Low carb for those of us who aren't hardcore enough for Bootcamp/Atkins induction etc

[QueenStromba]

This is a thread for anyone who wants to eat fewer carbs but has either failed on plans than start out really low carb or just doesn't want to eat very low carb for whatever reason. I'm of the opinion that the high carb diet recommended by the government is the cause of obesity and related diseases and that any reduction in carbs will boost health.

While the Bootcamp threads are fantastic, I think a lot of people find it difficult to dive straight into eating very low levels of carbs which leads to giving up by day five. I did this myself when I first tried low carbing last April. I wasn't even trying to eat induction level carbs, just cut out the obviously high carb elements of my diet (rice, potatoes, pasta, bread etc) and I still nearly killed my housemates. It was about six months before I tried low carbing again and I went about it in a completely different way and have ended up eating induction level carbs through preference.

First I cut down my carb portions slightly in each meal, waited a week or two then cut down the portions even further so I was only eating about half the starch element that I had been in each meal. The next thing I did was completely remove the starch from one meal - I think it was breakfast I did first. I had been eating a poached egg on a slice of toast with a slice or two of lean bacon and some mushrooms or spinach - all I did was cut out the slice of toast and replace it with more veg or an extra egg depending on how hungry I was feeling. Once I was happy with that I started on dinner. Instead of rice I had cauliflower rice, instead of potato mash I had cauliflower, swede or celeriac mash and instead of noodles/pasta I had either shirataki noodles or thin ribbons of courgette. For the first while I still mixed in half a small portion of e.g. rice with my cauliflower rice. I normally made enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch the next day. I lost really well on that without worrying about how many carbs were in veg and I still had milk in my tea and berries with yoghurt. I also had a couple of beers a week and the odd slice of cake or whatever. I only went very low carb after doing a lot of reading and deciding that eating a diet very low in carbs and high in fat (including saturated fat) is the healthiest diet for us.

Oh and when you're in the health food shop have a look for ground linseeds (also known as flax). It's really low carb and can be used to make things like low carb muffins, pizza bases, crackers etc. It also has lots of omega 3. Some people can't make use of the plant version of omega 3 but you may as well eat it because omega 3 has anti-inflammatory properties so if you can utilize the plant version then it will do you a load of good.

It's also a good plan to incorporate oily fish into the diet (but not too much of the mercury containing ones like tuna and swordfish) to up your omega 3 intake and make an effort to avoid vegetable oils because they are high in omega 6 which is pro-inflammatory. Ideally you want your omega 3 intake to equal your omega 6 intake to balance them out but you're doing well if you can just get the ratio down to 3:1. Just like "healthy wholegrains" being anything but when you actually look into the science, "healthy fats" like vegetable oils are actually bad for you. There are only three vegetable oils that are actually good for you - coconut oil which is mostly saturated fat, olive oil which is mostly mono-unsaturated fat and linseed/flax oil which has a lot of polyunsaturated fat (which is generally bad) but most of it is omega 3 which is good for you as opposed to omega 6 which isn't.

:)

Welcome to the thread BonkeyMollocks - I absolutely love your name!

Isn't it the other way round on the three and six? I get the principle though, I think. I read half of the John Briffa book last night, and I may not have retained that correctly though.

You want more omega 3 than omega 6 but you'll be doing well if you end up with only 3 times as much omega 6 as omega 3.

Ok, I have had a read through and I think I can do this :)

Another one here who looked at Bootcamp threads and then waddled my arse in the opposite direction!

Desperately need to get back on track. I lost a stone at the beginning of the year, then plied it all back on again

3st in total needs to go!

My biggest problem is carbs, bread to be exact! I could munch my way through a whole fresh loaf if I let myself. It needs to stop. I feel shit!

As of tomorrow I'm in!

Btw never ever thought about cauliflower rice, sounds really yummy!

Dinner was: salmon fillet with veg, roasted tomatoes and plenty of butter&pepper. For pud, full fat Greek yoghurt, with a few blueberries and a kiwi. All very nice, and filling!

I've only been doing this since yesterday, and I don't feel deprived at all- and I don't feel bloated and as though I'm entering the room stomach-first. I reckon this might just work.

Had a good 2 days, had 3 boiled eggs for breakfast yesterday, was quite hungry, felt really bloated and wasn't at all hungry at lunch time - but hubby made it so would have been rude not to dig in. Had lean diced steak with mushrooms, all fried in lovely butter and some green beans, it was well nice. Had half an avocado just before bed. Today had an egg scrambled with butter and smoked salmon for breakfast, and liver and green beans with mashed celeriac for lunch. I've never had celeriac before and was pleasantly surprised, cooks just like potato and tastes really nice. Hubby made a chocolate cake though, flour free but bit of sugar in it, had that with some greek yoghurt and a coffee. Not as low carb today but not at all peckish today or yesterday. Got a killer headache but I think that's lack of sleep (grumpy baby).

I'm nagging hubby to join and post

I've lost 3 pounds this week, which I'm very pleased about.

I didn't lose anything in the first 10 days. So maybe I'm just a slow starter!

I remember your plaintive posts Selky! Glad it's going the right way!

Just wondering about tea and coffee. I have each with 2 sugars and milk and it's the only thing I've missed the last 2 days. I thought I'd have a bash before starting next week proper but it seems so easy - I've got boxes of free from crackerbreads that I thought I'd struggle with because I usually have 9 or 10 a day with pate (individually, not boxes), but not missed them at all.

Is it best to have tea/coffee on it's own between meals or are the carbs so low it doesn't matter?

Loving all the advice and knowing what other people are eating.

Two sugars are going to 8g by itself and the sugar in milk can add up really quickly. Also, table sugar is really bad for you - fructose, which makes up half of table sugar has been implemented in lots of metabolic diseases. Have a watch of this video when you have the time - he explains it far better than I do.

Could you limit yourself to one cup a day and gradually cut down on the amount of sugar you use? I used to take 2 sugars in coffee and managed to cut them out just by putting a quarter of a teaspoon less in each time. Not long after, someone bought be a latte and I was convinced that there was sugar in it but I was actually tasting the sweetness of the milk. Also, if you get down to no sugar in your coffee you can have it with cream which feels wonderfully decadent after years of worrying about fat :)

I'm so happy you stuck with it Selky and that you're finally seeing results. Did you do anything differently? This is a funny old way of eating - people quite often report staying the same for ages and then 3 or 4 pounds just disappear overnight. It's also quite common to lose inches but not scale weight, so taking measurements every few weeks is a good idea. The most important thing to remember when you aren't losing though is that this is a much healthier way of eating than the government recommended diet so even if the scales aren't moving, you're still reaping the health benefits.

Can you rank milk, cream, mascarpone, creme fraiche in order of what's best for low carbing?

It's really a balance of how carby something is versus how much of it you are likely to eat. Double cream has about a third of the carbs of milk plus it's not really something you can eat a lot of. I used to drink a good 12 liters of milk a week and now a 300ml tub of cream lasts the week unless I cook with it. I'm a bit of a sad bastard so I've weighed how much cream I put in a cup of tea and it's about 7ml of double cream to get the same "milkiness" as 15ml of single cream and probably 40ml of milk. The double cream has about 0.1g of carbs in that size serving, the single cream has about 0.5g and the milk about 2g. It might not sound like a lot but all of those 2g add up over the course of a day and if you have milk rather than double cream you are having 20 times as much carb in your tea.

Mascarpone and creme fraiche are both fine - about twice the carbs of double cream but (if you go for the full fat - the reduced fat stuff is about twice as carby again), unlike milk, you're unlikely to get through large amounts of them. Again though, if you think you can get the same results using double cream then use that - you'll probably find you need less of it.

All of this assumes that you're eating quite low carb. If you're still eating the odd carby thing throughout the day then you can't go too high with the fat.

Thanks Queen, will hopefully have chance to watch tonight. Hmmm, cream .

I tried to compare them in the shop but yoghurt and creme fraiche's nutritional values were per 100g and milk and cream were per 100ml and I know ml and g aren't interchangable so thanks for your help.

I was thinking mainly for sauces, eating fruit salad with and putting in my coffee.

Actually for edible liquids a ml and a gram are normally so close to each other that you can treat them as being the same because a ml is the same weight as a gram of water and most edible liquids have a high water content. Oil weighs about 90g per hundred ml so if you assumed double cream was half oil and half water which is a decent approximation, then 100ml of double cream would weigh about 95g.

Oops, missed the last bit of your post there. Double cream is best for all of those things except maybe the fruit salad. If you are just having berries then cream is good but other fruit can be very high in carbs. If you are eating carby stuff then you have to be more careful about your fat content. I've not tried her diet myself but a lot of people have success with the Harcombe diet and she says you can have some carby stuff but don't have it within three hours of a fatty meal. I'd imagine she'd suggest something like 0% Total Greek yoghurt with fruit salad since she allows porridge but only with skimmed milk.

I would like to do some reading about low carbing. Where should I start? Can anyone recommend any good sources of information? (books, websites, etc.). I'm not so interested in diet books as such, but texts which tell me a bit about the science and philosophy behind low carbing and, ideally, which provide lists/guidance on what (not) to eat.

Thanks. TRQ

It would be raspberries, blueberries or strawberries.

They're fine to have with cream :) Raspberries are the lowest carb so try to eat more of them if you can.

Escape the Diet Trap is really good and it goes into other aspects of what healthy eating actually is like how "heart healthy polyunsaturated fats" are anything but. He explains everything in a very clear, accessible way while still explaining the science behind things.

Wheat Belly is also fantastic. It's all about how carbs are bad for you and how wheat is the worst carb of all so it gives a good explanation about why carbs are bad and tells a shocking story about just how unhealthy wheat is. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who read that book will never purposefully eat wheat again.

Also, I've only had it for about a week and haven't had to time to read past the first chapter, but The art and science of low carbohydrate living gets great reviews from all the big players in the low carb world. It was originally intended for doctors but they realised while writing it that most doctors wouldn't have a particularly strong biochemistry background so the final book ended up being something that most people would be able to read and understand.

Brilliant. Thanks so much, QueenStromba. Will get on Amazon.

Thanks for the info about milk & cream, QueenStromba, that's really useful. I'm new to all this low carbing stuff - to be honest, I'm here on behalf of DP who has recently realised he needs to lose some weight (entirely his choice and decision, although I agree). He seems to want to do it without changing his eating habits or giving anything up though! As I do most of the cooking, I'm looking for ways to make his mealths better for him, without changing all our diets.