What is considered low carb???

It depends on your caloric goal but I always consider under 150gms for me at 1800 calories........so if you were eating 1200 calories closer to 100gms.

It depends on your caloric goal but I always consider under 150gms for me at 1800 calories........so if you were eating 1200 calories closer to 100gms.

I try to stick to approximately 100 but even just getting that from fresh/raw veggies, yogurt, & a little bit of fruit seems tough (that's not my entire diet but just where I get most of my carbs from). How the heck do you do it?! :laugh: Personally, I find that doing it this way helps my stomach appear flatter and not as "poofy" or "pouchy" so I really would be interested to hear how you stick to that. Thanks!

Check out marksdailyapple.com for one guideline for lower carb eating (Primal Blueprint).

I keep my carbs <100 g/day no matter what my calorie limit, follow MFP's calorie recommendations (at first 1.5-2 lb. loss per week, now 0.5 lb. loss per week), and eat my exercise calories. The weight started coming off right away and is still coming off steadily, though more slowly now that I'm nearing goal weight. It's taken 8 months to lose 64 lbs., but I haven't really had a plateau.

Even radically low carb diets don't recommend "no carb." They just substitute some carbs for others, and overall lower the amount. Yes technically your body doesn't need carbs in the same way as it does other nutrients, but suggesting that one would live a long and healthy life with no carbs is a little disingenuous and presumes a lot about an individual.

Even radically low carb diets don't recommend "no carb." They just substitute some carbs for others, and overall lower the amount. Yes technically your body doesn't need carbs in the same way as it does other nutrients, but suggesting that one would live a long and healthy life with no carbs is a little disingenuous and presumes a lot about an individual.

You'd be surprised, feel free to follow whatever rules you feel will be healthy. However this is what studies show. Most of the recent "shedding of light" on this topic is proving to unravel what I already have. Just take a look, its in a book actually several.

Even radically low carb diets don't recommend "no carb." They just substitute some carbs for others, and overall lower the amount. Yes technically your body doesn't need carbs in the same way as it does other nutrients, but suggesting that one would live a long and healthy life with no carbs is a little disingenuous and presumes a lot about an individual.

You'd be surprised, feel free to follow whatever rules you feel will be healthy. However this is what studies show. Most of the recent "shedding of light" on this topic is proving to unravel what I already have. Just take a look, its in a book actually several.

As a point of clarification, were you suggesting that any information is valid because it calls itself a "study" or manages to get published?

No, I understand your ideal, but I am not your typical "poser" poster. Like I said, the information is out there. Feel free to go over it yourself, you sound like you should be able to tell the difference.

I don't know if this will be of help, but these are the journals I have read, I originally lumped them all together for someone else.

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A good carb is one that does not raise your insulin. So, as an example, fiber is a carb that does not raise your insulin. Technicaly speaking, any carbohydrate molecule that is too big to fit through your cell walls will be fine. This is the principal artificial sweeteners use to be sweet, yet not cause problems for diabetics. In reality, the number of carbs needed by the human body are zero. You can survive a long and healthy life without any of them. I know that seems like a radical statement, but you don't have to take my word for it, the science is out there. That being said, there are benefits to including certain ones found in leaf vegetables.

:drinker: :flowerforyou:

I don't think there is any general consensus, even among the various low carb diet proponents, about what exactly is the cut off which make a diet "low carb". Many low carb diets start with an introductory period where you keep carbs at approximately 20 grams/day or less. You can then gradually move to higher levels according to what your metabolism can support. I think for most people 100 grams/day of CHO, which is 400 calories or about 25%of a 1600 calorie/day diet is still considered low carb.

I think equally important to the question of how many carbs you consume is the issue of the type of carbs you eat. Eating carbs like sugars and many starches which quickly raise your blood sugar and in turn cause insulin spikes is much worse for you, imo, than eating carbs in the form of green vegetables. For example, you can eat a huge amount of avocados, artichokes, and asparagus and not generate nearly the same level of insulin response as when eating a proportionally much smaller amount of white bread. </$.02>

I'm sorry, is a wall of text lacking any contextual analysis supposed to signify something other than you can use a search function?

Wow, you really are not at the level I was expecting. How can you argue anything without understanding ALL the information. If I flip a coin 100 times, and withhold the answer half the time, I can convince you I have a coin with 2 heads. You need to be much better than that.

You haven't presented any relevant sources of information yet. Quite frankly, given the formatting, I highly doubt you compiled that list yourself.

Have fun selling snake oil to the public, skippy.

A good carb is one that does not raise your insulin.

This depends on who you're asking. Ask someone trying to lose weight, and they'll usually agree with you. Insulin inhibits fat from leaving your cells. Ask someone trying to put on muscle mass and they'll disagree with you as insulin also transports amino acids to your muscles.

Edit: In response to the OP, "low carb" usually means <100g/day, "very low carb" would be ~30g/day.

Our brains function by using carbs, we just have ways of synthesizing them.

Our brains can function on glucose (supplied by either protein or carbohydrates) or on ketones (converted from fat by the liver).

I'm sorry, is a wall of text lacking any contextual analysis supposed to signify something other than you can use a search function?

Wow, you really are not at the level I was expecting. How can you argue anything without understanding ALL the information. If I flip a coin 100 times, and withhold the answer half the time, I can convince you I have a coin with 2 heads. You need to be much better than that.

You haven't presented any relevant sources of information yet. Quite frankly, given the formatting, I highly doubt you compiled that list yourself.

Have fun selling snake oil to the public, skippy.

He is not selling any snake oil. It is a very well known fact that we don't NEED any level of carbohydrates for a perfectly healthy and properly functioning body.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson and others raised the argument in the 1920s that carbohydrates were responsible for the poor health and poor teeth of Western man. Since then, some Nobel-winning scientists have demonstrated through their research that obesity and overweight are only symptoms of the metabolic disorder which causes chronic disease. Controlling insulin is the key to stopping the progress of premature aging and chronic disease.

It keeps being proven time and time again, yet it still keeps falling on deaf ears.

To answer the OP's question, I eat around 50 grams of carbs a day from fruits and veggies - mostly veggies. From what I've read and what my dietician has told me, the number for sustained weight loss is between 50 and 100.

My argument was not a straw man as you did suggest that people could not live a healthy lifesyle on a zero carb diet. You apparently inferred that under your initial assumption that the body has some minimum requirement for CHO which we now both seem to know is incorrect.

I disagree with your premise that I suggested that the body needs a minimum amount of dietary carbs. As I never actually said that, or implied it, I think I'll call that unjustified inference on your part. Still a straw a man.

EDIT: I make a statement that the brain needs carbs, and then you make a statement that it needs glucose. Yet I'm completely incorrect? Did glucose suddenly not become a carb? If the process by which it's derived from protein isn't a synthesis, it hardly makes my statement completely incorrect.