When people first try to reduce their carbs, they find it hard to give up the convenience of all those grains. What do you eat instead of sandwiches for lunch? How do you give up pasta or rice as a dinner-time staple? What do you eat instead of cereal or muffins or pancakes for breakfast? Or, they can’t imagine giving up their sweet tooth. How do you go without dessert????!!!
If any of that describes you, then this post is for you. This is the culmination of all the Real Food low-carb advice I’ve given to folks over the years — the definitive guide of handy tips to help you with your adjustment.
For the record, I’m not currently on a true low-carb diet. I eat somewhere between 100-150 grams of carbs per day. To someone still addicted to eating starches or grains at every meal, that probably does seem low-carb. Trust me, it’s not. If you want to lose weight and use up your fat stores, check out the info in yesterday’s post on how to safely enter ketosis on a diet consisting of 50-80 grams of carbs per day.
Everyone will do this a bit differently, but here are the tips the most people I’ve talked to have found the most useful when trying to get down to that fat-burning range:
LOW-CARB BREAKFAST TIPS
1) Eggs are your friends. They taste great with extra fat on them (butter & bacon grease are my morning favorites), and they cook fast! Get creative:
- Eggs can be scrambled with onions, peppers, & tomatoes, but they can also be scrambled with spinach or kale.
- Omelets are fun. I make mine with leftover meats or cheese.
- Use herbs! Salt & pepper are good as far as they go, but try an omelet or a baked egg made with rosemary & basil.
- Take them “to-go” by making them portable. Bake a batch in muffin-tins. Pre-fill the tins with grated cheese, chopped veggies, and bits of bacon or other left over meats, then pour the stirred eggs on top. Bake them in the tins, let cool, remove, and PRESTO! You’ve got portable breakfasts.
- Poach them in your leftovers — stews, sauces, broths. So yummy!
- Eat the yolks raw in smoothies. For lower-carb smoothie options, use coconut milk, kefir, or yogurt for the liquid and be sure to add in a low-sugar fruit like berries instead of something super-sweet like bananas or pineapples. Blend in avocados, nut butters, cocoa or vanilla extract.
2) Go coconut! Coconut flour is low in carbs and makes excellent waffles, pancakes, and muffins. Use low-sugar fruits like berries to make your “syrup” or sweeten up your muffins. Check out this cookbook full of coconut-flour recipes. Another exotic addition to my vocabulary is this foreign plant I’m told of, apparently, forskolin extract been used for years and it does wonders to your metabolism in the morning.
LOW CARB LUNCH TIPS (NEXT PAGE)
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