Favorite low carb-ish recipe/support sites?

[lhamo]

I have had some serious slippage with my diet/exercise plan this year and am back up to nearly 70kgs. Ugn. I should be at around 60. I started at 65 last January, so I am not happy. Had some issues with injuries that threw me off my running plan, plus just general boredom/lack of enthusiasm.

I know that eating too many carbs is a major issue for me, but have had a hard time this year sticking with a lower carb diet. Anybody out there doing low carb eating? Would love your suggestions for good recipe/support sites.

I'm also considering trying some elimination diet strategies to see what kind of effect that has. But doing a proper elimination diet with no gluten/eggs/sugar/dairy/soy/peanuts is a bit daunting and I'm not sure I have the stamina/fortitude to follow through. I've already eliminated most extra sugar, but do have the occasional baked good and also eat dark chocolate on a regular basis. I may well have a sensitivity to wheat, so may try cutting that out. Dairy would be really hard as I am a cheese addict, but might be worth trying depending on how I react to no wheat.

[SteveinMN]

Anybody out there doing low carb eating? Would love your suggestions for good recipe/support sites.
I do low-carb. There is a family history of diabetes in the family and we all seem to have fat jeans (or is that fat jeans?) :|( Anyway, while I certainly could stand to lose some kg myself, some of that is a matter of simply being more active than I am. In low-carbing it, I have avoided diabetes while almost everyone else in my family had it by my age or younger (the exception being my relative with MS). So it's working well enough for me.

I would love to help you with recipe/support sites, but I really don't use any. I did buy a copy of the South Beach Diet book and skipped the ketosis phase and went right to their maintenance phase as a more viable way to stick to the diet. There are some recipes there. The Chowhound Web site is good for some recipes and reviews of products like low-glycemic-index pasta. I see I've bookmarked a site called carbwire (http://www.carbwire.com/category/lowcarb_recipes) , which either means I liked it or thought it was interesting enough to examine later.

But I pretty much stick to a diet heavy on protein and vegetables and fiber and it works out. Some of it is a matter of adaptation: for example, there are no spaghetti dinners at our house. If pasta appears, it's a side dish, and it's usually whole-grain or shirataki. It's also bulked up with, say, shredded zucchini or celery or such so a little pasta goes much further on the plate. I've made lasagna with tofu sheets and with eggplant slices; both were passable substitutes. We buy really good whole-grain bread because one small slice of that is far more satisfying to us than a couple of slices of the airy stuff. I don't eat bread or rolls for breakfast, and I don't handle cereal as well as I'd like. We use a lot of squash and sweet potatoes/yams rather than white potatoes. We don't drink juice. When I buy fruit, I tend to buy in bulk because then I can select the smaller examples. I'll eat an apple; whether it's 2-1/2" or 3-1/2" I'm going to eat the apple, so why not eat a small one.

And by now we've gotten so far away from the Standard American Diet that, frankly, some of it looks kind of gross to us. Mac & cheese with breadsticks on the side and no veggies? Ecchh.

[JaneV2.0]

You might look at Mark's Daily Apple and Tom Naughton's Fathead, the movie blog.

The recipe section at LowcarbFriends is extensive, and there have been some excellent paleo cookbooks released in the last year or so. And this is a good site with well-tested recipes: http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/

For reinforcement that you are on the right path, read anything by Gary Taubes (he has a blog now, but I'm not sure how often he posts.) Michael and Mary Dan Eades--both physicians--have a good blog as well. Links there will lead you to more.

Jimmy Moore's Livin' la Vida Lowcarb has countless MP3 interviews of leading LC and paleo researchers.

One of my favorite spots to wallow in related statistics is at Denise Minger's www.rawfoodsos.com
blog. She hasn't posted for months because she's writing a book due out early next year "just in time for the world to have ended," as she put it. I'll be buying her book because she's smart and fearless enough to take on The China Study and the whole phalanx of flying monkeys that beset her when she did. She is, in fact, a minor idol of mine.

[JaneV2.0]

SteveinMN mentioned shirataki noodles, and I'd like to recommend the angel hair variety, which I recently found at Uwajimaya. Because they're so fine, their texture is less noticeable/annoying. To me, at least.

[Rosemary]

As far as resources -- I've read many books and blogs/websites but they really focus too much on substituting for my taste. Sorry, but the mashed cauliflower doesn't work for my family. Focusing on preparing veggies in simply tasty ways does.

My primary focus is skipping wheat. I do not get the same weight gain (or overeating) from potatoes, for instance, as I do from wheat products. Also seem to have a mild allergy to wheat (it makes me very congested). When I'm too restrictive it backfires. Eliminating wheat takes out most of the sugar. I never would have discovered this allergy without eliminating wheat multiple times. It's difficult to track food sensitivities because there are just so many foods in most modern diets.

But in general I don't eat a lot of grains. I eat my stir-fry without rice (my opinion - why dilute the flavor with bland rice?). I eat fruits and veggies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with small quantities of eggs, feta cheese (generally on salads), salmon/cod, or poultry, with occasional small servings of other meats. I usually have one serving of dried legumes/day, in the winter in the form of a vegetable/bean soup, and make tofu every week or two (usually roasted and added to stir-fry). I often eat starchier veggies (e.g. winter squash, sweet potatoes) for breakfast. I also like winter squash as a basis for various toppings that other people might put on pasta. I eat a fair amount of nuts, too.

With these dietary changes, I weigh 15# less than I did in high school when I ate more typically (don't know that I can call it SAD even then, though, as everything was homemade and there was no fast food or soda), and now have a BMI around 20.

And as I just noted on another thread - when I am eating lots of fruits and veggies, my energy really, really soars. It feels great. I am back to some jogging which I hadn't done for about 15 years because it did not feel good - now I just want to move, dance, run.

[creaker]

I've always like South Beach. Paleo is good if you're looking for lower carbs and also eliminating foods commonly associated with allergies/sensitivities.

One of the better things I've done for cutting carbs is making sure I eat a good breakfast and lunch - I don't snack nearly as much in the evenings.

[lhamo]

Thanks for the suggestions and supportive comments. I first started experimenting with low carb approaches back in the summer of 2011, and quickly lost 3-4 kilos. Was able to more or less maintain that for about 6 months, as long as I stuck to my exercise goals, but

One particular challenge for me is that we have a helper who cooks dinner for us M-F and so we have rice or noodles nearly every night, as this is a typical Chinese approach to meals and she seems to have difficulty accepting anything different. It was a struggle to get her to stop giving me a huge bowl of rice as it is, so I am not thrilled about trying to educate her about a different style of cooking/eating. My CHinese is near fluent but in comparison to past helpers we have had I find it difficult to communicate with her -- she has a very strong NE China accent and also seems to find it hard to understand me (this was never a problem before as most of our helpers were from Sichuan, where I spent a lot of time). I'm not so sure it is a language/dialect thing or just a different personality/style/ level of education thing. She doesn't seem as "quick" as our past helpers have been. I know this is very much a first world problem sort of thing, so I shouldn't complain, but anyway it does make it difficult to change my diet when much of what I eat is prepared by someone else (including the leftovers that I typically eat for lunch). BUT that being said, I do have full control over breakfast and snacks, and can make the effort to bring more low-carby stuff for lunch. I don't have to feel obligated to eat all the leftover rice/cooked dishes, for example. So I will probably start with focusing on what is easier to control. We also need to get better control over processed snack-type foods, and more or less eliminate from the house. We don't eat a lot as it is, but more than we should. Crackers and cheese are my downfall.... Need to come up with better lists of protein-rich, low carb snacks and stick to those.

I have been reading some paleo/primal types stuff but I have a serious issue with the idea of giving up dairy. I think I am ready to try eliminating wheat before I tackle that "holy grail" item.

Rosemary, I hear your complaints about the substitution-focused approach of many of the low carb sites -- that is a serious issue for me, because we simply can't get processed low carb foods overseas. Dana Carpender's cookbooks are virtually useless to me, for example, because just about every recipe calls for some kind of special low carby substitute item. I do love the mashed cauliflower though! But no such thing as low carb noodles, etc. in Beijing at this point. So in that sense the paleo/primal recipes are probably a better source of ideas, as long as they don't try to pry my dairy out of my terrified, dependent hands!

[SteveinMN]

no such thing as low carb noodles, etc. in Beijing at this point.
Interesting as the places I find shirataki most often here is Asian grocery stores. ;) It does seem to be more of a Japanese product, though. A couple of alternatives that you may find in Beijing are glucomannan (also called konjac or konnyaku in Japanese). Some varieties of yam are low-carb or at least low-glycemic. And I have seen "noodles" made from tofu (or tofu skins).

[Rosemary]

re: high protein snacks -- I find that as long as I eat a lot of fiber, I stay full for a long time and have high energy. I've tried the higher protein route, but just focusing on whole foods seems to be enough for me. I don't need to eat as much, or as much protein, as I used to think was necessary. I usually just eat fruit, or fruit + nuts, for snacks.

[lhamo]

Japanese food items, aside from a few staples (nori, sushi vinegar, wasabi paste) are actually kind of difficult to find in Beijing -- harder than in the US (Seattle has one of the best Japanese markets in the country, Uwajimaya, so we are spoiled...). Tofu skins should be easy to find. I'm worried about adding too much soy, though.

Gosh, I'm being a complainypants today, aren't I? Need an attitude adjustment. I do actually like most meats and vegetables, so this shouldn't be as hard as I'm making it out to be. Just need to plan better and commit to making the changes that I know lead to positive results. Onward and upward!

lhamo

[Square Peg]

I like this site's SB forum: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/

[Rosemary]

One more note. I also find that if I am more mindful of my fluid intake I eat less. I try to alternate food and water/tea every couple of hours because I just can't consume a lot of water with my meals. So, I get up, have a cup of tea, wait at least an hour to eat breakfast. Then when I am next feeling hungry, I have some tea or water first, and wait to see if I'm actually hungry. Etc.

Also, I have a mini-fast every day, with at least 11 hours between dinner and breakfast.

[befree]

I don't have a favorite website, but I have my favorites, including some recipes if you want. My stand-by low carb snacks are raw almonds, tuna packed in water, beef jerky, hard-boiled or devilled (also known as stuffed) eggs, and cottage cheese, maybe mixed with plain yogurt, ricotta cheese, a little Splenda, and some fruit. Endemame, or soybeans, are a high protein complex carb. My low-carb plan doesn't limit complex carbs like green vegetables, or fruit; otherwise it's just too boring. These are some ideas I just got off the Internet re Chinese food and low-carb: emphasize clear thin soups like hot and sour or egg drop. Black bean sauce is the lowest carb option of all sauces used in Chinese food. And, use sauteed sliced cabbage in place of rice.