help please with carbs and sodium

should I count carbs or the net carbs.

How little sodium should I be taking a day as have read on some posts that people warn you about sodium if your weight lose is slow or stalling?????????????????

Hello there.  As with every other question you'll get different answers/opinions.  During this entire journey I've always counted net carbs (40 per/day) and never worried about sodium content.  If your diet consists of very few processed foods the sodium content will naturally be low.  Plus, we do need sodium in our diet.  So unless you're eating canned/boxed foods/fast food daily, I wouldn't worry about sodium.

Good luck!

Jennifer

The net vs, total carb topic is an almost religious thing for some, but the short answer is that while your brain may count total carbs, your body counts net carbs - that's the whole idea of the concept. (I never controlled carbs so never had to worry about that.)

On the sodium front, as jengo noted, it's not something that we generally have to worry much about during the loss phase - we eat so little of everything that it's hard to go overboard. The only real exception to that, which is where it usually comes up here, is if we are eating in restaurants a lot and their food tends to have a lot more sodium in it than what we prepare at home (unless we are living on TV dinners) Higher sodium consumption tends to lead to greater water retention which is where the slowed weight loss or stalling concerns come in. While we do need some sodium in our diets, there isn't a minimum recommended amount since the American diet tends to be very high on it (unless one is a marathoner or other athlete working in hot and/or humid weather and sweating away all of your sodium.) Potassium is the companion to sodium of which we tend to be deficient.

I always counted carbs, never net carbs.  I don't subtract my "burned" calories from the calories I eat either.  Keep the sodium low, I never got a real number, must mostly try to eat real not processed food and that should do it.

Thanks to all the help, ta.