Day 3: I’m just bellyachin’

I tell you when I burn my oven mitts.  I tell you when I screw up recipes.  Today I’m gonna be honest: my belly hurts.  It usually gets like this when there’s a major food switch-up.  Could be the lack of gallbladder (though I doubt it, since I haven’t majorly increased or decreased fat), could be what I’ve always suspected is IBS but don’t care to get diagnosed because they can’t do anything about it anyway.  This is an N=1 experiment though, and this 1 is not feeling well.  This means positively nothing for the rest of the planet, just me.  I’m working on doing some minor switcheroos tomorrow to just include tried and true foods to stop my bellyachin’.

I haven’t really eaten any dinner so I have nothing fancy to report.  For lunch I made a vegetarian version of a new standby in our house: fathead pizza.  Guess which half of the pizza is mine and which was my husband’s?

Spinach and feta on one side, pepperoni on the other.

Day 2: Creamy Vegetable Thai Red Coconut Curry

One of the most important things to do when you have to make a dietary switch is to not make it too complicated on yourself.  If you find yourself allergic or intolerant of nuts, you don’t need to go crazy finding nut substitutes.  If you are diagnosed celiac, you don’t need to go crazy finding wheat substitutes.  Just because I’m not eating meat, doesn’t mean I need to eat meat substitutes.  There’s a lot of veggie burgers that are loaded with junk, and I’m not willing to eat junk when I can easily eat the same delicious meals that I enjoy eating every day minus the meat.

For breakfast, I ate some delicious deviled eggs that I made a couple days ago.  I had this big mess making them and they were probably the ugliest looking deviled eggs, but the still tasted great.

Lunch was a recipe that someone posted on facebook a few days ago.  It was an amazing looking coconut curry.  Coconut milk (from the can, not those refrigerated cartons) is high on fat and can be the base of a great LCHF meal.  I switched out the sweet potato in the recipe and put in zucchini instead.  I also took out the red bell pepper because those don’t sit well in my tummy.  My grocery store didn’t have snow peas so I just used sugar snap peas.  I think I put about 2 tbsp of coconut oil into the recipe.

I did make one mistake when making the recipe… I added in cilantro.  It IS in the recipe, but I don’t like cilantro.  If you don’t like something in a recipe, don’t add it.  The rest of it was delicious!  I inputted my alterations into a calculator and it is 14% carbs, 81% fat, well within LCHF guidelines.  And it’s vegan, so this is a great dish to serve when you have guests with dietary restrictions.

http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/get-inspiralized-meet-blogger-ali-maffucci/

Recipe Round-up: Slow cooker veggie stock

I’ll let you in on a secret: sometimes, I add vegetable stock to my chicken soup, because it adds a depth of flavor that meat alone can’t bring.  It is also a great thing to have on hand when vegetarian friends come over.  Homemade vegetable stock is so cool because you don’t need to buy vegetables especially for it.  You know when you’re spiralizing a zucchini, and there’s some zucchini shreds and core left over?  Throw those in a baggie in the freezer.  Got half an onion left over from a recipe that you know you’re not going to use up?  Throw that into that baggie.  Slowly but surely, that veggie leftover baggie is gonna fill up.  When I make chicken stock, there is always more carrots and celery than I end up needing, so those always go into a baggie.  Sometimes they go towards the next batch of chicken stock, but sometimes they go towards a batch of veggie stock.  Tonight, since it’s Vegetarian Challenge Month, I obviously went with the veggie stock.  I also had half a red onion and some scallions left over from making a fathead pizza, I threw in a bay leaf, some dried shiitake mushrooms, and some peppercorns.  When I wake up in the morning, there’s gonna be magic in that crock.

http://hellyeahitsvegan.com/make-your-own-vegetable-stock/

What I learned from 6 weeks of no weigh-ins, plus my last meat meal for a month!

As previously mentioned, I just went 6 weeks without weighing in on a scale.  I’ve always thought of myself as being pretty objective with the scale usage; I thought it was just a tool to give me a number, and I didn’t think it controlled my emotions or actions. Man, was I wrong!

• Within the first week, I was having dreams about weighing in.  Pretty crazy.  For something to be so ingrained that when I stop doing it in my waking life that it enters my dreams, that’s intense.
• I felt like I NEEDED to know what the scale said.  Never mind that I could feel whether or not my shirt or pants were getting tight or loose.  Or that I owned a tape measure.  Or the other items that I’ve mentioned are ways to track progress.
• But I also felt kind of free… but maybe too free.  While it was nice to be able to eat a peanut butter ball at Christmas and a couple of clementines and not see that sugar bloat show up on the scale, I think that not seeing that reaction may have led me to take more liberties than normal because I wasn’t going to see the damage for 6 weeks.

So, I think it was an interesting thing to do.  I’m at at the same weight I was 6 weeks ago, and that includes holiday gatherings and current bloat so I think I’ll still call success.  I also went from dancing between two shirt sizes to being definitely in the lower shirt size during those 6 weeks.  The scale isn’t going to stay in the closet anymore but I think I’ve gotten a healthier head about what the scale says.

To the topic of meat… tonight I had my last meat meal for a month!  We went to a local hole-in-the-wall burger joint and I had a bacon cheeseburger and took off the bun.  This place, like many burger places around here, puts butter on the burgers. Pure heaven.

Superhusband is still a little skeptical about this whole Vegetarian Challenge Month thing that I’m doing, and is definitely not participating.  I’m going to be doing some research finding some local places that are both veggie and meat friendly.  I was also thinking about some ground rules that I wanted to establish that some vegans and vegetarians may be wondering about:

• I will still be eating cheese and eggs, so this is truly a vegetarian challenge, not a vegan challenge.  I’m sure I’ll be having some vegan dishes as I have vegan dishes several times a month.  Heck, hubby will probably be having his favorite accidentally vegan dessert some point soon.
• I will not be eating any meat including fish or chicken during this challenge (cuuuz that wouldn’t be vegetarian).  I say this because some people still think that vegetarians eat fish.  I also won’t be using rendered animal fat.
• Going along with the last bullet point, there are some instances that restaurants use animal fat to make things taste yummier (like, rolling a baked potato in bacon fat).  If I’ve heard that a place does that with a dish, I won’t eat it.  However, I’m not going to go out of my way to find these things out.  This is mostly for my sanity.  I’m aware of this issue.
• My exact ratios/carb counts may not be in total line with LCHF.  I’m going to work to keep my fats as high as possible, while still creating actual meals.  It’s one month.  Not a big deal.  The world will not end.

So there you go!  Starting tomorrow, for all of February, I will be meat-free.  Please feel free to comment with your favorite meat-free recipes to keep me fed! 😀

Guest post: My mom’s biometric results

My mom posted on LCHF America’s Facebook page today.  I knew she was going in for her biometric screening, but I didn’t know the results before I saw her post.  It put a big smile on my face to read it.  She’s been a diabetic for years, and LCHF has really been helping with her daily glucose readings.  Her post really speaks for itself; with her permission, I’m reposting here.  Please feel free to pop on over to our Facebook page to her original post to comment!

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I’m a 50-something, overweight, diabetic woman. While I don’t follow the LCHF regimen as tightly as my daughter does, I adhere to it pretty strongly. I had my labs done today, and I’m happy to share the results. Note that my LCHF or NSNG odyssey began in early June, 2013.

Per the Mayo Clinic
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/cholesterol-levels/art-20048245

Total cholesterol desirable < 200 – mine 161
LDL cholesterol ideal < 100 – mine 71
HDL cholesterol best > 60 – mine 63
Triglicerides desirable < 150 – mine 136

And the best news for me…as a diabetic (from http://www.diabetesforecast.org/2013/feb/meet-your-a1c.html )
“An A1C of below 5.7 percent is considered normal, while A1C levels of 6.5 percent and above call for a diagnosis of diabetes.”

My HbA1c today was 5.7! 

While I will always be a diabetic, the amount of medicine I take now has to be lowered. I’ve had some weight loss (quite needed), but it is not the focus of my way of eating. NSNG or LCHF is just a sensible (and delicious) diet for this woman.

February: Vegetarian Challenge Month (!!)

Image courtesy of KEKO64 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I agreed to a challenge for next month: eat all vegetarian meals.  The challenge was posed in a group I’m in and I agreed for a few reasons.

• While I love meat and have no plans on permanently giving it up, I know that the human body is super cool and can run on lots of different fuel.  Flex fuel, yo.  I support those who are vegans and vegetarian wholeheartedly.
• Some people, like those who eat halal food or people who are very particular about eating only grass-fed or pastured meat, will choose to eat vegetarian food when away from home to avoid eating something that goes against their dietary or religious beliefs.  I thought that eating vegetarian for a month would make me more aware of the challenges of that.
• I can.  I don’t mean that in the same was as that crazy chick who ate only Starbucks for a year just because she could.  I mean it in the way that I have the time, the patience, the knowledge, and the ability to do a well-formulated vegetarian diet for a month.  I think it will make a good topic for the blog, and since I’m able to do it, I’m gonna do it.

This will obviously present some challenges:

• I love bacon.  This is just a fact.
• My husband will still be eating meat this entire month.
• Because I’m insulin resistant, it will still be important for me to keep my diet as high of fat as possible.  I’ll likely be adding some legumes (or not, we’ll see) which is bending the LCHF rules a bit, but I’ve found from experience that I do okay with limited legumes.
• I work in an office, which means that at least one meal a day will have some limited options for cooking.  This is obviously an everyday challenge, but will be further limited by no meat.  There are a lot of days where I don’t have meat while at work, though, so it’s not a huge deal.
• Did I mention I love bacon?

So, starting February 1st, I’ll be posting about Vegetarian Challenge Month and sharing some Vegetarian friendly dishes.

There you go!  Anyone wanna join? 😀

One year of difference… check it out!

 

Haven’t weighed in this month yet (still doing the no weigh in challenge) but I think the pics speak for themselves.  Left picture is from last January, right picture is from a couple days ago.  Bacon is so bad for you, it makes you drop weight like crazy! 😉

Be well!

I ate this… at a buffet!

 

Can you believe this plate of food came from a buffet?  There’s a new buffet nearby that serves seafood and asian food.  Okay, okay, normally rice is off-limits, but I’ve never tried sushi and this was going to be my big chance.  Sometimes you gotta live a little!  Not pictured, but also eaten by either my mother or me: crab legs, lobster, clams, and mussels.  Yummy!

Just eat real food. Really.

Image courtesy of Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It can be really tempting to get really dialed in on carbs and figure things are great.  I mean, it’s a low carb diet, my carbs are low, so things are good… right?  But then you step on the scale and it hasn’t moved.  Or worse, it’s gone up!  You remember that sometimes the scale is a big fat jerk, so you check your measurements… oh no, they haven’t moved either.  The detective work begins!

You’re not fat-phobic, so you know that the issue isn’t that you’ve taken out the carbs but forgotten to replace them with fat.  That, as we know, is a good way to want to chew off your own arm.  Fat promotes satiety and is your fuel.  Good, we can check that off the list in our diet forensics for the day.  You’re eating above-ground vegetables just like you should, because they are full of essential nutrients and it’s weird but even though you hated them before you’ve really developed a love for them.  You’re only eating fruit occasionally, because while fruit has some great nutrients too, it’s still nature’s candy, and you know that candy and sugar is something that is limited and should only be enjoyed rarely.  The same nutrients that are in fruits can be found in vegetables.  You do love having berries, but those are very low in sugar.

Really, the only other thing worth mentioning that you’re eating is some Atkins bars and sugar free candy, but those aren’t worth mentioning because they don’t have carbs in them, right?  Wrong!  Oh, man, I get so mad at this.  Not at anyone who has eaten them or bought them, but at companies that still mark products containing sugar alcohols as have zero net carbs (or don’t count the sugar alcohols as carbs).  Here’s the issue.  A lot of sugar alcohols, especially ones that end in “-itol” (and ESPECIALLY ones containing maltitol) get processed by your body at least partially as sugar.  That means that even though Atkins or any other company marked that they’d have zero effect on your blood sugar, they do.  That also means they are going to drive your hunger.  If you go check out any low carb message board, you will see many people stall their weight loss or gain weight by eating those bars.  Not only that, but “-itol” sugar alcohols are really rough on your gut.  The only thing I’d recommend saving them for is if you get really constipated.  They’ll clear the plumbing really quick!

It’s not just the “-itol” sugar alcohols that raise blood sugar.  Aspartame, sucralose (splenda), truvia (Erythritol/rebiana blend), and even stevia can cause a Pavlovian like insulin response in your body.  So, even though there may not be any actual sugar in it, your body still responses like it was sugar in a lot of people.  It will cause a blood sugar drop, causing you to get hungry.  So then you eat more.

Also, that “measures cup for cup like sugar” sweetener?  That’s mostly not even mostly your favorite artificial sweetener.  Check the label.  The first ingredient is maltodextrin.  Maltodextrin gets metabolised as a sugar.  Awesome, right?

So the bottom line out of all of this is: just eat REAL food.  Seriously.  Don’t be afraid of real food like meat, veggies, cheese, eggs, and other amazing things like that.  Just don’t eat frankenfood like Atkins candy bars, “nutritional shakes”, diet soda, and watch the pounds drop.

One Pan Shrimp Scampi with Zucchini Linguine

I hate washing dishes.  (Probably why I assigned my husband dish duty.)  Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re gonna love this dish, because you’re only gonna dirty one pot.  Pretty awesome.  That’s one of the perks of LCHF, no need for an extra pot to boil water and do all that nonsense!

A few notes before the recipe.  Sometimes shrimp scampi is made with wine.  I’m skipping that since wine is pretty much just sugar in a bottle.  I’m also using raw shrimp in my recipe, but feel free to use cooked shrimp.  You’ll just need to add the shrimp to the pan right as you start cooking the zucchini.

Let’s cook!

Shrimp Scampi with Zucchini Linguine

• 3 T butter or ghee
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• The juice of one lemon
• Zest of one lemon (obviously, the same lemon as above, duh)
• 12-16  raw shrimp if cooking for one, thawed
• 1 small zucchini if cooking for one
• salt and pepper
• red pepper

First we start with ghee.  Put the ghee into the saute pan, and heat the pan on medium low.  When the pan gets up to temperature, add in the garlic.  Slowly stir the garlic around for 2 minutes until fragrant.  Add the shrimp into the pan.

You’ve got about 2 minutes to spiralize the zucchini while the shrimp cooks on the first side.  Good thing that’s more than enough time.  Spiralize away, and pat yourself on the back for the thousandth time for owning a spiralizer.  (Don’t own one yet?  Go get one! Seriously!)

Above, you’ll see what the shrimp looks like when it needs to be flipped.  See, it’s sorta translucent on the top, but the tails are starting to turn pink.  when you flip them, they are gonna be pink on the other side.

Right after you flip, immediately shove the shrimp off to one side, and throw the zucchini onto the other side of the pan.  Toss the zucchini a bit on the ghee to make sure it gets coated.  Put salt and pepper and red pepper over the contents of the pan.

After about 5 total minutes of cooking, or 2-3 minutes since you flipped the shrimp, everything should be done!  Take the pan off the heat.  Add the juice and zest to the pan, toss a few times to coat, and put on plate.

Inhale!