<p>I have printed several recipes from Jan’s Sushi Bar - they sound wonderful. I gathered that she is working on a cookbook. The low-carb, high protein/fat diet is a big change for me, and it probably won’t work well to try to do it with small changes. </p>
<p>I spend a great deal of time on meal planning, shopping, cooking, etc., and it would be very hard for me to follow any sort of unusual diet. I had already started working on increasing the amount of vegetables we eat, but I also serve a lot of fruit. I’m making pork loin tonight with 3 vegetables (plus corn for a visiting nephew who brings his own likes and dislikes to add to those of the permanent household).</p>
<p>One of the good things about Jan is that she has a teenage boy in the house, and she always reports on what he likes and doesn’t like in her recipes:). NYMomof2, pork loin and vegetables sounds delicious, can I come?</p>
<p>Oy! I’ve been limping all afternoon. I ramped up my treadmill time by running for one minute every 9 walking. (Remember this is weight loss for dummies!) But I put in 40 minutes on the dreaded treadmill and a good 20 minute floor stretch after.</p>
<p>This afternoon I hit the mall with DS1. He needed more professional clothes for his summer internship. We went to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. I probably haven’t been there in a year and was pleasantly surprised by the menu. I had a guocomole appetizer which they happily replaced the chips with celery sticks. For dinner I had grilled salmon, with creamy mashed cauliflower( Fab!) and steamed broccoli. Not too bad for mall food! There are several selections on the menu with the calorie counts listed. Just be careful… they consider something with <700 calories low cal :O!</p>
<p>I’ve also saved Jan’s Sushi bar recipes. I am looking forward to trying some of them.</p>
<p>Next weekend is our annual hellacious road trip to the summer house. It is a 28 hour road trip done in 2 days. There is so much fast food that I can no longer eat the stuff unless it is June or August when we are headed home. We hope to arrive Sunday night and our first house guests arrive Thursday. So if you have some tried and true healthful recipes that are company worthy please do share!</p>
<p>Thanks to all who are sharing. It is very edifying.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting the link to Jan’s sushi bar. Some of the recipes look really good. Does anybody know of a good low carb cookie or cake recipe? I need to make a cake to celebrate a birthday.
BTW, I’m on a low carb diet not because of any problem. No diabetes, no blood pressure, no cholesterol problem here. But I’m aware that as I’m getting in to my 50s there will be some health problem. I just want to ward off some of these potential problems. Besides eating complex carbohydrate seems to give me more lasting power, I feel like I have more energy.</p>
<p>It would have been great to have you, Alumother!</p>
<p>laketime, These are a couple of easy summer recipes that I considered healthy, although I’m not sure how sweet potatoes fit into a low-carb diet. In any case, I make them many times throughout the summer. Scrub and dry sweet potatoes, cut into wedges, toss with olive oil and a mixture of salt, pepper, garam masala (or cumin, curry, ginger, anything you’d like). Roast in a 400-degree oven in a single layer, turning every 10 mins or so. They will be done in 30-40 minutes, depending on thickness of the wedges. Serve as is, or with low-fat sour cream as a dip (or high-fat?).</p>
<p>I also like to make big salads. I usually start by washing and drying romaine lettuce, and tossing it with olive oil and a little vinegar (red wine, champagne, or balsamic), salt and pepper. I spread it over a large platter and top with other vegetables, etc. One great combination to put on top is sliced oranges, sliced fennel, toasted almonds, and shaved Manchego cheese. </p>
<p>My favorite summer dessert is classic shortcake, with home-made biscuits, mixed fresh strawberries and blueberries, and real whipped cream. For a low-carb diet, I guess we could skip the biscuits!</p>
<p>Thanks OP for starting this thread. The other was too advanced for me. To give you an idea of where I am, will some of you please post a list of high carb food items, and a list of complex carbs? I need a better idea. I’m not a bread and potatoes person, but cheese and diet pepsi are my big downfalls.</p>
<p>I am on the wrong side of “mid” 40’s. I live in a very obese, not eat healthy, everyone smokes state. No excuse, but little peer modeling either, and I have used this as an excuse to let my “panic” weight limit increase over the years. It’s more difficult every year to lose weight. Arthritis pain in my knees doesn’t help with my exercise motivation either.</p>
<p>I’m 5’2" and the middle age spread starts making me look more like a square than a column I live 30 minutes from a town with a gym, so that and $4/gal gas means my exercise is going to occur at home.</p>
<p>You can look at the nutrition labels for the foods that you eat to get an idea of whether it is high-carb or low-carb. In general, you can look at the grams of carbs, fats and protein. Fats have twice the calories of carbs and protein per unit of weight. So if a serving of a food has one gram of carbs, one gram of fat and one gram of protein, then 25% of the food is carbs. There can be an additional calculation for fiber that is inexact but it can be ignored to get a rough idea. An example of a low-carb food would be Brunswick Kippered Snacks (Herring) which are 8 grams fat, 0 grams carbs, 16 grams protein - zero carbs.</p>
<p>There are websites where you can lookup the nutrition info for food. I use the LiveStrong site - I can just start typing the name of the food and it will list matching foods along with their nutrition info. I sometimes go into their database looking for low-carb or high-fiber foods.</p>
<p>srystress,
I copied the text below from a Diabetes website.</p>
<p>What Foods Have Carbohydrate?
Foods that contain carbohydrate are:</p>
<p>starchy foods like bread, cereal, rice, and crackers
fruit and juice
milk and yogurt
dried beans like pinto beans and soy products like veggie burgers
starchy vegetables like potatoes and corn
sweets and snack foods like sodas, juice drinks, cake, cookies, candy, and chips
Non-starchy vegetables have a little bit of carbohydrate but in general are very low.</p>
<p>My understanding is that it is better to eat whole grains if you are going to eat carbs because whole grains are complex carbs, meaning that they take longer to digest and don’t readily convert to sugar in your body. The longer a food takes to digest, the less it will be converted to fat. So it is better to eat wheat flour, pastand bread and to eat brown rice as opposed to white. </p>
<p>I remember a tip that I heard once that said that when choosing food to eat, choose the food that is closest to its natural state. In other words, less processed foods. White flour is bleached and processed. Whole wheat is not.</p>
<p>Some advice if you’re not sure how to get started or how good/bad you’re eating…</p>
<p>Always start breakfast with a fruit - not fruit juice, but a real fruit - a banana, bowl of strawberries or blueberries - little to no added sugar.</p>
<p>Always start lunch with a plate/baggie of raw vegetables.</p>
<p>Always start dinner by eating 1/2 cup or more or a good vegetable (so talking broccoli, not baked potato).</p>
<p>The point being, that no matter what you are eating, by filling up on a good food and cutting that hungry edge, you’re more likely to not pig out on the bag stuff.</p>
<p>That makes a lot of sense. I’m gonna try that.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention something. A friend of mine lost a lot of weight recently by cutting carbs and portion sizes. she also drank a lot of tea called Yogi Healthy Fasting Tea. I bought some and it is pretty good and all natural. It tastes kind of like Chai tea. My friend swears it helped her lose.</p>
<p>I have heard this too, but I have also read that “whole wheat” processed food is scarcely better than processed food made with white flour. There might be a few whole grains in “whole grain” bread or pasta, but perhaps not enough to make a difference. What does counter the carbs is fiber, so even though beans are moderately high carb they have a good amount of fiber, which makes them preferable to other carbs.</p>
<p>^^^
Yes. That’s true. Don’t be fooled by “Multi Grain” products either. Look for Whole wheat bread that has about 3g of fiber per slice. I buy Arnold’s Whole wheat.</p>
<p>The more fiber a food has the better, again, because it takes longer to digest. Not all carbs are created equal.</p>
<p>I’m in! I’m another one who’s on WW. Over the past 7 years or so, my weight had been slowly - and then not so slowly - creeping up. I needed to lose about 35 pounds (!!!) just to get into the upper level of “normal” on the BMI index. I started in February and at weigh in this week I was down a total of 19.6 pounds. It has not come off quickly, but since I was steadily increasing, I’m happy with my progress. I had done WW years ago (the “regular” points program) and I find that I much prefer the new Points Plus program. I don’t often feel deprived on this one and I did much more on the other. That said, I was not very good this weekend, but look at it as a blip rather than the end of trying.
My big obstacle is that I hate to exercise. I cannot tell you how many gym memberships I’ve let languish (of course, while continuing to pay for them). I do play a little bit of tennis (only once a week) and was walking, but then when the weather got hot I found plenty of reasons to stop. I need to get back on track with that and also work on building some muscle mass with weights. </p>
<p>I have an iPhone and some really good apps are the Weight Watchers app and Fooducate. With Fooducate, you can snap a picture of a USB code on a package and it will give you the nutritional info, healthier alternatives and (not always) the WW points value. Very cool!</p>
<p>My favorite afternoon snack: 2 pieces of Wasa Crispbread spread with a wedge of Laughing Cow lofat cheese (the blue cheese flavor is my favorite) then topped with slices of apple. </p>
<p>Looking forward to getting some motivation to keep on going :)</p>
<p>For two weeks now I am only eating bread and vegetable salad. I don’t exercise much. Can this really help and would I be able to loose weight doing this. I am taking lots of water though.</p>
<p>Welcome my2sunz! Congrats on the weight loss! </p>
<p>Welcome Abinclane!</p>
<p>Your diet plan doesn’t sound like it will work long term. Bread is a very carbohydrate loaded food. Vegetable salad is good for you but can leave you feeling unsatisfied. Are you getting any protein? You need protein for energy and to build muscle. Where did you come across this diet plan?</p>
<p>You’ll be able lose weight doing that if you consume fewer calories than you burn. You will lose weight on ANY sort of diet provided you keep that equation with a calorie deficit. It’s simple math. </p>
<p>A guy famously proved this a few years ago by losing weight eating nothing but Twinkies. Of course his nutrition was atrocious, but that’s another story.</p>
<p>Yes, its true that you will lose weight if you take in less than you burn but i think that studies have shown that this kind of diet does not lead to long term results because you can’t eat that way forever. Besides it’s unhealthy. Again, where is the protein.</p>
<p>“Wheat” or “multigrain” bread is usually made with mostly refined flour, rather than whole wheat. Look for “whole wheat” as the first ingredient if you want to buy an actual whole wheat product.</p>
<p>Instead of packaged silced breads typically found in the same section at Wonderbread, look for artisan whole grain breads in the bakery section.</p>
<p>coureur, it is not true that the guy ate only Twinkies - he made sure that he was getting adequate amount of vitamins and essential nutrients by supplementing his junk food with other things (I saw his interview on CNN):</p>
I live 30 minutes from a town with a gym, so that and $4/gal gas means my exercise is going to occur at home.</p>