Help a n00b - net carbs and fat.

[KashaUK2000]

I'm still struggling to understand...

1. What is the difference between carbs and net carbs?
I've been told net carbs are carbs minus fibre and sugar alcohol, but how do you determine net carbs of a food? I'm just going off carbs as listed on nutritional information given on foods, is that not right? What am I not getting here?

2. How do you determine how much fat you need to consume per day?
Does this depend on your carb, calorie and protein intake? How do you determine what to get in each category? Again, what am I not getting here?

Looking at my last week of food diaries;

1. Day #1 Carb: 21.2 Cal: 1995 Fat: 814 Pro: 80
2. Day #2 Carb: 14.5 Cal: 1258 Fat: 55.5 Pro: 42.6
3. Day #3 Carb: 17.4 Cal: 785 Fat: 53.7 Pro: 58.7
4. Day #4 Carb: 21.7 Cal: 3536 Fat: 218 Pro: 78.6
5. Day #5 Carb: 16.9 Cal: 1559.4 Fat: 192.6 Pro: 51.8
6. Day #6 Carb: 16.5 Cal: 1789.5 Fat: 83.3 Pro: 137.9
7. Day #7 Carb: 21.3 Cal: 613 Fat: 37.1 Pro: 38.2

Don't judge, but as you can see there's no consistency, my numbers are probably totally off, and I have no idea what I'm doing

Any help?

[Ntombi]

I don't deduct sugar alcohols, I only deduct fiber. So for me, I would look at the label, deduct fiber grams from total carbohydrates, and be done with the math.

I don't aim for a certain number of fat grams, but I aim to eat high fat, moderate protein, very low carb. If the foods I eat have roughly the same number of fat and protein grams (or slightly more fat grams), that's close enough, because fat has 9 calories per gram, compared to protein's 4 calories. I limit my carbs to 20g total (even fewer if I calculate net carbs), as I'm on an extended induction.

Some people find they need to do more work to make sure their fat and protein grams are precisely right. I'm not one of them, but if you are, it really depends on your own experiments.

If you're following Atkins, I wouldn't bother with that at first. If you lose without that precision, why do it? If you're doing nutritional ketosis, counting protein is part of the plan.

[MtherGoos]

For me, I try to follow Atkins 72, so I don't deduct anything. I count the carbs as exactly what they have them, but I know different versions of Atkins are different.

[watcher513]

Ah, but KashaUK is in the UK so do not deduct the fiber. I believe, that only in the U.S. the nutritional labels separate the two. The fiber is already taken out of the carb count in Europe as far as I've read.

[KashaUK2000]

Originally Posted by watcher513

Ah, but KashaUK is in the UK so do not deduct the fiber. I believe, that only in the U.S. the nutritional labels separate the two. The fiber is already taken out of the carb count in Europe as far as I've read.

Ooooo....that's a new revelation.
I'm in the US next week so I'll check labels to see how they compare.

[shykins]

thats correct.. in the uk we do not deduct fibre counts. what it says on the packet IS net carbs.

in the US they have to deduct the fibre to get to the net figure, lucky us its all done for us lol

with regard to fat i dont have a hard and fast rule, i only stick to 20g carbs or lower thats it. no other counting or calculating, its too much for my brain lol

hope that has helped a little, if u want more help it would be good to have a rough idea of what u are eating

we do have a Uk thread only Lowcarb challenges if u want to come chat