If you have a sweet tooth and your diet contains a lot of foods with refined white flour and sugar, you can put yourself at risk for developing high triglycerides. Triglycerides are a lipid, or fat, you need for energy. Once your energy needs are met, any extra calories from the sugars and starches in your diet are converted to fat and stored in your fat cells. Consistently high triglyceride levels, over 200 mg/dL, lead to medical complications such as hardening of the arteries, heart attack and pancreatitis. There is no magic number of carbohydrates per meal that will help lower your triglycerides, but limiting your carbohydrate intake will certainly help. Talk to your doctor about how many carbohydrates should be in your diet.
Carbohydrates Into Triglycerides
All the carbohydrates in your diet are broken down into glucose, a sugar, during digestion. Glucose is then transported to your cells to be used for energy. When there is enough glucose available to meet your energy needs, any remaining glucose is converted to glycogen, a triglyceride, and a small amount is stored in your liver and muscle cells to be used when extra energy is needed. When your muscle cells have reached their storage capacity, the rest of the glycogen is then stored in your adipose tissue, or fat cells.
Percentage of Carbs in Your Diet
A typical healthy diet should contain 45 to 65 percent total carbohydrates, according to the Mayo Clinic, or 225 g to 325 g of carbohydrates for a diet of 2,000 calories per day. However, if your diet contains more than 60 percent total carbohydrates, particularly refined sugars such as high fructose corn sugar and sucrose, you can increase your risk of developing elevated triglycerides. Reducing your carbohydrate intake can help decrease your triglyceride levels. A 2006 study published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" found a low-carbohydrate diet containing 26 percent carbohydrates was effective in reducing triglyceride levels independent of weight loss.
Figure Your Carbohydrates Per Meal
To help lower the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, keep track of the amount of carbohydrates you ingest each day. Read all product labels and do a bit of math to help figure out how many carbohydrates you eat. According to Dr. Patrick Nemechek, an internal medicine specialist, reducing your daily carbohydrate intake to 130 g for women and 150 g for men puts you in line with a diet composed of 26 percent carbohydrates. Stretched out over three meals and one snack, figure on eating about 32.5 g to 37.5 g of carbohydrate for each meal or snack.
Lower Triglycerides With Diet
A normal triglyceride level is 150 mg/dL. Get most of your carbohydrates from complex carbohydrates that contain fiber, such as whole grains, beans, vegetables and fruits, and severely limit the amount of refined sugar and flour products in your diet, such as white bread, white pasta, cakes and cookies. Limit your total fat to 35 percent of your calories, limit your saturated fat to 7 percent and keep your cholesterol intake under 200 mg daily. If you can't keep your carbohydrate intake down to 26 percent, aim for no higher than 50 percent. Other ways to lower your triglyceride levels include losing weight, limiting your consumption of alcohol beverages and increasing your physical activity.
References
- eMedTV: Triglycerides
- National Council on Strength and Fitness: Converting Carbohydrates to Triglycerides
- Mayo Clinic; Healthy Diet: End the Guesswork with These Nutrition Guidelines; Feb. 22, 2011
- Baylor College of Medicine: Triglyceride Lowering
- "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition"; Separate Effects of Reduced Carbohydrate Intake and Weight Loss on Atherogenic Dyslipidemia; Ronald M. Krauss, et al.; May 2006
- DrNemechek.com; Reduce Carbs to Lower Triglycerides; Patrick Nemechek; Nov. 21, 2010
