Hey! It’s low carb this! lowcarbthis.com time and I found a few items today I thought were worth sharing, considering their very low carbohydrate counts. I’m not endorsing any of these, I just think it’s great when we can share LC knowledge!

It is very easy to cut down on the amounts of carbohydrates you consume when you check out the list of the acceptable proteins and vegetables in the Atkins list. But the Atkins diet is too different from the normal manner of our eating, and that is the reason why it will take some getting used to. American food is generally about carbohydrates, and that extends even to the snacks. The Atkins diet is too deviated from this kind of eating. Using some substitutes for the carbohydrate foods might stave off this situation though.

Sugar substitutes are the most important in this list. Now, sugar substitutes can be both good as well as bad, depending on the constitution of your body. Aspartame and Splenda may not be good for everyone. But they can be used in preparing low carbohydrate snacks. These can be used in making sweet snacks without actually having any carbohydrates in them. There is criticism, though. Some people find that they crave for real carbohydrates much more after having these artificial sweeteners. If you find that is happening with you, you will need to eliminate them from your diet completely.

One more difficult food to give up is bread. Bread is almost a staple food, a primary food, which people cannot do without. There are low carbohydrate breads available in the market, but more often than not, they will contain masked carbohydrates in them and some other stuff that you can certainly do without. If you have the time and the inclination, you can check out a recipe for making low carbohydrate bread yourself. That way, you can be sure what you are putting into the bread.

Pasta follows the list of common carbohydrates that people consume. Pasta is a favorite food for many people, but the thing that makes pastas delicious are the toppings that go with it. The toppings could be meat, vegetables or cheese, but people on the Atkins diet could also do well if they use squash as a substitute for the pasta. Spaghetti squash is a recommended option. It is a yellow gourd and makes a good replacement for pasta. Another option is zucchini. You can replace noodles with lasagna made with large pieces of eggplant. Since the meats and cheeses used are all low carbohydrate, they fit in well with the Atkins requisites.

Finding a substitute for rice becomes a bit difficult. Some people would use cauliflower, which is chopped into small pieces in a food processor. These are then cooked in a microwave without any water. They become like rice, and can be used in all kinds of rice dishes.

You can also substitute potatoes with cauliflowers. You will have to puree the cauliflower till it is smooth and resembles mashed potatoes in texture. Then add the topping you prefer, and you have something that looks like potatoes, but doesn’t have those harmful carbohydrates in it.

If you love pizzas, there’s no need to sacrifice them when you are on the Atkins diet too. You can make some Atkins permissible pizzas at home. Use low carbohydrates tortillas to make the crust, or you can use Portobello mushrooms to make the crust.

These are great substitutes for the normal carbohydrates foods that we eat. They look good, taste good and fit in with the Atkins plan.

Darren Williger is a guitar playing, tea drinking, meditating, low carbohydrate eating, wine making sales maker who writes for MyLowCarbPages.com, and MindSatori.com.

taking an exploratory journey through random items in my kitchen to uncover the actual “net carbs” within. There’s so many low carb options to enjoy as well as several ways to mistakengly have too many carbs when we’re not paying attention to the nutrition facts within our foods. Today we’re also exploring a few of the better low carb books I’ve been reading, including Neanderthin, Secrets to Low Carb Success and the Low Carb Bible.

What is Carbohydrate Net Anyway?

Net carbs are the carbohydrates that can be digested and processed by the body as dietary carbohydrate. Therefore, they directly impact blood sugar. You can determine how many net carbs you are eating by subtracting the grams of fibre, glycerine, and sugar alcohols from the total grams of carbohydrate. Net carbs are the only carbs that you need to count when you are on low-carb diets, such as the Atkins diet.

It is important to understand why fibre does not count as a regular carbohydrate. Fibre substance does not break down into sugar, so it does not play a part in the overall sugar load of the carbohydrate. If a slice of bread has 27 total carbohydrate grams and 3 grams of fibre you have a net carbohydrate content of 24 grams (27 g ? 3 grams = 24 grams). This explains why some high fibre foods will have a more favourable impact on the blood sugar and insulin levels.

Only plant foods contain dietary fibre. Fibre has a number of effects on digestion, some beneficial, and some more harmful. One positive effect is that fibre is likely to decelerate the rate of digestion of food. This leads to a more gradual emptying of the food from the stomach into the small intestine. This means that there is less possibility of large quantities of glucose being absorbed quickly from the small intestine into the blood, and therefore a lower chance of an insulin surge. Insulin is the hormone that is released when glucose is absorbed from the small intestine. It is possible that by slowing stomach emptying, fibre helps avoid the situation where the body has to produce large quantities of insulin, as a result of repeated rapid release of glucose into the intestine. In turn this may help protect against diabetes in susceptible people.

However, fibre does get in the way with the absorption of some nutrients. For example, up to 5% of the fat in a moderately high fibre diet is not absorbed because of this interference. This may even be a good thing in Australia, given that 63% of men and 47% of women were overweight in 1995, with no sign that these levels of overweight and obesity will decrease. High fibre foods also interfere to some extent with the absorption of some essential minerals and trace elements, but a high fibre diet is also probable to provide you with extra minerals and trace elements, so the effect is not believed to be very significant for normal Western diets.

Despite these minor detrimental effects, a high fibre intake is understood to be considerably advantageous on the whole. Low intake of fibre, particularly of the insoluble forms of fibre such as those in bread and other wheat products, is one of the major causes of constipation. Low fibre intakes are also strongly associated with an increased risk of diverticulitis. Although the evidence is less compelling, lack of fibre in the diet may also contribute to the incidence of rectal cancer, haemorrhoids, obesity, appendicitis and ulcerative colitis. High intake of soluble fibres such as the pectin and gums, found in fruits, vegetables, rolled oats, and saponins, found in legumes, is associated with reduced blood cholesterol. High intake of foods of plant origin, all of which contain some fibre, is linked with a reduced threat of heart disease, cancer, and an improved life expectancy.

Another benefit, and one that may help with weight control, is the sensation of satiety, that is, a feeling of fullness, which follows a meal plentiful in fibre. It is also true that high fibre foods are almost always low in fat, so a high-fibre diet will usually be a low-fat diet.

A Low Carb Diet Worked For Me

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the important of cutting out carbohydrates, or carbs, from a normal diet. I cannot tell you how many articles I have read and how many news clips I have watched about the benefits of a low-carb eating plan. Frankly, I’m a little tired of hearing all the reasons that I should alter what I eat. I’m sick of hearing about all of the consequences if I don’t make these changes. I do not, therefore, want to attempt to convince anyone reading to make the change to a low-carb diet. I simply want to share that changing to a low-carb diet completely worked for me and my lifestyle.

I cannot remember exactly what it was that led me to taking the plunge into the world of low-carb for myself. I think perhaps I was just tired of being overweight and of feeling lethargic all the time. I guess it is true that life has to get really bad and that we have to want to make changes before we actually will. My physical health got bad enough that I really desired to make changes. So I spent a few afternoons at my local bookstore and came away with a few books that seemed the most reasonable and the most helpful at the end of my search. One of them was all about going low-carb.

I was leery of going low-carb for one main reason: I liked carbs and most foods that were carb-filled a lot. I liked eating breads, pastries, sandwiches, cookies and many other carb-friendly things. I knew that if I attempted to cut back on carbs it would really alter my diet. It took me a few days of debating before I came to realize that yes, I did want to try the low-carb plan and see if it worked.

I began my trial of low-carb eating by going through my pantry and refrigerator and tossing out everything that went against what the low-carb book said I should be eating. I was amazed at how little was left. Only at that moment did I truly see how unbalanced my diet had been. I went to the store and replaced the carbs with fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean protein foods. I picked up a couple of whole-grain items to fulfill the small amount of carbs I was supposed to be eating.

This marked the beginning of a sixty day trial eating a low-carb diet. Within days I was shocked by how different I felt and by how much my cravings had changed. Sixty days after I started my low-carb diet I was many pounds lighter, full of more energy, and I looked better than I had in a decade. So, take this for what it’s worth. I’m not saying you should do a low-carb eating plan. I’m simply saying that doing a low-carb plan radically changed my life.

Frankly speaking, the Atkins diet is one of the simplest programs to follow for weight loss. Its restrictions and allowances are clearly mentioned in several books. But that does not mean there cannot be misunderstandings. Sometimes, these mistakes can make all the difference between weight loss and weight gain. This is what happens to some people when they are making mistakes with the Atkins plan. Let’s enumerate these common mistakes.

The first thing is that the Atkins program requires the dieter to be patient. The first phase, i.e. the induction phase can bring about fast weight loss, even up to eight pounds in the first week, but it will slow down after that. The induction phase is quite drastic. The later stages allow for more carbohydrate grams to be consumed and that will continue till the end of the program. The induction phase is your breaking in stage; the main purpose of this phase is to detoxify your body from the sugars that are present in it. But after that, you can introduce small amounts of carbohydrates in your diet, and due to that, the weight loss might occur slower than at the start.

Another thing to be borne in mind is that different people act in different ways to the Atkins diet. You might lose weight sporadically, or you might lose weight on a continuous basis. You might also have a lock in weight condition for a few weeks, and then a sudden decrease. All this is normal.

It is important to avoid caffeine and artificial sweeteners like aspartame when on the diet. There is caffeine in coffee and diet sodas too. Aspartame is present in gelatin and in diet sodas. If you take such substances, you are having a negative effect on your blood sugar levels, and might stop the useful reaction of ketosis in your body.

Though cheese is permitted on the Atkins diet, it is important to watch out for how much cheese you consume. Cheese does have some carbohydrates. It is wise to restrict its intake to four ounces a day, with some additional amounts on occasions. Instead of cheese, foods that can be used for protein intake in the body could be meats, tofu and eggs.

It is also important to consume vegetables during the induction phase. The vegetables taken in must be the leafy green vegetables that have more fiber. These vegetables can give you satiation from hunger and will not add to blood sugar levels. Have them in measured amounts, though. Three to four cups of salads and one cup of cooked vegetable per day is all that you should have. Also, there are many vegetables that the Atkins program prohibits. Do not consume these vegetables; they can cause your weight loss program to stop.

Keep eating constantly when you are following the Atkins diet. You must not allow six hours without food entering your system at a stretch. Have a snack of fats and proteins to keep up. When you skip meals, you will have a drastic lowering in your blood sugar level, and that will make you want carbohydrates. Also, it will weaken the reactions occurring in your body, due to which you will find losing weight difficult.

Do not cut out on the water amount you take in your body. Water has several benefits. Keeping hydrated will also reduce your hunger pangs, and avoid problems such as constipation, which might happen in the initial stages of the Atkins diet. It will also help to eliminate the toxins from your body.

Due to such mistakes people find that the Atkins diet is not working for them. It is necessary to know about these blunders and stop committing them, so that the best effects of the Atkins diet can be felt.