Your Carbohydrate Requirements

Have you heard someone proclaim the benefits of a low carb diet lately? They tell you that upon cutting carbohydrates out of their daily food intake they miraculously lost pounds of body weight?

Low carbohydrate diets are the latest rage right now but are they safe? How many carbohydrates do you really need to function properly? Carbohydrates are different from protein and fat. The body requires protein and fat in order to survive. They are BASIC necessities and if you don't get them, you won't keep living. Carbohydrates on the other hand, we can pretty much do without. The reason being that after a period of time after the removal of carbohydrates from the diet, once it has burned up all the carbohydrates it has currently has stored in the tissues, the body will start running off an alternate source of fuel called ketones. This is the basic premise behind Ketogenic diets. If you want to burn fat more effectively, eat fat. As a result, these diets supply very little carbohydrates to the body in an effort to keep you burning fat all day long.

Keep in mind however that this is only to survive. In everyday life, it wouldn't be practically to consume an absolute zero carbohydrate diet as you do need some, how many - that is what you need to determine.

The minimal amount of carbohydrates that you should be consuming to maintain proper health will depend on a few different factors, primarily your total body weight, how active you are in every day life and what particular goals you have at this time.

Typical recommendations have been around 50% of your diet coming from carbs, with lower carb plans ranging from 40% all the way down to 5% (keto diets). A better way to gauge your carbohydrate intake though is to use grams per pound a day.

One side thing to note right now at this point that you should know is that the lower you bring your carbohydrate and fat calories, the higher your protein requirements will be. While you may only require 0.8 grams/lb of body mass (and that is at the high end of the recommendation, some experts will bring that down to 0.8/kg of body mass), as soon as you start going on a hypocaloric diet, you will want to bring your protein intake up. The reason being that when faced with a reduced energy supply from both carbohydrates and fat, the body will start turning to protein for energy therefore leaving less available for maintenance and repair of your muscular tissue. By consuming slightly more protein, you can help offset any muscle loss that may occur. Under total starvation (not eating any carbohydrates or fat), it appears as though 1.5 grams/lb of body weight will ensure you retain your muscle mass. As soon as either fat or carbohydrate calories are brought back up though, protein requirements will go down accordingly. (so basically, carbohydrates and fat are protein sparing nutrients).

To error on the safe side and prevent this issue altogether, it's a good idea to set your minimum requirements for carbohydrates to 50 grams per day. That will help you considerably when it comes to maintaining lean tissue. On 50 grams of carbs per day, your body will still go into ketosis (the use of an alternative fuel source other than carbohydrates - as described above), which is the whole point of a ketogenic diet.

Problem with this is that not everyone tolerates being in ketosis well. You may get dizzy, fuzzy headed and feel weak and tired. Others on the other hand find they feel better in this state than when they were eating a largely carbohydrate based diet. This is why it is important that you find out what is best for YOU. While your neighbour may love a low carb diet, to you, it could feel like the worst thing on earth.

Going back to our carbohydrate requirements then, if you want to prevent your body from going into ketosis, bump your carbohydrates up to a minimum of 100 grams per day. This should help stop any of those issues just stated.

Keep in mind again, this is not assuming any exercise is done. Add exercise into the picture and we need to re-evaluate the situation.

For individuals who are performing moderate intensity exercise, say going for a walk or a bike ride a few days a week, the requirements for carbohydrates are not going to go up because the body is perfectly fine running on fat as a fuel for this type of work.

For individuals who are involved in weight training or sprinting exercise though, they are going to require additional carbohydrates if they don't want to see a decrease in performance.

For strength training, generally you require an additional 2.5 grams of carbohydrates per set of exercise. So for someone on a program that does 20 sets of work per day (say 4 exercises with 5 sets per exercise), it would be advisable to add in 50 more grams of carbohydrates to their diet on the days that they train. This will help the muscles from becoming depleted and ensure they are able to give enough effort to see results.

On the interval/cardiovascular end of things, it is a little harder to determine a raw amount as it will depend a lot on the intensity level and the duration. High level athletes or those performing endurance exercise (such as runners) can deplete their muscle glycogen stores in about 2 hours of exercise and this would account for a total value of about 350-450 grams of carbohydrates depending on body weight. For those exercising less, the value required wouldn't be as high. A good general guideline for these athletes would be about 3-4 grams/lb of body weight in carbohydrates taken in per day. This would account for the carbohydrates they expend during exercise along with the hundred or so carbohydrates needed that we discussed earlier. For those who are recreational athletes but are more active, they may wish to bring this total down to about 2-2.5 grams/lb per day since they won't be burning as much energy. Note that at very high intensity levels, the body can only use carbohydrates as a fuel source for energy so it would not be a good idea to try performing this type of exercise if you were on a very low carbohydrate diet or if you had recently done a carb depleting form of exercise (say a 2 hour run without eating carbohydrates after to refill your stores).

If you do wish to perform a larger volume of moderate-high intensity exercise, say regular weight training sessions, while still consuming a low carb diet (one supplying 100 grams of carbohydrates or less), you will need to implement 'carb-up' periods every so often where you will strategically eat a large amount of carbohydrates one day so as to refill your muscles with the energy they will need to continue performing this exercise on a regular basis. The protocols for such a 'carb-up' are generally 7 grams/lb over a period of 24 hours.

So that should give you a basic general idea of how many carbohydrates you should be eating at minimum in order to function effectively with the amount of activity you do on a regular basis.

Again the general guidelines are:

For those who want to be in ketosis: 50 grams per day.

For those who want to just avoid being in ketosis but are only performing low-moderate intensity exercise: 100 grams per day

For those who are weight training: 100 grams per day + 2.5gr/set of exercise done

For those involved in high intensity or endurance sports: 3-4 grams/lb of carbohydrates per day

For those involved in moderate, longer duration activity: 2-2.5 grams/lb of carbohydrates per day

For those who are doing a low carb diet while maintaining a lifting schedule and need to carb up: 7 grams/lb over 24 hours done about once per week.

Remember that carbohydrates are not necessarily what makes you gain weight. Having an excess of calories is what makes you gain weight. It doesn't matter if they come from protein, fat or carbohydrates. Lowering carbohydrates does however give some people better control over appetite, blood sugar and energy levels and therefore can be beneficial in the dieting process.