When you're on the keto diet, you need to keep a close eye on your macros. Short for macronutrients, these are the main building blocks of every meal. Your macros, which consist of protein, healthy fats, and carbs, are essential because they provide the fuel your body needs to function.
Yet, carbs are a bit more complicated than they seem, not only because they tend to lurk in foods and beverages that you never expected, but also because there are two different types of them: total carbs andnet carbs.
What are the differences? How can you successfully calculate net carbs? Read on to learn more.
The Keto Diet
It helps if you first understand what the keto diet is. This meal plan (and it certainly does take some planning) has you eating a low-carb diet while taking in larger amounts of protein and healthy fats to promote weight loss and wellness. The amount of each macro you should be eating daily is calculated based on specific keto ratios.
For example, you might follow a keto diet that has you eating 70% healthy fats, 20% protein, and 10% carbs. The final combination of percentages is up to you, as long as you eat a small enough amount of carbs to stay in ketosis. Typically, you'll need between 50 and 35 grams of carbs to reach that state.
What You Need To Know About Carbs
Also known as carbohydrates, carbs are a crucial macro, because they provide your body with energy. When you eat them, your body turns them into glucose, which affects your blood sugar levels and gives you a sudden burst of energy.
This is why eating sugary snacks can cause you to crash, because once they leave your system, all of a sudden, you're out of energy. To combat this, you need to watch your carb intake.
The keto diet helps keep your energy levels steady, since it limits the daily number of carbs that you eat. This puts your body into a state of ketosis and keeps it there so it burns off belly fat for energy instead of relying on those carbohydrates. Then you don't have to worry about those sudden energy surges and crashes.
So, What Are Carbs?
Before you can begin to understand what net carbs are, you first need to have a full picture of carbs in general. They are one of the main macros that appear in many foods, more so than you'd typically expect.
You can find carbs in some of the obvious places, like bread, buns, cereal, rice, and even noodles. These foods come from grain, so carbs are one of their basic components.
In the form of starch, carbs appear in a number of veggies, like potatoes, carrots, and corn, as well as anything made from them, like potato chips and corn-based snacks. Even pretzels contain a high amount of carbs.
But that's not all. In the form of high fructose corn syrup, which is made from, as the name implies, corn, carbs can appear in soft drinks, pre-packaged snacks, and even candy.
You'll find carbs in many processed foods like protein bars, gummy bears, and more. If you look at the nutrition facts, you will see them pop up in certain dairy products, as well as legumes, nuts, and even toppings, like BBQ sauce, ketchup, and some salad dressings.
It can be very hard to avoid carb foods, which is why diets like keto simply have you cut down on them, not eliminate this macro altogether.
Total Carbs vs. Net Carbs
Now that you understand whatcarbohydrates are and which foods they're in, it's time to discuss the difference between total carbs and net carbs. Both terms refer to carbohydrates, the amount of the macro you eat every day. However, they do have some differences.
What Are Total Carbs?
As expected, the term “total carbs” refers to the complete amount of carbohydrates you eat in a day. This number is calculated from the carbs in every single thing that you eat.
When you look at the carbs in your app or calculator (if you use your own recipes) or on the nutrition label of pre-mademeals, it will have the total carbohydrates clearly listed. You just need to do some addition to come up with the total carb count. Luckily, it's easy.
What Are Net Carbs?
On the other hand, net carbs are a little different. They make up your total carbohydrate intake minus certain things, like sugar alcohols and dietary fiber. Since your digestive system can't fully digest these two things and it simply eliminates them, arguments could be made that they don't count. Therefore, they shouldn't be considered in your carb bottom line.
To come up with your net carbohydrates, take your total carbs, add up the sugar alcohol and dietary fiber amounts, and then subtract them. Your end result is yournet carb count.
Dietary Fiber? Sugar Alcohol? Keto-Friendly?
Understanding the terms can be a bit tricky, especially when they go hand in hand with the two types of carbs: simple and complex.
So here's a quick breakdown of everything you need to know:
What Are Simple Carbs?
Simple carbs are just what the name implies — simple and easy. They only contain a handful of sugar molecules (usually one or two), so your digestive system can easily handle them. You don't have to worry about these forms of carbs. They do their job (give you energy) and then disappear quickly as they’re digested.
What are examples of simple carbs? Anything that's considered to be a whole food that contains carbohydrates, such as fruits and vegetables, milk, maple syrup, agave nectar, and honey.
What Are Complex Carbs?
On the other hand, complex carbs take longer to digest, because they contain more than just a few different types of sugar molecules. These complex carbs are good for you because they give you a long-lasting form of energy, not one that pops up quickly and disappears.
The long-lasting energy is thanks to the extended time it takes for your body to digest these carbs. Because of this, you want to incorporate some of them into your daily diet.
Many complex carbs come directly from grains. Examples include whole-grain noodles and breads, rice, whole grain cereals, oatmeal, legumes, corn, and beans. Because these foods tend to contain a lot of carbs, you need to limit your intake of them in your meals when you're on a keto diet.
What Is Dietary Fiber?
Where does dietary fiber come into play? These fibers are what keep the complex carbs in your digestive system, especially the nutrition-absorbing small intestine, for so long.
Essentially, you can't digest them, although your system tries, so they hang around and make you feel full until your digestive system eliminates them. (For the record, this is why you need to eat foods that contain plenty of insoluble fiber when you're bloating or feeling constipated.)
Foods that have many grams of fiber include many of the complex carbs listed above, as well as green leafy vegetables like spinach and lettuce. While you need to limit your carb intake while on the keto diet, you can safely subtract any amount of dietary fiber from your total carbs.
What Are Sugar Alcohols?
Also on the list of things that your body can't digest are sugar alcohols and sweeteners. These are found in many complex carbs, as well as in pre-packaged foods that have additional sugar added. Examples of sugar alcohols include xylitol, maltitol, erythritol, sorbitol, mannitol, and isomalt. Food manufacturers will list all of these in the food label or ingredients list on the pre-packaged meals or foods that you choose to eat.
Since your body can't digest them, these sugar alcohols are like dietary fiber. They go right through your system. Therefore, you can subtract them from your total amount of carbs to end up with your net carbs.
Calculating Your Net Carbs
When following the keto diet, you have your choice of sticking with either total carbs or net carbs. Adhering to net carbs can provide you with the chance to eat even more carbs than usual (as long as you stay under your ideal amount of total carbs). Keep in mind that it isn't a perfect science, and one or two miscalculations can send you out of ketosis and out of the magic weight-loss cycle.
With that said, the choice is yours, and you can choose to use either method of calculating carbs, as long as you're consistent. So, you shouldn't switch from one to the other on a daily basis.
Knowledge and planning are key to a healthy lifestyle.
Sources:
When a Carb's Not a Carb, The Net Carb Debate | WebMD