Carbs how much per day? Time to lose weight again.

[PaulStat]

So I'm wanting to lose some weight, again! I seem to do this, five years ago I was about 98kg, I then became quite active with jiu jitsu for a couple of years and dropped down to a fairly respectable 90kg.

I then stopped and floated around the 94-95kg mark which I was fairly happy with. Since going on honeymoon last October however I ballooned quite a bit (lots of food lots of wine lots of beer) I got out of the habit of regular exercise and into the habit of eating and drinking too much crap. Shortly after my son was born (10 weeks ago) I measured a hefty 104kg. I'm 5'10" and quite stocky

Now that my wife can be a bit more active again, we've both decided to get back on the wagon with regular exercise and healthy eating (well one day a week where we can have A treat of our choice otherwise I think we'll be back off the wagon pretty quickly)

Anyway now on to the real point of this thread, diet and how much of that diet should be carbs. A typical good day with no exercise would consist of something along the lines of

30g Shreddies with 200ml semi skimmed milk
1 slice of brown toast with marmite
1 glass of orange juice
1 large banana
1 muller light yoghurt
1 ham sandwich (2 slices of brown bread + 2 slices of medium cut ham)
1 medium apple
Evening home cooked meal with meat (lamb, beef, chicken) and usually either brown rice, brown pasta, mashed potatoes, cous cous or oven cooked chips.

That's if I manage to avoid the snacks. Now I realise quite a lot of the above is carbs. So how often should I be having carbs during the day and which meals should I have them in?

 

[roysters]

With your evening meal why not just replace the rice/pasta with vegetables or salad?

 

[Royality]

My personal opinion is that the best way to a better body composition is to ditch most of your carbs completely. Elevated insulin levels are not good for fat loss, and consuming a lot of carbs will cause insulin levels to rise (whether sweets or wholemeal pasta).

Try to keep carbs to <100g a day, and try to consume most of them post-workout (so they are utilised to replenish glycogen stores in your muscles rather than just stored idly as fat). Cutting out all carbs entirely will result in ketosis which can be desirable when cutting, but if you're lifting weights and doing a lot of cardio you're really going to feel lethargic when working out (at least in my experience).

For reference, a quick estimate suggests you're eating more than 200g+ a day in carbs, and half of those are simple sugars. I don't know how tall you are (I'm supposing 6 foot or more), but contributing 1000 calories+ to carbs whilst cutting is, in my opinion, not a great idea.

An example of my cutting diet at the moment:

Breakfast:
1 serving Whey (water)
4 medium eggs (scrambled in butter)
2 slices grilled bacon

Lunch:
Salted Nuts (50g)

Dinner:
150g Chicken Breast (fried in butter)
200g Broccoli

Post-Workout:
2 servings Whey
500ml Semi-Skimmed Milk

Comes out at around 1800 calories, 98g Fat, 43g Carb, 190g Protein. All this supplemented with fish oil, a multivitamin and a hell of a lot of water. I lift 3 times a week and run 3 times a week. I eat this everyday as it's easier for me to lose weight when I don't have much flexibility (I can mistakenly rationalise eating a lot of the wrong types of food when cutting otherwise).

If you do decide to cut out the majority of your carbs you'll probably spend a few days suffering carb withdrawal symptoms, you'll get over it.

 

[Freefaller]

Living with 0 carbs is hard, however living with low levels of carbs is absolutely fine. Most people eat far too many carbs, some carbs are fine and important as they provide energy for the body.Sure, fat and protein do convert to glycogen in the end, but taxes the body more so than necessary. 150g of carbs a day will be fine and you should still be able to lose weight with a good routine, and a good varied diet. Try and cut out the sandwich if you can, and try not to have any carbs before bed. Carbs before and after work out is fine, but before bed the insuline spikes interferes with the GH release which helps increase protein synthesis, but also use fat stores too.;

 

[Morba]

Ketosis is a bitch to live with, that's why ckd is doing the rounds a lot lately.

If your gonna have a ham sandwich, get some of that small bread (that tears when you spread marg on it) and pack it with ham (ham is low calorie but high in protein and water).

 

[Rosbif]

Paul I dont think you should get too hung up on carbs. You can play around with carb/fat/protein ratios all day long but if you dont have an energy deficit it wont matter what ratio you pick.

You're not gonna have 'elevated insulin levels' on a diet that is in deficit regardless of how many carbs you eat. Yes, you will have times when insulin is elevated i.e. when you eat, but those spikes are gonna be much smaller and far more infrequently purely because you're not eating enough calories. And those spikes are not going to deposit anything into fat cells because there isn't going to be a surplus of calories.

 

[Freefaller]

Ketosis is a bitch to live with, that's why ckd is doing the rounds a lot lately.

If your gonna have a ham sandwich, get some of that small bread (that tears when you spread marg on it) and pack it with ham (ham is low calorie but high in protein and water).

Agreed - or use wholemeal pittas, you can shove a lot of good protein in there.

 

[Freefaller]

Paul I dont think you should get too hung up on carbs. You can play around with carb/fat/protein ratios all day long but if you dont have an energy deficit it wont matter what ratio you pick.

You're not gonna have 'elevated insulin levels' on a diet that is in deficit regardless of how many carbs you eat. Yes, you will have times when insulin is elevated i.e. when you eat, but those spikes are gonna be much smaller and far more infrequently purely because you're not eating enough calories. And those spikes are not going to deposit anything into fat cells because there isn't going to be a surplus of calories.

Well said. Agreed.

 

[Royality]

Paul I dont think you should get too hung up on carbs. You can play around with carb/fat/protein ratios all day long but if you dont have an energy deficit it wont matter what ratio you pick.

You're not gonna have 'elevated insulin levels' on a diet that is in deficit regardless of how many carbs you eat. Yes, you will have times when insulin is elevated i.e. when you eat, but those spikes are gonna be much smaller and far more infrequently purely because you're not eating enough calories. And those spikes are not going to deposit anything into fat cells because there isn't going to be a surplus of calories.

Insulin doesn't just store carbs in fat cells, it inhibits the release of energy from fat cells also. Of course in general following any sensible restricted calorie diet will result in weight loss, but I would still say of the three macronutrients carbohydrate is the least beneficial one to consume when cutting.

But hey, if you can't stomach eggs and bacon for breakfast more fool you.

 

[edscdk]

I switched to low carb 6 weeks ago, I lost about 8 to 10kg up to about 8 days ago.

Hardly get tired or hungry, I need about 2 hours less sleep a night, I sleep better as well and don't get tired thru the day.

however my breath does honk....

 

[Robert1986]

I switched to low carb 6 weeks ago, I lost about 8 to 10kg up to about 8 days ago.

Hardly get tired or hungry, I need about 2 hours less sleep a night, I sleep better as well and don't get tired thru the day.

however my breath does honk....

Good job.

Did you include any high carb days at all?

 

[Ian]

I sacked all carbs a little over 3 years ago now. Best thing i ever did

 

[edscdk]

Good job.

Did you include any high carb days at all?

no high carb days... I am a bit lazy to read too much but I assumed suddenly eating a stack of carbs would spike insuline and not be good...

 

[Credo]

Surely low GI carbs are acceptable in reasonable quantities? Porridge for breakfast, and a moderate amount of wholemeal bread for lunch is surely more natural than excluding carbs entirely?
High carb - low carb - what about moderate carb days? I'd have thought eating a balanced healthy diet and increasing your energy output is a better weight loss program?

 

[Westie]

Doesn't completely taking carbs outta your diet make ya breath smell really bad?

*ah I just read up!

 

[Freefaller]

Nothing wrong with carbs at all, I don't go out of my way to avoid them as it's very hard to do so completely, and ultimately whilst very beneficial makes life (to me) more stressful.

I keep them to under 200g which for my weight, is rather low, and keep them complex.

I try not to obsess over it too much.

 

[^TANK^]

Agreed - or use wholemeal pittas, you can shove a lot of good protein in there.

Sorry but that sounded really wrong .

 

[Freefaller]

Only for you my dear friend

 

[Morba]

Surely low GI carbs are acceptable in reasonable quantities? Porridge for breakfast, and a moderate amount of wholemeal bread for lunch is surely more natural than excluding carbs entirely?
High carb - low carb - what about moderate carb days? I'd have thought eating a balanced healthy diet and increasing your energy output is a better weight loss program?

Check out CKD

 

[cHk4]

Try carb cycling.