Hello, sorry for a simple question but I’m struggling to find the answer!
I have prediabetes (Age 27) and started the fast 800. I’m tracking my food on my fitness pal. How many carbohydrates (in grams) is ideal to have each day? I’m aware of GI measure but for ease whilst I begin, I’m just looking for a rough ballpark figure as this is all brand new to me (to see if I’m not eating too much as I know I would be tempted to eat 800 calories of carb foods!)
Thanks

Hi,
This is a topic that isn’t completely covered in the BSD book. To my mind one of the positives of this forum is that we are free to share information from a range of sources, which will often provide insight into the science behind the guidelines, and includes information on research that has been published since the books were published.

Personally I like the work of Dr Bikman, there is a podcast I provided a link to in January or Feb 2018 on the Take a look at this thread which explains in much more detail the science behind this topic.

Its not really about the carbs, its about the impact the carbs have on our insulin levels. Insulin works like a switch, if high then our body is locked out of burning our fat as a fuel source. So we burn the food eaten, and then our bodies will try to encourage us to eat. So keeping insulin levels low helps control our appetite. It also means that if our insulin levels are too high and we try to loose weight by counting calories after a period of time our bodies will adapt to the lower level of calories by reducing our metabolic rate. Which makes it hard to keep any weight we loose off.

When our carb intake is low enough for us to be in fat burning mode that is known as ketosis. If you are prediabetic, then you have probably been eating a high carb diet for some time which means your body is probably Insulin Resistant, so you need to keep your carb level lower initially while your body heals. But eventually you can increase your carb intake and still be in ketosis. –

As a rule of thumb, you can be sure you are in ketosis even if you are IR if you have under 20g of carbs a day. – Some people once they have healed their IR can be in ketosis at 50g, and endurance athletes can go upto 100g a day of carbs when training and still be in ketosis.

Because the gut bacteria which can digest carbs have the facility to signal to our brains to try to encourage us to eat, sticking under 20g of carbs initially is a good idea because it will rapidly cause those bacteria to die off and so quite rapidly help to control the feeling that there is a little voice urging you to eat carbs.

It is possible to measure if you are in ketosis, (don’t bother with the pee sticks, they are not reliable) and so work out if you can increase your level of carbs. Personally I use one of the cheap breathalysers from Amazon to do that AT6000 ( if your search the forum you will find links I have posted to a podcast which explains this). But I have found that even after eating low carb for a couple of years now I still have to stick under 25g of carbs to stay in ketosis.

I would advise against assumptions that if you are loosing weight you are in ketosis. – There has been extensive research into the longterm impact on the program for the biggest loser program in the USA. Where people were competing to loose weight in a situation where their diet was controlled and they exercised so they were in calorie deficit every day and lost high levels of weight. – All of the group regained more weight than they had lost, with one exception. He regained weight but turned to surgery to reverse that. – So making the presumption that eating low carb, and loosing weight means you have your carbs low enough is not a good idea.

Hi Prediabetes27
I think it varies, some people just try to cut out/down on the main white carbs e.g. pasta, rice, potatoes, bread etc. A lot of people try to stay around 50g carbs per day, others go lower. I did the 8 week BSD 800 with 20g carbs per day but that was because my Hba1c was very high on diagnosis (over 100). That worked for me but I don’t think you’d need to go that low.
I think the key is to start at a level that is sustainable for you and go from there.
Hopefully others will be along soon to say what worked for them.

The great news is that the diet does work.
Jennie xx

Thanks for your reply. That’s really interesting and very useful information. I guess it sounds like the case of the lower, the better. I definitely need to meal plan a bit more as I tend to average about 70g of carbs per day (and this feels like so little!) but hopefully as time goes on, I become more familiar with alternatives. I’ll have a look at Dr Bikman as well 🙂

That sounds a good idea – I’ll keep a better eye on this and see how low I can go!

Hi JGwen, just reading back my post above it struck me it might seem like it was posted as a direct response to your post, so wanted to let you know our posts crossed. I’m still not convinced that being in ketosis is the only way for things to work or that it’s workable for everyone but I guess we will just have to differ on this.
Jennie xx