Total Carbs vs. Net Carbs

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, trainer, or any other kind of professional in regards to a ketogenic diet. Everything you read below is based on my personal research and opinions.

We talked about how the basis of a keto diet is counting carbs.  There are a LOT of carbs in vegetables but vegetables need to make up a big part of your diet.  Good news!!  Fiber cancels out carbs.  For example, if you have 1 cup of broccoli, that’s 6g carbs.  I know what you’re thinking - that’s way too much if I can only have 20g a day!  Yes, I thought the same thing.  And then I discovered that I could subtract the fiber!  Yay!  That same cup of broccoli has 2.4g of fiber so if you subtract that, you’re left with 3.6g carbs for that cup of broccoli.  Hallelujah!  Unfortunately, My Fitness Pal does not track net carbs so I just have to do the math mentally.  If I have consumed 25g carbs for the day and I look at the fiber and see that I consumed 8g of fiber, I know my net carbs are 17g which is perfectly fine.  

You can also subtract sugar alcohols but that gets complicated and complex because there are some you can count and some you can’t and I didn’t want to be bothered.  So I just stuck with carbs - fiber = net carbs.  Worked for me.

At about 4.5 months in, I was down 53 pounds.  FIFTY THREE POUNDS in FOUR and a HALF MONTHS!!  WHAT?!  Okay yea… sounds like a lot and it is but I have faced some challenges during that time.  Weeks where my weight was up, weeks where my weight was down less than a pound, and even weeks where my weight didn’t change at all.