Carbs (gasp!) How Many Does Your Body Actually Need Each Day?

Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host. Today’s episode is part of my “Macronutrient Series” where we are breaking down the 3 macronutrients that your body needs each day, through the non-diet lens, so that we can cut through all of the diet culture BS that has us confused about food, nutrition and what our bodies actually need in order to thrive. I want to be clear that I’m not talking about macronutrients in the way that diet culture does when you hear about counting your “macros.” I’m literally just talking about these 3 essential nutrients that your body needs, and clearing up confusion around them so that you can honor what your body needs while eating intuitively. It’s going to help you feel less afraid of food, less guilty about eating things you enjoy, and it’s going to help you feel more confident about making empowered decisions with food. When we can let go of all the fears and judgments about certain foods and specific nutrients, it helps us to be better able to listen to our bodies – which is exactly what intuitive eating is all about.

Like I said, this episode is part of my Macronutrient Series, which covers the 3 macronutrients: carb, protein and fat.

I previously covered protein in episode #123 called How Much Protein Do You Actually Need? I’ve linked to it in the show notes, so after this episode you can go listen to that one if you’d like.

I’ll be covering the 3rd macronutrient, fat, in an upcoming episode, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so you’ll automatically get that episode when it comes out.

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about.

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense.

Today’s Wellness Woo is: The Carnivore Diet

My sources for today come from Today’s Dietitian written by Carrie Dennett, as well as an article from Science Based Medicine by Steven Novella, and an article by Rebekkah Harding where she interviewed dietitian Sydney Greene.

The Carnivore Diet is sometimes referred to as a no-carb diet, which as you can tell from the title of this episode we’re going to be talking about why your body legitimately NEEDS carbs each and every day, and why the Carnivore Diet is not only nonsense, but it’s actually kind of dangerous.

Essentially the carnivore diet is where a person only eats animal products including meat, eggs and some forms of dairy. The lion diet is a version of the carnivore diet where only beef is eaten.

Where on earth did such an extreme diet come from? Early origins appear to trace back to the 1800’s from a German guy named Bernard Moncriff, who wrote a book called The Philosophy of the Stomach: Or, An Exclusively Animal Diet. There were other versions of this that followed, and in recent history the carnivore diet became popularized on social media starting in 2018 by a former orthopedic surgeon named Shawn Baker, who wrote the book The Carnivore Diet.

Baker reportedly at 4# of beef each day, and he acquired quite a following including a problematic figure in Wellness Woo, Jordan Peterson who is a psychology professor in Toronto who claimed the lion diet cured his depression, and his daughter who claimed it cured her rheumatoid arthritis and her depression too. I don’t have time to get into it today, but Jordan Peterson is problematic in a lot of ways. There’s a Maintenance Phase podcast episode on him from a while back that I highly recommend if you’re curious.

One trend you’ll see a lot in fad diets is that they are made up by doctors who write books about it and profit off it, and the general public sees their credentials and thinks that this must mean they know what they’re talking about. The reality is that doctors get very little training on nutrition in med school, and they’re highly unqualified to be writing books about it – especially books that are based on something they themselves made up, that’s not been studied, isn’t proven by research and is basically just a vehicle with which to make them money. It would be like me, as a registered dietitian, writing a book about a new surgery or medical procedure that I made up, and selling books on how to do it and making a bunch of money off it claiming I’m an expert when I’m absolutely not.

So Shawn Baker writes the book The Carnivore Diet back in 2018. Then in 2020 another guy, Dr. Paul Saladino, writes a book called the Carnivore Code. He’s one of those dudes you see on social media walking through grocery stores yelling at us about how “toxic” everything is (in fact, I did a wellness woo on that very phenomenon just a few weeks ago in episode 129 called How to increase your odds of binge eating and gaining weight).

Saladino initially worked as a physician’s assistant in a cardiology clinic, and then went to med school and did his residency in integrative medicine (which tends to be full of a lot of wellness woo stuff; I’m not saying all integrative medicine is woo, but the field itself is a breeding ground for pseudoscience and wellness woo and it becomes hard for people to tell what’s legit and what’s not). So that’s where this guy is coming from, and he makes claims that he used the carnivore diet to treat autoimmune diseases and depression in people who were told their illness was untreatable, so we’ve got a bit of a God complex going on here, and he’s making claims that aren’t backed by solid research.

In the description of his book, he says:
The carnivore diet is scientifically proven to reduce inflammation, improve sleep, reduce joint pain, improve mental clarity, and help you lose weight. Dr. Paul Saladino has experienced the incredible benefits of a meat-based diet firsthand, and has helped hundreds of patients transform their health using his diet plan.

Which is ironic, because in earlier this year Saladino publicly announced that he started eating carbs again, because the carnivore diet was disrupting his sleep, messing with his hormones, and he was suffering from joint and muscle pain.

Turns out his carnivore diet wasn’t actually making him healthier or improving his sleep. In fact, quite the opposite.

Yet he takes no accountability for the thousands if not millions of people he has misled and harmed through his proclamations. This guy has made millions of dollars selling books, as well as on YouTube and social media.

What’s interesting, and troubling to me is that both Saladino and Shawn Baker have backgrounds in cardiology – yet they are promoting a diet that goes to the extreme with things that are known risk factors for heart disease. Saladino is accused of being a cholesterol denier, and he encourages people to drink raw milk which is so unsafe the CDC explicitly advises against it and it’s illegal to sell it in some states. Neither of these guys who are using their MD credentials to promote the carnivore diet are following evidence-based medicine or science in a way that’s truthful and legitimate.

Let’s do a quick breakdown of the nutritional problems with the carnivore diet:

It’s essentially devoid of fiber (explain)
There’s no vitamin C in meat – and you know what happens when you get vitamin C deficiency, right? Scurvy. We aren’t sailors and there’s no reason for this to be happening to us anymore, except for because of people promoting these absurd diets like the carnivore diet.
Puts you at high risk for vitamin and mineral deficiencies
Increased risk of acid reflux
Difficult for your body to produce melatonin > sleep issues
Messes with your GI system and your microbiome
YOUR BODY NEEDS CARBS – we’re going to dig into this today

Bottom line is there is no evidence to support health benefits from an all meat or all animal product diet. Meat and animal products are absolutely safe for humans, and do have nutritional benefits, but we also need other foods as well. Humans are omnivores, not carnivores. As with anything, the extremes aren’t good for us. As a dietitian, I also don’t advocate for an all plant or a vegan diet, because then we’d be missing out on the nutritional benefits (and enjoyment) of meat, eggs and dairy. Cutting things out is a slippery slope nutritionally, medically and psychologically and it can be a gateway to disordered eating or a full blown eating disorder.

There you have it – the carnivore diet = wellness woo.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com.

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…How many carbs does your body actually need each day?

There’s so much out there about carbs right now and how they allegedly cause weight gain, inflammation, diabetes, and you might be walking around every day feeling like you should stay away from carbs, or limit them as much as possible. You might even have these categories in your head of which carbs are healthy carbs and which ones are “junk.”

All of this makes it really hard to feel chill around food, and to listen to your body…Because what if your body is saying it’s hungry for some pasta with garlic bread, or a bowl of Frosted Flakes or Lucky Charms? It’s hard to honor these types of cravings without feeling guilty, and ironically it’s those feelings of guilt that drive us to overeat when we allow ourselves to eat these foods that feel “unhealthy.”

What we’re going to do here today is neutralize our judgments about carbs. We are going to look at them factually and with an understanding of how they work in your body, so that you can feel confident and empowered to eat carbs with your meals and snacks, without worrying that you’re destroying your health or causing weight gain. When we can be neutral about carbs, we can make choices about eating them that honor your food cravings and desires, without it being unhealthy or excessive.

What’s unhealthy is being afraid of food, being afraid of carbs, feeling guilty when you eat. What’s unhealthy is cutting out food groups because the internet or social media said it was bad. What’s unhealthy is avoiding carbs because your freaking doctor told you to do the keto diet.

We are going to come back to reality, back to using science, logic and reason, and we are going to cultivate peace and neutrality with carbs so that you can eat like a normal person without pulling the bread out of the inside of your bagel, and without getting the protein pizza crust that’s made out of smooshed together chicken, and without forcing yourself to eat spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles instead of regular pasta. If you like those foods, that’s FINE, but if you’re eating that way in order to avoid carbs because you feel like you can’t or shouldn’t have carbs, then get out your pen and paper and let’s chat.

What Even ARE Carbs?

When we say “carbs” we are talking about carbohydrates, which is a biomolecule consisting of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Another word for carbohydrates is “saccharides” which can be split into 3 categories: sugar, starch and cellulose. Carbohydrates are one of the 3 macronutrients for the human body (“macro” = big; “nutrient” = necessary). The macronutrients are what provides energy for the body in the form of calories. Calories come from carbohydrate, protein and fat.

Your body can’t live without calories. They’re like gasoline for your car. If you run out, you die, but you also don’t want to overflow your tank. Throughout the day your gas tank gets depleted as your body uses the energy and you have to refuel by eating, which is like stopping at the gas pump.

When it comes to calories in food, carbohydrates are your body’s preferred source of energy. Yes, your body can use protein and fat for energy, but it doesn’t want to. Those are your backup fuel sources, because your body has other jobs for the protein and fat to do. However, if you’re not eating enough carbs, your body will tap into the protein and fat that you’re eating to use it for energy instead of doing those other jobs.

Carbs also do a lot of other important things in your body besides just providing energy. They also are a component of coenzymes in your body that do a lot of important things, as well as a component of RNA (which helps your body basically take the instructions from your DNA and turns it into functional proteins in your body), and carbs are also part of DNA. Carbs also play a role in the synthesis of neurochemicals in your brain that regulate your mood, such as serotonin, and carbs pretty much exclusively fuel your brain and nervous systems. (Your brain alone burns more than 100 grams of glucose every day.) Carbs play a part in your immune system, your digestive system functioning properly, your gut microbiome, your ability to have normal bowel movements, and so much more.

TRANSLATION = YOUR BODY NEEDS CARBS TO FUNCTION PROPERLY.

Just because you “can” get by on little to no carbohydrate doesn’t mean you should or that this is serving you well. I can almost guarantee you it’s not.

Now that we have an idea of what carbs are and what they do in your body, let’s look at what happens if you’re not eating enough carbs.

Not Eating Enough Carbs

If you’re not eating enough carbs, you are doing yourself a disservice in several ways. This is going to be so mind-blowing and freeing you to realize that not only is it ok to eat carbs, but it’s benefitting you nutritionally for you to do so!

When you’re not eating enough carbs here’s what’s happening:

Your body first burns through it’s stored carbohydrates in your liver and muscles (glycogen). EXPLAIN WATER WEIGHT LOSS
Then your body starts borrowing from protein (sometimes including your muscles) to covert it into glucose (aka blood sugar) so that it can deliver energy to your cells. (EXPLAIN THIS)
Eventually, if you’re severely restricting your carbs you’ll end up in ketosis, which the biohacking bros would lead you to believe is a positive thing, but your body isn’t meant to be in ketosis. It’s a form of survival mode, not optimal physiological functioning. There is some data to support the ketogenic diet for childhood epilepsy in kids who don’t respond favorably to medications, but it’s an extremely difficult diet to maintain. I once did a presentation on the ketogenic diet when I was in grad school and I brought a plate of food that represented a meal that someone trying to stay in ketosis would eat and it was the saddest plate of food I’ve ever seen. It had some chicken, lettuce and mayo.
Now, most people, even if you’re doing the “keto” diet aren’t actually putting themselves in ketosis. They’re just eating low carb. What happens if you eat low carb for multiple days, weeks, months or years? Your body isn’t able to fully perform the internal functions it’s supposed to, and you’ll likely find yourself tired, foggy in your thinking (because your brain NEEDS glucose), constipated due to lack of fiber, sleeping poorly, getting sick more often due to impaired immunity, and you may find yourself more anxious and depressed. Remember our Wellness Woo today and the reason the carnivore guy stopped doing that diet? All of these things were happening to him, because the carnivore diet has basically no carbs.

I was just reading a study the other day. I get a scientific journal every month from the dietetic profession’s governing body and it’s called the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and in the very back of the journal they feature studies from other journals, and I love browsing through these to see what else is out there. There was a systematic review published in the journal Nutrition Research about carbohydrate restriction during lactation (aka breastfeeding).

So here’s another example of what happens when you’re not eating enough carbs. In a systematic review they are looking at the results from multiple studies, so it’s a lot of data and gives us a good idea of the big picture (it’s not just one little study on like 10 people that doesn’t really tell us much). What they found was that, quote: “maternal health outcomes following carbohydrate restriction were poor and women often experienced hospitalization, vomiting, muscle weakness, nausea, abdominal pain, general malaise and fatigue.”

Think about how many women have a baby and want to “get their body back” asap and do something like a low carb diet.

Not eating carbs isn’t good for you. (And it doesn’t produce lasting weight loss either.)

You might also be wondering the flip side of what happens if you eat too many carbs…

Eating Too Many Carbs

This is what diet culture has us so worried about. Most people assume that eating too many carbs causes weight gain and diabetes, which isn’t accurate. Weight gain and diabetes are much more complicated than that, and hypothetically speaking you could eat a 100% carbohydrate diet and get zero calories from protein or fat, and if what you were eating matched your body’s caloric needs you wouldn’t gain weight. Diabetes is highly dependent on your genetics. Some people have great insulin sensitivity of their cells, and their pancreas can crank out insulin without getting overtaxed. Other people are prone to insulin resistance, which then overtaxes the pancreas, which is how diabetes develops. It’s not a direct cause-and-effect relationship with carbs or sugar. It also has a lot to do with your genetics and other variables going on with your eating and inside your body.

Is it possible to eat more carbs than your body needs? Yes, of course.

How would you know if you’re doing this? Well this could happen in a couple of ways:

Eating more carbs and overall food than your body needs. Symptoms of this could be feeling overly full after you eat, eating when you’re not actually hungry, weight gain (but we have to be careful with this, because there a LOT of things that can cause weight gain), elevated blood sugar, high TG’s.
Eating a higher proportion of carbs than your body needs, which means you’re undereating protein and/or fat. Symptoms of this could be not feeling satisfied after you eat, getting hungry again shortly after you eat (because you’re not getting the satiety from protein or fat), anemia, hair loss, dry skin (but again, these can be symptoms of other things, so we don’t want to jump to conclusions that you must be eating too many carbs. This is where a dietitian has a well-trained eye and can assess these things by looking at the total picture of your situation and can help you narrow down what’s going on).

So How Many Carbs Do I Need Each Day?

You probably need more carbs than you think you do, thanks to diet culture. That’s why I want you to be really careful with what I was just talking about and jumping to the conclusion that you must be eating too many carbs just because you gained weight or have hair loss. Those can also be symptoms of hypothyroidism and other medical issues. And sometimes gaining weight is part of the process of learning to listen to your body, or your body healing from dieting and disordered eating. We can’t automatically assume that weight gain means you’re eating too much, or that you’re eating too many carbs. Again, this has to be put into context and assessed as part of the bigger picture.

When I’m working with a client, one of the first things I’m doing is getting a good feel for what their eating patterns are looking like, any physical symptoms they’re having, their medical history, medications they’re taking, what their most recent bloodwork looks like, their menstrual patterns and menstrual history, their history with weight changes, what’s happening with weight lately, their relationship with exercise, what their daily routine looks like, their sleep patterns, and so much more. I need to understand the totality of all this to be able to determine if someone needs to be eating more carbs, less carbs, or keep it the same.

My point with all this is to be very careful with jumping to conclusions, because I’d be willing to bet you a million bucks that many of you listening are already going down that path thinking that you must be eating too many carbs, and you need to cut back, blah blah blah. Our minds have been conditioned to look for reasons to shame ourselves, reasons we need to cut back on our eating, and reasons that we need to tighten the reins with food – because we don’t trust ourselves.

Here on the Rebuilding Trust With Your Body podcast I am helping you to notice and name these thought patterns that are so well-ingrained, and that happen so automatically, that you don’t even know it’s happening half the time. As you notice these thought patterns that aren’t serving you, we get to create new thought patterns – new “neural pathways” that are going to support you in cultivating peace and freedom with food, while also taking care of your health.

So…how many carbs DO you need each day?

I obviously can’t give every single person listening an exact number. All bodies are different.

I also don’t want you focusing on numbers.

I want you to take what I’m about to share, and embrace the spirit of it, rather than getting into the weeds and doing calculations about your food.

There have been TONS of studies done on nutrition at the population level, and what these studies routinely come back to is that the healthiest populations of people eat a diet that contains about 45-65% of their total calories from carbs. That means that about half of your daily calories should be coming from carbohydrates.

Did you hear that? HALF of your daily calories should be coming from carbs.

That’s right.

Do I want you to go add up your calories and your carbs and calculate your macros and all that? Absolutely not.

Your brain alone burns about 130 grams of carbs per day, and it can’t store energy for later, so it needs a constant supply of circulating energy in the form of blood sugar. That’s why you feel so crappy if your blood sugar gets low, because it can become an actual medical emergency. If your blood sugar goes down to zero you die.

Other parts of your body need energy from carbs too. Which is why most of us need to be eating somewhere between roughly 200-300 grams of carbohydrate every single day.

Again, I don’t want you tracking this. I just want you to appreciate that you NEED carbs, and quite a bit of them.

If you have something like diabetes, pre-diabetes, PCOS or insulin resistance, you still need carbs. You would probably benefit from some “gentle boundaries” with carbs – meaning some gentle limits on the amount of carbs that you eat in one sitting to allow your pancreas to keep up with the insulin needed without your blood sugar staying elevated. But you still need to be eating carbs at consistent intervals throughout the day, and getting at least that 130 grams per day minimum for your brain.

The moral of the story here is that you don’t need to be afraid of carbs. You don’t need to eat your burger without a bun, and you don’t need to eat zoodles when you’d rather have tortellini. You don’t need to pull the inside out of your bagel.

So how do YOU personally figure out how many carbs your body needs? Especially if I’m explicitly asking you NOT to do calculations? Here’s how you’re going to do it by using the skills and tools within the intuitive eating framework. This is part of a skill we call “gentle nutrition” which happens to be principle 10 of intuitive eating. If you’re taking notes, this is the part you’re going to write down:

You listen to your hunger
You make peace with food
You let go of all the food rules (especially the low carb ones)
You honor your fullness
You pay attention to how your body feels

If you’re not exactly sure what to focus on when it comes to carbs, nutrition, making peace with food, listening to your body, I want you to go take my free quiz. It’s called Discover Your Unique Path to Food Freedom. It will take you about 2 minutes, and based on your answers I’ll send you custom results that contain guidance about what you should focus on. You can take it really quick – like as soon as we’re done here I want you to go do it. It’s at nondietacademy.com/quiz. I’ve also linked it in the show notes.

Thank you SO MUCH for listening to this episode. In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

Resources:

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