The Carbohydrate Curve

For the past few weeks, I have talked a bit about my weight loss goals and eating according to The Primal Blueprint.  For the first three weeks of following the blueprint, I was doing pretty well, losing about 15 pounds.  However, over the last few weeks I have hit a plateau and have been pretty stagnant.

The sudden plateau has been a bit perplexing for me.  I have really not changed the way that I have been eating since I started the program.  In fact, I actually thought that I had been eating better than when I first started.  About the main thing that I have been doing differently is that I had pretty much given up diet sodas because they really don't have any nutritional value.

Today, I think I finally figured out what has been causing the slow down in my weight loss, but first I want to talk about the Carbohydrate Curve as outlined in The Primal Blueprint.  According to the Carbohydrate Curve, to maintain your weight, you would need to consume an average of 100-150 grams of carbohydrates per day.  Anything more than that would put you at risk for gaining weight.

To lose weight, the Primal Blueprint recommends that you consume on average 50-100 grams of carbohydrates per day.  Eating within that range on a consistent basis puts you in the "sweet spot" for weight loss.  Eating less than 50 grams of carbs per day would put your body into ketosis.  This would be the carb goal on diets such as the Atkins Diet, but then you would not be able to enjoy the variety of fruits and vegetables that are a big part of eating primaly.

Now with this background of the Carbohydrate Curve, I can address my "eureka" moment as to why I believe my weight loss has stalled.  As I said, I had given up drinking diet sodas at lunch.  Instead, I was drinking small bottles of 100% juice thinking that it would have better nutritional value than the soda.  Unfortunately I had not read the nutritional labels on the juice.  That is, until today.

Today at lunch, I happened to turn the bottle of juice that I had in my lunch around and read the label.  While the juice had no added sugar, it still contained 52 grams of carbohydrates, more than half of the daily limit of carbohydrates if I want to remain in the weight loss zone of the carbohydrate curve.  Needless to say, the juice stayed in the lunch bag.  I am going to see if cutting out the juice and switching to something lower in carbs to see if it helps kick start the weight loss again.