Balancing Calorie Expenditure and Intake

[Mark72]

I'm trying to get a bit more active - regular lunchtime walks in addition to the dog walk right now but we're in the middle of moving house and once we do and I'm making it up hills without too much heavy breathing I'm thinking the gym to improve my fitness further and look at getting back into sport. The issue I have is that since being diagnosed and looking to reduce carbs I was losing weight before any change in exercise, if I start exercising more I'm concerned it may be too much. Tracking my food I'm often seeing between 900-1300 kcal per day when hitting my daily aims for under 25g and 120g sugar and carbs respectively.

Is this something other people struggle with at all? I'm considering asking to see a dietician to see if they can help with suggestions for food and meals since at the moment the only days I get close to 1500 kcal or higher seem to be when I'm naughty with the cheese or nuts.
The other side to things is that I was told I had very high cholesterol and have a significantly increased chance of a "cardiac event" than a normal man my age in the next 10 years so I'm also trying to watch the saturated fat intake as well. Balancing is proving tough!

 

[Lilsis]

Hi Mark.

Personally, I don't count calories (might be an idea for a while ). I track my carbs and protein. I stopped using fat free dairy and use full fat instead. If you want to up your calories, whilst keeping your carbs in check it's what I've found to work. Just don't see it as a free ticket to have cream with everything.

 

[Martin.A]

Balancing is proving tough!

Tell me about it. I track my carbs, calories, saturated fat, protein, fibre and salt. That's a lot of balls to have in the air all at once and it's rare that I stay within target on all six of them on any particular day.

 

[Mark72]

That sounds about right. I found a nice cured meat which is low fat/sat fat and generally great if you don't look at the salt but still both red meat and processed at the end of the day.

 

[Leadinglights]

That sounds about right. I found a nice cured meat which is low fat/sat fat and generally great if you don't look at the salt but still both red meat and processed at the end of the day.

I assume you meant you were losing weight that you didn't need to in which case making sure you have enough protein and healthy fats will help. The right choice of fats will improve your good cholesterol and reduce the bad.
Why don't you just look at the carbs as a whole as unless you are comparing two products with the same carb value the 'of which sugar' doesn't matter as it is the total carbs you need to take account of. It just makes it harder to have more things to work out.

 

[Mark72]

Funnily enough we're moving house and the guy who came round to do the EPC was talking about being almost keto and was saying that avocados which I love but tend to ignore and are one of the only things my wife won't steal from the fridge are some if the most healthy fat so will be introducing more of them.
Regarding the carbs/sugar thing I thought sugar would have a much more immediate effect on BG potentially causing a higher spike and carbs would differ based on GI and other factors like how they're prepared and what they're eaten with hence trying to avoid spikes with limited sugar intake and look more at wholemeal/grain versions of carbs over processed. Is that not correct?

 

[Leadinglights]

Funnily enough we're moving house and the guy who came round to do the EPC was talking about being almost keto and was saying that avocados which I love but tend to ignore and are one of the only things my wife won't steal from the fridge are some if the most healthy fat so will be introducing more of them.
Regarding the carbs/sugar thing I thought sugar would have a much more immediate effect on BG potentially causing a higher spike and carbs would differ based on GI and other factors like how they're prepared and what they're eaten with hence trying to avoid spikes with limited sugar intake and look more at wholemeal/grain versions of carbs over processed. Is that not correct?

There is very little difference in the carbs in the brown version of foods than in the white. The GI of a food is something that will vary between individuals as it depends on people gut microflora as to how quickly food will be digested. You can make a food lower GI by including fats and protein than it would be on it's own.
People will tend to only look at the sugar if comparing something with the same carbs and choose the one with the lower proportion on sugar. But that often becomes too onerous.