As I waited for my blood draw, I picked up “Diabetic Living” magazine & leafed through it. A weight loss article featured a 1500 calorie day’s menu which included fruit, bread, dried fruit, rice, sugary desert, etc. The day’s meals & snacks topped out at 176 grams of carbohydrates.
Who publishes this thing??!!
2 Likes
Industry publishes that kind of thing. You eat carbs, you need meds, they win. 
4 Likes
Is that considered a lot? This may sound like a stupid question, but I really don’t know what is considered a lot to other people.
1 Like
I guess for a man following ADA guidelines, it would be in line.
I aim for about 60-80 grams per day. And really low-carb people, aim for no more 30g.
2 Likes
Considering that most people not counting carbs probably eat 300-400 grams a day, I think 178 is not that high, although it’s definitely not low-carb. When I first began moving towards a lower-carb diet years ago, my goal initially was to eat below 200 grams a day. Then I lowered it to below 150 grams, then below 100, then below 70, then for a while below 50. That was too low for me. I’ve now started an SGLT2 inhibitor (in addition to insulin, since I have Type 1) and I’ve found that with that medication I can keep decent control eating 150-200 grams per day (before I definitely could not keep control eating that amount of carbs). In fact, with the SGLT2 inhibitor my control with that amount of carbs is just as good as, if not better in some ways, than my control eating less than 50 grams of carbs. I’ll probably lower carbs again at some point, but at the moment I need a break.
6 Likes
Thanks. I am not really up on what low carb standards are.
Another dumb question…for the low carb people, if you have low blood sugar and need to take something for it, does that count against your daily total? Or is it only meals that you count? That 30 gram thing, I’d knock that out just for a low BG sometimes.
In my world I do about 75g of meal carbs a day. I only restrict meal carbs to avoid the spikes they cause. I have some lower IC ratios (1:3 to 1:5 during the day) so if I give lots of insulin for lots of carbs things get interesting.
Corrections and exercise carbs are not part of the total. In fact I sometimes excercise just to eat some potato chips (not that there is anything wrong with that right?)
4 Likes
A low is a low and needs to be treated. For me, low-carb eating doesn’t matter in terms of the quantity of carbs I eat: I don’t win or lose anything depending on whether I’m higher or lower than a certain arbitrary number (my arbitrary number, by the way, is 50g of net carbs per day). It’s just a goal to help guide eating. When I dip below 60 mg/dL and feel wonky, I eat carbs (a Clif gel, 24g of dextrose and starch).
Some people get a little religious about it, which is fine. I just don’t handle carbs well and aiming for 60g net carbs per day helps me to stay more or less on track.
1 Like
I’d be thinking of all kinds of ways to “cheat”! Oops, accidental over-bolus! I guess I need to eat something to fix it now…
1 Like
David, you are a biker, right? How do you do that on 60g? I know there are some low carb runners, but when I do depletion runs, after a while it really starts to kill me. I could never do that consistently, I just have no energy. So I just do it once-in-a-while to shock the system a bit.
On a side note, I asked my coach and I asked the people at Ucan. I was told by both that the carbs in Ucan are really carbs, it’s not fiber. I guess the only way to know for sure is to go to a lab and do my own Molisch test…
For me anything above 50 - 60 grams daily will mean some loss of control. I am an older female without a great deal of muscle mass and somewhat insulin resistant so an excess amount of carbs will begin the high/low BG cycle. I think if you are younger and muscular the impact of complex carbs is not so negative. I also don’t worry much about treating lows cause the addition of more fat in my diet has minimized those events - lows evolve pretty slowly and are not as perilous as before. There is some indication that excess sugar is involved in the development of othe medical issues so I’m wary of the simple sugars anyway. And yes any carb counts in my world.
2 Likes
@Deborah3 The sugar and grain industry through ADA?
Life’s a funny thing. Back in the 70’s females life, ~1500 WAS the average calorie consumption and consisted of 150g carb. Who knew then, that they were on a low carb, weight reduction diet?
Who said carbs makes you hungry for more carbs?
http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(14)00332-3/fulltext#bib94
Carbohydrate Consumption (NHANES)††:
•Men
•1971–1974: 42% (∼250 g for 2450 kcal/d)
•1999–2000: 49% (∼330 g for 2600 kcal/d)
•Women
•1971–1974: 45% (∼150 g for 1550 kcal/d)
•1999–2000: 52% (∼230 g for 1900 kcal/d)
Here is an athlete’s alternative to high carb
It takes adjustment, and is far easier to do endurance on low-carb than it is to do intense exercise (such as weightlifting) on low-carb, at least for me. It takes a couple weeks of eating really low-carb for me to adjust, and it does feel terrible initially. I feel low on energy, like I have the flu, etc. I run out of energy on rides earlier (this is after a period of eating higher carb and then going low-carb), and it definitely feels terrible.
Getting enough electrolytes, water, and sticking through it for a few days to a few weeks has different results for me. My body adjusts to eating low-carb quite well, and the flu-like symptoms go away. Weightlifting is still a lot harder (and I push a lot less weight). But riding becomes pretty straightforward: push through the first 20 miles and whatever muscle glycogen stores you have, bonk, and then keep going. Fatty acid metabolism will provide enough energy to keep going (not at quite the same maximum pace… V02 is diminished for sure).
There are competitive runners and cyclists that eat truly low-carb. They tend to supplement with exogenous ketones to provide more energy, and I don’t aim for anything more than enjoyment and health myself. I’m not interested in setting land-speed records And I’m a strictly practical low-carber. If I could eat two - three times the amount of carbs I do now and manage my BG in the same range, I very likely would.
1 Like
Thanks. It’s interesting, and something I will look into.
My interest in a diet is always based on top performance from an athletic standpoint. So far, it seems the selling point for low carb has always been better BG control. I don’t have a problem with BG, so I never really pursued low carb.
If someone said it would make me faster, then I’d really start looking into it.
Well, there are those for whom it does work to be faster. You might check out Peter Attia’s blog. He’s a metabolic specialist doctor and competitive cyclist and triathlete, who now eats a low-moderate carb diet. He was interested initially in weight loss and BG control (or insulin control, in his case), but has a lot of information on performance.
He also has a lot of information on low-carb eating and cholesterol (or just serum cholesterol in general) which is quite fascinating. His blog is eatingacademy.com.
Cool, I will check out his info.
In the past when I looked online, I saw a lot of sites where people were big advocates of something, and then when I looked into it, I found they were just trying to sell me something!
Like the bullet proof coffee guy. Funny how he talks about how great it is, and has a recipe for you to try. And if you click on the ingredients…whatdoyaknow?!? You can actually BUY the ingredients from the guy’s website!! Wow, what a coincidence!! 
My “just turned” 3 year old eats between 30/meal to 45/meal. So that’s 90 on the low side and 135 on the high side. I’d say 176 isn’t bad for a grown up…and probably a good target to shoot for?
Yep, that’s often true. Lot of snake-oil salesmen out there. What the BPC guy doesn’t tell you is that equal parts butter and coconut oil in your coffee (or tea or by the spoonful) have identical effects: more free fatty acids for energy without a spike in insulin (or BG, depending on whether you’re one of us or not)
Attia is great because he got interested in low-carb as a doctor and someone who was a competitive athlete but trending towards Metabolic Disorder (Syndrome X). Definitely no interest in selling anything!
Jen, I just started Invokana myself, as I was having problems with metformin.
While this is diabetes sin, I’ll point out that since with an SGLT2 inhibitor your excreting some of those carbs in your urine – and not packing them on as fat with increased insulin to cover it – you can relax a bit on the low-carb train and enjoy food a little more.
I worked out the numbers to get a rough idea, and for me Invokana represents a IC change from 1:5 to about 1:6.5, which allows me to eat about 30% more carbs as my calories (sliding the scale around between carbs, protein, and fat for total calories) and still maintain the same quality of control.
I’m a bit nervous about SGLT2 inhibitors, but they don’t seem to be causing any problems in many many people. It’s just that a drug that makes the kidneys do something (spill sugar) that is also a very bad thing when happening because of kidney DAMAGE just makes me nervous.