How Many Carbs Per Day To Lose Weight?

I’ve probably heard this question asked more times than I can count and the answer I give is never quite what most people expect. See, I firmly believe that controlling your body’s weight is solely based on calories in and calories out.

When you ask the question “How many carbs per day to lose weight?”, you’re really questioning what sort of health benefits you can receive throughout the day based on your food choices and not your food amount. I’ll talk briefly about what carbohydrates do, how this low-carb craze began, who goes against it, and my personal opinion based on my own weight loss success.

What Do Carbohydrates Do In The First Place?

The best way to understand if you’re getting enough of one kind of food or another is to understand what it does in the first place. Essentially, carbs provide your body with energy. For everyone that attended 3rd grade health class, carbs were the giant chunk at the bottom of the food pyramid with pictures of bread and spaghetti.

They’re loaded with fiber, minerals, and vitamins to help maintain and fuel many of your normal bodily functions and conscious physical actions like running, jumping, lifting, etc. That’s why the marketing departments of popular sports drinks like Gatorade and Powerade strongly promote the inclusion of carbohydrates in their products to replenish water as much as energy levels.

It All Pretty Much Started With The Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet was really the first eating plan that promoted a low-carb solution to weight loss. Between 2003 and 2004 it was estimated that 1 in 11 American adults were “on Atkins.” Atkins users have typically made claims such as putting on fat becomes easier with increased insulin levels and carbohydrates increase insulin. It was claims like this that made cutting out the carbs appear so important.

And did people lose weight from this diet? Yes they did. The debates concerning the health risks of the diet were numerous due to its initial emphasis on protein (later devalued by the creators), but regardless, people still lost weight. But was it because of the carbohydrates or something else?

An Interesting Study Shed Some Light On The Effectiveness Of Low-Carb Diets

A study was done on the effectiveness of a low carbohydrate diet versus a low fat diet and the results showed that both diets effectively dropped participants’ weights. You can check out the details of this study here: A Randomized Controlled Trial On The Efficacy Of Carbohydrate-Reduced Or Fat-Reduced Diets In Patients Attending A Telemedically Guided Weight Loss Program.

What’s interesting to note about the study is that both groups lost about the same amount of weight even though their main consumption-type was different. I consider this as support for the notion that portion control is the dominant factor in weight loss and maybe the question “How many carbs per day to lose weight?” doesn’t matter so much.

Carb Cycling For Weight Loss Has Been Popular For Body Builders

When I first became interested in fitness and looking somewhat athletic, I followed an approach that was geared towards body builders more than fitness models and came across a number of eating plans that were not really suitable for my personal needs. One of these eating plans is carb cycling.

Carb cycling is the concept of varying your carbohydrate intake for each day. It was originally developed by body builders who would change their carbohydrate levels depending on the amount of energy they would need for their workout routine. I would do variations depending on whether I was putting in more effort or increasing the total time that I was in the gym.

This eating plan is usually carried out with 5-6 smaller meals to encourage a faster metabolism, and you can check out my own personal spin on that idea in this post, Diet To Increase Metabolism: 5-6 Meals A Day Exploited.

During this entire “body builder phase”, I never looked the way I really wanted because I didn’t realize that the problem was my body fat and not the amount of muscle that I had. This lead me to believe that counting carbohydrates wasn’t what I should be focusing on.

So What’s The Answer? How Many Carbs Per Day To Lose Weight?

I honestly believe that losing weight has very little to do with what kinds of foods we put in our bodies and more about how much (calories). If you really want to take a look at the question “How many carbs should I eat a day?”, most people consume about 45% – 60% of their daily consumption from carbohydrates, but the problem is that the majority don’t lead active lifestyles and most of those carbs become stored as fat.

Sure, you can start substituting different foods in place of high-carb items like bread and pasta, but usually, you’re just lowering the amount of calories that you’re actually going to eat. I’m sure that there’s plenty of debate on this subject, but people can get crazy and count the carbs in things they didn’t even care about before, like bananas. (And just for the record… how many carbs in a banana? …about 17 depending on the size)

The Eat Stop Eat method gives me the freedom to eat whatever I want as long as I control the frequency and sometimes the portions of what I eat. No, I’m not going to shovel in an entire quart of ice cream because I have strong portion control. Healthy discretion should always be involved in whatever you consume.

The best thing to do is analyze your diet, determine when and what you appear to eat too much, and change it. Don’t try to make things too complicated. The amount of carbohydrates in your diet will dictate your energy level more as opposed to your body weight. But the case usually stands that too many carbs means too many calories.

P.S. If you're interested in the diet that I use when I want to get particularly lean, it's Eat Stop Eat. It's very progressive, and probably not like anything you've tried before.