How Many Carbs Can You Consume In One Day To Lose Weight?

Low-carbohydrate effectively generate weight loss. Recommendations vary depending on the diet you choose and the phase of the diet you are in. Low-carbohydrate diets are most effective when you choose a specific diet and closely follow that diet's recommendations. Atkins, Protein Power and Zone are all popular low-carbohydrate weight-loss diets.

Identification

Carbohydrates contain sugars. When you consume carbohydrate-containing foods, your blood glucose responds by rising. If you eat simple carbohydrates that contain one or two sugars, you experience a sharp and sudden blood glucose level incline. When you eat complex carbohydrates, your blood glucose levels rise in a slower, more sustainable fashion. Dairy products, candy, baked goods, table sugar and fruit all contain simple carbohydrates. Whole grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds all contain complex carbohydrates.

Background

Low-carbohydrate diets limit carbohydrate consumption. Many also limit the types of carbohydrates that you can eat. They work because they allow you to control insulin, explains Gary Taubes in "The New York Times" article "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" When you eat carbohydrates, your blood glucose levels rise and the pancreas releases the storage hormone insulin. Insulin takes the foods you eat and stores them as fat. It also prevents fat cells from utilizing stored fat as fuel. When insulin is absent from the bloodstream, your body burns fat as its primary source of fuel.

Types

In early phases of the Atkins diet, Dr. Robert Atkins recommends eating 20 g of carbohydrates per day. Atkins calls this phase "Induction," and suggests that you follow it for two weeks before gradually increasing your carbohydrate intake levels. The Protein Power diet recommends eating between 7 g and 10 g of carbohydrates per meal or snack with no more than 30 g of total carbohydrates per day. Protein Power also suggests counting effective carbohydrates instead of total carbohydrates. To calculate effective carbohydrates, subtract the fiber grams from the carbohydrate grams. The result is your effective carbohydrate count. Protein Power recommends eating at this level for the first two weeks of the diet, which is called "Intervention." The Zone diet makes the same recommendation throughout the course of the diet. If you are on following a Zone plan, you will eat 30 percent of your calories at each meal from carbohydrates.

Recommendations

Both Atkins and Protein Power change their recommendations after the first two weeks, while Zone remains the same. Atkins calls the second phase "ongoing weight loss." In the ongoing weight loss phase, Atkins suggests discovering your personal carbohydrate threshold by gradually increasing your daily total carbohydrate intake by about 5 g, and incrementally increasing that amount every few weeks. Once you stop losing weight, you have discovered your carbohydrate threshold. Atkins recommends backing off of that amount by 5 g to 10 g of daily carbohydrates and eating at that level throughout the remainder of the weight loss phase of the diet. Protein Power suggests increasing your effective carbohydrate level after the first two weeks to 15 g per meal or snack, and less than 50 g per day.

Research

In 2007, Stanford University conducted a study that was printed in "The Journal of the American Medical Association." The study followed premenopausal women on Atkins, Zone, Ornish and LEARN diets and found that those on the Atkins diet had the highest rates of weight loss. A 2010 Temple University study published in "Annals of Internal Medicine" followed two groups of dieters for two years. One group ate a low-carbohydrate diet while the other group followed a low-fat diet. The study concluded that both diets were effective for weight loss.