Feeling slightly less nutso, hermit, crazy person this week. I figure at this rate in another two weeks I may even willingly leave the house and walk among the common people (not that I’m a greater than thou royal snob…I mean common as in akin to ordinary, normal and regular…you know…the people that see and even speak to other human beings on a regular basis…eek!).
I have a confession on the dieting front. I thought I could do the Atkins/Low Carb thing and passionately believe in the new lifestyle and embrace the changes to my diet as the right thing to do. I was wrong. I am still haunted by my previous revelations about healthy life style and food choices. I still believe in whole foods, cutting back on meat consumption, upping fruit and veg, drinking more water, cutting out bad fats and increasing the good fats, always eating wholemeal/wholegrain (my kids don’t know what white floured baked goods taste like for the most part, they’re going to go nuts on white bread when they’re grown!) and eating a balanced diet…
…so where does that leave me?
Atkins “Induction” and “Ongoing Weight Loss” plans cover the veggie element to a certain extent but you don’t have free rein to eat as many veggies as your heart desires. Whilst it doesn’t outright say, “go nuts with the oils, butter, mayonnaise, cheese, cream and as much meat as you could possibly squeeze in” that’s pretty much where a person ends up. Sure the Atkins recipe’s are great and there are a lot of alternatives to food’s we currently eat ultimately we live in a lazy society (or is that just me?). Now, I’m going to go ahead and make some lazy suggestions for Atkins goers below because ultimately I’m a lazy cow 90% of the time and if I hadn’t found quick, easy, low mess options then this diet would never have worked for me. However, it’s just not the same as being able to grab a packet of pasta from the grocery shop along with the ingredients for whipping up a yummy sauce to go with it and then sprinkling a generous amount of cheese on top. There are pasta alternative recipe’s but lets face it, on a busy week day how many of us actually make our own pasta from scratch? That’s not an alternative that’s extra work.
I was very pleased to discover that Flaxseed Meal is still okay and Flax Muffins are an awesome breaky (I like mine with peanut butter) not to mention they address the whole backed up inevitability that comes with starting on Atkins. The Flaxseed muffin I’ve been making for months (I found it whilst still calorie counting) is a bariatric-eating recipe made in a mug in the microwave. It was a super easy recipe, BUT after flipping through my new low-carb bible, (The Low-Carb Gourmet by Karen Barnaby) and swooning over her recipes I read through her info on Flaxseed Meal and its not okay to microwave it! By microwaving it your nuking out the good stuff. She has a recipe for flax muffins baked the conventional way so I’ll report back on how they turn out. You can also make Flaxseed Bread which I haven’t yet tried but has great reviews (honestly when you’ve gone weeks without a slice of toast dripping with butter and in my case a generous slather of vegemite then any bread is going to be orgasmic).
For over a month my standard breakfast (that kept me going until 2pm most days) entailed frying in a little oil either a turkey breast, a beef/pork steak or a few pork sausages. Then frying a few rashers of bacon and sometimes an egg. Then I’d balance the plate out with a loosely packed cup of baby spinach leaves, a grilled tomato, a few pitted olives, salad onion and up to half a crunchy cucumber sliced. My fav sauce was (and still is) a roasted garlic mayonnaise (if you’re low-carbing you really need to read the nutritional table on your flavoured mayo’s, a large percentage of them add a lot more than the “mayo + [blah]” on the label. If you can find a good one though it will jazz up your meat and salad immensely!).
I of course got completely sick of this (as any sane person would).
Fresh prawns fried in a little butter with garlic and mushrooms plus the aforementioned salad got me through another few weeks and lately I’m just preparing my salad, adding a babybell cheese and deciding randomly which of the meat selection in the fridge I feel like today.
Creamy coleslaw (check the nutritional table for carbs count) and fresh olives (stuffed with anything from garlic cloves to jalapeno peppers) from the deli are a must have. Jars of roasted red peppers (that’s capsicum for Aussies) in olive oil and pesto’s (basil is my fav) make life much more pleasurable also.
Cream! I have a cow’s milk protein allergy so honestly I envy any low-carber who can have cheese, cream and butter to their heart’s desire without doing the waiting game on the cramps and the rashes to follow. Yes I should be using more tofu but I figure that’s another branch I can take when I’m mind numbingly bored with what I’m currently experimenting. I do have quite a bit of dairy and I’m dealing with the repercussions for now. I’m glad I went for the blander options at first because adding cream’s and butter in at this stage has jazzed up my meals and made me feel spoilt (like I should be dreading how much weight I’m going to gain after a naughty day…only instead I lose weight….weird).
I’m not perfectly sticking to plan (I’m such a shoddy rule follower) but I’m doing okay.
I’m honestly hoping that if I stick with this until I’ve lost the weight, then maintenance with fruits and grains will satisfy my health concerns.
If not…well at this point I’m just happy to be semi-sticking with something and seeing results and I’ll revisit this niggling concern at a later date.
Chaotically Rambling 