Has anyone got any advice on how to work out the carbs relative to the 20g target. I have been using the FatSecret app on my phone to enter everything I eat and drink and aiming for being under 20g in carbs in the daily summary. I understand that there are other ways of working out carbs, so for example carbs in fiber don’t count in the 20g limit. Is there an app which makes it easy to work this out, or some other formula that people use? The FatSecret app does’t include the break between carbs from fibre and sugar in the reports. It does show a figure for fibre and sugar carbs when you enter each food, but, there is no way with the menu system to select the reports show only suger based carbs. The total of the two figures for carb type is greater than the figure for overall carbs on some food items. So I am getting very confused.

Hi JGwen and welcome! If you will type the name of this thread into the search box
at the top right of the page “20 g Carbs anyone?” it will take you to a recent discussion
of this topic. Come on back if it doesn’t answer your questions though, and someone
will be along to help 🙂
Best of luck to you!

Allie

Judging from your spelling of fiber you’re in the UK. As Allie alluded to in the other thread, any British entries that you utilize from the Fat Secret database put fiber and carbs in separate categories so you do not subtract the former from the latter. Only in the US labelling system is fiber included under carbs along with sugar. So your total carbs are likely whatever Fat Secret says they are. No subtracting necessary. The sugar is a subset of the total carbs. Most days that column total for me is no more than 2 grams, mainly from yogurt, nuts and veg.

Thanks for the message, yes I am in the UK.

The fatsecret app displays in the standard report just a total for carbs, but I have found that there is an option for an extended report which lists a total carb, dietary fibre and sugars values for the day. What confuses me is that the values for carbs, fiber and sugars don’t add up. For example, after breakfast the figures were total carb 2.84, fibre 0, sugars 0.7

So how do I work out the 20g level for the diet, is it just the sugars figure?

They don’t add up because fiber is not considered a subset of carbs according to UK labelling regulations so there’s nothing to add. It’s just a separate category of nutrient like protein or fat. Sugar is a subset of carbs, but it is already counted in your total carb grams, so you don’t add it or subtract it. I like to ensure I get at least 25 grams of fiber a day and I watch sugar like a hawk, so that information is valuable, but on the question of ensuring you stay under the limit, you have all the information you need in the total carb count. So in the breakfast example, you’ve eaten approximately 3 grams of carbs from your 20 gram daily allowance.

JGwen, Esnecca is entirely correct that you have all the information you need to
calculate staying <20 net carbs per day. Counting sugars is not necessary. It’s
total carbs less fiber = net carbs. On the 20 g thread, there are posts of some of
our menus to help you envision what that might look like for you. Both Esnecca
and I have loss extreme amounts of weight by choosing to keep our carbs under
20. Others do very well on 30-40. If the scale isn’t moving, you always have
the option to lower your totals. My losses averaged .5lbs/day at the lower rate.
However, I was willing to do whatever it took. I think it depends greatly on your
personality type and emotional make-up. You will find what works best for you!

Allie, it’s not total carbs minus fiber for her. It’s just total carbs period, assuming she’s using Fat Secret’s UK database which I believe is the default. Only in the US and US-based apps like MyFitnessPal do we have to do that manual subtraction.

Thanks guys, that helps to explain the confusion for me, I wondered why some people talk about doing a manual subtraction. I didn’t realise about the difference between the UK and US.

I am a vegetarian, no fish or meat, so many of the discussions on menus and most of the recipes in the book are not ones I can follow. That’s why I need to be able to work out using a log of ingredients how many carbs I have taken in.

JGwen – as a GB person (though I use MyFitnessPal, which doesn’t do net carbs) I can confirm all the others are saying.

If it helps further in the UK : –

carbs = sugar plus starch (so bread has sugar plus extra carbs that are not sugar i.e.: starch. Your body breaks it down to sugar in the end which is why we should minimise our intake of both).
fibre – separate reading. is the insoluble stuff that goes straight through. Important for bowel movements and I think we should be trying to maximise this within the confines of the 800 calorie limit.

It might be useful to look at a few packets and compare them to the app? Its all separated out on packets, normally, and would give you a point of comparison.

Hope this helps
xx

Essie, you’re right of course 🙂 We’re the anomaly! Thanks Jackie. That should help
make it clearer for our new UK friend!

The recipes in the original BSD book (as opposed to the follow-up recipe book) don’t have accurate counts, and even if they did, they would still consistently be way above 20 grams a day. I never made a recipe from the book and just used MyFitnessPlan to calculate the counts of everything I ate. I’m glad I did it that way because I had no idea what a serving size really was or how much of which nutrients were in my food until I started.

Vegetarians do the BSD, but I don’t recall any of them shooting for the 20-gram limit. The goal is a challenge even for omnivores. It’s a very difficult thing to get enough protein for your needs (about 1 gram per kilo ideal body weight) when you have to lean on pulses and legumes as a primary source. Seitan is made out of wheat and meat replacements like Quorn often have pretty bad carb counts, lots of breading, hidden sugars, etc. Do you eat soy and hemp products? If you don’t, it’s time to start, particular in the tofu arena.

Good luck!

Thanks for the suggestions. I am coming to the end of my first 8 weeks on the diet, so far down 15kg, and 6 inches off my waist. I want to loose at least another 20kg and two more dress sizes then set another range of targets. I have been lurking on this forum and also reading more about keto diets on the web to gather more info. I have been struggling with getting to sleep when trying to be around 20g of carb, which started me looking into if I was working out my carb intake correctly. I think you are right Esnecca, going for the 20g level is difficult for vegetarians, its only possible by having a very small range of meals and a not very balanced diet. I thought I would find being down to 800 calories a day really hard, so wanted to try to hit it hard for a short period of time. After so many years of trying to loose weight by calorie counting and it feeling like pushing water uphill its been a surprise how much energy I have on this diet.