Hello everyone, I am new to this so bare with me. I have been on lowcarb since 2nd feb. I have lost 11lbs. I really really like it. I am constantly trying new recipes to keep it exciting. I live in Ireland and find it very hard if not impossible ot find anything low in sugar! My mother lives in CA and has just sent me the Atkins blueberry muffin mix. I am confused at the carb count. It says it has 9 g total carb but the net carbs are only 3g because the fibre count is 6g. Has anyone any info on this? Does this mean that in all foods you would subtract the fibre count from the total carb count to get the NET carbs? I have been counting my carbs religiously and this would make a BIG difference to me. Thanks to anyone who has any info! Hope I wasn't long winded! Bye for now

Since your body can't respond to carbs that are never digested, you don't have to worry about grams of fiber because fiber is, by definition, not digestible.

Therefore, it is your digestible carbs that are limited. This is often referred to as the Effective Carb Count (ECC) of a food.

Take care!

I'm still very confused about this whole carb count thing as well. I'm being extremely cautious (paranoid?) about consuming any of this type of total carb vs. net carb food because it has been stated severl times on this site that the Atkins bars and other similar products (which list their carb count in this fashion) actually contain more carbs than they claim.

Now I'm afraid to eat any of it, because I don't REALLY know what to believe.

Can somebody explain this?

There are a lot of things that may or may not affect your insulin levels and therefore should or should not be counted against your daily carb allowance. It varies strongly by person and I suspect that you, headstrong, need to err on the side of counting them.

But everyone agrees that you can subtract the fiber carbs from the total carbs - I've never seen any debate on that point.

Cheers

Thank you so much Wbahn , I think I understand now. This will make things alot easier on me. Hope to talk to you all again soon, but my timezone here in Ireland is way off most of yours so it's actually my bedtime now. Talk to you later,