# Ep 5: Low Carb Simplified
Welcome to the Why Wait podcast. I'm your host, Cheryl Takayama,
qualified nutritionist, emotional eater, and weight loss coach at Walks
The Talk. I've maintained my 30 kilo weight loss for the past 23 years
following a low carb plan, and now I coach other women online so they
can do the same.
It's my mission to help women get off this crazy diet wagon and find a
way of eating and a way of thinking that works so you too can lose your
weight for life. Join me each week for lots of practical advice, tips,
and motivation so you can start now.
Today is all about the low carb food plan. I want you to start by
knowing exactly what low carb looks like and how I define low carb. You
could line up ten practitioners who all work in this area and ask them
to tell you what their version of low carb looks like, and it might
actually look different because there's not one generic definition that
everybody goes by.
What I follow is what I was taught years ago at Resorts Nutrition Center
from Allison, and what I've used for the last 23 years to maintain my
weight and what I've shared with clients for the last 13 years. This is
the outline I use when creating a one-on-one food plan or doing my
weight loss programs. What I can tell you for sure is that it works very
well. And that's the most important thing, right?
It has to work, it has to be easy, and it has to be delicious. I really
think that's the most important thing of all, because this is not a
diet. This is not something you do in the short term that you're not
really enjoying, but you white-knuckle it because you're so desperate to
see results. If that's how you feel about your way of eating, you are
never going to be able to sustain it.
This way of eating is definitely not a diet. It's something that brings
a lot of pleasure and it works. So that's important.
With my vision of low carb, I need to start by saying it is not no carb.
Okay, this is not extreme. We're not talking about keto. We're not
talking about a ketogenic food plan. A ketogenic food plan is very
extreme low carb. While it is effective in the short term for fat
burning - and I have some clients who like to do keto, so I'll do that
for them - it is not what I recommend in the long term, simply because I
don't believe it is sustainable for most people.
I see a lot of people who come to see me who have done keto. They've
lost lots of weight, but they can't keep it off because they couldn't
sustain the keto way of eating. Then they went back to carbs and found
all that weight again. So I don't use keto as a foundation way of
eating. I prefer low carb, and my definition is 50g of carbohydrate or
less a day.
Now this is total carbs. I know some people go by net carbs, which is
the total carbs minus the fiber, but I actually choose total carbs
because I find that that is a good level for most people. And I don't
include the carbs in vegetables because in my experience, nobody's
weight loss problem is caused by eating too many vegetables. It's not
carrots that are the problem, it's carrot cake. We don't want to make
vegetables the bad guy here.
I want people to be able to eat as many vegetables as they like, except
for the really starchy, high-carbohydrate vegetables: potato, sweet
potato or kumara, pumpkin, parsnip, peas, and sweet corn. We don't want
to be eating a lot of these when the goal is weight loss, because these
are high-energy veggies. We want to be burning the energy that's sitting
in our fat cells, not getting a whole lot of energy coming in through
our mouth. That's the whole point of lowering carbs.
Every other vegetable is absolutely fine. When people do my program,
they can eat as many vegetables as they like, but I structure it so it's
50g or less per day, roughly around 14g for each meal. And often it's
lower than that - about 6 or 7g for a snack.
When you are doing this, you have to be very careful of fruit. I don't
encourage my clients to eat fruit except berries, because every other
fruit is quite high in sugar and it adds up quickly. A good example is a
banana. A medium banana has about 27g of carbs. That is more than half
your daily allowance just in one go.
My plans do not include fruit, and in my experience, the faster someone
gives up fruit, the faster they get to their goal. A little bit of fruit
is fine in maintenance, but not when your goal is weight loss.
The other thing I find some people need to be wary of is milk, because
one cup of milk can have 14g of sugar in the form of lactose. So if
you're drinking a lot of milky coffees and you're not losing weight the
way you think you should, I would be looking at the coffee possibly as
one of the reasons why. You've got to be a bit cautious of milk.
The one thing you can include in your plan are low carb substitutes.
I'll be talking more about that in upcoming episodes. We've got low carb
bread, low carb wraps, and low carb pasta. A lot of these products are
really low in carb. Bringing in these products is a fantastic way to eat
food that you enjoy in a way that's just so much better and will help
you get a great result.
So 50g of carbs is my guideline. The other thing we need to include with
every meal is protein. We're lowering carbs, but for many people, we
will be increasing protein because I find that a lot of people are not
eating enough protein.
Protein with every meal is going to look like eggs, meat, seafood,
chicken, tofu or other vegetarian sources, and protein powder. Every
meal is going to have to include protein because that's going to keep
your blood sugar levels stable and keep you satiated. Really important.
How much protein you need is always another hotly debated topic with
lots of formulas out there. But let me tell you how to keep it simple.
On my programs, I put between 75g to 95g. That's the rough range that I
work on, and that is the level of pure protein.
If you're having 100g of chicken as a cooked weight, that's only going
to be about 25 to 28g of pure protein - it's not 100g of protein because
some of that would be water and other things. So you're getting about 25
to 28g of pure protein. If you're having some chicken or other meat with
every meal, it's not going to be too difficult for you to get to that
level of between 75g or above.
I know there are some people out there who will say you should be eating
1.2g for every kilo, and they actually give some really high levels. In
my experience, that is only really necessary for somebody who's doing a
lot of exercise or maybe a woman who's pregnant. They could have it in a
specific phase of life, but otherwise, I prefer to keep it under that
100-gram level. And I find that works really well.
The other thing you need to include with every meal is a portion of
healthy fats. Healthy fats are real fats: coconut oil, olive oil,
avocado, olives, nut oils like macadamia nut oil. We want to have food
as real as possible and have a portion with every meal because that
keeps us satiated. It keeps us full.
Fats are also very important for your digestive system. Most
importantly, they taste delicious. This is why when you start changing
your plate and including protein and healthy fats, you feel full. You
don't feel hungry anymore because you're actually eating in a way that
works with your body. We're eating in a way that you're supposed to eat.
Your body gets those wonderful signals that say, "Yes, I've eaten and
I'm satiated."
I recommend about two servings of fat with each meal, which is about 200
calories worth - might be half an avocado and a tablespoon of oil.
In summary, a low carb plan looks like: - Having 50g of carbs or less
per day - Meals that contain protein for breakfast, lunch, and dinner -
Meals that contain healthy fats - Optional low carb substitutes like
bread or wraps
And yes, you can count calories if you want to, but I'm actually a fan
of keeping it as simple as possible. If you are not losing weight and
think you might be overeating, then of course you can track and start to
count everything. But I've always found with people on my programs, if
they're following this guideline imperfectly, it's a much less stressful
way to do it. You don't have to calculate and track everything. You're
just making sure that your plate has the right things and you're doing
your absolute best to cut out those extra snacks that can easily creep
into your day.
That is my summary of what an overall low carb eating plan looks like.
I'm going to finish today with my top tip of the day - one key action I
would love you to do if you are ready to get started.
Today's tip: Go and look at the labels of some of the foods you have
been eating and look at how high the level of carbs are. You might be
quite surprised to see some of your common foods, like muesli bars or
yogurt, and just how high the level of carbs are. I think that type of
awareness is a really great place to start because you can see what
you've been eating and perhaps why it hasn't been working, and from
there you can start making some changes.
All the best, and I'll look forward to catching up with you next week
when we're going to go in-depth about exactly why low carb works so well
for weight loss and many other health benefits. I look forward to seeing
you then.
Thanks so much for listening. If you want support in your weight loss
journey, I would love to help. You'll see the links in the show notes
for my socials, as well as my fab freebie - a five-day low carb meal
plan and five delicious dinner recipes. You'll also see the link for my
four-week Foundations of Fat Loss program. This is the program I've
designed specifically for the fat burning needs of women over 35.
Remember, the only thing that's going to stop you from reaching your
goal is if you quit. Never, ever give up.
