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.

Hi
I am also low carbing. My main problem is terrible headaches. Is this normal?

Headaches on low carb are normally due to low electrolytes - get some lo-salt and put loads of it on your food to replace sodium and potassium.

Another vote for Escape the Diet Trap. If you search there is a good webchat on mn with John Briffa with a link to a clip. Very easy to read.

I had read several books which had been much more complicated in explaining the low carb science. The others look interesting, though, QueenStromba.

Yummy food in this woe:
Breakfast: poached egg, fried mushrooms, roasted onions and tomatoes (with sausages for rest of family)
Lunch: green salad with cheddar and walnuts in pesto dressing, greek yoghurt with protein shake to make up protein
Dinner: meatballs with ratatouille (with brown rice for others).

First bit was to TheRedQueen.

Can I join, please ?
Just back from hols and have not put on as much weight as I thought . Am off to do food shopping later and am really inspired by this thread as know I should cut carbs but am not ready to go hard core!
Would be really good to have some more examples of what you eat in a day like quirkychick's above as I can easily fall back into same old rut.. and wonder why I am not losing weight
thanks

Hi colette! Glad you liked my food . There is a link further up the thread to some recipes on the bootcamp thread.

I have been experimenting with the baked cooked breakfast: sling it in the oven altogether with olive oil. Today we had it as a late brunch with: bacon, meatballs (left from yesterday), courgette, onion and tomatoes with herbs. Really delicious.

I had lost 6lb with eat more to lose weight and had been slowly reducing carbs. I had plateaued and now I have lost another 2lb this week. As well as inches from bust/waist/hips. And I had frozen berries with double cream for pudding!

thanks quirkychick and well done. I will look at the link.
Amazing pudding to eat and lose weight !

I meant to say thank you for the links QueenStromba provided way upthread.

I tried making Cauli rice this evening following an American recipe and it was not good. Recipe said blitz cauliflower in food processor to rice consistency, cover and cook in microwave, no need to add water. Then return to food processor, "add cream cheese and pepper, blitz and voila!" Am sure the last word is a typo, it should say 'blitz and vomit' as that was what it looked and vaguely smelt like.

I need to lose 2 stone and have been eating quite low-carb for a few days as a preamble to doing it properly. I suffer from bad water retention and when I don't eat wheat I find it's a million times better. I find breakfasts the hardest as I get up stupidly early and am not really functioning properly!

Could someone explain how to use protein shake/powder as 'porridge' please?

Olympicnmix I make cauli rice by putting it through food processor on grater attachment, putting in microwave with lid for eight mins and then voila! No messing with second blending or other additions. Think I actually prefer it to normal rice! ESP with curry.

Thanks Zimbo, I shall try that when I next do a sauce-based recipe, as I think it must need some. Does taste good on it's own or does it need something adding to it?

Hi I tried low carb a while back but had to give up as I felt strange the whole time and would wake up hungry and think I felt a bit depressed too.
I have just bought the John Briffa book hoping for a different take on things but I think if I try again I will feel just the same.
I am in trouble because I rely on weetabix and banana at bed to help me sleep.
Is brown rice allowed?
Maybe I need to try low GI diet instead?

quirkychick Have you got the recipe for the ratatouille?

QueenStromba Are blackberries or blackcurrants allowed?

The only other fruit I really enjoy are peaches, melon, pineapple, apple and bananas but I am guessing all those would be banned?

Ratatouille was onions, peppers, courgettes, garlic and mushrooms with passata. I fried the veg in olive oil until very soft and added passata and cooked for ages. Blended and gave as tomato sauce to kids.

Fridge porridge is usually greek yoghurt, flaxseed, milk, oats and fruit. Care of www.theyummylife.com

Low carb version: greek yoghurt,
flaxseed, impact protein powder mixed together; add flavourings and fruit. Leave in fridge over night. Lots of lovely flavours e.g. add strawberries and vanilla essence, frozen cherries and almond essence, blackberries and cinnamon... Flaxseed thickens the yoghurt and if you use frozen fruit/berries it melts into the "porridge". I think you can cook a porridge with flaxseed and protein powder but I haven't tried it.

Made this www.marksdailyapple.com/sweet-tart-rhubarb-and-berry-dessert-sauce/ tonight but with frozen redcurrants/blackcurrants as well as raspberries & blackberries. Big hit, I will be doing that again!

earthpixie - Have you tried scrambled eggs for breakfast? Three eggs and a knob of butter will cook in a medium sized frying pan in less than a minute. And don't forget that you don't have to eat "breakfast food" at breakfast time. Most cultures don't actually eat anything different for breakfast - I think we may have been had by the cereal advertisers. The easiest breakfast of all is to just make extra at dinner time and heat it up the next morning - this also works well for lunches.

Olympicnmix - I do the same for cauli rice except I just stick it in the food processor with the normal blade in and pulse. I also normally just put it in a small tupperware box in the microwave for about 2 mins then let it sit for a couple of mins with the lid still on. I wouldn't eat it on its own - I just have it with curry really.

nappyadict - I don't recommend eating a lot of fruit, but 100g of lowish carb fruit a few times a week should be ok. Blackberries have a similar carb count to raspberries which makes them a good choice. I had a bit of trouble finding carb counts for blackcurrants but from what I can tell they have a carb count of about 10g per hundred which makes them a bit on the high side to have by themselves but a few mixed in with some other berries won't do you any harm. Out of the other fruit, bananas and pineapples are out because they are high carb and high GI and apples and melon will vary according to the variety to it's hard to say. Peaches are surprisingly low carb - I checked Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's and they all said 7.6g per hundred so odd one probably won't do much damage.

topsi - I got really moody when I tried to cut my carbs down drastically all at once but I was fine when I cut them down gradually as I described in the opening post. Actually I was better than fine because within a short space of time I was able to cut my antidepressant dose in half. I also found that within a short space of time my insomnia completely disappeared - it used to take me an hour to get to sleep on a really good night and on low carb I turned into someone who was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and 20 mins to get to sleep was a bad night. I've been rather stressed the last week or two so I've been sleeping badly - that used to mean I'd get no sleep at all but now it means it takes me an hour to get to sleep.

One thing that can really help sleep rather than carbs is taking a magnesium supplement an hour or so before bedtime. I've not tried it myself yet but I'm about to order some from Amazon because unfortunately Boots only stock magnesium oxide which isn't very readily absorbed by the body.

I'm in. What an inspirational thread, a big to Queenstromba for all her LC knowledge!!

I had already started trying to do this, but hadn't got far. I am re-inspired.

To complicate matters I have emotional issues re food (who doesn't to some extent) but I am sure sugar/carbs play a part in my probs - ie it isn't just in my head, it is physiological too.

Added to which I have PCOS. My cycle has responded to metformin, so I am guessing that reducing carbs would be good for me in so many ways.

Interested to see the oat/yogurt breakfast things. Recently discovered Moma in Sainsburys - www.momafoods.co.uk/products/bircher-muesli/ Too sugary for what we are looking for, but the idea is the similar.

Here is to a low carb week everyone.

Welcome watersign76 :) You should start feeling a lot better on a low carb diet. PCOS is just one of a number of problems that come under the banner of metabolic syndrome/syndrome x which is related to insulin resistance and carbohydrate sensitivity. There was a pilot study done by one of the authors of the most recent Atkins book (all of whom are well respected low carb researchers but I can't remember which one it was) where they put 5 women who had such sever PCOS that they couldn't conceive on a low carb diet. Over the course of the study they all had much improved symptoms and two of them actually got pregnant.

Really the NHS is failing in their duty of care for not recommending low carb to everyone with symptoms of syndrome X, particularly diabetes and PCOS. Similarly, wheat has been linked to basically every immunological disorder from allergies, asthma, eczema etc to autoimmune diseases like arthritis, MS etc. I've never had a doctor recommend a gluten free diet for my allergies, asthma or psoriasis but since I've stopped eating wheat they've all vastly improved.

That's interesting QueenStromba I have asthma, as do dds. I had started the eat more to lose weight as I needed ro recover from bad chest infection.

I had a borderline high blood pressure reading at a healthcheck: 140/90. I have been tracking it at home. Initially, I was reading 135+/85+ pre diet changes. Then I was 125ish/80ish when on low gi and now I am 120ish/75+ on low carb. I was told by nurse to follow a mediterranean diet, drink no coffee and do yoga. I now do low carb, weights/pilates/yoga (I was already doing this but have upped my weights), and drink the odd coffee.

The berry pudding I linked to was for family "tea" as an alternative to cake as mil came round, not an everyday thing. Also had homemade smoked mackerel pate (cream cheese, lemon zest) with crudites instead of sandwiches. High carbers ate pudding and didn't want any biscuits afterwards.

There's a delicious chocolate mousse made with dark choc and whipped coconut cream on same site.

Hi All, I've just started low carbing after trying calorie counting and failing miserably.
I'm 12 stone and would like to get down to 9.5. Been cutting out carbs for three days now and am finding it quite easy (have probably spoken too soon) as we are quite a carnivorous family.
So far a typical day is raspberries and full fat natural yoghurt for breakfast, small handful of almonds for a snack, cheese salad with an avacado for lunch and something like sea bass fried in butter with a pile of green veg. So far haven't been hungry apart from the two days when our meal break at work was delayed until 3.00pm having had breakfast at 5.00am!

Day off today so going to have mushrooms, tomatoes and egg today for breakfast.
Don't want to tempt fate but my allergies seem better already, have had a sneaking suspicion for a while that they were connected to wheat.

Anyone made the sausage and egg breakfast bites

Whoever was asking about black pudding John Briffa says it's OK as an occasional breakfast.

Oh nappyaddict those sausage and egg bites look delicious!

There are some really lovely recipes on that blog. I don't know that I'm quite ready to grind my own meat . But good quality mince would be an easy option.

I had crispy bacon with galia melon slices. Yum, yum. Might try a version of a salad I had in Palma: thin pancetta, smoked salmon and garlic frizzled in olive oil with a little balsamic over lamb's lettuce. I could swap for thin bacon and add avocado too...

Thanks Quirky and QueenS for your info/tips.

i don't feel at all hungry today - weird!

Want to weigh myself but loathe it - have to psyche myself up!

You're probably in ketosis earthpixie - one of the most obvious symptoms is not feeling very hungry because your body has just noticed that you aren't actually starving and that you're carrying around plenty of food. Chronically high levels of insulin caused by eating a "normal diet" actually creates a state in your body where even though you are eating enough food and have plenty of fat stores, the cells in your body are starving because as soon as you eat something lots of it gets immediately turned into fat and locked into your fat cells which means you have to eat again soon after because insulin not only causes fat to be made, but stops it being released from the fat cells. If you control your insulin by eating a low carb diet then the fat can be released from the cells and once it's in your bloodstream it doesn't matter if it came from your thighs or from the bacon you ate earlier - it's still food for your cells.

Hello people I am officially at a major plateau or the end of weight loss and start of maintenance - how do I know if I've reached my 'point' to stop? I've not lost any weight for 3 weeks, and observed that the only days when I have lost anything is when I've eaten virtually nothing the day before. I want to lose 5 more lbs but I don't want to have to eat nothing. Am also finding it hard to deal with having to eat like this just to stay this weight - I see friends slimmer than me who have all the bad stuff and don't put on a pound.