored away for later use as body fat...body fat is basically your backup generator for leaner times. When you consume less energy than your body requires, that difference/gap has to be made up for...so your backup generator kicks on and you burn body fat to compensate for the deficiency of energy consumption.

    Carbs carry roughly 4 grams of water per 1 gram of carbohydrate...when you cut carbs, you see a big water drop initially which gives people a scale chubby...but it doesn't have anything to do with actual fat loss. When you reintroduce carbohydrates, you put that water back on.
  • gcminton
    gcminton Posts: 170 Member
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    Nah it really doesn't matter, and I say that as someone who follows a keto or otherwise low carb diet. If you find you tend to overeat carbs then you may find that cutting them out is helpful to you, but that's a very individual thing.

    I've lost weight eating carbs and not eating carbs, at the same rate. The only difference is I feel better eating low carb, especially grains, but that's because of a medical issue I have.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,529 Member
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    You lose water weight faster. Water is needed to store carbs in the cell.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

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  • spiriteagle99
    spiriteagle99 Posts: 3,676 Member
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    If you tend to eat a lot of sweets and baked goods, cutting carbs can help with weight loss, not because of some magic about low carb, but simply that you are cutting out a lot of calorie dense foods from your diet. Many people also find that high protein high fat diets fill them up better than a higher carb diet. The down side to that is that it can be hard to do long term. When people think they can never have the foods they love, they tend to crave them more. For me, I lost weight easily on low carb, but would 'cheat' about every other week because I missed bread, beer, ice cream, etc. That led to frustrating stalls. I also had a hard time once I lost weight because I would gradually reintroduce all the carby foods I missed, which led to a return to the bad habits that got me fat in the first place.
  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
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    Ashlove5 wrote: »
    I heard diets which involve strictly meat and vegetables helps you shed pounds faster but on my fitness pal everyone says as long as you are in calorie defecit you will continue loosing. So does eating carbs have any affect on how much weight u loose or how fast if you are in a calorie defecit?

    Going low carbs makes it easier for me to hit or come in under my calorie goal for 1lbs loss per week.

    When I have more processed carbs, I notice I'm more likely to go over my target. So it's how the carbs impact my hunger, not that carb calories are different than fat/protein calories.
  • Mellouk89
    Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
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    I lose weight faster when I eat carbs because foods that contain carbs also have fiber which is very filling maybe more so than protein, at least for me.

    I eat 50-60% carbs on average.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited February 2021
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    I've never eaten no carbs. As others have said, veg have carbs. But I did try keto for a while (at maintenance), and my maintenance cals didn't change at all, so I would say that other than the initial water drop you might get, the loss would be the same.

    JUST meat and veg (keto will include fats too) would typically be pretty low cal, so if you are eating that way to eat crazy low cals, that would make a difference, but it wouldn't be sustainable over time, or healthy.