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I've been eating Paleo for a few months. I've kept falling off the bandwagon though. I upped my fat intake. My mate also is paleo and said that men need higher carb intake. So I've added some carbs to my diet and it has worked wonders with cravings and keeping me feeling satisfied (I used to eat 3-4000 calories a day, easily - it's gone down some but is still pretty high).

So my actual question -- what is a good amount of carbs for an active male with a high metabolism? Should I thus reduce some of the ft or protein in my diet?

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Mm, I said that some men might need a higher carb intake...and I thought you'd be one of them. And, personally, I need less carbs and there seems to be a trend that women do better on lower carb in respect to weightloss ... but it isn't always the case. A lot is trial and error ... * shrug * – Allie Oct 28 2011 at 0:20

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I've never heard that men need a higher proportion of carbs in their diet than women. They will of course need more carbs as they have a larger body to function.

I think most people will function best with 10% to 30% carbs but the more training you do / more activity then it follows to increase starches.

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I think a good guide is that the liver takes up something like 70g and the muscles around 200g. Now, we never actually deplete glycogen stores completely, but after some serious hard work, carbohydrates seem to be helpful, while a similar carbohydrate load on a more sedentary day leads me into the roller-coaster ride of crankiness, where I end up with low blood sugar and brain fog (that bag of dried dates seemed like a good idea at the time, especially since I was walking).

So it is easy enough to point to 100-150g as a safe range, with additional carbs acceptable contingent on some serious physical work having happened. I'd like to point out too, that it isn't a good idea to be totally steady state on this stuff. Ketosis once in a while is a good thing- it probably happened pretty often to our ancestors. I usually eat a good amount of protein, for instance, but I like to have a day or so without any for autophagy- my point being, allow evolutionarily sensible variations of macro-nutrients in your diet.

I am also assuming you are at your target weight here; if not, keep them sub-100g and maybe even lower for ketosis is definitely your friend if you are trying to lose weight. You could check out the Shangri-La diet too (which is really a technique, not a diet).

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shangri-la diet? – Caleb the Hobbit Oct 28 2011 at 3:53
sethroberts.net – August Oct 28 2011 at 14:27
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My opinion is that you should experiment and see what allows you to look, feel and perform your best, to steal a phrase from Robb Wolf.

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