Do you count leafy salad?

Rosso Rebel said:

Good Morning, a bit of background-
I was diagnosed with type 2 a couple of months ago and since have googled and joined forums to find out more about eating plans to try to get off metformin.

I started to eat Keto about a month ago and have been able to reduce the amount of tablets which is brilliant.

I have been concerned about the lack of salad / veg I can fit into 20g of carbs per day and some people advocate not counting leafy salad - do you count all carbs or do you exclude leafy salad?

Thanks for your help

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Yes you should count them but 100g of lettuce contains 1.4 g of carbs so you could have a kilo and still be sub 20g per day..
That's quite a lot of lettuce.

I don’t/didn’t ‘count’ any carbs. I just only eat/ate them solely from leafy greens and overground vegetables. Possibly some nuts. Never totted up any values and managed to maintain blood ketone levels higher than ~3.0 consistently. Past tense implied because I’ve recently cut out nearly all plants and eat mostly carnivore, but that is another story.

That is my experience. Others may find it easier to count vegetables but personally I think it’s a waste of time unless you’re consuming a kilo of salad and broccoli with each meal.

I'm with Jim on carbohydrate from vege. I have never really counted carbohydrates from above ground vege as they are valuable natural sources of vitamins and minerals. I'm more cautious about below ground vegetables and limit my intake of these. Life is too short to be overly concerned about the minutiae.
P.S. I have had a non-diabetic HbA1c for almost 5 years and take 500mg Metformin per day.

I'd also add to this that it is worth making sure you are counting net carbs rather than gross carbs. I was alarmed at first to discover a medium avocado according to My Fitness Pal was 12.8g of carbs! I couldn't work out why they were a Keto staple! I then worked out this was gross carbs and if you look up a medium avocado from a UK supermarket it's only 5!

My meter says count ALL the carbs, leafy or not .

The salad will still contain those carbs whether or not you choose to actually count them, and your body will still process them when you eat them! (And as @Pasha said,your meter will know too, and you may see any increase in carbs reflected in your post meal glucose levels.) On a very low carb diet even a few carbs could be a significant percentage, but how you might respond to these small amounts is individual to you.

You will need to know whether the total quantities of carbs you're eating are low enough to get you into ketosis and keep you there long enough to become keto/fat adapted. After that you can be a bit more relaxed in what you count and eat.

Robbity

I bought a set of kitchen scales for the first time in my life today, so I could weigh and visualise what a certain amount of 'allowed' veg looks like.I'm able to count the carbs from this measurement, rather than just guessing, as I could be way out. I've got a notebook and a calculator next to the scales (!) This is because I'm very new to this. Soon it will become second nature I'm sure.
I've always survived on ready meals with extra veg before this as my cooking is usually a disaster. Have to learn new skills now
@Rosso Rebel, I was wondering why you want to come off metformin, is it the usual stomach upset? Well done for getting your amount of tablets down! I just started metformin and am suffering my way through the side effects. Some people find it very useful though, and stay on it even in remission.