Day… oh my… 95 maybe? (6 kilos down)

I’ve been lousy at writing here, but I should, because I’ve worked so much with food lately.

It’s been hot however so my intake has been kept to a minimum, mostly due to lack of appetite.

My new favorite is:

• frozen raspberries
• heavy cream
• cocoa powder
• vanilla (I chose vanilla sugar at first, but it gives me stomach ache, so now it’s plain vanilla bean for me)
• Blend or mix together, either freeze or eat as it is.

I also made a sugar free version of the Indian dessert Shrikand, with Turkish yogurt, saffron and cardamom, very cooling and delicious (for the sweet version – add powder sugar, in huge quantities).

 

Day 22

Yesterday I made roasted aubergine with the parmesan beurre composé I made the other day, topped off with some melting brie. In general I really like roasted aubergine (with olive oil or butter), it becomes a completely different vegetable, the pretty boring, spongy black and white bulb becomes a creamy, deliciously peppery course that can be served with anything or just eaten the way it is (or mixed into a delicious dip).

Today is marking the end of my third week on LCHF, so far I feel great, I’m trying to note the differences and I believe that my skin (that has never been problematic, to be fair) has kept even more cleared up. I felt that my PMS got a lot easier to bear, my cramps were very mild compared to the horror I usually suffer through, my mood was still going up and down, but less so. My stomach has been really weird lately, and not in the good way people describe on LCHF. I suppose it may take a bit longer to make my stomach understand what is going on. My sleep is good, but I wake up not feeling quite rested. I think it’s more due to stress right now, too much school, and too much emotional stress too.

 

Day 18

I clearly notice when I eat sugar now and I gladly turn back to my fatty food instead. I haven’t felt this good for a long time, and people are starting to comment on it. Saying how I look healthy, how I look good and haven’t looked this good in a good while.

It’s interesting to note the differences.

New food added this week:

Ground chicken skewers. Ground chicken (works with turkey too, but it can’t be too lean) mixed with salt & pepper, sambal oelek and garlic, formed around skewers, fried in a generous helping of clarified butter (ghee) until browned around, cooked until done in oven.

Served with home made Béarnaise sauce (reduce white wine vinegar, 2 chopped up shallots or 1 yellow onion, some terragon and peppercorns until almost all fluid is gone, strain, mix with 2 egg yolks in bain marie until it gets thicker, then carefully stir in melted butter until its a nice thick, gooey sauce) and some steamed asparagus.

I made “ice cream” (only for few occasions): blend frozen raspberries with heavy cream and some vanilla until mixed, freeze, and voilà! instant parfait.

I also tried making coconut pancakes, I made them of the american variety though which ended up being: eggs, heavy cream, shredded coconut that I gave a turn in the blender until it was smooth and powdery, vanilla and some baking powder. Mixed it all into a rather thick batter then fried in butter. Turned out very yummy, but VERY rich, only make a very small amount since on or two is enough for a whole dinner. Had some of it with the ice cream and some of it with just a slice of brie.

 

The food

So of course people wonder what I actually do eat.

I don’t have any pictures of my food so far, but I will write down a little about what I eat. Lately it’s been a lot of cheese, it keeps my PMS lower and me happier.

Today I had:

2 spoonfuls of shrimps with mayo, dill and crème fraîche (“skagenröra”) for breakfast (I usually only eat a little for breakfast)

150 g mozzarella (fresh, full fat), tomato sauce cooked from fresh tomatoes off the vine, garlic. chili, a good chunk of butter and a nice splash of olive oil, salt & pepper and heaps of fresh basil.

A favorite is creamed spinach (spinach, heavy cream, nutmeg, garlic s&p and sometimes a little butter) with either smoked turkey sausages or smoked salmon. Mixing some full fat sheep feta in this, and topping it off with a splash of olive oil is also delicious and goes well with for example egg white omelet.

Yesterday I made a compound butter to serve my fried breast of chicken (with its skin on) with. I mixed ground parmiggiano reggiano with garlic, chopped parsley, chili flakes and butter. It will complement the chicken in a wonderful way, I will also serve it on top of some green fresh, steamed asparagus.

Other kinds of compound butters can be; with cress, peppers of different kinds, garlic, parsley and lemon, basil/pesto, mixed fresh herbs, lime/orange/lemon zest and/or juice, or sundried tomatoes.  Butter mixed with a reduction of white wine vinegar, white pepper seeds, tarragon, shallots and maybe a little parsley (possibly an egg yolk to keep it together) and s&p becomes a béarnaise butter. Mix in any kind of spice or herb you like, let your imagination run free.

 

Stats

I started my LCHF eating on Monday, April 27th. It’s now been 14 days.

I made one mistake, I didn’t weigh myself before starting, BUT I do have my old stats, so I will know if I lost weight or not.

I eat meats, seafood or dairy paired up with some vegetables, often spinach, cucumber and avocado. On few occasions I also eat berries (fresh strawberries with heavy whipping cream.. yum!)

I think my PMS has been less severe this week, no pain killers taken so far and I started bleeding before I even noticed, I feel less tender and except for emotional crying (which could just as well tie in with everything else) I’ve felt great, I even went out for a walk yesterday and I’m going swimming today. If this food reduces my PMS problems I might very well stick around just for that perk. Still bloated however.

I’ve had a problem of being frozen for quite a while now, when I removed the carbs from my diet and added fat I got warm and stayed warm. I had Paneng (Thai food with lots of coconut milk and just a few veggies) and skipped the rice, but forgot about the sugar. I was freezing like crazy afterwards. Once I went back to fat and no sugar, once again warm.

So far my conclusion is that the fat is indeed making my metabolism work more and for a longer time, which should require more stored fat to be used.

We’ll see, now I’m off to swim for an hour.

 

LCHF

This is my food blog about LCHF, which means food that is low in carbohydrates and high in fat. It’s my own personal journey, from an intent to feel better and also lose weight slowly.

Introduction to LCHF

Today LCHF (not to be confused with Atkins, it’s not quite the same thing) is one of the diets that is recommended for weight loss and for type 2 diabetics. The idea with this way of eating is to reduce fat storage in the body by keeping a low amount of the fat storing hormone insuline in the blood (this is the hormone people with diabetes lacks or has a deficiency in). When you eat large amounts of carbohydrates it means a lot of sugar gets out in the blood stream. Sugar which needs to be taken care of by insuline. Having larger amounts of insuline in the blood will cause larger amounts of fat to be stored in.

The idea with eating a diet very rich in (natural) fat is also that the fat with its large amount calories makes you full faster, while it also makes the metabolism work harder, causing it to use more energy from the body (stored fat!). There are also new studies that show that saturated fat (which LCHF-people eat a lot of) is not at all bad for the body, same with cholesterol, these are the two main things nutritionists and dietitians have claimed and pushed for many years. I could easily make this into a political debate about the margarine and starch/sugar lobbies, but that will come later, this is just the introduction.

How to

For a strict LCHF diet (I call it diet here, but in fact it’s a way of living, it won’t cause you to keep losing weight once you’re down to your proper weight) the percentage of carbs is not supposed to go higher than 5-10%, protein stays at a normal 20% and fat ranges between 70-80%.

The fat is supposed to be all natural, such as fat meat and fish, heavy cream, full fat cheese, butter, natural coconut fat, cold pressed olive oil. Vegetables growing above ground such as lettuce, spinach, broccoli, all cabbage sorts, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, avocado etc is okay in moderate amounts. Dried beans and fresh berries are fine in small amounts occasionally too.

All kinds of flour food (bread, pasta etc), grains, potatoes (and other root vegetables that contain more starch and/or sugar), sugar, fruit (specially dried fruit, bananas and grapes) are off limit or extremely seldom.

This blog will be my own food, what I eat, how I try to make things interesting and how I develop, changes etc in my body.

My background

I’m a recovering food addict, I’ve dealt with eating disorders since I was a child and finally managed to deal with it in my teens, my emotional eating stuck around for some years more. These days I’m happy to say that even though my entire life is about food (I’m a trained chef, I’m on my last month of my gastronomy program – food sciences and fine culinary arts – and it’s been my hobby since I was little) my own eating is much less worrisome.

What happened after my eating disorders was however that I started putting on weight and kept gaining. I kept pushing it until I reached 117 kilos, realized something had to be done and joined the Weight Watchers, I’ve always worked out so that wasn’t a problem.

With the help of an “ordinary food program” (WW) I lost almost 30 kilos until I stood still, for 6 months I kept trying to lose weight without anything happening. Afterwards I turned to VLCD (very low calorie diet) which was an even bigger catastrophy that had me putting on weight as soon as I looked at normal food.

I haven’t been big with chips, candy or cookies. My main vices are butter and cheese, on bread or pasta. I heard about LCHF and thought it was crazy, trained in clinical nutrition the definition of a healthy meal has always been 15-20% proteins, 25-30% fat and 50-60% carbohydrates. It seemed to good to be true that I could just skip all hard carbs and sugars and eat all the butter, heavy cream and cheese that I’d want to. This blog is here for me to document what happens in me when I try it out.

As long as I feel good and don’t put on weight while doing it, I will continue.