List your best low carb BREAKFASTS and SNACKS here please?

[VulpusinaWilfsuit]

I am going to do it. I have been slooooowly losing weight and now I need to kickstart it, so going to do a week of lowcarbing and see how it goes.

But I am buggered if I know what to eat for breakfast and I know I am going to need to snack. I don't know if I can go the whole hardly any carbs to start off thing (can I?) as am an ADDICT.

So, wondering if a teeny tiny bit of porridge might keep me going rather than bacon and eggs every day? And I know on the Atkins regime nuts and seeds are out for a while but...

Lunch and dinner I can work out (salad, with meat, fish etc)

So. What does everyone else do for snacks and breakfast etc? Thanks.

Anybody?

Not very imaginative but I have been eating a roll of ham and a piece of cheese. Dull I know, but it stops me being hungry.

At least this response will bump the thread.

(But I have lost 8lbs in about 3 weeks.)

I did Atkinsd for months earlier in the year - stopped as pregnant.

Breakfast was always the hardest. Good thing though is I found a low carb b/fast really reaaly stopped me feeling hungry way more than carbs despite equivalent calories.

If you want to get to/stay in ketosis then porridge is a no go.

I used to have predominantly eggs (omlettes or scrambled). Occasionally a can of tuna and mayo, sometimes smoked salmon and cream cheese or some prawns and avocado. Kippers were also a treat but tended to repeat.

I wouldn't do this in the first 2 weeks of lo-carbing, but for breakfasts, I had berries with creme fraiche as they are the lowest carb fruit, or had All Bran, as virtually all the carbs are fibre.

Snacks - cheese with ham, cheese and pickled onion, low carb crispreads (yellow box) with cottage cheese or low fat philly, nuts.

I would roast a chicken and have a couple of slices for a snack, perhaps augmented with a bit of salad.

For snacking nuts, cheese, pickled eggs (!), pepperamis

poached egg on quorn smoked ham with gerkins or spring onions.

scrambled egg with chopped quorn ham and spring onions

nuts and dried/fresh fruit for snacks

It isn't low carb but I find that a bowl of porridge keeps me going until lunch. I eat fruit,dates or dried apricots as snacks.

Why thank you everyone. I must go shopping so I can actually start doing it instead of just thinking about it.

Don't you end up smelling just a little bit, um, eggy though?

And fishy?

And ketones on top of that? Yum, it must be a shagathon in all those low carb households. Thank god DH has agreed to have a go with me, even though I know whole stones will drop off him in a week.

My favourite low carb food for breakfast is cream cheese muffins, I don't seem to get sick of them:

www.apinchofhealth.com/forum/vbb/showthread.php?t=5632

Are you low carbing 'generally' or are you following Atkins induction?

If the latter, then things are a lot stricter and porridge certainly isn't allowed! Nor is any fruit or yoghurt.

If you're just cutting down on carbs, then full fat yoghurt (Total make a lovely one) with strawberries/blueberries or raspberries is lovely. I sometimes add some vanilla essence.

Otherwise, my usual breakfast is eggs of some sort. At the moment, my current 'thing' is boiled eggs, and I find that a couple of these is more than enough to keep me going until lunch without any desire to snack. Honestly.

The really great thing about low carbing is that you will find that you don't get that hungry between meals. it's not uncommon for me to forget to eat lunch - something that would never happen if I was doing a low calorie diet - it was hard to get ast 11 am without eating anything!

Otherwise, for breakfast - apart from other egg-based dishes, try to look at it as just another meal, and not view it as a meal that requires certain sorts of dishes. Sometimes I might eat leftovers from dinner the night before.

Mushrooms are also very low carb. Sometimes I buy the large ones and bake them with a little olive oil, sometimes some bacon chopped into them and some cheese.

Re snacks - if you really need to snack, one of the great joys of low carbing is that fat is positively encouraged, therefore you can snack on cheese and nuts. Just be careful about the quantities of these as they are also very high calorie, so too much can undo your good efforts.

Thanks. I still haven't started but we have just had another bug and not sure I could face eggs or bacon for breakfast right now. But will do V soon. Thanks for the suggestions.

BIWI, are you doing the full Atkins induction? It seems so extreme. I am wondering if I can lose weight without going the whole hog or whether it is pointless.

I am, also, still doing a teeny bit of breastfeeding so am not sure whether it is wise to completely cut out (will it affect milk for example... I believe not in general but ketones might make it taste funny?)

Am prevaricating and must just get on with it...

BTW those breakfast suggestions - full fat yog with berries and vanilla essence, and mushrooms, bacon and cheese sound DELICIOUS...!

I love mushrooms (fried in olive oil and butter with chives and tamari or soy sauce and garlic) on toast... will have to adapt that without the toast.

I just low carb generally (some days better than others ).

Atkins induction is extreme, but as long as you follow it properly (i.e. make sure that your 20g of carbs daily come from green veg and salad), it's not an unhealthy way to eat. No alcohol and an emphasis on fresh, unprocessed foods.

But I have no idea about doing it and breast feeding - would have to go back to the book for that. If you haven't got the book I can look it up for you?

Thanks BIWI. I do have the book and it deffo says not. But this is by no means exclusive BF - he is nearly 2 and if the taste meant he would actually give up of his own accord I would be delighted...

So. I wonder if it could do harm? Hmm better check.

Am gearing up.

I have been thinking a lot about steak, which I NEVER ever buy or order thinking too much fat and red meat is bad. And in France this year had the most wonderful steak in some kind of sauce. And tried to recreate it and was a chewy, cardboardy disaster.

So any low carbers have fantastic steak advice for me? How to find great meat? And how to cook so it isn't bleeding but not solid?

My favourite steak is fillet steak - which I know is not to everyone's taste. And, of course, it's bloody expensive!

My top tip:

Each steak should be 3/4 inch thick, minimum. Marinade steaks in olive oil, lemon juice and black pepper for c. 20 minutes before cooking. Dry the meat with kitchen towel before cooking.

Heat a frying pan till smoking hot. Add a little oil and when that's hot, put the steaks in. Leave the steaks - don't move them around or turn them over - and fry for 2 minutes on each side. This will make them rare, so you can increase the time if you want them cooked through more.

Put onto a warm plate, salt them, and then leave to rest for about 5 minutes, then serve.