Carb Commando - Carbohydrate Counter

Carbohydrate Counter

Why are low carb diets so popular? Probably because eating fewer carbs forces your body to burn fat for fuel instead of sugar. Of course, that's a very basic explanation, but that's the gist of it.

During the first two weeks of diets like the South Beach Diet and the Atkins Diet, you are only allowed 20 grams of carbs. This rids your body of any unnecessary carbs and puts it into fat burning mode. Then you get more carbs, but not a lot more. When the average person is used to eating 250 grams of carbs (or more) every day, this is quite an adjustment. The first thing you might want to do is look at packages and go to carbohydrate counter web sites to see how many carbs you eat now. You might be surprised. Or maybe you don't want to know. In any case, once you decide to lower your carb intake, you'll need a way to help you with your carbohydrate counting.

What to Use as a Carbohydrate Counter

If you're new to low carb dieting, you'll certainly need a way to count your carbs. If you go online, you'll learn that there's more then one type of carbohydrate counter. Obviously, carb counts are on food labels, but there are some foods that don't have labels. Lots of people just buy a carbohydrate counter book. But some prefer to keep a journal. That way they can track what they ate during weeks when they were particularly successful.

There are also interactive carbohydrate counter web sites that let you keep an online journal. Other sites just let you use their online carbohydrate counter directory that's divided into different food categories to look up carb counts. There are even carbohydrate counters for your PDA!!

As you can see, counting carbohydrates doesn't have to be difficult. Between food labels, books, online directories, interactive online journals and PDAs, it shouldn't be hard to track your carb intake. Now, willpower....that's a different story for a different day. Happy counting!

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