Hi everyone,
I've been thinking a lot about carbs lately (reading Good Calories, Bad Calories) and the million dollar question to me seems to be - how much is too much???

I don't necessarily believe that the body doesn't need any carbs and I know that I can no longer do induction level (20-30 grams) carbs. Right now I'm at a pretty low count, by my standards (60-70 grams/day) but I've always been a huge believer in a whole food diet as the way to go for healthy long-term eating. Since I'm a vegetarian, I'm finding myself resorting to eating more frankenfood than I'd like to replace the carbs (such as veggie burgers, veggie hot dogs, etc.) Also, I've been trying to go vegan (i.e., no dairy/eggs/meat) for a year now, but each time I end up putting in a lot of carbs (in the form of fruit, whole grains, and beans) into my diet because I can't seem to conceptualize a low carb vegan diet.

So the gist of this is that I'd like to create somehow a vegan semi low-carb plan but I can't seem to wrap my brain around how low is low carb in this kind of case. I've created some sample menus for myself that have a good balance of percentages (the 30/30/40, roughly) and most of these are about 130-140 gram carbs a day, all from whole unprocessed foods, mostly beans and fruit and a bit of grains (and some dark chocolate ). But I'm afraid to try it because it might cause me cravings.

So I guess my question to this board is (sorry to be so round-about!) for those of you who are doing a semi low-carb plan, how many carbs approximately do you find yourself consuming so that you don't have cravings? And what form do those carbs usually come?

Tam