As you may know for the past few months I’ve increased my carb intake some! Well, next month I am going to do a mini cut to loose some of the body fat I’ve gained during this time. Just a LITTLE one, don’t freak out people 😉 Anyway, pretty soon I’ll be saying goodbye to eating carbs as freely as I would like haha. That being said, I thought it may be fun/helpful to do a blog post on how I would alter my eating when I make the switch. Basically, I’m going to lay out what a 250 carb diet a day looks like (which is what I’m eating now), and then I’m going to say what changes I’d make through the day to eat around 190 carbs. Make sense? Okay, cool!

Day of Eating approx. 250 Carbs (my actual food diary from the other day)

Breakfast: 47 carbs
-Everything bagel (47 carbs) w/ butter

Lunch: 26 carbs
-Spinach salad w/ chicken, avocado, mozzarella, and olive oil (4 carbs)
-Pretzels (22 carbs)

Snacks: 92 carbs
-Protein bar (23 carbs)
-Pretzels (22 carbs)
-1/2 Apple (15 carbs)
-4% fat plain yogurt (10 carbs) w/ agave syrup (3 carbs)
-Trader Joes oatmeal cookies (19 carbs)

Dinner: 87 carbs
-Diced gold potatoes (40 carbs)
-Pork tenderloin
-English muffin w/ vanilla almond butter (31 carbs)
-1/2 Apple (16 carbs)

=252 carbs for the day

Okay, so! Now I’m going to modify these food choices and show you what I would eat to hit around 190 carbs

Day of Eating approx. 190 carbs

Breakfast: 31 carbs
-English muffin w/ vanilla almond butter (31 carbs)

Lunch: 28 carbs
-Spinach salad w/ chicken, avocado, mozzarella, and olive oil (4 carbs)
-Baked lays potato chips (24 carbs)

Snacks: 87 carbs
-4% fat yogurt (12 carbs)
-Zero fat yogurt (11 carbs)
-Pretzels (22 carbs)
-Reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich from Starbucks (28 carbs)
-Slice of bread w/ egg and avocado (14 carbs)

Dinner: 46 carbs
-Diced gold potatoes (30 carbs)
-Pork Tenderloin
-Yasso Ice Cream Bar (16 carbs)

=192 carbs for the day

In my opinion, if you look at both days of eating, the one that is 190 carbs doesn’t look like that much less food. It’s really about just making some smaller swaps through the day and not eating an extra snack at night. When my carbs are lower, I tend to opt for fuller fat yogurts since those tend to be lower in carbs. Or I’ll buy yogurts that are lower in sugar because they are lower in carbs (think 11 carbs vs. 22 carbs). Another trick is to  have egg whites for breakfast or just an English muffin instead of a full bagel. Also, recently I’ve been drinking chai teas a lot more which are about 25 carbs. That is an easy thing I can sub regular coffee for and save those carbs for food.

So yeah! If you make some small swaps though the day, it can definitely save you some carbs (or fats depending on what you’re looking to cut back on). Also, I definitely could have increased my veggie intake to stay full but low on carbs, but I was trying to base it off of my original 250 carb food dairy so you can see what swaps you can easily make.

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*Header photo from cookieandkate.com