How To Count Carbs On A Keto Diet To Lose Weight Fast

Hello Health Champions I've received a lot of  requests on how many grams of carbs to eat and  

how to count carbs on a low carb and ketogenic  diet and it's not real complicated but there is  

some controversy and there are a few things that  you really need to understand in order to know  

what's right for you so today after watching this  video it will be totally clear to you how to count  

carbs in order to get the best results not just to  lose weight but to get as healthy as possible in  

the process coming right up hey I'm Dr Ekberg I'm  a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete  

and if you want to truly master health by  understanding how the body really works make  

sure you subscribe hit that bell and turn on all  the notifications so you never miss a life-saving  

video first a real quick review on why are we  talking about eating less carbs and counting  

carbs at all it's because carbs is the primary  thing that drives blood glucose blood sugar  

which in turn stimulates insulin and insulin is  a storage hormone and that in itself is a great  

thing it helps us survive a famine it allows us to  store excess energy for the future but if we have  

chronic excess blood glucose then now we get into  something called insulin resistance and chronic  

storage over storage and what this means that  once you've had this and you're getting close  

or into the range of type 2 diabetes and severe  insulin resistance now your body becomes very very  

stubborn and basically you broke it and take that  with a grain of salt here what i mean by that is  

a lot of the advice that they tell people as far  as healthy eating it might work for a slender  

active young person who is insulin sensitive  and who is just maintaining an ideal weight  

but if you're not there if you have this situation  and you broke it if you broke your metabolism if  

you broke your carbohydrate handling system now  those regular rules don't apply and we need to  

be much much stricter in order to reverse the  process and allow the body to heal so we want to  

reduce carbs but how much do we reduce carbs now a  lot of people still eat 300 grams of carbs as per  

the recommendations in the official guidelines  so if they cut down to 100 that's a tremendous  

decrease and that might be enough for some people  but some people might have to go down to 50 or 20  

or even less we often talk about macros meaning  the percentages of the different macronutrients  

and the macronutrients are carbohydrate protein  and fat so if you want to go low carb or even keto  

a lot of people might start off with 10 carbs  20 percent protein and 70 percent of calories  

from fat and if we illustrate this graphically  then this would be carbs protein and fat so the  

majority of calories would be from fat and how  does that translate into percentages then well  

if we assume that we have a 2 000 calorie person  depending on your size and metabolism and so forth  

then the 10 would obviously be 200 calories 20  percent is 470 percent is 1400 calories for a  

total of 2 000 and then you just adjust based  on your size and calories then the next step is  

to convert that into grams so 10 of carbs would be  200 calories and carbs have four calories per gram  

so 200 calories means 50 grams 4 times 50 is  two hundred ten percent real simple and then  

for protein they're also four calories per gram  times a hundred so since we're eating twenty  

percent that's twice as many calories and for fat  now it becomes a little different because fat has  

nine calories per gram so that means even though  we're eating most of the calories it's just a  

little bit more fat than protein by weight so 155  grams of fat is 1400 calories for a total of 2 000  

and that would look something like this so this  is basically what it would look like on the plate  

in terms of how much each macronutrient would  contribute but then a lot of people say that oh my  

god i couldn't possibly eat that much fat because  they're thinking oh 155 grams that's about one and  

a half sticks of butter does that mean i have to  add a stick and a half of butter no it does not  

because a lot of this fat is already in the food  if you don't choose low fat varieties if you have  

cream and you have beef and you have avocado and  so forth there's already a lot of fat in there  

so if we take for example a half a pound  of ground beef with 20 percent fat content  

now this is already 45 grams of fat and 45 grams  of protein in there and for a lot of people this  

works beautifully i have hundreds of testimonials  of people who they cut back from 300 grams of  

carbs down to 50 grams of carbs and they're  dropping weight like never before but i also  

get a lot of comments from people who say I've  done this for months and nothing's happening so  

first of all something may be happening it's just  not the weight coming off yet but you might be  

reducing your insulin resistance to a point where  your body is getting ready or it just means your  

body is really stubborn and you need to take it a  step further so now what you might want to try is  

you cut this 50 grams of carbs in half down to 25  grams of carbs 5 instead of 10 25 instead of 50.  

you eat the same protein and you make up the  difference in fat if you need to the whole idea  

is you reduce the carbs you eat moderate  protein and you eat enough fat to be full  

and now it makes a difference for a lot of  people but if it still doesn't work then you  

might have to cut back on the protein a little bit  Atkins for example helps a lot of people but not  

everyone because Atkins is very low in  carbs but it's higher in protein so keto  

to really get into that state a lot of people  find that they need to reduce the protein as  

well and again this is not everyone that has to do  this because some people are on a carnivore diet  

and they tend to do really really well with  much higher meat and protein percentages than  

that a lot of people ask me well do i have to  eat that much fat and no you don't the whole  

point is that you want to burn fat off the body  so you reduce carbs to reduce insulin because  

when insulin is high you can't burn fat off the  body but once insulin drops now you have access  

and if you do the low carb the keto and the  intermittent fasting for a while you will  

find that you don't get as hungry so now you eat  your 25 grams of carbs you eat 75 or 100 grams of  

protein and you eat fat until you're full and you  notice that you don't have to eat as much anymore  

which leaves even more room for your body  to make up the difference from body fat  

and that is the whole idea is to reprogram your  body so you have less hunger so you get satisfied  

on less but it's really important then that you  eat high quality foods you're also getting the  

micronutrients but now your body can really start  burning off that fat from the body one of the  

biggest questions that come up is do i count net  carbs or total carbs and what's the difference in  

different countries they list this differently in  the United States for example they will tell you  

total carbs and the fiber separately and the way  that you calculate it then is you take the total  

minus the fiber to get the net carbs and why do  you do this because you have enzymes to break down  

some of the carbs those we call digestible you  can turn those into blood sugar and into fuel and  

energy but you don't have enzymes to break down  the fiber it passes through you it has no effect  

on blood sugar so therefore in my opinion it's  more precise to count the total minus fiber to  

actually calculate the net carbs now let me give  you a few examples so you can see why this makes  

a big big difference if you take a banana which  typically you don't want to eat on a low carb diet  

then it has 23 grams of total carbs which is  quite a bit but the problem is almost all of  

that is sugar and starch it's digestible it turns  into blood sugar and drives insulin very quickly  

there's only 2.6 grams of fiber so almost all  of it becomes net carbs let's look at another  

example like avocado it looks like it has a good  amount of carbohydrates and if you counted total  

carbs you might want to avoid this because 9  grams of carbs is going to make up big chunk  

of your carbohydrate budget but if you're counting  net carbs you subtract the fiber it doesn't affect  

blood sugar and therefore you only have two grams  of net carbs which is negligible has very very  

little impact and one more example would be flax  seed which looks like it has an enormous amount of  

carbohydrates like almost a full third of the seed  is carbohydrate however it has 29 grams of total  

but almost all of it is fiber so 1.6 grams of net  carbs means from a blood sugar perspective you can  

safely eat flaxseed as much as you want now here  is where it gets interesting and this is where the  

debate and the controversy gets a little more  heated because this fiber turns out is actually  

two types of fiber one is called soluble  and one is called insoluble and even though  

you don't have the enzymes to digest either  one you have bacteria in your gut that will  

use the soluble fiber for food so they will turn  this soluble fiber into short chain fatty acids  

and this does not have any impact on blood  sugar but it does result in calories because  

these short chain fatty acids they mostly serve  as fuel and food for other bacteria in your gut  

but some of these come back into your system  as calories do we care no because if you've  

watched this channel for a while you know that  calories are not a bad thing calorie is just a  

measurement of how we make energy and this turns  out to be a highly beneficial form of energy  

there's several different types of short chain  fatty acids and one that you've probably heard of  

is acetate or acetic acid because that's  what you supplement when you take apple  

cider vinegar and that has tremendous benefits  for your intestinal tract for your digestion  

but if you don't add this and you have a healthy  gut and you eat some fiber then your gut bacteria  

will actually produce this and this is the most  abundant short chain fatty acid in your system  

it helps with PH regulation and as we've talked  about a lot your digestive tract needs to be  

acidic even though your body overall is slightly  alkaline in the blood your digestive tract needs  

to be acidic these have an impact on appetite  it tends to lower appetite then there are other  

short chain fatty acids such as butyrate and  propionate and if you think that the name  

pewter sounds kind of familiar it's because  it is from butter that is where they first  

discovered it and butter has a good amount  of this so butter is something else that's  

beneficial that's why we talk about eating a good  clean source of grass-fed butter this is fuel for  

your epithelial cells an epithelial cell that's  the innermost lining the surface of your gut that  

is in contact with the food that has the job is to  deal with the food and absorb the food and not get  

too inflamed by the food and these epithelial  cells they have the highest turnover of any  

cells in your body so if we provide them plenty  of fuel then they can heal and maintain integrity  

but if we don't have enough then we can get  things like leaky gut so these short chain fatty  

acids will actually improve your ability to heal a  leaky gut they're also anti-inflammatory they have  

anti-cancer properties and all of these put  together has the overall effect of improving  

the balance of beneficial to pathogenic bacteria  so when we eat a lot of sugar and we don't have  

enough of these short chain fatty acids we tend  to over produce the pathogenic bacteria and now  

we get I.B.S. we get bloating we get Chrohn's we  get S.I.B.O. and all these nasty things so these  

help us regulate all these gut functions  it further helps to regulate immunity  

the vast majority of your immune cells are in  the gut so if you have a balanced gut it tends  

to promote a balanced immune system these fatty  acids even help protect the brain because when you  

have a leaky gut pretty much anything that gets  through the leaky gut also gets through your blood  

blood-brain barrier and if you have inflammation  in the gut you're gonna have inflammation in the  

brain and finally if we're concerned about the  glucose and the calories then know that these will  

actually help reduce your blood glucose levels  and improve your insulin sensitivities this is one  

of the mechanisms that they believe the apple  cider vinegar works through now which one is  

best for you the people who promote total carbs  they say that it's much easier that's a benefit  

that you don't have to count there's just one  number to worry about and if you just count  

the total you tend to be stricter anyway you get  better results and they say you avoid these short  

chain fatty acids there's still some controversy  in my mind it's pretty clear but if you believe  

that you want to avoid these because of the  calories then that would be a plus in my mind  

it's more of a minus actually and a negative of  total carbs is that you're going to be missing out  

on a lot of the plants that animal foods are  rebuilding which is excellent but plants can be  

cleansing and if you're towning total carbs you  have to reduce your plants dramatically and you  

might be missing out on some of these cleansing  properties you're going to have much more  

limited food choices and if you want to develop a  diverse and healthy microbiome you want to have a  

diversity of food as well so if you count total  carbs that's going to limit your food choices  

and a lot of people will have problems with  constipation it tends to increase when you  

reduce the fiber now a pluses some individuals may  do better on this okay and here is the caveat that  

we can't just say this is the principle this is  how it works for most people we have to look at  

the end result on the individual case of one  which is you and some people do better on this  

if they have extreme sensitivities if they have an  extremely upset biome a microflora bacterial flora  

then some of them get upset no matter what fiber  you put in there and for those people carnivore  

might be a good way to go for a while at least  now the people who promote net carbs they say  

that it is more accurate because it better  reflects what you're actually absorbing and using  

they say you're getting these short chain fatty  acids which in my mind is a significant benefit  

you're promoting regular bowel movement because  if you get constipated then you tend to improve  

toxicity it's harder to get the junk out  of the body without regular bowel movements  

you get more food choices because now you can  include non-starchy vegetables there's a lot of  

vegetables that look high in carbohydrate like  we talked about the avocado and the flax and  

leafy greens and so forth but net carbs they're  very close to zero so you can eat a lot of those  

with out exceeding your net carb budget  and here we're going to have a complete  

copy a repeat some individuals may do better on  this so again we first understand the principles  

and then we look at our own situation  and we see which one works the better  

and it might even be working better for a while  and then we need to do the other one a couple  

of bonus points for you a lot of places they say  that the soluble fiber is great because it's an  

appetite suppressant and I just want to point out  the language here that i don't like suppression  

in any form because suppressing sounds like  we're pushing the body we're suppressing we're  

suffocating the body and what we're really  doing is we're allowing the body to normalize  

we're allowing the body the freedom to get to a  point where it can do what it's supposed to do  

drugs suppress things and it's not a  good thing for you but the soluble fiber  

it allows your body to better regulate  appetite bonus point number two how many grams  

of carbs should you eat well I often  come across quotes like this studies show  

most people lose weight on 50 grams or even  more of net carbs well my question is who cares  

because who is most people you sitting in that  chair you may be most people or you may not be in  

the group of most people so it's really irrelevant  what works for most people what you have to figure  

out is what's going to work for you so if you have  been eating 300 grams of carbs then just cut it  

back go to 150 175 50 and just see where is the  point where your numbers change where your weight  

changes where your glucose changes where your A1c  and your fasting insulin changes where your brain  

clarity changes where your appetite changes  that's what really matters and also realize  

that cutting carbs is one tool and cutting  frequency of meals is another so you might try  

an intermittent fasting pattern where you fast for  14 hours and you eat in a 10-hour period and then  

you go to an 6 and then you might try 24 and if  that's not enough or if you want to get into some  

deeper autophagy now you can go longer into 36  or 72 hours if you enjoyed this video and you'd  

like to learn more about how the body works and  how to take your health to the next level that's  

going to be a fantastic video for you next thank  you so much for watching I'll see you next time