Breakfast shakes WITHOUT protein powders

by | Jan 31, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the recent comment I made on a post at lowcarber about breakfast choices

 

Hi Thump,

When I was in the Middle East we often used to have cottage cheese for breakfast. That and a  very tasty avocado and onion salad  that was finely chopped and went  down a treat especially with a good dash of lemon juice over the top and salt and pepper to taste.

Another thing you can have is fresh yogurt made with some raw milk. That will act as a nice base for all sorts of different things that you could put in it which if it’s a nice fresh one made with unpasteurized milk will charge up the bacteria for when you start eating solids later in the day.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Grass Fed Beef

by | Jan 30, 2013 | Food Choices, High Protein Diet, Meat Products | 0 comments

A recent comment that I made on a lowcarber forum post about naturally fed beef

 

JoreyTK’s post:

Hey all,

I asked a local farmer if their cattle are grass finished. I’m pretty clueless about cattle raising but is this basically just as nutrient devoid as the supermarket meats?

 

My comment:

Great question JoreyTK and a super response from Jacki too.

From my perspective there are really two different criteria that needed to be looked at whenever we buy beef. The first thing are the animals fed natural food as opposed to food that is laced with antibiotics, hormones and other drugs and is it GM free? Generally speaking if those criteria are met then the meat product is usually pretty good simply because any farmer who is willing to go the extra mile not to use drugs and hormones and to ensure their feed is GMO-free will tend to take care of their animals far more conscientiously than those brought up on vast feedlots.

Whether or not they are finished on grass or corn fed or any other type of grain for that matter, as Jacki has said, will affect how quickly they come to kill weight and that will obviously  affect in many ways both the texture and the taste  as well as the look of the meat as well.

Then there is a third option for finishing cows off and that’s one they use quite extensively in Europe which is once the  growing season has stopped the cattle are transitioned on to silage which if you don’t know about it is fermented grass. This has the advantage of retaining a much larger proportion of all the good stuff, the nutrients as compared to say, dried hay or something like that.

Another popular feed in Europe is also root crops such as turnips, carrots parsnips, sugar beets and even sweet potatoes. Kale is also a very popular hereabout and it seems to last in the field quite well where the farmers will allow the cattle to strip graze it progressively each day.

So even though there may not be grass growing through the winter where you live, farmers do have a choice to feed their cattle in as natural a way as possible according to the resources they’ve got at hand. Whether they’re finished on grass, whether they’re finished on corn or whether they’re finished on solid or kale or whatever, the key issue for me is more is it natural and free of drugs and other additives that I just don’t want passed on to me through the meat I eat. The rest is really just more of a question of taste.

Cheers,

Mark

Looking for low carb salty crunchy snack

by | Jan 28, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Another post at lowcarber forum  that I have commented on regarding low carb foods

 

belovednes:

Sometimes I will like to crunch in to salty snack. If you have a recipe please let me know.

 

My reply:

Hi belovednes,

One of my favorites is streaky bacon fried until it’s crispy but just before it gets crispy sprinkle it with slivers of Parmigiano cheese or any other strong hard Italian type cheese; can be eaten hot or cold. It’s also nice chopped up into small bits and sprinkled over salad.

Hope you enjoy that.

Mark

Are avocados good for me?

by | Jan 25, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Here is another of my comments on a post about avocados at Jimmy Moore’s

 

Jimmy Moore wrote:

Are avocados good for me?: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/heal…cle7524624 ~ Do we REALLY have to ask this question about a real food like avocados? Unfortunately in this fat-phobic culture we live in these days, yes we do and it’s indicative of the mountain of work that’s still in front of us to convince people that dietary fat (especially from whole food sources) is NOT the problem. I credit the registered dietitian for answering this question well except for her dig at butter and promotion of “whole grain toast” towards the end. Is there a mandate that fat be demonized and grains heralded in the RD manual or what?

 

My comment:

I absolutely love avocados. Many years ago I was staying in a small chalet in the garden of a friend’s house. The gardener has planted something like 35 years beforehand and all around the chalet there were 12 different varieties of avocado, each one fruiting to maturity at a different time of the year so you virtually have avocados all year round.

Everyday for breakfast along with cottage cheese we used to have an avocado salad that was simply the pulp of 2 fresh avocados cut into small cubes, mixed in with finely chopped onion and dressed with a little lemon juice, salt and pepper. The secret was to leave it for about 20 minutes so all the flavors exchange before you eat it. It was absolutely delicious in fact thinking about it now makes me want to go and make something just like that.

Incidentally the owner of that garden lived well into his 90s and strangely enough he had avocados virtually every day.

Definitely a food for thought.

Mark

HELP-Don’t wanna eat NUTHIN’!

by | Jan 21, 2013 | Food Choices | 0 comments

Another copy of a comment that I have commented on at forum.lowcarber.org regarding eating habits

 

corsair915 posted:

Hey Folks I need some helps and advice. I am back on full time low carb after a maintenance period of semi- low carb. This return to serious low carb was a choice to clean up my diet and build muscle. I have gained lean mass very well on low carb. I do martial arts with heavy weapons and train heavily 12 hours/week. I have a prize fight in one month-3 grueling hours of full on contact with big weapons against guys who are a foot taller and twice my weight-all highly trained. I’m ready! And in just 2 weeks of true low carb I packed on 4 pounds of muscle-WOOT!

Now the bad news-I burn 400-800 calories/day and am deeply in ketosis. All is going well with diet, hydration, electrolytes, supplements, even energy levels. I allow up to 50 grams of carbs on days when I train more than 2 hours and I am doing well with sufficient energy. But I really have to FORCE myself to eat anything at all. I am not only without hunger, but food is a total turn-off. I just don’t want to eat anything. No nausea, fatigue not out of proportion to the level of training. But I just don’t feel like food has any appeal at all. Except for pork rinds, hahaha!

Before you all wanna kill me, seriously I need to ask if you can helps. I will not be able to repair my beat-up 49 year old body without food! Anyone been through this? Anything you found that stimulates appetite? Everything I eat tastes awful from the ketones. Just breathing heavily during a workout is like having my head in a bucket of nail polish remover. Water runs through me in an hour and I need to drink a lot so it makes me full and doesn’t helps the food intake situation. Will this pass? 

I’ve had a lot of experience and success at low carb for 4 years but this is new territory for me. Any advice and suggestions are truly appreciated!

 

My insight:

Hi corsair915,

The two keys here are variety, leaning towards the things that you like to eat and quality, making sure that they’re protein and fat rich but there is something else I noticed as well. You say you’re without hunger which isn’t that unusual for someone in ketosis but I noticed also you are drinking protein shakes. My only observation there is that you are sacrificing the pleasure of eating natural protein for consuming, shall I say, an unnatural protein.

No one and I mean no one can convince me that the protein contained in those types of supplements are superior to the protein, vitamins, minerals, trace elements and more importantly enzymes that  we get when we eat protein from a natural source.

I suspect that if you tackle those three things you’ll find that your appetite returns but also you will give your body the opportunity for it to tell you what it needs on a day by day basis.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Not meeting the caloric needs

by | Jan 21, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

This is a copy of the post over at forum.lowcarber.org where I have replied about calories

 

kangaroo said:

Hello everyone! 

I’ve always wondered if eating less calories is that big of a deal. I mean, now that I’m low carbing, some days I’m ok with eating between 800-1000 kcal (and rarely do I exceed 1200/1300 kcal anyway), with no hunger or anything, but everywhere I read says that I’m not meeting my caloric needs and that I’m in ‘starvation’ mode. But if I am, shouldn’t I feel starved??? 

Should I stuff myself anyway to reach the calorie goal, even if I’m perfectly fine with eating less?

 

My response

Yes your body will tell you when it’s hungry. As like most living creatures, we are hard-wired for self preservation. In fact I don’t think you’ll find a single psychologist anywhere who will dispute that. Furthermore if you’re listening to your body and it does seem that you are, then you have no need to count calories, at least not in terms of are you getting enough.

A low carb diet works in a very profound and basic level not in terms of the quantity of food that we eat but much rather in terms of the quality of the food that we eat. Everyday our bodies have a certain requirement for particular nutrients. If the food that we eat is lacking in those nutrients as a high carbohydrate diet would typically be, then we have to eat vast quantities of food in order to get the small percentage of the nutrients that our body craves and then of course it has the perks and job of dealing with all of the other stuffs it didn’t need just to get out what it did need.

Whereas by following a low carb way of eating, the foods that we eat are much more in keeping with exactly what the body needs everyday, meaning that we have to eat a whole lot less in terms on quantity in order to get what we need in terms of quality. All that to say, I wouldn’t worry at all about how many calories you’re consuming everyday and proving your body continues to say, “I’m okay with this” just carry on.

Hope that helps,

Mark