Saturday, January 31
You know what I love about this Atkins thing? Well, besides the obvious effortless weight loss and all that. What I love is that all of a sudden I'm a kickass cook. This, of course, is because the whole secret of delicious food is: fat. If you're not on Atkins and you try to make some French sauce that calls for cream, you know how it works, you don't feel like schlepping to the store for 1/4 cup of cream so you think, "oh, I'll just make it with milk, it'll be fine" and you use the 2% milk you have in the fridge and it comes out okay but in your heart you can't deny it's wan and unsatisfying. The thing with Atkins is, you always have a quart of heavy cream in the fridge and all of a sudden everything you make has mad MOUTHFEEL and makes you swoon. Cream, butter, there's a reason humans have refined dairy products the way they have.We've been eating really well, I think, and all legal low carb stuff. Last night was some nice salmon steaks (I know, I know, we won't eat any more salmon until next month) and this morning I made a giant "B's Not Home" omelet with cheese and Taylor Pork Roll. Yummity!
I'd been on a bit of a plateau for the last week or two but I seem to be losing again. It's either because of adding some more strenuous exercise to my yoga routine or eating one portion of the cheesecake every night instead of two. Actually, more than one; it's supposed to be cut into 16 pieces but that's just too small so I've compromised with 12. I still think they're kind of skimpy looking but it turns out a little cheesecake goes a long way.
One more thing: Keto shake review #7665584: Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor. Meh. Not too chocolatey or too peanut buttery. If you were to goose it with some chocolate Davinci and maybe a spoonful of PB, you might have something there, but as is it's not too impressive.
binki 5:39 PM
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Wednesday, January 28
Today I tried the Keto shake in Orange Creme flavor. The verdict isn't good. The orange flavoring is that awful St. Joseph's aspirin flavor that is supposed to be related to oranges, but in a way I still don't understand. To put it less kindly, it tastes like the underpass in the 23rd St. subway station smells. A bit of vanilla DaVinci helped, and I may try mixing it with chocolate next time, or maybe half and half with the vanilla Keto shake. It's gross, but it was 15 bucks, so I'm going to find a way to use it.binki 5:39 PM |
Tuesday, January 27
I just realized tonight that Myra's Cheesecake is supposed to be divided into 16 servings, not 8. Oopsie. I think it's the gray snowy weather that's turned me into an eating machine; lots of homemade yogurt (made with half and half...homer drool...) and good proteins but I still found myself making a cheesecake tonight. I'm not going to worry about it. I think it's something cyclical.binki 5:38 PM |
Wednesday, January 21
DaVinci syrups, DaVinci syrups, DaVinci syrups. I am loving them. I'm using them to goose the sweetness of everything these days. I'm making Italian sodas with seltzer and often a splash of cream, I'm mixing them into my shakes, I'm mixing them into my Flax-o-Meal, I'm putting them in coffee, I'm flavoring whipped cream. I can start to understand why people end up with dozens of bottles of the stuff. Zero carbs! The flavors I didn't like as much last week have all turned out to shine in coffee. I think they were formulated with coffee drinks in mind. I never used to like flavored coffees all that much, but this is just a treat.We tried the Flax-O-Meal pancake mix the other day. They came out pretty well, though I wish I'd read the instructions better and realized that the recipe on the package is for a batch that serves 4. I gave the extras to B and when he got too full to eat more I froze the rest. It would have been better to just make enough for the two of us, though. In any case, they're as nutty and hearty as the cereal is, only in pancake form. With a nice pat of butter and some (surprise, surprise) DaVinci pancake syrup, I was pleased with breakfast.
binki 5:38 PM
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Saturday, January 17
The latest family of products I'm trying are the sugar-free DaVinci syrups. Sweetened with Splenda and available in many different flavors, I've mostly only used them in coffee but look forward to using them in baking. The chocolate flavor isn't too hot, kind of a fake chocolate Necco Wafery taste which is just ok in coffee. I think I will use it in baking from now on, to sort of round out other chocolate flavors. The French Vanilla isn't my favorite either, its taste is just too close to the Dulce de Leche flavor. Both are pretty good, don't get me wrong, but you don't need to buy them both. I'll get the regular vanilla next time. I'm looking for more of a vanilla milkshake flavor.I got a few other bottles, which I like a lot. There's Cookie Dough, a very sweet flavor that's pretty much just like cookie dough in liquid form. I don't know how they do that. Then there's Red Hot Cinnamon, which tastes just like red hot candies. Yummity. I got the pancake syrup too, but I haven't tried that yet. Maybe I'll make some yogurt when we get back from the store today; I love yogurt with maple syrup in it.
Dinner tonight was fantastic. B made his famous broccoli and shallots dish, I made a cauliflower dish (not quite this recipe, but close). We were going to make veggie burgers but it turned out we weren't hungry after all the cruciferous veggies. Dinner was followed by pumpkin pie, with whipped cream, of course. All low carb, all delicious. Life is sweet.
binki 5:37 PM
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Tuesday, January 13
A wee update. The cheesecake just gets better each day it sits. We'll finish it off tomorrow, and I'm already plotting the next one. It's pretty much exactly the Cheesecake Cockaigne from the new Joy, only with artificial sweeteners instead of the sugar, and that gives me confidence to try some of the other recipes in that section. It's so utterly unbelievable that this is diet food, it's really blowing my mind.It's working, though, I'm staying in ketosis and yoga is getting easier as my body parts get smaller. The Plow is a totally different exercise, far less claustrophobic without a big beer belly in your face. It's like magic, it really is.
I ordered more of the Flax-O-Meal hot cereal. I think it must be the most healthful thing I've ever put in my mouth, and this is from someone who used to do wheatgrass shots every day. It certainly tastes better! One serving is 13 carbs, of which 12 are fiber. It's like a big bowl of chopped up seeds. You wanna talk about roughage! You can almost hear a faint "so you don't have tooooooo...." as it goes down your throat. And it's full of flaxseed oil, which is an excellent source of Omega-3 fatty acids, especially now that we're not supposed to eat salmon in restaurants anymore on this coast.
binki 5:37 PM
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Sunday, January 11
Got Myra's Cheesecake in the oven right now. I love diet food...actually I usually say that around a mouthful of Splenda-sweetened whipped cream...I made it with a mixture of Splenda and Erythritol, a combination that's worked well for me so far. If the recipe calls for a cup of Splenda, I'm using half a cup, plus a quarter cup of Erythritol to get the same sweetness with much less aftertaste.New Product Spotlight for today is Flax-O-Meal hot cereal, cinnamon spice flavor. Thumbs up! It couldn't be easier to make: half a cup of cereal in bowl, add boiling water, sweeten and add cream to taste. It's very nutty and hearty and keeps me full and satisfied all morning. I'll be getting this one again.
binki 5:37 PM
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Friday, January 9
To all the people who find this site via searches for it: yes, Virginia, vodka has zero carbs. However, as long as there's alcohol in your system, your body will burn that alcohol for fuel, not fat. So drink up, but don't expect to lose weight as fast as you would otherwise.binki 5:36 PM |
Tuesday, January 6
I made the Flourless Fudgy Chocolate Cake last night. I actually made it in mini-muffin tins, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. Perhaps I might have had more success with the silicone kind of muffin pan. My little mini-cakes are stuck in my ordinary muffin tins but good; I'll have to dig one out with a knife or spoon every time I want a snack. That said, they're pretty tasty, especially with a big blop of whipped cream on top. B wasn't too impressed, but he's really intolerant of any kind of artificial sweetener.
I've got some erythritol on order from Netrition and will soon be doing science projects to figure out the optimal balance of the two sweeteners to get the best taste. It's pretty universally agreed that if you use more than one sweetener it tastes better, with less of an aftertaste, and you can use less of each of them than you would otherwise.
binki 5:35 PM
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Monday, January 5
I think I'm going to stop eating sugar completely. I'd been eating a couple squares of good chocolate at the end of the night, as a treat. The carbs weren't a problem; I stayed in ketosis and everything, but I think the sugar causes more cravings than it's worth—I hadn't had any cravings at all until I started eating the real chocolate. Even the bittersweet 85% bars seem to make me more hungry than I was. The Atkins Endulge bars aren't great, but at least they don't have any sugar in them, and I seem to tolerate them better than the sugar-free Reese's and Hershey bars. I'll go with this for a while and see what happens.binki 5:35 PM |
Friday, January 2
Got through the whole holiday season, still in the pink. I was able to zip my original benchmark pants, but they were still a bit tighter than I liked so they remain on the shelf. Soon, though. I also found another pair of much smaller pants which have become my new benchmarks. They're several sizes smaller than my usual, though, so I don't expect to get them on for a few months.New product review: Keto mac & che. Not great, not worth the money. The pasta is marginally better than the Due Amici nastiness, but still has that off smell and texture issues. And the cheeze sauce was remarkably unsatisfying and uncheesy. I'd say don't bother.
Review #2: Atkins Endulge bar, Chocolate Crunch flavor. Not bad, it'll get you through, but don't eat it any time near real chocolate, because the contrast is not flattering.
binki 5:35 PM
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Diet stuff (specifically low-carb, Atkins-type stuff) will be on this weblog from now on, so as not to clutter the regular blog with its boringness. As I learn about new low-carb stuff I'll post it to this blog, so check in from time to time if you care to. If you got here directly from a search result and want to read about anything other than low-carb living, here's how you get to the rest of my site!
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Useful links:
Atkins All the Way boards
Active Low Carber boards
Low Carb Transformation boards
Low Carb Eating boards
First Step Tracker
USDA nutritional info
Glycemic Index
Liquid Splenda!
Honeyville Grain
CountCarbs.com
A La Carb
Atkins
The skinny people want what the fat people's got...