The Carbohydrate Curve – what’s it all about?

Helen Marshall here I am your personal Primal Health Coach, I am a big fan of the primal lifestyle and today I am bringing to you the Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve.  Mark Sisson is the brains behind this amazing graphic, I am a student of his course the Primal Health Coach Course.

Everyone seems to be talking about carbs, low carb, ketosis – what does it all mean?  What amount of carbs could you be shooting for each day?

It’s all about insulin.

The reason we want to be moving away from excessive carbohydrate consumption is due to the insulin response that occurs when glucose hits the blood stream.  In a nutshell, if you want to increase your lifespan, you want to reduce the amount of insulin you produce.

How many carbs?

So when you are at your ideal body composition and eating plants and animals, you will default into your effortless weight maintenance zone of 100-150 grams of carbs per day.  If you are interested in losing weight you can take more of a focused effort to eat in the ‘sweet spot’of 50-100 grams of carbs per day. Ketosis is anything under 50 grams of carbs per day.

Why it can be helpful to monitor your macro nutrient intake.

If you are like me and have had decades of calorie counting and came to this lifestyle to get more intuitive you will likely have some resistance around ‘tracking’.  However, if you are not getting the results that you want then I encourage you to have an objective look, you may find you are overdoing the carbs every so slightly.

Hit play on the video for a really comprehensive breakdown of the Carbohydrate Curve, only goes for 11.08 mins!