In a ‘Low Carb.’ diet, how does one determine what is a ‘Low Carb.’? Has a reference level of carbs. relative to other nutrients been established?
If we look at the now discredited GDA or RI carb. levels, the carb. energy relative to fat energy plus protein energy is about 125%. What should be the relative carb. energy level compared to the fat and protein energy levels in, for instance, the 800kcal. diet?
Alan B
Hi Alan B,
On the bsd diet most people do the 800 calories, while keeping all carbs to 50g or under, if you download the fat secret app, it tells you the carb value of all the foods, which makes keeping a check on your carb intake easier.
I’m not sure where you are coming from in relation to your question, however as a general rule if you keep to the 800 calories and 50 g carbs you should lose weight and keep healthy. I hope this helps?
Christine
Alan, if you want to explore this subject further, there is a lot of information on the web.
One site which I found helpful in establishing the best proportions of carbs, fat and protein to support the BSD is below.
I believe Michael Mosley set out the BSD to be as simple as possible, so that its users could do the diet without too many investigations/calculations themselves.
However, many people here, as well as my OH and I, have established that planning the 800 calories around 50g or less carbs per day works very well at both losing weight and visceral fat, and helping with issues such as high blood sugar.
Here’s the site:
http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com
If you work out your potential proportions from the site, using the carb levels and calories per day (800 on the BSD)you wish to set, it will calculate your recommended protein and fat levels so that you can enter them into an app such as the one recommended by Christine or MyFitnessPal, which is the one I use – there are a number – and set your targets.
Then entering your food into the app keeps you on track as it shows the nutritional content of what you are eating, and you can monitor your progress, plan your meals, establish how many calories/carbs there are in everything.
I hope that helps.
Hi Alan — I recommend the book by Gary Taubes, “Why We Get Fat” for an excellent discussion of carbs/diet — it is my best reference. Good luck going forward!
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for your replies – most useful.
I use Excel to log all my food intake and have done so for some years. The ‘Back of Pack’ nutrition information for each food that I buy is logged on a database which is accessed via an arbitrary unique code. Before consumption each food is weighed and logged on a daily spreadsheet. At the end of the day the total energy and nutrients is calculated.
With the ‘Estimating Carbs.’ (CHO), I couldn’t see what the level should be in the BSD book (I must look harder!), hence the question.
Using the information that the Protein amount should be about 1 gram per kg of bodyweight (I use 0.8g), and setting the CHO to 50g, the Fat percentage can be calculated. For example: My target weight is 66kg giving 52.8g of Protein and 38.7g of Fat for a 800kcal. diet. Dietary Fibre is set at 20g.
So, if I use these figures converted to their respective energies, the CHO energy limit can be calculated – which in this case is 35.7% (of 800kcal.) (CHO energy)/(Fat energy+Protein energy).
Well, that’s the background info. to my question.
Alan B
Well done, Alan – there are all sorts of apps for recording meals and counting nutrition, and now there is another one: Alan’sFitnessFriend! Created via Excel by you! You could market it!
Sounds as though you’ve got yourself on to a really sensible footing. I think the BSD doesn’t really recommend precise nutritional targets in its efforts to be as simple and easy as possible. But researching the principles does help and many people here can recommend keeping an eye on the carbs particularly.
Very best wishes with you journey – lots of helpful advice and experience here if you need it – and keep us posted with your results.
🙂