Keto 101 – How many carbs should you eat per day on Keto?
How many carbs are a carb too many?
I’m not as eloquent in my videos as I am with written word (or at least I like to think). It was a recent comment on one of my videos that sparked the idea for this post. An Indian man (it always is) told me that a certain recipe was not Keto because you can only consume 20 grams of carbs in a day. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard similar comments. It’s a constant source of frustration to me when people (mostly Indian for some reason) comment on my recipes telling me that I can’t eat onion and tomato on Keto and I have to get into explaining net carbs and serving sizes to them. I got so fed up I even made a video about it so I could just link them to that.
So what’s this post all about. It’s about people losing their minds and stressing themselves and others out about eating too many carbs. For starters lets understand that our body goes into Ketosis when it is sufficient deprived of carbs and has burnt out everything stored in it’s reserves. It’s at this point that it goes into fat burning mode. Just dropping carbs on day 1 will not have this impact. It takes some time. Now it just generally advised that one needs to lower their daily carb into to around 50grams or less to get the body to eventually switch over to Ketosis and get fat adapted. We know that for optimal Keto 20-30 grams of net carbs are advised. The body doesn’t have a little policeman sitting inside who will stop the process of Ketosis if you eat 21 grams of carbs instead of 20. There is wriggle room with the numbers. Which brings me to the video.
The daily calorie in vs calorie out
When we calculate our macros we are given a number of calories that we burn in a day and a number which is what we need to consume to either maintain our weight or lose it. These numbers are just guides. If your daily expenditure is 1500 calories a day it’s unlikely that every single day it will be exactly the same. You might have a day where you might have more activity and another where you have less. This number is just an estimate and it’s the same with the calorie intake. The overall effect is felt and seen because you are working in a ball park figure. It’s the same with your Keto macros. If you have 25grams of carbs instead of 20grams, nothing will happen. If you have 150grams instead of 20-30grams then YES you will feel the effect because you’ve gone AWOL. It’s important to remember this and not break a sweat everytime you miss your macros by a few points. As long as you are largely in the ball park figure, you will see results.
Not all carbs are equal
I want to stress on not using this post of mine as an excuse to eat rubbish. Eating 5-10grams of extra carbs from vegetables isn’t the same as trying to add 1/2 a slice of white bread or a small bown of crisps just because you are counting your macros. There are folks who live by a ‘if it fits your macros’ lifestyle and honestly for the most part you are unlikely to see the benefits with that attitude. If you are cheating in these ways, you are only cheating yourself. At the end of the day it’s a free world but if you want to see results then discipline is the key. I also want to point out that eating the right kinds of food is very important and there is something as doing Keto badly. The bottom line is if you ate badly before and you eat badly again, it will hurt your health. So think about it and take a call.
My Keto 101 Series
I have a series of videos to answer your Keto questions. Check them out if you haven’t already.
Thank you for everything, you’re about the only one that I understand more about keto than anybody else.
Again thank you.
P.s. great recipe
Hi jibber jabber, gud job… I am an indian, on keto, but doing keto i feel sagging of skin on my face n arms, i feel gud losing weight watching your all the stuff n video on keto.. Last year in 2 months period in had lost 6 kgs weight… Now i am 62.6, again needs to get to loose 2 kgs… But the main problem is skin sagging… Please help.. Thanks a ton
Hi Adi, sadly I don’t know anything about sagging skin I think the only way to fix that is actually surgery so please consult a professional about that. I think it’s a result of losing a lot of weight. There is a Youtuber called ‘Obesetobeast’ who also has lose skin and he talks a lot about it in his videos. Do check his channel out.
Thanks for this info – I’m constantly being told I shouldn’t be eating this or that by others on keto – but I’m calculating my overall diet to be around 22 net carbs a day. I can’t go below this and eat what I consider to be a reasonable amount of fibre. But is this still too much?
No this is fine. I always ate close to 30-35g of carbs per day. As long as it’s coming from vegetables and more healthy sources it’s all good. If it’s coming from pieces of chocolate which have sugar, then I’d reconsider.