Another Low Carb Thread

Hello,

I've spot-read through the other low carb thread which got me to thinking; if I wanted to try a low carb menu, about how many carbs would I start with? I'm currently 33 (going on 34 years old), 261 pounds, 6' 1" in height, and female. I consider myself moderately active for the most part.

Thanks.

at moderately active you burn about 3100 calories a day, so a 1000 calorie deficit puts you at 2000 calories to lose. 

i've been searching online and generally speaking 10-25% seems to be considered low carb...so that's anywhere from 200-500 calories, which is 50-125g of carbs. You wouldn't count the grams that are fiber though.

this type of diet isn't really ideal because restricting any macronutrient is likely to end in weight regain when you resume normal eating, however i hope that this information is still useful for you. good luck :)

This is a crazy subjective question, and as such, so is this answer. Personally, I don't recommend below 50. Though if you're just looking to cut, you don't really need to count. A healthy low carb diet has very few grains and fruits and is focused around protein and vegetables. If you're counting calories, those changes can be made without counting carbs.

Low carb diets work, according to research, because they are low-cal diets. The large amounts of protein act as an appetitie suppresant, you eat lots of veggies and no sugar, so it's hard to go over your daily calories. Honestly the low carb menu keeps you on the lookout for sneaky sugars (and therefore calories), reduces, in most, cravings, and helps regulate blood sugar. This is all if you do it correctly with lots of veggies.

Honestly, I use carbs as a kind of nutrition check on foods. If a bread has 30 a slice, it probably has added sugar and lots of white flour (not nutritionally great), whereas a low carb bread (Nature's Own wheat n' fiber is my favorite) typically has lots of fiber and whole grains.

Oh, and go ahead and realize you've opened a can of worms and prepare for plenty of comments about how horrible a low-carb diet is.

The standard CC benchmark for a balanced diet is one that obtains around 40 - 65% of the calories from carbohydrates.   A 'reduced-carbohydrate' diet would therefore be about 40% which equates to about 200g carbohydrates for someone on 2000 cals a day.  Low-carb diets often suggest an 'induction' phase of <30g carbohydrates, rising to 70-100g thereafter. 

If you wanted to go 'reduced carbohydrate' and aim for 40% together with 'reduced calorie'... 2000.... I think you'd see good results. If you wanted to go 'low-carb' it can tak some getting used to and there are some physical side-effects that you should be aware of.  Read around the subject....

Google "keto diet" and there's lots of good stuff there.

Original Post by momof2kd:

if I wanted to try a low carb menu, about how many carbs would I start with?

It doesn't matter.  There is no magical number of carbs that makes you lose weight.  If quality of food, calories in and calories out are the same, 20g/day isn't going to be any different than 200g/day.

The human body can reduce its desire for carbs to about 130 grams. Anything under that sends you into a ketogenic state (Which is the point of a Low Carb diet).  Alot of times it suggested when you first start to shoot for 20 grams or less.

Low Carb is more concerning the amount of carbs you eat per day as opposed to the percentage of carbs. This doesnt change much from a small woman to a large male. Make sure to eat a decent amount of protein and especially at first you might want to add a Multi-Vitamin.

It's great for weight loss. It'll take you a couple days to adjust and then after that you should be fine. Good luck! 

Thanks for the tips. I'm familiar with counting calories. However, lowering carbs is fairly new to me. I don't guess I should have said "low carb" as opposed to lowering carbs. Currently, I eat way too many. I eat tons of breads (though whole wheat), pastas, starchy vegetables such as corn and potatoes. I think it would be a good idea to, at least, lower my carbs to an acceptable level instead of my diet being focused around them as it is now.