Low Carb Dieting - How it Works and Recipes!

I've been involved in low carbohydrate dieting for about 6 years now. I've lost a lot of weight when I used the diet properly and I've gained a lot back when I fell into my old lifestyle of eating poorly. Simply put, the low carbohydrate lifestyle is a healthier lifestyle than what we've been taught and that we have practiced for the last few generations.

White flour and sugar has become the staple of our western diet. Pastries, pasta, white bread, and sugared up beverages have caused us to gain weight while addicting us to death by ingestion!

Diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and many more ailments we suffer in our modern society can be attributed to a high glycemic diet. We were not designed to take in the non-nutritious garbage that pollutes our life machine. Yahweh gives life. He gives spiritual life and physical life. The subject of this article is physical life; however I believe you really can't separate the two.

Our life machine is our body. It is a gift of Yahweh-God and we have to maintain it. It's like getting a new car. When you first drive it off the showroom floor it is immaculately clean and in its best running condition. But we immediately take it down dirt roads, through rain; as well sleet, snow, and chemical ice melt products. Our new car begins to age the minute we drive our of the dealership parking lot. Even though our car, like all cars, will wear out with age, the length of dependable service and enjoyment we derive from it is directly related to our proper care of the vehicle. And so it is with our life machine, our bodies.

Proper care of our bodies, providing it with the correct fuel for optimum performance and long life is essential. Coupled with exercise, the correct diet will give us a much better chance at a longer, more productive, and happier life. Sedentary life and junk food nutrition make us sluggish and sick and this affects our state of mind as well as our body performance.

When I began my low carb diet journey I read Dr. Robert C. Atkins' book entitled Diet Revolution. My initial desire for the low carb diet was the amount of food I could eat. Especially food I liked. But when I began to read the book I was convinced by the science behind it and the decades of success stories from people just like me.

I had heard about insulin before. I knew a couple of people who had diabetes and I knew they had to take insulin shots. It sounded awful to me, and since I didn't have diabetes I really didn't want to know any more. But Dr. Atkins introduced me to a better understanding of what insulin really is and what it does to our body.

Insulin is a hormone. According to Dr. Atkins book, The New Diet Revolution, on page forty-nine; "This insulin hormone is one of the most powerful substances that the body uses to control the use, distribution, and storage of energy." Since a lack of energy was one of my problems, I felt I should read on. I learned that our bodies are powered through glucose, a basic form of sugar in the blood. Our bodies must have glucose. Our body looks for glucose from the foods we eat. As long as there is a supply of food from which glucose can be derived our body will continue to obtain it - as much as it can, all the time.

Dr. Atkins describes what happens when the typical person sits down to eat dinner. The carbohydrates we eat; simple sugars such as bread, pasta, desserts, sugar sweetened beverages, and the like quickly and easily become glucose. Sounds like that's a good idea doesn't it. At first glance I want to eat a big spaghetti dinner with garlic bread, washed down by Pepsi Cola, and topped off with a large bowl of cake and ice cream! But is that good?

What about the other foods we consume at this meal? Well the fats we eat are absorbed as glycerol and fatty acids. The roast beef or chicken (or whatever your favorite protein is) becomes amino acids, the building blocks of protein - lean muscle. So what does all this mean?

So if I determine I want energize my body I should eat that big pasta dinner and cake and ice cream desert, right? Wrong! "Why," I ask? Well energy from these high carb, simple sugar menu items does not necessarily translate into strength.

Our bodies handle glucose like a bank handles money. What it doesn't need to use right away it stores away in a vault for later use. The more money we get the bigger the vault has to be to hold it all. It's the same with glucose. Our body is the vault. When we produce more glucose than we need at any given moment, by the foods we eat, our body converts it into fatty tissue called triglyceride. That's what insulin does. It is the agent that converts the glucose to fatty tissue and you can see our glucose vault getting bigger and bigger with every deposit of pasta, bread, pastries, and pies, etc!

Of course, what I'm presenting is very oversimplified and is just a small bit of the complex science behind the low carb diet plan. Put simply; the simple sugars in the cakes, pies, and deserts we eat make us fat. Eating fat doesn't necessarily make us fat.
Eating protein, even red meat, doesn't make us fat. In fact, what we've been told is a healthy diet of pasta, breads, and cereals make us fat. And that causes diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and other ailments that doctors have prescribed this death diet to combat for years. We've been trying to put out the fire with gasoline!

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So how does the low carb diet cause us to lose weight? A body function called ketosis. Ketosis is what happens when a person is starving. If you go without food for a couple of days you will enter into ketosis. When we burn fat we give off ketones through our breath and urine. Alright, I know, this doesn't sound very romantic or attractive, but it truly can be beneficial.

Now I'm not talking about starvation. What I'm talking about is what Dr. Atkins called Benign Dietary Ketosis. This form of ketosis takes place when you eat as much food as you want! You don't starve at all. In fact you never go hungry. The difference is the absence of simple sugars in our diet.

So how does this work? When we don't eat the high carb items on the menu we aren't making those deposits into our bank to create more glucose. Remember, the body needs glucose for energy. So where does it go? It goes to the vault and makes withdrawals from the fatty tissue stored there. Our body burns the fat in the absence of fresh intake of high carb foods! You see, our body looks first to the food we eat. If it doesn't find the insulin it requires there it goes to the bank and makes the withdrawal. The effect is the fat is burned for energy and ketones are the by product of the process. Put simply, we lose fat! And we didn't go hungry at all! HalleluYah!

If you want to learn more check out the Atkins website or find a copy of his book, The New Diet Revolution.

When I first began the diet I initially lost about 50 pounds. I ate lots of meat and cheese and then began to add in some good carbs, like broccoli, green beans, spinach, cucumbers, and other great carb offerings. This comes after the initial phase of the diet. For the first couple of weeks you should stick to meat and cheese, with maybe a small one cup sized salad.

Eggs have become my friend on this diet. I've always loved eggs. Now I look for more ways to prepare them. When I first began the diet I ate a lot of pork rinds. It was a great filler snack with a diet soda. But since then I've begun to follow the Biblical diet outlined in Leviticus. Since becoming Torah observant pork and shellfish are no longer on my diet. But there are many other offerings that are. Allow me to share with you what I eat.

Breakfasts, in the initial phase of the diet, for me, consists of eggs and cheese. I love omelets. Here's my favorite omelet recipe.

Break four eggs in a small bow. Yep four eggs! I'm not worried about cholesterol on this diet.

I add about an eight cup of water to the eggs and then blend in some taco or other Mexican style seasoning.

I've got my pan on the stove with butter melting in it. Butter is good on this diet, as much as you want.

I add about a quarter cup of green onions or white onions if I don't have green, to the pan. I sometimes add some lean turkey or chicken to the pan as well. Adding meat is good. The protein party is better with more protein in attendance.

After I give my onions a little bit of time to sauté, I add my whipped up eggs, water and seasoning mixture to the onions, and other items, in the pan. The water makes it fluffier, in case you're wondering.

Keeping the fire low cook just as you would any other omelet and when you flip it, add cheese. I like a Monterey jack myself. Fold the omelet and place it on your plate. Add some Cilantro and a little fresh jalapeño, and a little hot sauce and get ready to titillate your palette with a great start to the morning. Other ideas with your omelet can be spinach, kale, and later on some tomatoes. Be creative and enjoy.

I eat about 5 - 6 times per day. My "between meal" snacks, or "sneals" as another low carb guru has said, consist of lean meat, cheese, and now some peanut butter. I wouldn't recommend peanut butter in the early weeks, however, but it can be one of the early additions to your diet, as you continue.

I lift weights now and that has changed my diet somewhat, but not much. I find that when I go back to my old lifestyle of simple sugar carbs I begin to put the glucose back in the vault. That's fat and I don't want it. So back I go.

I like to mix a little peanut butter with Cool Whip for a cool "ice cream" like snack or desert. You can use cream cheese and mix in some peanut butter and later on a little no sugar added fruit and create a great desert. Peanuts make good snack food later in the diet as well.

Lunch time comes around and I like to eat a lot of meat and cheese. Turkey and chicken are my favorites, but I really like a great big juicy hamburger. Here's my favorite way to prepare it. Get some good fresh ground beef. Separate out about a pound of it and add some onion to it along with Worchester sauce and some garlic salt and pepper. Mix it all together and throw it on the grill or place it in a cast iron skillet and cook it to your specifications. I serve it up with dill pickle spears, a little lettuce, and later on with tomatoes or some other good carb veggie. A note on good carb veggies; they usually are green and leafy, but green beans and broccoli make my list too.

After you begin to reach your goal, or when you feel like you want to, add a little Ezekiel 4:9 Bread to you diet. There's no flour in it and it is very low glycemic, but healthy, nutritious, and delicious. Kroger and Meijer stores carry it and you can find more about it on line at Food For Life.

Supper is good for roast chicken with a sauce made of fresh garlic and cream cheese and parmesan cheese. With a side of spinach with cheddar cheese melted on it, you can't go wrong. The cool thing about low carb recipes is that they are very simple. Don't be afraid to experiment.

One of my favorite foods is barbecue beef. My wife makes the sauce for it without sugar. Splenda is a friend of mine and we use it liberally. Mix a cup of low carb ketchup in a bowl with a quarter cup of prepared mustard, add a teaspoon of chili powder, and splenda to taste and mix it all together. Take a big lean beef roast and slow cook it till it falls apart. Oh, and don't forget to add a diced medium onion to the roast while it is cooking. After it is done blend in your low carb barbecue sauce and dive in. I like to add cheddar cheese over it as well.

I love Mexican food so I have about as much of it as I want. I just don't eat the shells. Lots of jalapenos, cheese, seasoned chicken, turkey, or beef, add liberal amounts of cheese, along with a good hot sauce (stay away from salsa during the induction phase of the diet) enjoy it and watch the weight come off.

Okay, two more desert recipes. Although, one of the by products of the low carb diet is that you don't crave the deserts like you used to. Here's a fruity one.

1/2 cup blueberries
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 TBSP finely chopped walnuts (2-3 walnut halves)

Chop walnuts. Put berries in a bowl. If they are frozen, you may wish to thaw them a bit. My son likes them frozen. I need them thawed a little. 30 seconds in the microwave should be good. Pour the cream over the berries, and sprinkle the walnuts on top. Enjoy!

If you like coffee deserts you will love this.

Brew some good strong, dark coffee. Let it cool and blend in heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract, cocoa, and Splenda. Put it in a freezer safe container and in a few hours you have a glorious low carb chocolate frappacino! Yeeaaaahhh! Now that's what I'm talking about!

You can lose weight, not go hungry, and in fact enjoy the culinary journey of low carb dieting. I encourage you to get started today. Even if you are not overweight, if you try this diet, you will feel better. But don't take my word for it. Give it a whirl. Okay, now for the disclaimer, only because ya gotta do it. Check with your doctor before starting any diet. I'm not a doctor and I don't claim to be. I'm just relating my own personal experience with low carb dieting. Take it for what it's worth. You can publish your results and thoughts after you've tried, should you have the urge. Gotta go. I've got a big old hamburger with some zucchini on the side for lunch!