Real food vs. Low carb concoctions
 

:) I've been reading a lot of posts about the different recipes cooked up to mimic "real food", and I've tried low-carb pancakes, one minute muffins, etc.

But I wonder if I wouldn't be just as well off, moving out of induction, with trying small portions of the real thing: say a sandwich with 1/2 slice of real (whole wheat) bread, or 8 oz of actual milk with a blueberry muffin or such.

Has anyone had good or bad experiences trying this?

Well, either you're doing atkins, or you're not. So either you eat what you're allowed, or not. Grains aren't allowed until the end.

Personally, I think whole wheat bread is the devil- but I have a wheat allergy. The fact is, most low carb substitutes will be more nutritious than a half a slice of whole wheat bread.

If you want small doses of the bad stuff right off the hop, and regularly, you should be questioning whether or not you're actually commited to this as a way of eating, or thinking of it as a temporary fix.

Why not make the substitutes? Many of them are far better for you than the original. They use things like coconut flour, flax seed, peanut flour and so on. They don't taste identical, but often quite good.

I'm not convinced there's anything beneficial in grains and there's plenty there to avoid.

Besides, I can't eat 1/2 of an anything... :lol:

I do not even think the substitions are a good idea for me.

What I am trying to do is to re-orient my mind so that grain and sugar are no longer part of my lifestyle.

If I eat the sweet cake-like Atkins bar, or the bread-like MIM, I am just taking a step backwards by flirting with that which I can no longer have.

Sure... it may not be hurting my body... But I am making things more difficult on myself because I will not be allowing my mind to adjust at the same rate as my body.

That's what I was getting at. I feel the same way. Back to the ladder.

There's your problem!

Actually, there are several reasons:

• Carb count. Do you want a half a slice of bread, or a whole steak? Hint: one has a lot more carbs than the other.
• Cravings. If I never eat bread, I never crave bread.
• Calories vs nutrition. As Nancy LC pointed out, these high carb items tend to be low in nutrition. There's some evidence this results in overeating because the body will keep sending the signal until enough nutrients come down the pike.
• Nutrient vs non-nutrients. To make matters worse, there's more research all the time showing that grains drain our bodies of B and C vitamins.
• Opportunity. If you are eating a 1/2 slice a bread a day; are you doing to store the rest in the freezer, and thaw it in the microwave? Or are you going to "eat it up before it goes bad"?
• Moderation. If we could eat carbs in moderation, we wouldn't be here.

Well you are getting close to your goal weight, it looks like from your stats.

You should be moving up the OWL ladder to find your carb limit for maintenance. All of the things you mentioned are "allowed" as rungs of OWL. I highly recommend you re-read the OWL part of an atkins book and follow it as you add things in.

For example, you would add the blueberries first, eating 5 carbs worth, and that is the only new thing you add that week.

Then you add another new food from the next OWL rung the next week.

The good thing about adding foods in slowly is you can identify any foods that make you bloat up and not feel good (indicating inflammation due to a food sensitivity) or if you get bad cravings afterward, then thats a trigger food for you.

If you were to add in 3 new foods at once you wouldn't be able to tell which one was a problem.

I agree
 

I'm new here, but for what it's worth....I am in agreement about you don't crave what you don't eat. I have troubles with the Atkins bars, I ALWAYS want more than one...and sometimes I eat more than one.
MarieGray

Well, I don't consider a flaxseed muffin a "substitute" for anything. It is real flaxseed, a real egg, real coconut oil.

I don't feel the same way about Atkins bars, which involve sugar alcohols and various chemicals I don't count as "real" food.

The low-carb instructions say, NO FLOUR PRODUCTS. So why would a flaxseed muffin be a bad choice? It isn't a "fake flour" product. It's something entirely different. And those are the choices we make.

I suppose it would also hinge on your idea of what "real food" is. What I love about Atkins is that its focus brings you to REAL (ie., WHOLE) foods. Not processed wheat bread that has numerous additives and non-real foods. I'd rather make a "fake bread" that consists of real, whole foods, or a flax muffin, than eat something that is full of chemicals or triggers cravings - or does me harm (frankly, anything that Monsanto owns or endorses ;) )

Why not treat yourself to a piece of low carb cheesecake? i once was missing milk (and i am not even a milk drinker) but used some cream diluted with water.

I just came off a "break" from low carbing . A LONG one (10 months). I did gain some weight back.... less then 10 pounds, but still it was 10 pounds. I ate those things your missing and let me tell you ..... it's not worth it. I lost a lot of ground "health wise" that I am now fighting daily to get back. JUST DON"T DO IT!

Exactly.

I just had some cookies with my lunch; aside from .083 ounces of Splenda in each one, they are almonds and butter and cream cheese and eggs and cranberries and walnuts.

Should I get worked up that they aren't "real cookies"?

For me...

Back in the day, I'd never eat a flaxseed muffin. Are you kidding me. A nice hunk of toasted bannana bread, loaded with chocolate and carmel chips... toasted and slathered with butter... Yea... I was on that.

Flaxseed... no way.

Now... what I have done while on low carb was... Ohhhh... a little extra splenda... mmmmmmmm... put some 85% crumbled up chocolate in there. Is that sugar free carmel syrup over there? MMMMMMMMMMMM.... Yea... I deserve THIS. I've been good ALL week. I had a tough day. REWARD TIME.

Wait... is this a new way of living? Maybe there are hardly any carbs in there. And, a whole lot of fiber too.

But, I am telling my mind that my rewards are still... BREADS... SUGARS... CHOCOLATE... CARMEL. I am holding on to the old principals that I cannot be happy eating a low carb diet... I must occasionally fall back to my old way of eating to be happy in my life...

And what is worse... is when I ease my guilt by providing myself with the fake substitutes. I'm in a painful position, with one foot on each side of the fence... all the time telling myself: "It's OK... It's not REALLY a muffin... It just tastes like one... kinda... sorta... not really... BLECH"

Now, this is just me. Other people, I am sure, can have "cheat days", and fake muffins, and Atkins bars, and diet drinks and all kinds of artificial sweetners. I cannot. This isn't my first rodeo. I've been on and off diets before. And, EVERY time I have fallen, it has started with a small compromise in my resolve. EVERY time.

I agree with you guys who state its not replacing but re-orientating. I have been low carb for 7 weeks and I have been making some great recipes with vegetables I have not eaten in years. the flavors are wonderful and I wonder why I did not try these before. My current favorite is the fried cauliflower recipe that was on here yesterday. I made it last night and loved it.

Hey WereBear, I'm just curious. With just .083 ounces of Splenda in each one, what does that do for you? Would the food be so flat without it? or what would happen if you used, like, a raisin?

It seems so small.

I noticed my Kwasniewski cookbook has "Viennese style cheesecake" and its only sweetener is currants so that's why I ask.

Werebear, what is the receipe for your butter cookies please?

Do you have the recipe???

I started with a recipe that had 1 1/2 cups of sweetener, and made it with 1/2 cup and 2 tbl sweetener. To make my point, I divided the amount of Splenda among 4 dozen cookies.

Cranberry Walnut Cookies

It's still a work in progress. Sugar and sugar substitutes do more than sweeten; they have chemical actions in baked goods, too. I'm trying to have as little sweetener as needed; since the rest of the ingredients are so good for me, it's a net win.

These two personal experiences are great examples of the different approaches I'm talking about.

I still don't get it I guess; one experience you quoted was a worry about substitutes creating cravings for the real thing, and the other was the joy of exploring a new food. Both valid points; but I still don't see how those support your possible strategy of having small portions of high carb foods.

So so so often this turns into the slippery slope where people reach for the potato instead of the cauliflower more and more; until they are right back where they started.

But I'm a huge fan of substitutes. Especially since I'm gone gluten free. Never having cookies again is a far less reasonable option than having low carb gluten free cookies whenever I want.

In my case, low carb cookies don't tempt me to the Dark Side; they prevent me from being tempted by real ones.

I feel like there's a difference between homemade substitutes for favorite foods and low carb products created industrially. I am far more skeptical of the latter.

I also think some recipes adjust to low carb better than others. Cheesecakes are a great example. The only substitute is a sweetener and a nut crust instead of graham crust--no flour substitutes necessary. It tastes like cheesecake, not a weird fake thing or a lesser thing that has me less satisfied. I wouldn't, for instance, try to make a baguette without wheat flour. It would be like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Thankfully, I am happy enough with the range of food I can eat that I don't spend a lot of time worrying about all the things I can't. And eating low carb has me feeling better in general which makes the need to "treat" myself less of an issue altogether.

Move up the OWL ladder as designed. If you eventually try grains at the end of the process and find out they cause you problems, you will have discovered lots of other good foods you can eat forever along the way.

I'm no good with portion control of high carb foods. and that is what got me here. I can't have a little bit of whole wheat bread. I love bread, obsessively. and flaxseed muffins I don't love, and I think that's because I was looking for a substitute for bread. If I'd have come acrross them as just a fabulous new food to try, I wonder what I would have thought? still I'm not going to love everything that's low carb any more than I loved everything high carb.

Baked cheesecake is an example - I've never had a "high-carb" version so I don't have any comparison, I only know that Bawdy's cheesecake tastes fab and I'm very happy to eat it thank you.

Pasta I could live without forever, I'm not even vaguely interested in a substitute for pasta. In fact I get ridiculously annoyed when people on here suggest cauliflower with a cheese sauce as a "mock mac and cheese" - it's not a "mock" anything, people, it's a bonafide dish that non-low carb people have eaten in the UK for generations BY CHOICE because it tastes blooming fantastic and is 1000% superior to gloopy, stodgy, gluey pasta. <cough, sorry rant over>.

anyway.

we get used to thinking of the high carb way as the "real" way and think that low carb is a lot of messing about, and a lot of messing about with wierd ingredients. in order to try and fake a high carb experience. but a lot of "simple" high carb foods aren't simple at all. Wheat goes through a lot of processing to become bread or pasta. High refined table sugar isn't that much more "natural" than artificial sweeteners, given the chemical processses it goes through. We are just conditioned to think that these things are more real.

Most of what I eat is pretty close to it's natural state, mainly because I am too lazy to faff about for hours combining ingredients to approximate a dish that I once craved.

During the last 3 weeks I went on a high carb comfort eating binge. This is going to sound odd. But very little of that food actually tasted good. I ate most of it mindlessly, without tasting it at all, when I did concentrate on what it actually tasted like, instead of how it made me feel, it tasted pretty blah, plastic, bland. That didn't stop me eating it, even though the taste was unappealing.

You know how smokers insist that they enjoy smoking? (I'm an ex smoker), and non-smokers can't fathom why anyone would like smoking and ex-smokers understand how it works but also know that the "enjoyment" is a lie...?

that's how I'm feeling about high-carb food at the moment.

I am with you 100%. The way I eat does not look freakish or weird or abnormal. It's whole foods prepared simply and deliciously.

I agree with all of these comments ... before LC i was always looking for a more healthy alternative to foods. I stopped eating white bread and pizza crust and started with wheat. I stopped eating fries and started baking my potatoes, or baking sweet potato fries. I drank diet soda for years just because of the cut in calories.

Now Im realizing that I can take it all a step further and eat foods without bleached white flour and sugars and refined carbohydrates all together. Eating this food doesnt send me craving for other foods or full-carb foods. I feel lighter, more energized, and happier about my food choices.

I have to give kudos and agreement to this statement albiorix. I've given up lots of food recently, and haven't looked back. Not one bite of anything not on approved food list....and i dont' miss it, at all, everytime I reach into the bread drawer for a sandwich bag, I look at the bread, bagels and english muffins and think, huh. I haven't eaten any of that in 23 days, and I'm very much ok with it. I didn't even bite into a strand of spagetti last night to test for doneness. I asked my daughter to do it. I couldn't care less about pasta, or potatoes..bread I always thought would be hard to give up. Seeing those pounds melt away has completely overridden any craving for bread I've ever had. I'm still learning....I'm still experimenting with amounts of vegetables, and I'm still trying to remmeber to eat a bigger breakfast because I hate getting to 10:00am and being really hungry...and realizing i've forgotten to pack a snack.
I'm rambling. I just wanted to agree with this.....I had a good friend who was vegetarian and wanting to go vegan and she spent SO much time trying to replace cheese, it was painful to watch. Now she's not only eating cheese, but the burger to go with it!
MarieGray

I think some of these "sub" (or as someone said-fake) foods really come into play when you have commited to making this a true WOE. I have been at this for an entire year-every day, day in, day out, vacations, birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. New Years, anniversaries, wakes, celebrations and every single day in between. If it were not for an occasional foray into "fake substitutions"-why, I doubt I would have made it this far. There is something to be said for a low carb pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. There is something celebratory about a slice of LC cheesecake on my Birthday. It allows me to actually visualize this way of eating for LIFE!, that's for LIFE! people. YMMV.

I don't believe in substitutes for the "foods that make us fat", most of them are not "real" anyway. Over time your taste will change. I tried a donut once and had to spit it out. Even apples or melons are too sweet for my taste now. I even enjoy cooking chocolate. Sometimes I make an low-carb muffin, whipped cream or LC pepperoni pizza, but that's about it.

I found Candace's blog with recipes and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. Blueberry muffins made with Coconut flour and Banana muffins made with peanut flour and coconut flour. I also use the Splenda with fiber for baking and it makes them even lower carb. I feel like I'm eating something great and it keeps me on track. I have a really hard time with breakfast, I'm not a big egg eater and although I eat plenty of fat on the plan I don't want to go overboard with Bacon,Sausage and Red meats. i try to keep it balanced. Every one is different but I love to cook and bake so the low carb recipes with different flours make me feel like I'm not really giving it all up. I feel like I can really do this forever :-)

What I'm getting at is this: how often, for you, is "whenever I want?" Is it a once a week treat, or are you eating a cookie a day? I have a couple strawberries cut up and thrown into cream but I would say I have them sparingly, not whenever I want. :)