Is a carb a carb by any other name

vegetables

(Robin) #1

So… been going keto for about 2 months, feeling great, seeing great results. My question… I love my veggies and subsequently they account for the bulk of my daily carbs. I could opt to get my carbs from less healthy options. Does it really matter? I’m not craving other substitutes, but just curious. Are veggies still the good guys, in carb friendly moderation? Or does a healthy keto count not give a hoot?


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

There is a variety of keto eating called IIFYM—“if it fits your macros.” In other words, as long as the quantity is 20 grams or less each day, the carbs can be sugar, kale, broccoli, yeast bread, or glazed doughnuts.

I don’t personally subscribe to this view, because for one thing, sugar is deadly, quite apart from being a carbohydrate. But the types of carbohydrate we recommend eating are green, leafy vegetables, and cruciferous ones, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.

We discourage eating grains, starches, and legumes, for various reasons. Maize/sweet corn is too rich in sugar (glucose) to be a good idea. Fruits and nuts should be treated with caution. Some are high in fibre and lower in digestible carbs, but even those can be a problem if they tempt you to eat too much of them. Sodas/pops/tonics/fizzy drinks are too rich in glucose and fructose to be to be anything less than pure poison, and the same goes for fruit juices. Stick to water and coffee. Certain hard liquors are low in carbohydrate, but you might find your tolerance to alcohol is lower on keto, so drink safely.

The less manufactured a food is, the better. Bacon, cheese, certain sausages, and unflavoured yoghurt are about the most processed foods I eat these days (unless a moment of insanity comes over me, which I hate to admit does happen from time to time).


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #3

Yes, a carb is a carb - strings of glucose and/or fructose molecules of varying lengths.

Concern about carbs is somewhat normal at first. After all most of us ate SAD in our previous lives that typically included hundreds of grams of carbs daily. Probably nearly everyone wondered what exactly am I going to eat? How can I possibly eat less than 20 grams of carbs per day - and do I really have to? The good news is that most of us get over it. You quickly discover the amazingly varied world of lo/no carb foods once you start to explore it.

Some of us just bit the bullet early on. Carbs serve no useful purpose and you can live a full and satisfying life without them. Or at least keeping intake to a minimal and incidental amount. There are some wholesome and nutritious foods that contain a carb or two per 100 grams. Think of them as a ‘carb tax’ on otherwise good food. But obsessing about how many and what carbs are ‘better’ is not useful. Trying to maximize carbs and remain in ketosis is a fool’s game.


A Calorie is Not A Calorie - A Discussion of Thermodynamics
#4

Starches and sugars may be similar carbs, but carbs like fiber, allulose, and sugar alcohols are quite different. Even the sugar alcohols are quite different from each other (e.g. maltitol vs erythritol).

It’s why so many people use the concept of “net carbs”, which is the standard usage on non-FDA nutritional labels.


(Robin) #5

Thanks for the info. I am already a proponent of natural food. My one and only complain is I truly miss beans. But I got over it. I don’t care for pop. I drink water all day long and have three cups of coffee every day, like clockwork. I don’t drink (and yes, I can count the number of days for a reason). I avoid processed food, because I don’t want the cravings they can add. But I sometimes add cheese and salami just to get enough calories in. And I’m always under 20 g carbs. So I guess I am right on track. I have a friend who eats bacon at every meal and disdains veggies and is as keto-healthy as a horse.


(Robin) #6

That makes perfect sense. Thanks.


(Robin) #7

Thanks. Ya’ll are saving me some research!


(charlie3) #8

20 grams total carbs makes me carb crazy. I do 4-5 days of carnivore then 12 days with a very large non startchy vegetable salad with olive oil, avecado, and HB eggs. After a meat meal I end up around 30-35 grams net carbs. I figure activity/exercise burns off the extra carbs. What’s gone from my diet are grains, nuts, seeds, fruit, startchy vegetables, milk sugar–what have I forgotten? So 20% protein, 5/10% carbs, 70% fat, all good meals I enjoy eating.


(Robin) #9

Would love to hear about your average food input for a day. What goal do you have for your total calories daily. Any common snacks? My biggest challenge is getting enough fat without going over in protein. Maybe I have my macros percentages wrong. I currently have them sent as 5% carb (14g), 68% fat (86g), and 27% protein (76g). Am I way off in those? Last night, I had the craziest dinner, trying to get all my numbers right. (Celery, TBS of peanut butter, TBS of cream cheese, slice of hard salami, and some cheddar cheese.) The low carbs is the easy part for me. But I keep going over in protein. ???


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

I stopped eating breakfast a while ago. Sometimes when I do get around to eating, I make bacon and eggs, but generally it’s the meat from the night before (I seem to be the only person in the household willing to eat leftovers). For supper, we generally have a meat (pork, beef, chicken with the skin on, or something similar), or I will make Fathead pizza (cheese and almond-flour crust, with cheese, tomato sauce, and various other toppings). Occasionally we have fish for supper. Our vegetables are generally salad greens and broccoli or cauliflower, sometimes Brussels sprouts. My father and I eat liver, but no one else will, so when we have it, it is generally for lunch.

I have no calorie goal. I eat to satisfy my hunger. Some days, my appetite is less; other days, it is more. We buy the fattier cuts of meat (they’re cheaper, too!) and cook with bacon grease, butter, coconut oil, and lard, so getting enough fat is not a problem. I have been known to drink the bacon grease or the fat from cooking burgers. When we make gravy, it is with heavy cream and butter (or bacon grease). I couldn’t do keto, if it required counting calories (it’s a mental block), and fortunately I reversed my diabetes without counting them (and lost 85 pounds or so into the bargain). I love being able to eat and not having to go hungry. When I was a carb-burner, I could stuff myself literally to bursting and still be hungry for more; these days, when I stop being hungry, there is still plenty of room left for more, but I just don’t want it.

If you keep your carbohydrate intake under your personal threshold (which is a gram value, not a percentage of caloric intake), you will stay in ketosis, and the amount of protein you end up eating will not be a problem. Excess protein stimulates a noticeable insulin response when a significant amount of carbohydrate is present in the diet; but when carb intake is low, the insulin response from extra protein is minimal (or more accurately, it is counteracted by an equivalent secretion of glucagon, so the insulin/glucagon ratio remains low, and we remain in ketosis). Fat, which stimulates a minimal insulin response, then becomes a safe source of energy. (The notion that dietary fat causes cardiovascular disease is not actually supported by any scientific data, it turns out.)

Protein should be reasonable. We advise eating 1.0-1.5 g/kg of lean body mass/day, but some experts recommend up to 2.0 g. If you start smelling of ammonia, you are eating too much protein—but you’d have to work really hard to eat that much. We appear to have an instinct for getting the right amount of protein, so eat what your body tells you to. And remember that most meats are 1/4 protein, so if you eat 100 g of steak, you are getting 25 g of protein. If you want to eat 100 g of protein, you need to eat 400 g of steak (nearly a pound). This works out to roughly 7 g of protein per ounce, by the way.

So if you keep carbohydrate low, eat a nice amount of protein, you can fill in the rest of your needs with fat. I put blue cheese dressing on my salad, gravy (made with cream) on my meat, and cheese sauce on my vegetables. It makes them really tasty and satisfies my hunger.


#11

I personally wouldn’t worry about protein - unless you experience a problem. 76g sounds right for me too… But I can’t seem to avoid my 160g days though I am usually below 120g. Added fat and cream doesn’t satiate me so it doesn’t help, I just end up with way more fat and the same amount of protein. But most people don’t have this so you can add some butter or cream or sour cream…
But I find 68% quite easy even if I barely eat anything besides my protein sources as they are quite fatty. Even scrambled eggs are perfect for this percentage, I don’t even need to add my fatty sausages (but I often do because it tastes great). I do use some added fat just little. I almost always end up with 65-70% fat, it’s high protein for me because I eat much more than you do while my needs are probably similar.


(Robin) #12

OK, this is just what i hoped to learn. I am going to just wing it today with my meals and then chart afterward and see where I land. For lunch, I just had a fried hamburger patty with a fried egg and cheese. And I sopped up every bit of the grease. Yum. Just charted it. Dead on. I think the only thing I will need to be aware of is when i have a veggie urge. But then I’ll just watch the serving size. And see where that goes. Everything you said makes sense to me. I can do this. Thanks,


(Robin) #13

Excellent! I feel more confident about my choices.


#14

Yes, glycemic index matters. 20g of Dextrose will spike your insulin, 40g from broccoli won’t. When I started tweaking my diet one of the first things I did when upping carbs was not counting them from veggies unless it was something drastic like a potato, which eating those was pretty rare. Now things like sweet potatoes are pretty common for me and I still notice no real difference. If I were to eat the same amount of carbs from a piece of cake, it’d end bad!


(Bunny) #15

Beans are keto (1cup or 1/2 half cup) too and better than eating meat, but meat or animal proteins are good for B-12.


(Polly) #16

Bunny, half a cup of cooked, drained red kidney beans weighs about 125 g and contains 22g carbohydrate. Beans are an incomplete protein and require a grain accompaniment to make up the deficiency. By the time you have added 50g of brown rice to make up the missing amino acids from the meal you have added a further 12g of carbohydrate. This is going to mean that your one bowl of rice and beans provides you with 34g of carbohydrate which has blown your 20g of carbohydrate limit for the day.

In addition to that, about 3 hours after eating that carbohydrate filled bowl you are going to be gnawingly hungry.

Please don’t believe what Bunny says about this being a good way to eat on a keto diet. It might work for her/him (although I seriously doubt it) and I have been wondering for several months now whether s/he is actually just trolling this forum.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #17

I think this sentiment is widely shared.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

Bravo! Enjoy.

BTW, I forgot to mention that because food percentages are calculated off the total number of calories (for historical reasons), an equal amount of protein and fat by weight are 31% and 69%, respectively, of the total calories involved (100 g protein × 4 cal/g = 400 cal; 100 g fat × 9 cal/g = 900; 900 + 400 = 1300; 900/1300 = 69% and 400/1300 = 31%). This means it is much easier to get the correct percentages than may first appear.


(Robin) #19

Ah, good point!