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!

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?