How Many Grams Of Carbs Per Day To Lose Weight Calculator

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Could there possibly be a more controversial topic than how many carbs we should be eating?! One of the perks of following a Paleo framework is that when we maximize nutrient density (see The Importance of Nutrient Density) and eat high-quality foods from both the plant and animal kingdom, other elements of diet, like macronutrient ratios, tend to fall into place without us needing to obsessively count fat or carb grams. Still, considering how much bad press carbohydrates tend to get (as well as the tendency for the media—and even some leaders within the Paleo movement itself—to mis-portray Paleo as being low carb), a great deal of confusion exists surrounding optimal carb intake. What’s the scoop?

, as the basic structural components.  Carbohydrates are relatively simple molecules composed of carbon atoms, oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms (including hydroxyl groups, one oxygen and one hydrogen bound together), and a general formula of Cm(H2O)n , for example sucrose has the molecular formula C

. The most important and prevalent carbohydrate is glucose, the primary metabolic fuel for the human body and indeed most forms of life on Earth. For more on ATP production and the Krebs cycle, see How Does Sugar Fit into a Healthy Diet?

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Are long chains of sugar molecules that can be hundreds long (think of polysaccharides of long chains of monosaccharide units therefore they can be broken down in our digestive system into simple sugar molecules). From a dietary perspective however, it’s more relevant to classify carbohydrates based on how they’re digested and absorbed:

I’m very excited about the Nutrivore information! Thank you so much for all your research and hard work you put into this kind of information for all of us to use!! Debbie

Whole-food carbohydrates, like fruits and vegetables, contain a mix of simple and complex carbohydrates, including fiber which slows own digestion and blunts the blood sugar response. Blood sugar regulation is further improved by ingesting fruits and vegetables as part of a complete meal that also includes protein and fats.

Serving Sizes And Carbs

Refined carbohydrates refer to carbohydrates that have been processed. For example, when the bran and germ are milled away from whole grains to make refined grain products, most of the fiber is removed. The resultant starches are digested and absorbed rapidly, sometimes raising blood glucose levels as quickly as simple sugars. Examples are white flour made from whole wheat, white rice made from brown rice, table sugar made from whole sugar cane or sugar beets.  Of course, whole grain foods are omitted on a Paleo diet due to being relatively empty calories and containing compounds that negatively impact gut health (both gut barrier and microbiome) and stimulate the immune system (causing inflammation).  For more, see What Is The Paleo Diet?,  How Gluten (and other Prolamins) Damage the Gut Gluten-Free Diets Can Be Healthy for Kids,  Worse than Gluten: The Agglutinin Class of Lectins, Gluten Cross-Reactivity: How your body can still think you’re eating gluten even after giving it up.,  Are all lectins bad? (and what are lectins, anyway?),  Why Grains Are Bad-Part 1, Lectins and the Gut,  What Is A Leaky Gut? (And How Can It Cause So Many Health Issues?),  How Do Grains, Legumes and Dairy Cause a Leaky Gut? Part 2: Saponins and Protease Inhibitors, and Are Pseudograins Pseudobad?.

Simple sugars can also be refined. A prominent example of a processed sugar is high fructose corn syrup. In this case, corn syrup is treated with enzymes to turn a proportion of the syrup’s glucose into fructose. High fructose corn syrup is discussed further in Why is High Fructose Corn Syrup Bad For Us? ,  Is Fructose a Key Player in the Rise of Chronic Health Problems? and Fructose and Vitamin D Deficiency: The Perfect Storm?.

When we consume carbohydrates, they are broken down into simple sugars (mostly glucose) by our digestive enzymes and absorbed into our blood stream.  This causes a rise in blood glucose levels, which stimulates the release of insulin and it’s this system (and what happens when things go wrong) that is what all the hubbub is about.

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When we consume carbohydrates, our digestive system first breaks complex carbohydrates down into monosaccharides (mainly glucose molecules), which are absorbed into our blood stream, causing a resulting rise in our blood sugar levels, (aka blood glucose levels). In response to that rise in blood sugar, the pancreas releases the hormone insulin, which facilitates the transport of glucose into the cells of the body and signals to the liver to convert glucose into glycogen for short-term energy storage in liver and muscle tissues and into triglycerides for long-term energy storage in adipose tissues.  Once inside our cells, glucose in an energy source, being rapidly converted into ATP, the energy currency for all cells, via the Kreb’s cycle (a process that also uses oxygen and produces carbon dioxide, also called the Citric Acid Cycle or Cellular Respiration, explained in How Does Sugar Fit into a Healthy Diet?).

It’s a beautifully efficient system… until things go wrong. Chronically elevated blood sugar levels stimulate adaptations within cells, rendering them less sensitive to insulin. These adaptations may include decreasing the number of insulin receptors embedded within cell membranes and suppressing the signaling within cells that occurs after insulin binds to its receptor. This causes the pancreas to secrete even more insulin to lower the elevated blood glucose levels. This is called

, when more insulin than normal is required to deal with blood glucose. When normal blood sugar levels can no longer be maintained, you get type 2 diabetes. See The Hormones of Fat: Leptin and Insulin ,  The Hormones of Hunger, How Does Sugar Fit into a Healthy Diet? and The Paleo Diet for Diabetes

How Many Carbs Does My Child Need?

The Weekly Serving Matrix is very helpful! I’ve been eating along these lines but this really helps me know where to focus vs. which foods serve a more secondary role. It’s super helpful and has taken a lot of worry out of my meal planning. Thanks! Jan

Insulin resistance is bad. It promotes weight gain and increases risk not only of obesity and diabetes, but also cardiovascular disease, many forms of cancer, asthma, allergies, PCOS, chronic kidney disease, many autoimmune diseases…. the list goes on.

So, if chronically elevated blood sugar levels makes you insulin resistant leading to health problems, then the key must be to not eat all those carbs, right? This thinking is what led to the now-debunked carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity and a surge in popularity of low-carb diets since the early 1990s. See New Scientific Study: Calories Matter

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Low-carb diets do promote weight loss (and achieving a healthy weight reduces risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.). This fact has led to their increased popularity and the push towards ever lower carbohydrate intake, including the current ketogenic diet fad. However, rigorous and well-controlled metabolic ward studies have confirmed that low-carb and ketogenic diets don’t turn us into “fat-burning machines” with increased energy expenditure and preferential fat mass loss (see New Scientific Study: Calories Matter, Adverse Reactions to Ketogenic Diets: Caution Advised and How Ketogenic Diet Wreaks Havoc on Your Gut). These diets help us lose weight simply by creating a dietary structure that focuses on more satiating foods so that most individuals naturally achieve a caloric deficit (the Paleo diet which embraces whole foods sources of carbohydrates also results in weight loss by focusing on more filling foods, while also supporting high veggie intake and nutrient sufficiency, see The Importance of Vegetables, The Importance of Nutrient Density, and Paleo Diet Clinical Trials and Studies). While weight loss is certainly more complicated than calories in versus calories out, a caloric deficit is still a necessary prerequisite for weight loss. See Paleo for Weight Loss and Portion Control: The Weight Loss Magic Bullet

I never realized how important nutrients are and how intricately the body works! I can’t thank you enough for sharing all your knowledge and insights. Cheryl

The fact is that insulin plays a lot of important roles in human health independent of its role in energy balance. So, while insulin resistance is clearly damaging, not eating enough carbs to secrete much insulin can also cause health challenges. This is very important to understand because it means that eating too-low-carb can cause the same kind of health problems as having insulin resistance, and indeed this is borne out in the research and discussed in detail in this very important post: The Case for More Carbs:  Insulin’s Non-Metabolic Roles in the Human Body. Tldr; a moderate-carb approach is optimal to support the vast array of biological systems relying on insulin as a signaling molecule.

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It’s also true that insulin sensitivity (meaning that the body is sensitive to insulin signaling and blood sugar levels are well managed) is not simply determined by the amount and types of carbs we consume.  Insulin resistance is caused by lack of physical activity (prolonged sedentary periods), inadequate sleep and high stress, and in fact, insulin sensitivity may be more reflective of lifestyle than diet, see 3 Ways to Regulate Insulin that Have Nothing to Do With Food.

Macronutrients are the nutrients we need in big (“macro”) quantities: fat, protein, and carbohydrate (in