Newbie help please

(Robin) #21

My only input is that I believe it helps to only look at total carbs, not net. I don’t always trust labeling. In fact, I used to round up, so I knew for a fact that was under that 20g.

That’s just me tho.

(Megan) #22

Hi again Mark, have a look at the ingredients in the red thai curry paste. The carbs in it may fit in with your macros but I’m betting it is full of sugar to have 13.6 grams of carbs in it. Peas and corn are also full of sugar. You may want to look at getting more of your carbs from green leafy veg and cruciferous veg, rather than “sugary” veg. They have a better nutritional profile and won’t spike insulin in the same way more complex and/or fibery carbs do. It’s a journey tho, we all start out where we start out, and change things as we go along. Or change nothing if what we’re doing is working for us. The most important thing is we start! How are you finding it so far?

(Mark) #23

I checked the label of the curry paste and of the 13.6g carb there are 3g sugar (22%). is this considered high?

I wasnt aware of the sugary content of corn and snow pea so will limit my intake.

Im actually really into roasted broccoli, cauli and brussel sprouts which I wouldnt have believed had you told me this 6 mths ago!!

(Mark) #24

I’m surprisingly quite comfortable on my new diet, I guess it wasn’t an instant change but I not missing potatoes, chips, cakes, pies, biscuits, milk, chocolate, carrots, etc.

(Megan) #25

What else is in it?

(Mark) #26

Curry paste nutrition per 125g jar portion (serves 4 but i made 3!)
Cal 207
Pro 3g
Fat Total 15.1g
-saturated 1.4g
Carb (net)13.6g
-sugars 2.5g
Sodium 2,961mg

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

This paste is 11% carbohydrate. So if you have 125 / 3 = 42.7 g of it (assuming that’s what “I made 3” means), you are getting 5 g net of carbohydrate, nearly a gram of which is sugar. Only you can say whether that is a good use of your 20 g/day allowance of carbohydrate. Also, if you are counting total carbohydrate intake, then you need to add the fibre to the 13.6 net grams of carbohydrate and do the calculations from there.

Also, do I assume correctly that “Pro” means protein? Or does it mean “professional” something-or-other?

(Mark) #28

I made the curry last night and only worked out the values today, Ill re-portion the two remaining serves into 3.

I thought the 20g/day was net carbs not total? If so, probably explains a lot.

Yes ‘pro’ = protein.

(Megan) #29

Some people do net, some people do total. When I was doing keto, before moving to carnivore, I counted net carbs because almost all my carbs were coming from high fiber veg. My daily total of net carbs usually ended up between 8-12 grams.

#30

I personally count net carbs and aim to end each day at or preferably below 20. I think this is likely to be a very personal thing though. I seem to be doing great on that level, but I’ve read that others have to be way more restrictive, and others less restrictive :woman_shrugging:

#31

In the end, it only matters how much carbs you eat compared to your personal keto limit and how the food affects you… It’s quite complex, actually, not all carbs are the same, we have our non-physical needs too but it definitely can’t be simplified to “don’t eat items carbier than N%” :smiley: Some people do that and it’s fine but it’s not general. I had numerous very high-carb items on keto and actually I do the same on carnivore-ish, it’s even easier when my normal food has very little :smiley: I am aware they must be used in tiny amounts and decide if it’s worth it.
So it’s a more important question that what is the carb content of your curry you actually eat on a day when you have curry, how big is your carb allowance and how carby are your other dishes (in total, not in percentage per 100g).

By the way, I only care about net carbs but when I stay very close to carnivore (it’s my default), it’s very close to total… And it seems to matter a lot if my carbs come from mostly plants or mostly from animal products like eggs, liver, dairy though I am not fully sure about the latter, maybe lactose is more troublesome than egg and meat carbs, even for me? I am not sensitive enough to figure it out easily.
Ketosis isn’t enough for all of us, going lower* may be the thing that brings most of the benefits.

*With non-animal carbs at least? I dropped my 40g net carbs to 20g total carbs and my plant carbs went from about 35g to 1g or something and I added meat too so good luck to figure out what was the reason for the great changes… But many people experienced that mere <20g keto isn’t good enough yet and certain items had to be eliminated. So it’s not only about net/total carbs, of course. Though it’s quite important for most of us, of course.