Tag: low carb

Low Carb Picnic Lunch Ideas

Summer means picnics and barbecues but that can sometimes be difficult if you are trying to stick to a diet that is low carb or has less sugar. Plain lettuce chicken and tomatoes doesn’t always hit the spot. Try some easy delicious picnic lunch ideas that are also healthy and low carb.

 

Main Dishes

Lettuce Wraps

Fill large lettuce leaves with deli meats, cheese, avocado, and a touch of mustard or mayo. Roll them up for easy eating.

Chicken Salad

Combine cooked, shredded chicken with mayo, celery, and seasonings. Serve in lettuce cups or with low-carb crackers.

Zucchini Noodles with Pesto

Toss spiralized zucchini with homemade or store-bought pesto. Add cherry tomatoes and grilled chicken for extra protein.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Fill halved bell peppers with a mixture of cream cheese, shredded cheese, and cooked ground meat or turkey.

Sides

Caprese Salad Skewers

Skewer cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella balls, and basil leaves. Drizzle with balsamic glaze.

Cucumber Salad

Mix sliced cucumbers with red onions, feta cheese, and a light vinaigrette.

Deviled Eggs

Prepare deviled eggs with your favorite recipe. For extra flavor, add bacon bits or a touch of smoked paprika.

Guacamole with Veggies

Serve guacamole with an assortment of low-carb veggies like bell pepper strips, celery sticks, and radish slices.

Snacks

Cheese and Charcuterie Platter

Include a variety of cheeses, olives, nuts, and cured meats like salami and prosciutto.

Nuts and Seeds

Bring a mix of almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds for easy snacking.

Desserts

Berries with Whipped Cream. Enjoy fresh strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries topped with a dollop of sugar-free whipped cream.

Keto Fat Bombs

Prepare fat bombs using ingredients like cream cheese, coconut oil, and low-carb sweeteners for a sweet treat.

Drinks

Infused Water

Add slices of lemon, lime, cucumber, or berries to your water for a refreshing, low-carb beverage.

Iced Tea

Brew some unsweetened iced tea and bring along a few lemon slices.

Tips for Packing

Keep everything cool. Use a cooler with ice packs to keep your food fresh and safe. Bring utensils and napkins. Make sure to pack any necessary utensils, napkins, and plates. Think about convenience. Opt for finger foods and items that are easy to eat without too much fuss.

These low-carb picnic options will help you enjoy a healthy and satisfying outdoor meal.

Can a Keto Diet Help Me Lose Weight and Stay Healthy?

https://www.tryadietforamonth.com/The keto diet is a special high-fat, sufficient-sugar, low-carb diet which in common practice is used chiefly to cure epileptic seizures in epileptic children. It has been reported that patients who have followed this diet for a long time have succeeded in controlling their seizures with remarkable improvements. The keto diet forces your body to use fat instead of glucose for energy, thereby sparing the pancreas from making too much of the hormone insulin. When the pancreas produces too much insulin, ketones, or ketones are produced by the breakdown of fat and glucose. Excess ketones are eliminated through the urine, and the remainder passes out of the body as ketones. As the liver is forced to use muscle protein for energy, ketones can be expelled more efficiently through urine than through the diet.

Following the keto diet can also help you in weight loss. This is because it forces your body to use fat for energy instead of glucose. If your goal is fast weight loss, then it’s recommended to eat up to five pounds of lean proteins (for example, chicken or fish) and carbohydrates every day, and to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. For best results, always try to eat as healthy as possible and choose proteins that are low in saturated fats. Eggs are particularly good if you want to lose weight quickly, while sausages and other meats are better choices for long-term weight loss.

High blood pressure is one condition that can be helped by following a keto diet. In a study conducted in Finland, hypertensive women were given either a low or a high fat, low fiber diet for a period of six months. The researchers reported that the subjects on the keto diets had significantly lower blood pressure than those on a low carb diet. In addition, blood pressure was lowered even in those with previous hypertension. These diets seem to improve many common conditions, including diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure.

A keto diet can also help one’s complexion, as it reduces uric acid buildup. One study comparing women who followed one of two diets reported that their “whole body metabolic profile” was similar, despite the fact that one group ate mainly carbs and the other ate mostly protein. No significant differences were found in insulin levels or in the amount or type of fats consumed. However, it is important to note that one study did report that a ketogenic diet can increase the risk of certain cancers, including colon cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.

A keto diet can greatly reduce abdominal fat. Many people feel that cutting one’s carbohydrate intake drastically reduces the amount of fat that’s accumulated around the midsection. However, while reducing carbs might make one lose some weight, it can also cause significant health problems. Most of the weight lost by reducing carbs tends to come from water and muscle rather than fat. Also, most people who try low carb diets eventually end up eating more carbs than they had previously.

For people at high risk for heart disease, especially people with plaque-based conditions like cardiovascular disease, lowering LDL particles (fatty compounds) can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease. LDL is the “bad” cholesterol and increases the risk of heart disease. Statins, one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for cholesterol control, lower LDL but not HDL. So taking statins may actually increase the amount of saturated fat one eats, making this disease risk worse. Research into how diet can affect LDL particles (and other factors such as disease risk) is still ongoing.

Gene Madison writes concerning the Keto Diet and Weight loss in his blog.  Visit his website for more information.

How To Keep Weight Off

Lost It?

It’s all very well losing the weight, but keeping it off can be another problem altogether, especially if you chose a rapid weight loss diet as your method for losing weight. Once the weight is off, there is the temptation to return to your previous way of eating (WOE) and a consequent build up of fat again. Been there, done that, got the (bigger) T-shirt back again! It’s not the fault of the diet – it promised to get the weight off and it worked. It’s just that KEEPING weight off requires changing your normal way of eating in some way.

Problems

Impulse eating

This is where you pass the fruit bowl and take a piece of fruit and then another. Fruit is good for most people, however, most of it is high in natural sugar, so eating a lot can add calories that you weren’t counting on consuming. This also applies to the cookie tin, a quick “treat” from the local store, a piece of cake in the office to celebrate someone’s birthday and a friend sharing a bag of candy. There are so many impulse opportunities in our lives these days and it is hard to say no to them all. You can deal with the fruit bowl and cookie tin problems by not keeping them in the house. I know someone who always has a full cookie tin, “in case someone calls”. They deny eating them but their visitors are not sufficient to account for the cookie tin always being full of fresh cookies!

Mouth boredom

This is where your mouth gets bored with nothing to do, and it wants something to chew. Very often this translates to raiding the fridge for snacks or a sandwich, to keep you going until the next meal time. You may find some help by using sugar free chewing gum. This gives your mouth something to do while not adding sugar to your diet. Just take care with sugar free gum as it can have a laxative effect, if you use too much. Hot drinks (no sugar) can also be helpful. For a refreshing drink, try a few slices of fresh ginger in hot water, then add lemon juice. If it’s too hot for a warm drink, this is just as nice allowed to cool, or even iced.

Comfort eating.

This is where you are under stress or anxious and find that eating, especially the so-called comfort foods like potatoes and ice cream, helps relieve the stress or calm the anxiety. This requires finding ways of reducing stress and anxiety without using food. It has been said that exercise is the most (and best) under-used stress and anxiety reliever available and food the most over-used.

Keep It Off

There are a few ways of keeping the weight off, without feeling constantly deprived and without constantly having to refuse those little treats.

The Post Diet Diet

Try the 5:2 diet. On this diet, you eat normally 5 days a week and stick to 500 calories a day (women) or 600 (men) on two days a week. You can choose which two days. Many people find a Monday and a Thursday to be their best days. This is also a long term diet strategy that a number of people use. If you don’t need two days to keep your weight down, then use 6:1 and have just 1 day a week where you restrict your calories. Many people find this doable by telling themselves, that it is just for today and tomorrow they can eat “normally”. It works because it helps to regulate the appetite and also people do not eat “enough for two days in one” on the following day so the overall calorie intake for the week is reduced.

Then there is the 16:8 diet. This refers to the 24 hour day, in which you eat ONLY during a window of 8 hours, staying away from food (not water) for the other 16 hours of the day. This is doable by stopping eating 4 hours before bedtime, assuming you are in bed 8 hours and waiting for your breakfast until about lunchtime the next day. If you have finished your meals by, say, 6pm and can wait until 10am the next day before eating your breakfast, you will have an 8 hour window for eating between 10.00am and 6.00pm. You can move the hours around to suit yourself.

You could work on a slow increase in calories or carbohydrates. If you have lost the weight you need by whatever means and are now moving onto a maintenance diet, you could try increasing your intake slowly, whether in terms of calories (low calorie diets) or in terms of carbohydrates (low carb diets). This requires self discipline, to calculate a little extra, then sticking to that until you find the point at which you no longer lose weight and then stay at that level of carbohydrate or calories.The Atkins diet (low carb) provides suggestions for gradually increasing your carb intake at the stage 4, maintenance level, and the 800 BSD provides suggestions for gradually increasing your calories.

There is also one suggestion that you should eat ten times your desired body weight in calories each day. This is said to reduce your weight while you are heavier than that and keep you there once you have reached your desired weight. If your desired body weight is 140 pounds, then on this diet, you could eat 1400 calories each day.

A Healthy Long Term Diet

It is of course, vital that you find a healthy long term diet that keeps you at your desired healthy weight and also provides all the nutrients you need for health.  One recommended diet for this is the Mediterranean diet, which includes plenty of vegetables and healthy fats, as well as protein. The Mediterranean diet is one that you could stick to for a life time if you choose.

Overcoming Stress

If comfort eating is a problem, whether just at certain times or because your life is stressful anyway, then find a way of reducing stress and anxiety without using food as a crutch to ease your stress or anxiety. This may involve letting certain people go, taking up meditation, listening to relaxation tapes or learning to become aware of when you are using eating to reduce your stress and anxiety levels. Exercise can be a great stress and anxiety reliever. If you are taking medication for relieving stress or anxiety then do not change your dosage without consulting your medical adviser. Exercise can be used in conjunction with medication to provide great relief and reduce reliance on food for comfort.