Optimising carbohydrate levels

One of my most fervent nutritional tenets, based on the evidence, is that anyone who is overweight (particularly around their waist) or has one of the common metabolic issues such as diabetes, prediabetes or high blood pressure is likely to be eating too much carbohydrate. For them.

But what is the right amount of carbohydrate to eat? How do people go about understanding what is best for them?

Read on to find out...

How much carbohydrate should I be eating?

As a biologist I understand very well that we are all completely different and unique. Aside from the obvious differences in our physical characteristics like finger prints, height or eye colour our internal worlds also vary a great deal with different hormonal responses, different digestive systems and different tolerances to chronic stress to name a few. We all intuitively know we are one of a kind and can probably think of someone we know who can eat what they like yet remain slim whilst others tend to fatten at the merest whiff of a slice of cake.

If you are overweight, especially around your waist, or you feel hungry again a couple of hours after eating then you should consider reducing the amount of carbohydrate you eat. These markers signal some degree of carbohydrate intolerance.

The technical answer to the question of what is the right level of carbs for you is the level at which the signs of your carbohydrate intolerance resolve themselves. Reducing carbs should reduce excess weight and improve metabolic health markers, with the maintenance level of carbs being the amount you need to keep below, to keep that weight off for the long term.

I appreciate this concept is quite difficult to get your head around and people generally need more clarity and personalisation! Before getting on to a suggested approach that can help with this let’s take a quick look at what exactly is a ‘lower’ carb diet…

The range of lower carb eating

The standard British diet as eaten by most people in this country and laid out in the Eat Well Plate dietary guidelines (or the Eat Badly Plate as it is know in my low carb circles ??) is very high carb, typically over 260g of carbohydrate a day.

A ‘High Carb / High Sugar’ diet is where you will end up when advised to have a third of your plate made up of potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates with another third consisting of fruit and vegetables many of which are also starchy or sweet.

Carbohydrates are actually strings of glucose (sugar) molecules strung together and your body deals with them both in virtually the same way whether natural/wholegrain or not. Carbohydrates quickly become glucose (or blood sugar) once eaten, after the digestive process breaks them down, and blood sugar is something the body needs to very tightly control.

Definitions of what is a lower carb diet do vary and you will find a lot of different things on the internet, but the diagram below is a useful overview that most people knowledgeable about lower carb eating would broadly agree on. And it outlines in a very simplistic way what foods to limit to achieve each level of carb intake.

Halving your carbohydrate intake by adopting a ‘Real Food’ eating approach is a great place to start and something that would probably benefit almost everybody from a nutritional quality point of view. Overweight or not.

‘Liberal Low Carb’ eating would typically be below 130g carbohydrate a day and require a bit more focus to cut down on the carb content. So think about having only a couple of roast potatoes with your Sunday roast or an open sandwich of quality sourdough bread at lunchtime rather than two slices of sliced bread from a pack. Typically washed down with a packet of crisps in Britain!

Going below 100g takes you into ‘Moderate Low Carb’ eating and getting below 20-50g a day, which is what I eat, becomes ‘Strict Low Carb or Keto’ territory. To do this you will need to be taking the refined carbs off your plate all together. So no chips with your steak, eating bolognaise on a bed of cabbage and serving curry with cauliflower rice for example.

An easy way to think about your meals if you want to eat low carb is to:

• Start with your protein and fat as around half of your plate - meat, fish, eggs, cheese, nuts
• Then add plenty of salad and above ground vegetables to the other half of your plate
• Add butter, olive oil, homemade sauces and dressings, herbs and spices
• Use full fat dairy products – whole milk, cream, butter, cheese, yoghurt

Food diary Apps can be helpful

If you want to know how much carbohydrate you are actually eating then do consider using a food diary App, such as My Fitness Pal, for a couple of weeks to log everything you eat and drink. Ignore the default recommended macros built into the programme (!) and use it to understand the typical carbohydrate level of your current diet.

As part of my Nutritional Coaching work I offer a food diary review to provide some initial pointers on how to reduce your carbohydrate levels, fitting around your lifestyle, as well as a few top tips on how to up the nutritional quality of what you are eating. Just get in touch if you think would be helpful. I love a food diary!

Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM)

What a food diary can’t tell you is how those all important hormones are responding to what you are eating and thus what is the right level of carbohydrate for you.

This is where an additional intervention such as using a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) can really be enlightening and something I have started to use more often with my clients to help them explore what different foods do their own blood sugar levels. So they can make informed choices on specific foods and figure out what is a good level of carb for them – true personalised information to support their future health.

A CGM is a small device you can buy, for around ￡50, that sticks on your arm and continuously measures your blood sugar over a 14 day period, with a bit of daily phone scanning to download the data. So combining this?with a food diary of what you have eaten helps you see clearly how your own blood sugar responds to different foods.

A two week period of self experimentation with one of these very clever pieces of tech could completely change the way you eat for ever.

When I put my diabetes into remission 12 years ago CGMs didn’t exist but I managed with finger prick blood tests to figure out how to stop my blood sugar spiking. A lot more painful for my finger tips, but it did the job!

Now I do periodic CGM assessments to keep myself on track, stop carb creep and test out various personal hypotheses. I am wearing one at the moment and the big revelation for me yesterday was the impact of stress, as it's been a difficult week, illustrating that whilst food is really important it isn't the only factor affecting health.

The morning blood sugar raise shown in the graph was work related stress (to do with my laptop mainly!) and the evening peak was an experiment in eating a carby snack on the train home. My diabetes is definitely in remission, not gone, was the lesson for me here and I will return to my normal eating patterns and better blood sugar control when the CGM has gone from my arm.

Working with me and a CGM to understand your level of carbohydrate intolerance

If you would like to know more about using a CGM, or even old fashioned finger prick tests, to understand your own level of carbohydrate tolerance then do get in touch and I would be happy to support and coach you through this. For the cost of a CGM plus four coaching sessions with me you could transform your eating, weight and health for the better.

I offer a free initial online meeting to discuss if this approach could be right for you, which you can book directly by following this link or just drop me a message to make a date: watch-your-waist/discovery-meeting

What can I eat if cutting down on carbohydrate?

There are so many good things to eat! You really shouldn’t need to feel you are denying yourself if you are avoiding the refined carbs and sugar. And lower carb meals are better for you from a nutritional point of view, which is the absolute key to eating healthily. Take a look at this selection of my main meals to get your taste buds flowing:

I hope this article has been helpful and given you something to think about. Do get in touch if you feel the need to kickstart your weight or health journey and try something different – using a CGM for two weeks with me on hand to support you could be just what you need to help you make the most of the spring and summer to come.

www.watchyourwaist.net

I am a part time Nutrition and Health Coach, working with clients to help them lose weight and improve their health through real food, low carbohydrate eating and lifestyle change.?