Hi all,
I am a total Keto newbie and looking for advice. Today I thought on my 1st day I had nailed the targets only to find my net carbs were on 2g and showing red in carb manager. I thought I had to keep net carbs under 20g so how come it’s showing red? Total Carbs were 19g of my macro of 23g? Help and advice me much appreciated.
Thanks
Wayne
On keto, there is no such things as too low net carbs. You have only a limit, no target. You can’t reach zero if you eat properly as most food has some carbs but you can go quite low. If you feel right doing so, don’t worry about a low number, it’s good.
I ate about 5g total carbs today, it’s perfect 
When I was a newbie, I couldn’t go nearly this low but my food choices were quite different for various reasons. Some people start with very low numbers right away.
Thank you so much for the swift response 
. I just thought I had done something wrong with it showing red on carb manager. I’ve attached a screenshot of my 1st day. Banging headache now but feel ok apart from that.
Our ideas of human nutrition have been distorted by the false notion that saturated fat and/or cholesterol are unhealthy and cause cardiovascular disease. This notion was promoted in the 1950’s by people with an agenda on the basis of faulty (possibly even fraudulent) “science,” and has been shown to be baseless, but it became nutritional orthodoxy for political reasons. After that, it became necessary to promote a high-carbohydrate diet, in order to replace calories lost from no longer eating fat. (Before that point, it was universally understood that carbohydrates were fattening and bad for us in quantity.)
The upshot is that most online diet apps have an in-built bias in favour of eating carbohydrate and avoiding fat. As long as you are keeping your carbohydrate intake low, you are doing fine. We have plenty of other advice to offer, but that is where to start.
Hi Paul,
Thank you for that, very interesting read and great to learn more. I only quiered it as Carb Manager is supposed to be for a Keto diet. Panicked when I saw it as red when I was under my total Carbs for the day. I will see how I go this week and will revaluate then. Thanks for the information. Wayne
You’re welcome.
Bear in mind that while vitamins and the essential amino acids and fats were all discovered over a hundred years ago, there has never been any sign of there being an essential carbohydrate. The minimum daily requirement for carbohydrate intake is, in fact, 0 (zero) grams. This is because the body is perfectly capable of manufacturing all the glucose it needs (a small amount, actually) from various sources.
By contrast, there are a number of essential amino acids required in our diet (somewhere between 10 and 30; I’m too lazy to look them all up right now) and two types of essential fats (ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids). “Essential” here means simply that the body cannot manufacture these out of other materials. We don’t necessarily need vast quantities of them. Most amino acids used in the human body can be inter-converted, and so can most fatty acids.
Every cell in the body is capable of using glucose, but most of them are also able to metabolise fatty acids and ketone bodies. You will hear figures quoted for how much glucose the brain needs each day, but there is actually some doubt as to exactly how much it actually does need, especially when we have ketones available to feed it with.
Hi Paul,
You are obviously very knowledgeable at this and it’s great to here your input of how this all works. The human body is a fascinating thing and minor changes can have a big impact. Thank you again and I look forward to hopefully having a long and successful journey on Keto.
