Low(er) carb NOT keto

[Gaslitbygynae]

Hi

Posting for advice / support really
Have been trying a lower carb diet for a week. Essentially I've cut out bread/pasta/potatoes/lentils etc

I track via MFP and my carbs are still 100g ish a day (which according to MFP is way less than intended amount of 250g or something). I have massively upped protein. I am very active running up to 40km a week plus daily walks. My calories deficit is huge but that's because of the exercise. But basically aim to eat less than 1500 a day.

I eat a ton of veg and fruit and I can't see a way round this if I want to fuel the runs. So going super low carb is a bit impossible and undesired.

So...my questions are:

• ideas for low carb veggie snacks
• whether being lower carb but certainly not where near keto will actually support weight loss? I'm definitely consuming less cals overall but have been eating a lot more of other things.
• how others do low carbs with high intensity exercise? I've run out of steam this week with runs and it must be lack of carbs.

Thank you

I'm doing lower carb eating at the moment. I started off quite severely low carb (but without the extreme monitoring of a keto style diet) and felt the benefits almost immediately. But I have decided to allow in a few more carbs and see if the benefits persist.

I was initially very generous with the amount of fat that I ate, and I really do think that helped my body to switch away from using carbs as its preferred food source. I started to lose weight even though I was not restricting calories at all, and I lost the cravings that lead to snacky overeating.

Unfortunately, though, I've learnt that my cholesterol is high. So I am now more or less cutting out saturated fats. That's why I have to allow in a few more carbs -- you can't restrict too many food groups at once! But I am also upping my consumption of unsaturated fats to compensate.

If you are exercising a lot, I really would recommend incorporating an adequate amount of fat as well as protein. It really helps with sticking to the diet, and in my case it did not impede weight loss at all (although I was only aiming for a few kilograms loss).

The carbs I'm allowing in are the higher fibre complex carbs. Lentils, oat bran, a little bit of brown rice etc.

I did keto years ago and was surprised that some veg is much higher in carbs than you'd think. Some of my favourite things:

-Bake cauli florets till just browning. Baking dries them out, so not wet and mushy which boiling or steaming can do. Chop to make cauli rice, mash with cream to make mash or drizzle with a tahini/lemon juice dressing and use a veg side
-Celery with peanut butter down the centre is tasty snack. Or Almond butter, hazelnut butter etc.
-Carrot or celery strips with houmous
-Berries are lower in carb than say a mango or banana

-Ground almonds make a handy breadcrumb substitute for chicken, but could be used on pork chops or beef schnitzels etc. These are the rough measurements, which can be altered to taste. Its vaguely a KFC type crumb.
1 cup ground almond meal
1 Tsp paprika
1/2 tsp each garlic powder, onion powder, Italian herbs, pepper and celery salt
I don't use any flour/egg mix beforehand like a normal crumb. I just roll the meat in the crumb mix, sometimes twice, then bake. It could be deep fried too though.