Bread Making

I've decided that If I'm going to have bread, it will have to be healthy not just something filled with nothing. So wholemeal comes into the topic - check out "websites i lurve" for a link on the topic. Now I know this is low carb living, but you do introduce some carbs later and why not the healthy ones?

I make my husband sandwiches for lunch and I was thinking I should bake my own bread every morning. Found it only takes 5 minutes, how nice is fresh bread with butter, nice and hot! And even our homemade bread without all sorts of funny things. So this will be my next feat - I'm on my master cleanse right now so I wont be able to taste it, I guess my husband will just be my guinea pig.

Now, on to find the equipment and ingredients. I may just start with my oven for now nad see how I get on.

Think Vegetables

I found this amazing website about a month ago or so. http://www.thinkvegetables.co.uk/ I think it is without doubt one of the best food websites out there. Hopefully they will add more vegetables in future. I emailed them with suggestions and they were very nice.

They have various veg on their website with very beautiful pictures, which you can use, like the one shown here. Not only that, but you can search for vegetables and for each, they show nutritional information, and other information such as vitamins, minerals etc. You can also search for certain nutrients and it will give you a list of sources (i.e. the vegetables which contain the selected nutrient/s). The website also has recipes, growers and much more. I'm in love with it and will continue to use it in conjuction with my diet.

Now if someone could do the same for fruit?

Image : Vine Ripened Tomatoes Skewered with Chicken and Courgettes

Flax Burger Buns

I couldn't resist trying the burger. Burgers are ok for low carb diets because you can have beef / lettuce / tomato / cheese. But if you fancy something to hold all that, then this flax bun is fantastic. Not only is it healthy but if you use golden flax, it actually looks good too. Sorry, the picture isn't great but that's the best my phone could do, my digi cam batteries were flat. The picture on the right is probably a better one as I took it after recharging my batteries.

Flax Peanut Cookies

So you miss something a bit like a cookie? It's amazing how when on a special diet we crave for things we probably wouldn't eat normally. These cookies are made from flax seed meal

which itself has carbohydrates (very small amount) so you could safely eat these during a low carb diet. Just ensure you check the measurements. 2 tablespoons of flax are ok for a low carb diet per day, just to help things move along a little.

Pizza : Flax seed meal

Doesn't this look delicious? And to think it is low carb. I was going to say carb free, but that wouldn't be entirely true. The base is made from flax seed meal instead of flower. I did use some baking powder and this has some starch. If you are going to use it, check it doesn't have too much carbs if you really want to keep the pizza low carb. Cheese has some carbohydrate too, but overall this pizza is great as a low carb meal and if you miss some pizza. Topping: fresh tomato, green peppers, pepperoni, cheese and pepper.

Low Carb and Atkins

I just finished with the Atkins diet, which I like because you do get to eat and lose weight at the same time. The idea is simple - your body burns carbohydrates for energy, therefore no carbs means your body will burn fats next. The atkins idea, involves eating plenty of protein and some veg with none or low carbs.
I am on the Master Cleanse diet now, because I found the low carb wasnt working fast enough for me for the folowing reasons;

1. I started at 72.6 kg / 160 lbs which isn't obese for a 5'5 tall person
2. I suffer from bloating and possible* digestion problems
3. So being not so fat made it tough to lose the weight although I went to the gym daily
4. I also followed the diet to the book but the scales didn't shift until I started having 1 meal a day, which Atkins is against.
5. At my lowest I went down to 68.2 kg / 150 lbs but I managed to gain 2.1 kg / 4.7 lbs during a birthday when I decided to eat anything and everything. I was upset because my scales wouldn't work (battery went flat) and I was getting ridiculous weight readings.
6. It was slow going.

I guess Atkins is ok if you are very big, I'm talking over 180 -200 lbs, you lose the weight faster. I really like the atkins diet, well at least some of it. The downside, for me in particular is that some of the food is too oily. For instance you can make an egg with soft cheese and some other cheese - too cheesy and way too rich for my liking.

I like the idea that you can slowly introduce carbs after 2 weeks, during ongoing weight loss, then introduce more carbs later and so on. So clearly it's not like you are never going to eat rice again.

After my master cleanse diet, I will have cleansed my system so hopefully I will be able to move my bowels at least once a day rather than once a week. I am hoping to flush all the dirt away and feel great etc. Then I want to adopt the low carb diet again. This for me is not like dieting all my life, rather adopting healthier foods etc. I will add recipes and pictures of what I make and interesting things I will be eating and trying out. I don't think I eat bad food, I guess It's all good to add a variety of things into one's diet.