Hi Mandi, welcome!
I was thinking that 40g of Carbs a day sounded really low from my journeys perspective, so I went googling.
Sounds like your dr wants you to lean more toward something like the Paleo diet which is an extremely low carb way to eat. Paleo works on the premise of what the Paleolithic Age humans were able to gather or kill.
From what I've read, true hardcore Paleos eat no grains or beans at all, but nuts are ok.
I found this recipe site, by accident actually, but this chick sounds like she's going full blown Paleo. From what her recipes depict, she uses alot of almonds and such for the "starchies" in her diet. This is a full blown personal blog of hers so its not just a recipe site and will give you some idea of what and how she's doing it.
http://www.runningtothekitchen.com/ otherwise, I'd say, don't kill yourself just jumping in whole hog on a diet that may not fit your lifestyle. If it doesn't , then you will be more likely to quit and fail. Best actually to go gradual, make some small changes , test some theories and use what fits and discard what doesn't .
No "diet style" is made to be one size fits all and NO doctor is infallible in their suggestions about dieting, dr's all have their own "very human" opinions of how others should live their lives. Take what your dr says with a grain of salt and do what you feel most comfortable doing and what makes you become healthy .
Start a food and fitness planner here on WebMD, or the one on Fitday.com. Either one would be a good starting tool for you to see how many calories to shoot for and how much exercise you should do daily to reach your goals.
hope this helps some
kim
Kim SW 243 CW 182.6 GW 135
If hunger is not the problem, then eating is not the solution.---author anonymous
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger---Friedrich Nietzche