Low Carb Breakfasts
When you have to give up biscuits, toast, waffles, and pancakes, breakfast can seem impossible, but there are plenty of good ideas for low carb breakfasts.
Ideas for Low Carb Breakfasts
While it's true many popular breakfast options revolve around carbs, protein and fat-based choices also abound. For many people, protein breakfasts are actually more filling than their carbohydrate counterparts.
Eggs, Eggs, and More Eggs
While eggs are severely limited or even eliminated on low-fat or low-calorie diet, they are welcomed, and even encouraged, on low carb diets. You can eat whole eggs, too, instead of just the whites. It's hard to find a food more versatile than the egg. Scrambled, fried, boiled, or poached, options are limitless. Here are a few ideas for dressing up your eggs.
Omelets
You'll find a basic recipe at Diet Articles Recipes. This recipe may be adapted to your taste:
- Add a variety of allowed veggies, such as mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, onions, and peppers.
- Add meat, such as chicken breast, steak, ham, bacon, or ground beef.
- Get creative and add seafood. Lobster, crab, oysters, and shrimp are especially tasty options.
- Try different cheeses. Cream cheese with spinach and mushroom offer a decadent twist on the basic omelet, while sharp cheddar with steak strips, peppers, onions, and a dollup of sour cream offers Southwestern flair.
Eggs and Corned Beef
Make sure your corned beef is low in carbs. Simply melt butter in a pan, add crumbled corned beef, and stir until slightly crisp. Pour in lightly whisked eggs, and stir until eggs are done.
Scrambled Eggs
Plain old scrambled eggs are great, but they can get boring after a couple days. Dress them up for a new and different taste every time! Simply saute meat or veggies in a pan, pour in whisked eggs, and scramble as usual. Tasty additions include:
- Ground beef, onions, and tomatoes
- Chicken breast, peppers, and onions. After cooking, top with cheese.
- Tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers
- Cream cheese and oysters
- Salmon and cream cheese
Fried Eggs
Once you've mastered the basics of how to fry an egg, you can make changes and additions for a new taste:
- Miss fried egg sandwiches? Top with a slice of ham, a slice of cheese, and a touch of mayo, and eat with a fork.
- Saute veggies or meat in butter until just done. Carefully crack egg over the veggies or meat and cook slowly until egg whites are set.
- Top with sliced tomatoes
Boiled Eggs
Boiled eggs are perfect for quick and easy low carb breakfasts. Simply boil a batch of eggs and store in the fridge until needed. Add some string cheese and turkey, and breakfast is done.
Low Carb Specialty Items
If you really have to have your typically carbed out breakfasts, you can have them... sort of. Thanks to the proliferation of low carb specialty items by companies such as Atkins, you can find low carb versions of bread and tortillas and mixes for pancakes, muffins, bread, and waffles. These items are not cheap, though. They are also not suitable for use during the weight loss phase of your diet as their carb content is still higher than needed for ketosis and fat burning. Once you've reached your ideal weight and are maintaining, these items can be added into your diet as desired.
Dinner as Breakfast
There is no law that says that breakfast must consist of traditional breakfast foods. Some low carbers mix things up by having traditional lunch and dinner fare as breakfast. Have leftover steak? Eat it for breakfast! You can either eat the steak as is, or combine it with breakfast foods for a more traditional breakfast. For example, a slab of steak on the side of fried or scrambled eggs is divine. Alternately, you can thinly slice the steak and saute it with mushrooms, peppers, and onions. Add the mixture to eggs and create a delicious steak fajita omelet.
Another quick and easy dinner food that tastes great for breakfast is chicken alfredo, minus the pasta, of course. Combine 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup cream in a sauce pan. Stir over low heat until butter has melted. Stir in parmesan cheese and season to taste. Pour over cooked chicken breast.
Atkins Diet Books
There are a number of Atkins Diet books available to help you follow the plan, and it can get confusing as to which ones you need to get started, and which ones can be used to enhance your experience when you progress to later stages of the Atkins lifestyle.
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution is the essential Atkins reference -- if you can get only one book, this is the one to get. It explains the basic science behind the diet and gives the guidelines for following each stage. It also provides tips for difficult situations that may arise, and recipes for making Atkins-friendly dishes. A very helpful section of the book explains how to determine whether the Atkins Diet is right for you, with questionnaires and test-interpretation guidelines.
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Cookbook
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Cookbook is a perfect companion volume to Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution. The book summarizes the diet and offers sample menus along with the 175 pages of recipes. There are a number of recipes that offer an alternative to favourite foods that are not allowed on the Atkins Diet, including manicotti and gnocchi, cheesecake, and various pies and other desserts. And there are many recipes that will become new favourites, like "Cheesy Brussels Sprouts" and chocolate ice cream.
Dr. Atkins' Quick and Easy New Diet Cookbook
Dr. Atkins' Quick and Easy New Diet Cookbook addresses the frequent complaint of Atkins dieters that preparing friendly meals takes too much time. The meals and dishes features in this book can be prepared in thirty minutes or less. As in Dr. Atkins' New Diet Cookbook, there are both adaptations of old favourites and new recipes that are sure to become favourites. This cookbook presents a number of great sauces for dressing up low-carb dishes without adding sugar or other "forbidden foods."
Dr. Atkins' Vita-Nutrient Solution
Dr. Atkins' Vita-Nutrient Solution is the next step in Atkins dieting. Unlike the other selections, this volume does not teach you how to follow the diet. Its purpose is to teach you how to intelligently enhance your food intake with the best nutritional supplements available. More than 120 supplements are profiled in this book, with explanations of what each supplement is supposed to do, how one should determine the right dose, and what specific health problems each supplement may target. There are three parts to the book. Part 1 explains why nutritional supplementation is preferable (in most cases) to drug therapy. Part 2 profiles more than 120 vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, digestive aids, "superfoods," unique vita-nutrients, cartilage building nutrients, hormones, and herbs that are used to improve health. Part 3 explains how to apply parts one and two to improve specific health problems. This is a very useful book, but it should be one of the last books you try to incorporate into your Atkins diet plan -- learning the basics of the diet should take precedence over supplementation.
Atkins for Life
Atkins for Life is one of the newest books. Part one explains the basics of the plan and addresses some of the more common misconceptions. (Yes, you can eat carbs on the Atkins Diet!) It also recommends exercise as a part of the weight-loss journey, a component missing from previous material. Part two of Atkins for Life explains how to plan your kitchen and your meal plans so that you get the most out of your low-carb experience. This section offers meals plans for various levels of the maintenance phase, from 45g to 100g of daily carbohydrate intake. It also provides special occasion menus and 125 recipes. This book is the last Atkins book you will need, as it is designed to help those who have completed their weight loss and are ready to adjust to lifetime maintenance of their weight and health.
Other Low Carb Books
While the Atkins plan is the progenitor of the modern low-carb diet, it is not the only plan out there. Just about any cookbook or weight loss plan that calls itself "low-carb" will have something to contribute to the Atkins dieter. Any cookbook that provides carbohydrate counts can be a useful reference. The most crucial reference, however, is a good carb counter. Many different carb-counter books are available, including one published by Atkins Nutritionals. The best carb counter on the market, however, is Corinne Netzer's The Complete Book of Food Counts. It includes comprehensive nutritional information for various sizes and preparations of common foods, even fast foods and frozen dinners.
Atkins Diet Instructions
Although Atkins Diet free instructions are not hard to find, it is still a good idea to read the book. This way, you get the science behind the diet in the exact words of Dr. Atkins.
Carbohydrate Theory
This diet plan has soared in popularity and many users and experts have written about not only the science behind the diet but also their own personal experience with it. The first step to using the diet is to understand Dr. Atkins’ carbohydrate theory.
According to Dr. Atkins, the amount of carbohydrates you eat is not as important as how your body processes those carbohydrates. Dr. Atkins believes that the reason most people are overweight is because they are insulin resistant. This means that the cells that convert carbohydrates into glucose or energy are not functioning properly. If this is indeed the cause, then the remedy is simple; limit your carbohydrate intake substantially and then slowly raise the amount of carbohydrate-rich foods you consume.
Atkins Diet Free Instructions
How It Works
The plan is to reduce your carbohydrate intake to less than 40 grams per day so your body enters a state called ketosis. Ketosis is the state in which your body burns fat as fuel and causes you to lose weight. Essentially, your body burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates and Dr. Atkins believes this state of being also curbs cravings for carbohydrates. Ultimately, this results in weight loss and feelings of satisfaction.
Phases and What You Can Eat
When reading through the Atkins Diet free instructions take time to understand the four phases; induction, on-going weight loss, pre-maintenance and maintenance.
The induction phase is the first phase and only lasts for the 14 days that start the diet. Dr. Atkins says that dieters can lose up to 15 lbs in this phase alone by cutting their carbohydrate intake to the required maximum of 20 grams per day. During this stage you should also limit the kinds of carbohydrates you eat to mainly low carbohydrate vegetables like:
- Broccoli
- Tomatoes
- Lettuce
Additionally, you are limited to consuming no more than three cups of these types of vegetables per day.
You must also avoid the following:
- Yogurt
- Fruit
- Starchy vegetables, like potatoes
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
The next phase, on-going weight loss, is less restrictive than the induction phase. In this phase you can increase your total carbohydrate intake by 5 grams to total 25 grams of carbohydrates per day. However, you must still avoid the foods you avoided during the induction phase.
This phase should continue as long as you keep losing weight. Eventually you will hit a weight loss plateau and once you do you should move on to the next phases.
The pre-maintenance and maintenance phases require you to slowly add carbohydrates back into your diet until your total carbohydrate intake is increased to about 40 grams per day. These phases require you to sort of test out different carbohydrates. If you find that a particular food causes you to gain weight you must then avoid that food.
You can expect to still lose a small amount of weight in the pre-maintenance phase, although it will be slow going. Again, you continue you this phase until your weight loss plateaus.
You do not lose any weight in the final maintenance phase as this phase lasts an indefinite amount of time and serves to only help you maintain your weight. By the time you’ve reached this phase you’ll have added all the carbohydrates you plan on eating.
Throughout the entire process you are expected to avoid unhealthy carbohydrates such as:
- Excessive amounts of white bread
- Excessive amounts sugary carbohydrates
- Carbohydrate-rich fried foods
Overall, the Atkins Diet has many supporters and a lot of purported benefits. In addition to increasing overall health and well being, dieters seem particularly fond of Dr. Atkins’ plan because it helps them shed pounds quickly and curbs the cravings that caused them to gain weight in the first place.