Stuart's latest diet update 8 October

Well I've not updated for a while as I've been static for 2 or 3 weeks. There have been a few 'wine days' which probably haven't helped but then again thats not high in carbs either.

Anyway on the diet I have now moved to having lost 15lbs in 6 weeks so I am happy with that and is a positive move of 2.5lb since last week. Ironically on my last post I mentioned about starting to do some walks at the weekend and I noticed pretty quickly that after those walks I would often have added weight when I weighed in the morning before and after. That was despite keeping to the diet plan on those days!

I have now added a few supplements to my diet and they are a probiotice multi vitamin and a selenium supplement which helps with ensuring that the thyroid works properly and thus that any food is processed efficiently.

On the snack front this week I have dropped peanuts for walnuts which contain a lot more fibre and are therefore effectively carb neutral.

Yesterdays diet plan on this Tesco ediet was:

• Bacon & vegetable stir fry with cheese
• Gammon steak & salad
• Thai coconut chicken curry
• snack of Chicken strips & guacamole
• orange 60g

What I have noticed now that I have moved to advancement level is that you are able to manipulate each recipe so if you didn't fancy the 3oz's of Feta Cheese on the Gammon Steak Salad then you can swap it for 9 oz cottage cheese, 3 oz brie or 3 oz low fat cheese. This sort of swap is available on a number of the recipes so you can stay to the meals even if you have run out of one ingredient or you don't like one of them.

Good stuff.

Latest weigh in update on the Low Carb diet.

I had my latest weigh in on the Tesco ediet on Thursday morning and I'm please to say that I lost 4lbs this week which makes 10lbs in all in just 11 days.

The menus this week have been pretty similar to last week with scrambled eggs, frittata or fried eggs for breakfast with sausages or bacon. I've had a problem with the afternoon meals though as many of them were not really the sort of foods to put in a food flask so I have been making up a salad with a bit of french dressing and some meats eg chicken, grilled bacon, bacon lardons and even a sliced up hot pepperami in with a bacon salad. I usually make sure that all of the ingredients are mixed together in my bowl and then I grate some parmesan on top. I am generally also having a mixed selection of Kiwi fruit, melon and grapes mid morning which happily is brought around on a trolley around the office for just £1.50. You can buy similar products from your local supermarket.

I dodged a bit of a bullet on Tuesday as that was my the day of my twice monthly lunch at the Thai Restaurant/own brew pub. Great food and great beer what more could you ask for? Well going through the menu it was clear that anything with rice, noodles or Thai fries was out and that some of the curries had potatoes in them anyway which is not good. In the end I went for Grilled Neck of Pork which was served on a bed of beansprouts. This came with some Tamarind sauce which I just lightly drizzled some onto the meat. All in all it was very nice but it has to be said it was a few pounds more expensive than the Yellow Curry meal deal that we normally have. I have say that I did sin a bit though as I had my only pint of beer since starting the diet.

Last evening I had some zesty sea bass with asparagus and tomatoes which to be honest I wasn't too hopeful about as I don't really do asparagus or cooked tomatoes but I have to say I was really surprised and the zesty lemony sauce on the fish sort of made everything go together really well. I shall definately have this again which is more than can be said for some Avacado, Broccoli and Turnip concoction on Thursday. The avacado has joined smoked salmon on the banned ingredients list!

I've generated the recipes for the coming week and going through the ingredients list I don't think that I need to place an online order this week. The eggs and meat I will source locally and the small amounts of salads and vegetable shall be covered from either our weekly delivery of a farmers box from Riverford or a trip to Aldi.

Like last week I am planning to go for a walk around Spalding which I have now planned on Map My Walk which is a great site for working out distances and planning your walks. If you put in your height, weight, distance walked and time the walk was completed in then the site will show you how many calories that you burned on the walk. It will also show this if you walk, run etc. After running last weeks route through this web site then distance last week was 4.16 miles rather than the 4.5 as advertised but still not bad. I have also gone for a walk around the block in our village which I have also plotted in the map as 1.25 miles so I have done a couple of short walks as well as the longer one. Using this website though I have managed to plot a nice 3.6 mile walk around the village so I might have a go at that one tomorrow.

Saturday update to the new Low Carb diet

Just a quick update as to the state of play since Thursday.

If you recall I was to take sweet potato and smoked salmon to work in a food flask so that I could have them at the office. This ended up a dismal failure as the vegetables were cold by the time I came to add the salmon and cream cheese. I managed some of it but to be honest the amount of salmon that I was supposed to have was far too much and as I don't really like it that much then it was a bit of a problem.

Luckily I had taken a chicken salad with Parmesan shavings on it as that was the snack on my Tesco ediet. I'd not really had Parmesan like this before and you know the salad was really nice when I came to have that in the afternoon.

For the evening we had Thai Fish cakes which were made from whitefish and some of those fish sticks that you can get. I saw the fish sticks on offer so I bought a couple of packs and then realised that in fact they look better than they taste! Instead of wasting them though I had some of them put into the fish cakes that were served with stir fried veg. These fish cakes were top notch and I will definitely be having them again.

Friday morning was supposed to be warm strawberry and cream cheese danish but the strawberries that were delivered at the start of the week were starting to look like they were not going to be any good by Friday so the rest of the family had them whilst they were still good earlier in the week. I replaced that breakfast therefore with bacon, sausage, egg and tomatoes. I grilled 5 slices of bacon and 2 sausages and when done I placed them in a pan which I was heating up a tin of chopped tomatoes. I let the bacon and sausage intermingle with the tomatoes whilst I fried one egg and I then had the egg with just 2 of the bacon slices and 1 sausage and some of the tomatoes. The remaining bacon, sausage and tomatoes were put into the prewarmed food flask for the mid day meal.

This time the flask worked fine. I think as there was more food in the flask and instead of warming the flask with hot water I used boiling water that there was a big difference. I also had the food after just 4 hours instead of 7 and whilst it was not piping hot it was warm enough to be pleasant.

I also took a similar chicken salad as yesterday but this time used some spicy chicken pieces. I had this mid afternoon and this came out really good as well.

For the evening meal we went off the recipe list and had some pork chops with spinach, chilli and sweetcorn which came from one of the Atkins books. This was a favourite of ours last time I did a diet and it made use of the spinach which would otherwise have been thrown away.

This morning we are back on the Tesco eDiet recipe with Burger scramble which is effectively minced beef and onions fried until cooked and then beaten eggs added and the whole mixture is mixed to give the scrambled egg burger effect! I added the remaining chilli from last nights meal to give a bit of an extra burn!

Exercise is my achilles heel and I don't really do any but today I went for a 4.5 mile walk around our town which took me about 1 hour 40 mins. I could have done it quicker but as I was following the rivers around I took my camera to see if I could get any decent shots of the route and of the town.

For lunch today I again went off the recipe sheet for the day but I did have a recipe from a previous day which was Quorn with stir fried veg. I've not had Quorn before so that was a new experience and I am not averse to having it again as it tasted pretty much chicken like.

Its the first weigh in on the Tesco eDiet

Its the first weigh in on the Tesco eDiet today. I signed up to the program last Thursday and the diet officially started on Sunday although I was fairly low carb on the days prior to that so the result in not entirely the diet but nevertheless I had had alcohol on the days to Saturday and none since so there has been a change of sorts.

My result is 6lbs off in the first week which is pretty good and is ahead of the plan so I'm happy with that. Going forward if I can stay to plan and be 2lbs ahead each week then that would be great. As well as being 6lbs off my BMI has decreased by 2 points - OK we're still in danger levels but we're moving the right way.

From today though things get more tricky as I'm back at work and a lot of these recipes require cooking. I've bought a food flask so I am going to try smoked salmon and sweet potato, courgette and asparagus. Hopefully it won't be a disaster! Todays snack is a chicken salad so I'll be taking that as well.

When I get home from work I will then review the recipes for next week and swap them around where necessary and then place my Tesco order so that it all of the ingredients I don't have will be delivered on Saturday or Sunday.

Day 2 of New diet

Well its the second day and but things didn't quite go to plan as we went out for the day to a family fund day at Grimsthorpe Castle near Bourne.

For breakfast I did OK with a meal which was as per the Tesco eDiet. The meal was fried bacon, egg & courgette with cherry tomatoes. I must admit to being a bit iffy about this as courgette is not my favourite veg. I must say though that once I had had fried the courgette with the bacon that it didn't end up too bad and the cherry tomatoes which I cut in half brought back memories of my childhood when we used to have bacon cooked with plum tomatoes.

The afternoon was supposed to be Egg & Bacon salad but as we went out that wasn't on the cards and the options were a touch limited at the event. I ended up having an Ostrich burger as it is low in fat and high in protein.

For evening meal the Tesco eDiet has tasty chicken fingers which I had served up with the bacon and egg and some salad which I had bought for the afternoon meal. All in all that was very nice and it was very spicy - maybe we put in too much cayenne pepper but I do like it spicy so not too much hardship.

The snack option in the diet for the day is an egg mayonnaise salad but I probably won't be having that as I had the burger earlier.

In addition I have had a couple of babybels and a litre of water and 1.5 litres of low calorie barley water (Tropical/Strawberry & Kiwi). My 5 a day fruit and veg would be the courgette, tomatoes, salad? (does that count) and so is short so I will try and have an apple or banana for a snack later.

Stuarts Low Carb Diet update 16 April 2009

I've had a couple of weeks off the blog so it's time we got going again. Its fair to say that the last couple of weeks hadn't been that great with a number of days out to events where the food available was not exactly low carb friendly and there was even one evening where we finished off the beers in the house. All in all as of last Saturday I was back to 8lbs down.

That said, however, I have had protein bars for breakfast for the last few days and then some peanuts to snack on during the day. For lunch I have had a small salad with a further protein bar during the afternoon. Last night I was back on the Sainsbury soup which I have mentioned before which is butternut squash, ginger and lentils. This soup is relatively low in carbs with a high fibre content and even better it tastes great!

So I had a quick weigh in this morning and I've at least made a move in the right direction and I am now down 12 lb. Andrea is currently in Italy on holiday so we'll see how much damage that has done when she gets back at the end of the week!

Stuarts update 29 March 2009

First the good news that we are still down 10lbs since the start of the diet and too be honest after the last two days I'm not sure how!!

On Saturday we ended up at our local pub for lunch and I had a pint of Tribute bitter with gammon,egg, vegetables and some new potatoes. (I would have preferred chips with gammon and egg but needs must!)

Sunday was always going to be a dangerous day as we were due to go for a trip to London to see the Model Train Show there. The change of the clocks caught us out a bit so we had to rush to get the train so there was no breakfast and we didn't have time to prepare anything either. I had to make do with picking up a protein bar on the way out of the door. Of course we are then at the mercy of the food that they served up at Alexandra Palace and with different food bars scattered around the hall it is possible to get a low carb salad BUT we only realised that each eating area was different after we had had Pizza. I must say that this was probably the most amount of carbs I had had in one go for a month and whilst the Pizza was OK I was not clamouring for more and turned down the chance to finish off my sons pizza.

For the evening meal we picked up some bits from the train station - chicken breast, cheese etc and had those on the way home so that wasn't too bad. I confess that I did have a couple of beers when I got home and so I was a bit nervous about the results this morning but it was the same as a couple of days ago! I guess all the walking around yesterday must have offset the carbs consumed so overall there was a nil effect.

Its The 4 Week Diet Review!

It's 4 weeks since we started this journey into a low carb diet and this week is a non mover so we're stuck with a 9lb loss during those 4 weeks. I'll be honest I was hoping for a bit at this point but that's still not to be sniffed at.

What I really need to do now is to have some consecutive days without any alcohol as I still haven't worked out whether that, albeit in low carb delivery system such as wine, effects how the body's metablolism works.

Over the last few days its been a bit more of the same so bacon and eggs, omelette, salads etc. I made another "low carb" chicken curry and this time it was using a morrocan style chick pea and spinach soup (again from Sainsbury's) as the base for the sauce. I did,however, add some sweet chilli dipping sauce to it (high carb!! but not much) to get the heat. As before the rice substitute was cauliflower but because this time I was making for two and there wasn't enough cauliflower I also used some broccoli. The result was OK but I think it is better using just cauliflower on its own or with just a couple of florets of broccoli and not in 50/50 portions like I used.

The final result for the week may be dissapointing but I have still had more protein than carbs each day this week so maybe I am using up the fat but storing the protein which when stored as muscle is somewhat heavier than fat anyway so let's not get too disheartened and lets keep going with the diet.

Summary Of The First 24 Days Of My Low Carb Diet

Its been about 3 and a half weeks since we started the low carb diet so I thought it worthwhile just having an overview of what that has really entailed.

Well for a start the following which were staples of my diet have been virtually wiped out - potatoes, crisps, beer, rice, sweets, chocolate and bread. I have put potatoes here but generally any vegetable that is grown under the ground has been limited. That doesn't mean that parsnips and carrots are on a banned list but just that they are limited. Likewise potatoes probably only make an appearance once a week for the Sunday roast but generally are not used at any other time.

Some of the foods above have low carb alternatives so instead of having a beer then I can have some wine, potato crisps are replaced by peanuts and in some instances potatoes can be replaced by cauliflower, broccoli and even some mashed turnip (which is OK). I always thought getting a rice substitute was difficult but using shredded caulflower means that curry is on the menu in a low carb diet.

Of course one of the main components of a low carb diet is in fact that you are on a high protein diet. I have bought some high protein chocolate bars which do have around 18g carbs in them but 13g or so is in polyols which can be deducted to find the net carb and around 8g is fibre so basically they are a net -3g carbs per bar and surprisingly they taste great! Another great way of getting the protein is to have a chocolate whey protein drink which has around 3g per pint. Be careful when buying these as some have 20g or more as they are usually designed for body builders and whilst coming in tins that look the same some are for bulking up and some are for the high protein to turn to muscle. The bulk up formula generally has a much higher carb content. The great thing about having one of these shakes for breakfast is that the protein does take away that hungry feeling and generally you do not feel like eating as much as before.

There is not a lot of substitutes for bread but to be honest I have been having a salad from the trolley each day rather than bread rolls and I haven't really missed it. I will, however, probably reintroduce a bread into my diet over the next week which will be home made using an organic wholemeal flour from one of the local mills in the area. The flour is untreated and unbleached as it comes straight off the stones so I can be sure that I will not be using and processed ingredients in the bread. I just intend to use this in some small slices to create a bit of variety in the meals and with the high fibre content and lower carb content than normal bread this is a good bread option.

The scales were wavering this morning between a loss of 9lb and 10lb so we'll call it 9lb and then hopefully by the time we get to the end of 4 weeks on Wednesday morning we will have got that to 10 or 11lb.

Update on Stuarts' low carb diet

Yesterday morning was a weigh in and I was dreading it slightly as last Saturday when I had an interim weigh in I was up 4lbs!! (yikes). The good news is that some progress was made as that turned around into a 1lb loss on the week so that I'm now down 9lb in the first 3 weeks which is still above the 2lb a week target that I thought was reasonable at the start.

I think it just goes to show that you can do everything right during a week (apart from the wine of course!) and yet you are still subject to factors outside your control such as how much water or waste you are carrying at any one time. I have learnt from this that it is probably best just to do a weigh in the once a week as doing it on a more regular basis may make you feel that the diet isn't working when it probably is.

We took delivery of our protein shakes and bars from Nature's Best yesterday and I have had a shake with some some Acai Berry juice added to it this morning. Its going to be chicken and sausages for dinner with a bit of salad and a protein bar.

Update on Stuarts' low carb diet

Just a quick update on the last few days.

I have been keeping to the same regime but on Sunday I had a few potatoes with my Sunday lunch and a low carb Cobra light beer. I had actually put on a couple of pounds at this stage but we're back to half a stone loss now.

I have ordered from Nature's best some whey protein shake and also some protein meal replacement bars. I was pondering the protein bars for a while as on the face of it they do have quite a high carbohydrate content but a large proportion of this relates to sugar alcohols and they have a decent amount of fibre in them as well which pretty much makes them a net carb neutral bar. Hopefully we will get them later in the week so we can see what their like.

I think that today I will be on a Banana protein shake to start off with and then I will take some ham and cheese with me to work to snack on and then I will pick up a salad for lunch. I have an Atkins bar and a pepperami also in reserve for this afternoon if I get hungry but to be honest whilst I have been on a low carb high protein diet I have not really got the hunger pangs like I used to so I probably won't have them.

Low Carb Chicken Curry and Rice

Today I made myself a low carb version of chicken curry and rice. I love a curry but to have a curry without a rice dish or a bread was just killing me until I came across this rice substitute which we'll come to later. This is therefore a perfect dish for those on a low carb or atkins diet.

First up the curry - the ingredients I used were:
1 small onion - chopped (approx 5 net carb)
150g packet of chicken breast (approx 0 net carb)
1/2 tin of Sainsbury's Parsnip,butternut squash and ginger soup (approx 0 net carb)*
Tikka Curry Powder to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Cumin powder
2 cardomom pods

Pour some oil in a pan and heat up and then add the curry spices to your taste. Mix the spices in with the oil and after a couple of minutes add the chopped onion. After a few more minutes add the chicken breast and fry until cooked or if using pre cooked chicken breast then fry thoroughly. Add the soup, mix and simmer for 20 minutes.


Next the rice - well not rice actually as we know that rice can seriously put a dent in a low carb diet although brown rice can be accommodated once in a while. For this we will use cauliflower (approx 1.5 net carb) to create our rice substitute.

To do this you need your food mixer with the shredder blade attached. Fill up the funnel into your mixer with cauliflower florets and shred. I did this three times for the dish I created for myself. In reality this is about 3 or 4 decent sized florets which are cut up to go in the tube. Now once you have shredded the cauliflower then you will have a lot of small rice size pieces of cauliflower in the bowl. Transfer this shredded cauliflower to a bowl suitable for a microwave and cook for 3 and a half to 4 minutes on full power.

The bowl with the cauliflower was very hot when I took it out of the microwave so watch out for that. The curry should be complete by now. If you need a bit of extra fibre then this is a good time to stir in some benefibre or fibresure or some such fibre additive.

Hopefully if all has gone well then when it gets on the plate it should look like the picture above. The net carbs for this meal come in at around 8g.*

* The Sainsbury soup declares a carbohydrate per 1/2 tin to be 7.2g and a fibre content of 10.2g which to me gives a net carb of 0 (or minus 3). On the off chance that Saisnbury have already deducted the fibre from the carb this would make the whole meal to be around 18g.If you are of the opinion that the net carb is minus 3 due to the fibre content then the meal could be as low as 5g.

Any comments on the maths and the premise of carb - fibre are appreciated

Stuarts Low Carb Diet - Day 15

Its day 15 of the diet and whilst not being overly bad yesterday it wasn't quite a tip top day.

For starters I have a meal replacement shake for breakfast instead of the usual whey protein shake. The problem with this is that the meal replacement shake is 15g carbs more than the protein shake.

Again I had a salad around 11.00am and this time it was beef and corned beef. I then went out for a walk at lunchtime and ended up in Boots where I bought some Atkins bars and I had one of these around 2.00pm. These bars claim to be 2.9g of carbs because they have altered the net carb formula to include taking off Sugar Alcohols (Polyols). Apparently there is some debate about whether to do this for net carbs as Polyols affect people in different ways and for some there will be a net carb of 2.9g and for others it will be net carb of nearly 18g. I think I'll put the remaining bars in the cupboard for now and maybe bet them back out in a week or two.

Then at around 3.30pm I had a cheese and ham salad which kept me going until the evening meal which was a roast chicken dinner with 3 roast potatoes (eek). I then got watching some TV until late and had a packet of peanuts whilst watching which probably had about 9 net carbs more than if I had had Brazils or Walnuts.

I had a delivery yesterday of Healthy Carb Cookbook for Dummies which is a very easy read and has loads of great tips and recipes in it. We'll be trying some of them out in the coming weeks.

Day 14 of Stuarts diet and its a weigh in day!!!

OK the weigh in on the diet actually happens on the morning of day 15 so I'll give you the results at the end of the day 14 resume.

First thing in the morning I was to have my chocolate whey protein shake but I didn't have enough to make a whole one so ended up with one scoop chocolate,one scoop banana, two ice cubes, half a pint of water and 1 teaspoon of fibresure all in the processor which was blended on smoothie mode to make 1 pint of shake.

During the morning I picked up a tuna mayonnaise and cheese salad off the trolley at 11.00am and then I had my turkey salad with leaves,peppers and caesar dressing at about 3.15pm.

For my evening meal I had a bacon and leek quiche which was made without using a pastry so was a bit like having a deep omellete.

I do also confess that I did have a few glasses of wine whilst watching the football and playing poker online.

Anyway back to the weigh in - drumroll - after 14 days on the diet I am now down 8 pounds which considering a major disaster for carbs last Thursday is amazing.

Day 13 of Stuarts Low Carb Diet

Monday morning started with a couple of poached eggs, and grilled bacon and sausages. I had my usual supplements with 2 Hot Rox Extreme tablets (prior to having my breakfast).

Mid morning I managed to pick up a ham & chicken salad (see picture)from the trolley that comes around the office and then mid afternoon I had a pork salad with caesar dressing that I had taken in. I took the dressing in the bottle and added it when required because salad does goes a bit funny in plastic containers with some dressing on it. lol - you end up with a nice watery mess in the bottom of the tray.

Evening meal was a couple of chicken pieces with some fried up broccoli,leek and cauliflower in a bubble & squeak type fashion but without the potatoes.

I have my 2 week weigh in tomorrow so that's and incentive to be extra good today!

Day 12 of Stuarts Low Carb Diet

Sunday started off with a fry up for the family with 'The Black Farmer' sausages, bacon and eggs. These sausages are about the lowest carb sausages that I've seen as they come in at just 1 carb per sausage. When you consider that pork and apple or pork and leek sausages are 5 to 6g per sausage (or more) then that is a pretty big deal.

I had the usual supplements of a multivitamin,acai juice, flaxseed oil and some fibresure in my coffee.

We took a delivery of some groceries from Tesco with some low carb items in there including some low carb Cobra beer which is 4 carbs per bottle. Funny thing was though I just didn't fancy any at all! - mmmm best just stay on the wine!

I was having problems with my camera so I thought I'd pop up to Spalding to get some new batteries and film and so ended up in Sainsbury's. There were some great meat offers in there so I ended up gettings some pork slices and 2 more packets of Black Farmer sausages. (Sainsbury is the only place I've seen them sold). I also had a look at other items and I bought some organic brown rice which is 23g per 100g rather than 44g for white rice, some anchovy paste, lumpfish caviar and a couple of John West prepared Tuna Light Lunches with peppers,rice,sweetcorn,kideny beans and a mild tomato salsa dressing. This is the lightest of the John West range and comes in at 18.7 carbs and 2.8g fibre. I just think that this is a decent alternative to a LOW LOW carb meal and won't bust the diet. I also bought some more tins of the soup that I used on Saturday as the basis of a curry sauce.

Evening meal was roast lamb with cauliflower, cabbage (red and green) and 3 small roast potatoes and gravy and 2 glasses or red wine. Getting into the evening I had some baked sweet thai chilli nuts that I could nibble on. Bizarre how the carbs in these are lower than in plain roasted nuts but they may be in the baking rather than roasting.

I forgot to mention that I had a weigh in yesterday and I'm currently down 5 pounds. I know its only moved 1 since last time but considering the indiscretion on Thursday I'll take that!

Just one more thing I found a video on About.com yesterday which was making a rice substitute from cauliflower. Basically you just take the raw florets (washed) and put them through the shredder in your food processer so you could lots of little rice like bits of raw cauliflower. Just take these pieces and microwave for 4 mins and voila you have a low carb rice substitute. According to the video you just microwave the raw pieces and do not add anything to it. I've not tried this yet but I'll see if I can give this a whirl later in the week.

Day 10 and 11 of Stuarts Low Carb Diet

It was important to get back on track on Friday after a lapse on Thursday so I started off with the protein shake with a spoonful of FibreSure for an extra 5g of fibre in the shake.

Mid morning we got a visit from a new service bringing sandwiches and the like to the office. This could be dangerous but I went to see if there was anything suitable on the trolley and there was a ham salad with a bit of coleslaw for £1.50 which I thought would be low carb and good value.

I then had the sausage salad that I had brought for lunch in the afternoon with a couple of chicken thighs and for the evening meal I had a roast chicken breast with a cheese and onion topping with broccoli and cauliflower.

Moving on to today it was back to a cooked breakfast of sausages, bacon and egg. This time though instead of the chilli sausages which come in at nearly 4g of carb per sausage we had the Sainsbury Ultimate Outdoor Reared Sausage which has a net carb of just over 1g per sausage so that it ideal for a low carb or atkins diet. I got a case of the nibbles during the morning so I had a small selection of unsalted nuts.

I got home from the office at around 2.30pm so I thought about what I could have for lunch. I found a chicken breast that I could use and a tin of the high fibre / low carb parsnip, butternutsquash and ginger soup that I had bought from Sainsbury's earlier in the week.I cut the chicken into pieces and fried them with some Indian Curry powder with some extra garlic, cumin and fennel seeds. Once the chicken was cooked I added nearly half a tin of the soup. The soup is fairly thick to start off with and then breaks down into a nice sauce which with the spices used gives a nice low carb / high fibre chicken curry.


Finally this evening we're back on the salad. This time it is some slices of roast pork and egg to go with the peppers, celery and leaves etc. This time I also ditched the slightly high carb sweet chilli sauce and went for the much lower carb light mayonaise.

I'll have a mid week weigh in tomorrow so hopefully Thursday's mega carb muffin won't have hurt me too much!

Day 9 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

hmmm - I think the title of this entry should say high carb diet!

The morning was OK with a high protein/low carb chocoloate shake and then we had a lunch at the office. I knew this was going to be bad and it was! The delivery was sandwiches, potato wedges, small sausage rolls, small samosa, small duck rolls and some very tasty looking muffins.

So I had a small portion of each and a muffin (alarms went off here as it's is possibly 30g carbs!! (if not 50g carbs)). In the evening I had a tin of Sainsburys Parsnip,Butternut Squash and Ginger soup which had 14g carbs and 20g fiber so by reckoning thats a net off of the carbs. The funny thing is Sainsburys' don't have the main ingredient of lentils in the title of the soup but I have to say that I really enjoyed the soup and the ginger really added a nice layer of warmth to it. Looks like we'll be getting some more of that over the weekend.

I will be back on track with a low carb lunch today and so hopefully when I get to Saturday morning for a weigh in there won't be any increase in the weight due to the damage done. I will be happy with the same result as mid week,under the circumstances, but can I dare hope for even a slight fall?

Day 8 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

I started yesterday morning with the large protein drink and then snacked on a packet of Macadamia nuts during the day (more fibre than carbs !). For lunch I had a sausage salad which was on the plate long enough for me to take a photo! The salad was just some lettuce & watercress leaves that you can get in packets from the supermarket with some red and yellow peppers thrown in. (I call them peppers but in the new world you probably know them as capsicums). These sausages were higher in carbs than I would normally have like (4.8g each) but they do have chilli in so that may help to increase the metabolic rate anyway. I do have some seriously lower carb sausages to have once we've finished these so I'll put up with the chilli sausages for now.

The evening meal was roast pork with cabbage,cauliflower,broccoli and a big sin - 2 medium potatoes. That last bit probably blew the low carb for the day but we'll see if we can shift it for the next weigh in at the weekend.

We took delivery of our organic vegetable delivery order today along with a salad bag from River Nene Farms. I'm not sure what was in there but at least we're stocked up for the next few days.

Day 7 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

Day 7 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

Day 7 started without the cooked breakfast this time as I had a large protein shake. Again the powder is mixed with water rather than milk. A pint of this shake is 2.8g of net carbs and does make you feel full. These protein shakes are typically used by weight lifters but can be inserted into a low carb regime. You can pick these whey protein shakes up from Holland and Barrett at the moment for £14.99 each rather than the usual £24.99.

I then had at Atkins bar during the morning (2.9g) and a beef salad for lunch with just a small amount of chilli sauce this time compared to Monday. I also had 2 chicken legs at lunchtime and a small pot of nuts and raisins so carbs would be in the nuts so lets say 3g.

I was in London during the afternoon and I ended up at a pub in the Minories but I was good and had 2 glasses of red wine rather than go for the fantastic range of beers that were on offer. (maybe on another day I will give one or two of these a go)

Then for an evening meal I had 2 poached eggs and 2 grilled sausages so about 7g of net carbs here as well.

One thing I have mentioned to date is supplements. I have just taken delivery of an order from Holland and Barrett so yesterday I also had 1 capful of Acai Superfruit Juice, 1 Flaxseed Oil capsule, 1 Centrum Multivitamin and 1 Hot-Rox Extreme which is a pill which increases your metabolism. Hot Rox is made from a raspberry derivative and if you are shopping at Holland And Barrett you could but the Fat Metaboliser which is made from capsicums which may yield similar results.

Ok - the all important part then. I have been on the Lower Carb diet for 7 days and I have gradually reduced the carbs during the week and then introduced some supplements on the last day and my result so far is a loss of 4 pounds. My thoughts at the start were that I will be happy with 2 to 3 pounds a week so that is not a bad start.

Day 6 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

Well I had my usual cooked breakfast washed down with a small protein shake (used water not milk) and then for lunch I had a beef salad with a sweet chilli sauce (hi carb! - eek) and a few peanuts.

Evening meal was a ham & cheese omellette and a glass or two of red.

I'm gonna drop the wine for a day or two and see if that has any appreciable difference on results.

Day 5 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

Ok we started Sunday with the cooked breakfast (pictured and posted yesterday) and then it was Sunday roast for lunch. No yorkshire pud here but roast beef, swiss chard, 3 small roast potatoes (you just got to have them on a roast!) and some small pieces of parsnip. - say around 40g net carb altogether for the whole meal.

In the evening I had the same ham and cheese type sandwich that I pictured a couple of days ago so that was a zero net carb evening meal with a few nuts snacked on during the day.

I did a shop yesterday so I bought some fish (pollack fillets), a pork joint, some bacon, cheddar cheese and 3 packs of sausages with low carbohydrate contents which I hope to start on when I've finished my current pack.

I also bought a packet of Miso Soup with Sea Vegetables which has 2.6g of carbs per serving and 1.1g of fibre so a net carb position of 1.5g per serving and I also bought a couple of cans of Sainsbury's Parsnip,Butternut Squash & Ginger soup from their 'be good to yourself range'. A whole tin of this is 14.4g of carbohydrate yet there are 20g of fibre in each tin!!

I shall probably have the first tin on its own to see what it is like and then if it is suitable then I may use the other tin as a sauce for a fish and vegetable stir fry (maybe add a chilli or two!).

And one final thing it was Sunday so I'd best declare the 3 or 4 glasses of red wine that I had during the day.

Andrea's day - Sunday 1st March

Sunday Food consumed

Breakfast: Special K with berries (small). Tea
Mid morning snack: bite of cheese, a few olives
Dinner: Roast Sirloin with gravy (!) and roasted veggies - courgette, butternut squash, red onion, red and green pepper, cherry tomatoes, aubergine. **No roast potatoes or yorkie pud!** Followed by half an Atkins Sunshine bar (a breakfast bar really) and a cup of tea.
Evening: I plan to have a light supper of cheese, radishes, olives, salami, celery followed by a low carb chocolate pudding.

Unlike my bro Stuart, i'm not yet working out my actual daily carb count ...but know I am consuming far less than before and feeling fine. Actually feeling loads better than last weekend after two days on Atkins Induction. Will monitor & report weight loss midweek .

Sunday Low Carb Breakfast

Two slices of bacon (0g), 2 eggs (1.2g) and 3 sausages (say 6g). Bit of brown sauce say 1g.

Day 4 of Stuart's Low Carb Diet

Well Saturday was another OK day and it has to be said any snacking (even low carb snacking on bits of carrot) was reduced to just a small portion of a nut mix in the morning and the evening.

At breakfast time it was back on the sausage,bacon and eggs. The problem with saying for certain how many net carbs there are here lies in the fact that the sausages that I bought from the co op in the week didn't state the carbohydrate or fibre content and therefore I am estimating the net carbs. Depending on the meat content to filler content of the sausage will give rise to variations in the carbohydrate content and ultimately the net carbs which may run from 0.5g to 5g per sausage. I suspect that as these sausages taste so good that it may be nearer the top end of the range so I'm going to go to the supermarket today and make sure that I get some sausages which are higher in meat content and have a label with carbohydrates and fibre content on.

For my mid day meal I had a tin of Chunky Chilli Beef soup from Aldi. Now a whole tin of this soup is 14.4g of carbohydrate of which just 8.4g come froms sugars and the fibre content is 12g. I also added two teaspoons of Benefiber to the mix so that the fiber content was pushed up to 15g. So on a pure carb - fiber calculation Iwould have a negative net carb of 0.6 but as 8.4g still comes from sugars then I will take that as the net carb position. (right/wrong any views?)

In the evening I had the ham and cheese sandwich as per the picture posted earlier so that was just one thick slice of ham with two slices of cheddar laid on top. This was then cut in half and folded over to make the sandwich. You need some good thick ham from your butcher for this as the bought prepacked stuff just won't hold the cheese in. Tastes good too!

Atkins style ham and cheese sandwich

Now this is what a low carb sandwich looks like! Yum

Stuarts Day 3 of Our Low Carb Diet

Unfortunately I didn't have any eggs left so yesterday's breakfast was just bacon and sausages.

I dropped in at Sainsbury's on the way to work and bought some small cheese pieces, 2 small packs of chicken breast and a bag of carrots and these kept me going almost all day with the exception of an Atkins bar that I had mid morning and a piece of 85% cocoa chocolate that I had in the evening.

I went to an event at the local school in the evening and whilst others were tucking into hot dogs and hog roasts I waited to get home and have the rest of my chicken and carrots. All in all this was my lowest net carb day to date which was OK but I think I got a bit bored of raw carrot by the end of it. More variety is required!

I found this article on 3 Ways Carbohydrates Can Make You Fat which is quite interesting and worth a read.

Day 2 of Our Low Carb Diet

Well I was a bit better prepared today so it was 2 rashers of bacon, 3 lincolnshire sausages and an egg for breakfast with a cup of coffee for around 2 net carbs.

During the day I had 4 small chicken legs that I cooked up yesterday, a small pot of nuts, some cheese and 20g of 85% Cocoa Fairtrade Chocolate (just 3.8 net carbs in 100 gram bar!). For drinks I had some caffeine free teas. So thats about another 9 net carbs.

I also had a packet of pork scratchings which turned out to be a bit of a disaster as I managed to crack a tooth whilst eating them and the NHS Dental Surgery near us was closed for lunch when I went up there!

For the evening meal I had a fish pie which comes in at around 20 net carbs.

So with a glass of wine and a few more nuts today will come in at around the 35 net carb mark.

I must admit that I have had a headache this evening and I had one yesterday afternoon too. I know this is because of the lack of caffeine so I'm going to have to have another coffee this evening. It has been a big jump going from 6 or 7 cups a day to 1 so I think if I have two a day then I have a better chance of weaning myself off the caffeine.

Getting going on the low carbs

Well things didn't quite go so well this morning as I didn't get breakfast and so I ended up in Sainsbury's to stock up for the day. It was therefore mainly meat and cheese today with 2 small packets of chicken slices (1 with a sweet chilli flavour on it.) 2g of carbs for both packs though. 120g of cheddar which was almost another 2g and some pepperami x 2 for another 1.2g.

Normally I would like a packet of crisps in the morning but today we went for the 'heart attack in a bag' option of a largish packet of pork scratchings which came in at around 0 carbs.

So thats about 5.5g of cards consumed during the day except for my sin!! A pear which comes in at a whopping 16g on its own.

The evening meal with some sausages, veg and a small amount of potatoes and gravy which I would estimate is about 40g for the meal.

Ok it's hardly the Atkins induction coming in at around 61g so far and with a couple of glasses of wine this could be 65-67g but I had been having a McDonalds Sausage & Egg McMuffin Meal with a Large latte for breakfast and that comes in at the same number of carbs just for the breakfast so all in all that is a big change to what I have been used to.

I bought some sausages and chicken legs on the way home so I'm gonna cook them up for tomorrow and make sure that I get my egg, sausage and bacon breakfast first thing.

Ok, here goes - The diet!

After seeing a friend lose 23lbs on the Atkins diet , thought i'd give it a go. I only want to lose about 10lbs and it sounded like a piece of cake (eh-hum!) but after a weekend of Atkins INDUCTION I felt doomed for failure and pretty miserable. Decided not to throw in the towel though but to do a low-carb version of my own and record the results, warts 'n' all, in this blog. Not sure if i'm gonna declare my weight on here yet but will certainly note my losses (and mood swings) as the diet progresses. Motivation comes from my game brother who has decided to join in! Here's what i've consumed today:

Breakfast: 2 egg omlette, decaf tea (not that bad actually).
Mid morning snack: banana (ouch!)
Lunch: Large chicken & beansprout salad
Dinner: Mixed antipasti veggies, salami & cheese. One glass of red. Low carb chocolate dessert

I feel full but not bloated. Hope i don't need to raid the fridge later.

Getting Ready For The Diet!

Before I get cracking on our low carb diet I have had to go and buy a set of bathroom scales so that I can monitor my progress. Prior to this my last few years have been a living in ignorance bliss but now I will monitor what is going on. My plan is to show my current score on the site since the day I start so look out for those updates.

Anyway the scales I got are the Salter 9021 Eclipse Electronic Scale with Ultra Slim Technology. From John Lewis in Peterborough they are £34 but you can get them from Amazon.co.uk for about 2/3rds of that price. (see picture).

I have also found a couple of carb counter websites and I will be pop some links on the right hand side of the page to their sites.

Welcome To Our Low Carb Diet

This blog is about the experience that we are having by engaging in a low carb diet. We are inspired by Atkins but we will each be going our own way with regards to how closely it is followed and we will record total weight loss on this blog.

Keep coming by for regular updates from myself Stuart and my sister Andrea.