chicken breast stuffed with philidephia and wrapped in bacon

Chicken.

Chicken is meat and therefore zero carbs.  This doesn’t mean you can eat breaded chicken or KFC (obviously!)  You should also not buy reconstituted chicken products or shaped chicken products from the supermarket.

chicken breast stuffed with philidephia and wrapped in bacon

carb count

philly = 0.5 per oz

chicken = zero

bacon = zero

Polyols Isomalt

Polyols are a sugar substitute.  If you look on lowcarbmegastore at the sweets, you will find that they are described as zero carb, yet the ingredients say 81 carbs, 81 polyols.  this is becuase the sugar sustitute isn’t sugar but is carbs.  the way it works is that if you have under 10 polyols a day – its considered free food.  so yes, you can buy a bag of zero carb sweets, but can’eat them all in one go!

You may also find these are termed Isomalt.  I’m not a scientist, but common sense tells me that nothing is free, there is no such thing as unlimited carb free chocolate.  so sure, treat yourself, but only eat a small amount at a time

Carbaholic Basics

Thought i would post some carb musings and advice and tips which in no way  purport to be healthy. Doctors warn pregnant women, alcoholics, or people with kidney or liver disease never to go on a ketogenic diet. If your worried about your weight… see a doctor.  But if you want to know more, read on…

Tools of the trade:

• Digital scales
• Flavoured Olive Oil
• Spices and herbs
• http://www.lowcarbmegastore.com

How Does It work?

When people eat carbs, the body releases insulin into the blood.  Its role is to burn down the sugar molecules that circulate in the blood and to diminish the harmful effects that high levels of sugar have on the body.

By the activity of insulin, carbohydrates are converted into fat.  insulin prevents the fat cells from releasing fat into the blood and burning it. So the body begins to deposit fat. At an average of thirty grams of carbohydrate per day, the insulin levels in the blood system are kept down and the body burns all the fat consumed and released from the fat cells.
Another side effect of insulin is the stimulation of hunger signals to the brain. The result is craving for more and more carbs.
When the carbohydrate intake is restricted, the insulin level goes down and the level of glucagon increases. Glucagon is a hormone that stimulates the burning of body fat and the removal of cholesterol from the arteries.

When people drastically cut down on carbs in their diet, (e.g. to up to 30 grams daily), the body quickly goes into a condition called “ketosis”– i.e. the burning of fat with the production of ketone bodies in the bloodstream.

the ketones released with ketogenic diets reduce the release of insulin and the stress hormones. As a result, the blood sugar becomes more stable, hunger is calmed down, and anxiety is reduced.

Ketosis

ketosis merely means that our bodies are using fat for energy

When people eat less carbohydrate, their bodies burn fat for energy

In short your body uses the existing stores of fat.

You cannot eat

bread ( unless it is specifically low carb bread from a specialist)

bread products ( bread sticks, crackers etc)

Rice

Pasta

Root vegetables ( carrot, swede, turnip potato)

Fruit ( becuase it’s full of natural sugar)

sweets, crisps, chocolate etc

nuts & seeds,

MILK – take your tea and coffee black!

Sugar

You can eat.

all kinds of meat

all kinds of fish

limited vegetables

eggs

butter

limited amounts of full fat cream

limited amounts of cheese

limited amounts of cottage cheese

limited amounts of soft cheese

sweetner ( although they have a carb value becuase of the starch content, so count it!)

FIBRE!

You won’t be getting a lot of fibre in your diet, however you should note that the carb value YOU count is minus any fibre

so if a food has say 3g carb and 3g fibre – the net carb value is ZERO

Sausages & Burgers

Sausages & burgers as we all know are usually filled with the arse end of everything.  They are also stuffed full of carbs as they are ‘padded’ with starch and bread crumbs.  YOU MUST read the back of a packet of before buying.

top tip – Sainsbos do chippolata sausages at 0.6 carbs each. this is the lowest i have found and oh boy have i searched! Search for 100% beef burgers for a low carb count

Black farmer Sausages – expensive – but worth it – thick sausage with high meat content –

 

 

How should you start?

Start off at 20grams of carbs per day.  remember that if you cheat just a little incy wincy bit, all your hard work will be for nought!  this is why this diet has worked so well for me.  If you go over your daily allowence of carbs you will come out of Ketosis and your body will store the fat.  It can then take upto 3 days to return into Ketosis.  This is very disheartening as you have to diet for three days without a visible effect.

weigh yourself at the same time every day.  Mark your weight down on a calender or in your diary or blog.  alternatively you can use http://www.fitday.com to record what you eat and your weight.

You can eat as much as you want of meat and so you shouldn’t go hungry.  This diet gets you out of the snacking habit.

 

What Recipes?

Google is great for getting recipes although  this diet is very popular across the pond and so often times a recipe may have an ingredient or two that is a specialist item and is hard to find here.

Alcohol

no beer – its not worth it.

wine is carbalicious – not worth it

so its the hard stuff – distilled liquors such as vodka and gin with diet coke or lemonade.

no alcohol for the first week ( yeah right!)

Caffeine

Dr Atkins advises on giving up caffeine for the first week.  I think bolleaux to that, ineed caffeine. Remember no milk or sugar.   use splenda and full cream or give up cream and sugar altogether.

Sweeteners

Sweeteners have a carb value so count it.  The lowest carb sweetener is splenda.  however if you are stretching every carb and making it count, if your coffee is important to you and you can’t live without it, you might consider buying Davinci sugar free syrup.  It is quite expensive but is carb free.  you can buy in different flavours which makes coffee quite an intresting experiment at first, especially nice flavours are cinnamon and hazelnut.  You can buy this from lowcarbmegastore.com