Can I ask - what is your avg. daily carb count?

[Greenwitch]

Hi everyone, mind if I ask what your daily carb count is? Do you count grams or just eye-ball it at this point?

Bev :wave:

[NDHuntress]

I try to stay below 10. Usually am right around 5 for the day. (this is net carbs)

[Cissie_12]

I count. My goal is 20 or below daily. There have been days when I went over but more where I was under. Yesterday was one of those days for dh and me both!! By the way, my dh is on this woe with me. We pretty much average out and when we are under that kinda gives us bonus carbs. for the other days or save some up for a special event. Thing is the longer you are on LC the less hungry you tend to be...

From your stats I take it you are new so I just wanted to encourage you and welcome you to the site. Now sure your plan since you don't have any listed so I avoided saying "low carb family", but that's okay cause you can still be family!! lol Should you decide to go LC I believe you will be pleased.

Cissie

[j13]

When I started I counted REALLY closely, but over time I've come to have a basic understanding of what most of the foods I eat have and now I generally just wing it. I think it's important to go through that phase of discovering the carb counts of different foods, though, because doing this means re-learning how to eat. I had no idea what the nutritional info was for anything I was eating.

I used to keep my carb count under 15, now I try to stay generally 10-40. I'm very often on the low end of the scale, because I'm just so much more comfortable eating this way and I really have no desire *not* to. More specifically on what I eat, the grand majority of my carbs come from green vegetables, I don't do a lot of artificial sweeteners, I try (and fail with some regularity) to keep the cheese and dairy down. I keep pretty close to the DANDR prescription, basically, but I've stayed closer to induction levels for longer than he originally proposed. From what I've seen on the board and from studies, it seems like that's okay to do. I've been toying with reintroducing lower-glycemic index fruits this summer if I can get down to 245 by July or so.

edit: Btw, don't take my saying that I wing it to mean that I *don't* count. It's just that I'm not as slavish about it as I was because I'm better at keeping a better running count in my head, and I trust myself to be able to guess when I'm not positive. So, for instance, if I have cheese with breakfast, I'll factor that in as I eat for the rest of the day. If I have vegetables at lunch, I won't go to the calculator and check them (because I know most of the ones I eat regularly), but I'll also eat less carbs later in the day. If I go to a restaurant, I'll order a salad and pick around or ask them not to put in the things I know can't eat, then I'll avoid carbs the rest of the day. So instead of weighing or portioning everything, I take a rough estimate and act accordingly for the rest of the day. I don't say "I must stay under 20," I say, "I've had a salad for lunch, so I'll do a burger for dinner and forgo the cheese. That'll keep me in my ballpark." I do NOT recommend taking this approach when you first start out because your guesses are very, VERY likely to be wrong. Carbs are hidden ALL OVER THE PLACE. It takes a while to get the nuances down, and having done this for 14 months now I still don't have it mastered. I do, however, have it comfortably livable, and that's really what I want.

-j.

[Greenwitch]

You are SO RIGHT! OMG the carbs are everywhere! I discovered my favorite breakfast sausage is 2g per link - and they're tiny! It sure doesn't take much to get up to 20g in a day. Oh well, I'm tracking with a carb book at first to remind myself, as well as reading labels. Thanks for sharing what you're doing! It really really helps!

Bev

[Charran]

If you haven't tried using Fitday give it a whirl. It will track everything for you as you enter your foods for the day and keep a running total.

[Kandra]

I discovered my favorite breakfast sausage is 2g per link
Greenwitch, this may be because it has sugar in it.

Charran, I like My PLAN on this site better than fitday.

My PLAN figures everything out for you and keeps a nice log. I don't have to surf over to that site and back again because My PLAN has a button to download all your food data for that day into your journal. It also keeps up with exercise, mesurements and other stats.
It's still in Beta, but I haven't had any issues with it.
:D

[diemde]

It really helps to track diligently when you are first getting started. It's the best way to retrain yourself on what you can eat.

I don't track as long as I'm losing. Once you've been doing this for a long time, you sort of know what you can and can't have. If I stop losing, I'll go back to tracking.

[2007]

Welcome GreenWitch!

I average 5 to 10 carbs a day. Once in a blue moon I'll actually get to 20 carbs in a day, but that's pretty rare and the funny thing is I kinda feel guilty when I do, but there is nothing to feel guilty about because 20 carbs per day is A OKAY especially if your doing Atkins.

As for your sausages and staying in or under 20 carbs per day is so EASY. Ya' just gotta make sure to check ALL labels for carb and sugar count. There are so many brands of sausages out their that do not have sugar or carbs or only 1 carb and no sugar. You just have to do a little searching around, but it won't be much 'cause they are usually very easy to find.

Even though I'm just now entering my third month enjoying the low-carb lifestyle I can pretty much wing a lot of things now because I pretty much use the basics to build on like, induction friendly veggies (asparagus - my favorite) :yum: and I know which brands of almost everything I need to build a great meal without getting carby (check out the great induction friendly recipes here on the forum). Be careful when buying your basics like salad, cream cheese, sour cream, romaine lettuce, cabbage and so on. I say this because a lot of manufactures will put sugar in there for god knows what reason, so please don't waste your carbs or end up with unwanted sugar on such nonsense when there is no need for it and make sure to check the label. The best way to go is just to buy fresh and not packaged veggies, eat clean unprocessed foods whenever possible and before you buy that cream cheese or whatever it maybe that just happens to be on sale...check the label because I betcha it's got some sugar in it. Sorry I'm repeating myself, but I just can't emphasize enough how important checking labels is. I have made this beginners mistake myself so I just don't want you to go reinventing the wheel if ya' know what I mean.

All the best to you and again, welcome to the TDC! :wave:

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Delight yourself in the Lord and He will grant you the desires of you heart ~Psalms 37:4

[BaronE]

Right now I'm technically at 0 doing '72 Atkins...in reality it comes out to 6-10 a day. Soon I'll start adding veggies and it'll go up.

[Cissie_12]

You mentioned sausage, well I about freaked a few weeks back when I read the label on a jar of kraut I bought! Yep, sugar added!! Good thing is I've been off reg. sugar long enough that I caught it at first bite. Instantly it tasted sweet where before I'd have never even noticed. Oh yeah, another thing I found is they add sugar to a lot of the mixed spices as well so watch out!

Cissie

[Greenwitch]

Waah! Kruat with sugar...ok, it's official...life is not fair.

[bubbasbabe]

I haven't really started counting per say. But i'm reading labels, checking out the carbs and making decisions on that. I've watching Blaine Jelus for some good ideas.

[NDHuntress]

My PLAN figures everything out for you and keeps a nice log. I don't have to surf over to that site and back again because My PLAN has a button to download all your food data for that day into your journal. It also keeps up with exercise, mesurements and other stats.
It's still in Beta, but I haven't had any issues with it.
:D

Thank you for the information I love being able to export my menu to my journal.

[BaronE]

Waah! Kruat with sugar...ok, it's official...life is not fair.


Fitday has kraut listed as 6 carbs/cup. Of course it doesn't show the sugar in food. I'll have to check the lable next time I buy it.

[stacy0912]

since i count every little carb these days (eggs, cream, splenda packets) i average about 20. my cream alone on a daily basis is 7 carbs but there are days like yesterday where i probably only ate 12 carbs.

i have to say since buying the davinci's sf syrups especially the liquid splenda, and giving up my packets of splenda, i've cut off 6 more carbs to make it easier for me to stay under 20.