I have been eating low carb on & off (mostly on) for almost 2 years now. In the beginning, it felt like the hardest thing to do. Did you know freakin everything has carbs?!?!
After a few months, I figured out alternative for the things I was really missing. These are the things that I keep i my house at all times so that I can keep myself on a low carb diet without depriving myself of the things I really love.
Disclaimer: I work on a net carb system. This means that I take my total carbs for the day and subtract dietary fiber & sugar alcohols to give me my final carb count.
Great Low Carb Cinnamon Bagels
The day I found these, was the day that I stopped hating low carb. Each bagel is only 2 net carbs. Yes, you saw that right. Considering a typical bagel can easily be 60+ carbs, a 2 net carb bagel is beyond amazing. And since cream cheese is incredibly low in carbs (typically around 1-2 carbs per 2 tablespoons) I can get through an entire breakfast for under 5 net carbs.
If anyone is looking at getting into low carb, I would highly suggest checking out Great Low Carb Co. online. They make amazing bagels, loafs of bread, & rolls so you never feel like you’re sacrificing in order to eat low carb. They are more expensive and shipping is pricy, but I like to buy in bulk and shove the extras in the freezer for later.
Great Low Carb Plain Sliced Bread
This is less of a requirement for me as it is for my boyfriend. He has recently decided that he was going to do this whole low carb thing with me, but the second I told him he would have to cut out his regular sandwich bread he almost quit before he’d even started. Since getting the low carb sliced bread alternative, he hasn’t even been able to notice a difference. We also picked up low carb corn chips so that he could happily eat his chips and salsa.
Almond Flour
When I first started looking for ways to make things that were low carb, everything seemed to require coconut. Coconut oil, coconut flour, coconut milk. I don’t like coconut. This was gonna be a problem. But then I realized that I could use almond flour and a whole new world of options opened up.
I use almond flour for almost everything. If I make fried chicken, it’s my breading. If I want pizza, I make the fat head pizza crust which requires almond flour. If I want chick parmesan, I mix almond flour with parmesan as the coating. We even like to make almond flour chocolate chip cookies. If it’s always in the house, we have a ton of options. If it’s not, I feel like we’re always at a loss for what we can actually make.
Bryers Carb Smart Ice Cream
I don’t even remember eating a ton of sweets before going low carb, but once my options for sweets became limited, I began to crave them like crazy. I would literally get mad at people if they brought candy around. I had seen recipes for low carb ice cream online, but to be completely honest, I just didn’t want eating low carb to mean that I had to slave away in the kitchen for hours everyday to make sure we had things to eat. Bryers Carb Smart Vanilla Bean Ice Cream tastes exactly like regular vanilla ice cream, albeit melts quite a bit faster, and is only 4 carbs per 1/2 cup. It’s just such a nice thing to have in the house for when you just NEED to have something sweet. I like to top it with chopped pecans. SO GOOD!
Cheese
Literally all of the cheese. Sliced cheese, string cheese, HUGE bags of shredded mozzarella, shredded parmesan, those little Babybell mini cheese wheel things. Since cheese is typically minimal carbs (a lot of the time it’s even zero) we basically live off it. String cheese I find to be the most important since its so convenient. It has nothing to do with cooking, which saves me all kinds of time. When Austin is complaining that theres nothing quick to eat in the house, I’ll literally chuck string cheese at his face. It just makes things easier.
We also started buying the 32oz. bags of shredded mozzarella now. When we make meatballs, we top it with mozzarella. When we make pizza, the pizza crust is basically made out of mozzarella and almond flour. THEN we top the pizza in more mozzarella.
I feel like I’m going on and on about my love affair with cheese. Let’s move on.
Meat
Same premise to the cheese. It’s typically zero or almost zero carbs for basically any type of meat out there, so our fridge and freezer it packed to the brim with different types.
We typically pick up short ribs (that we cook in a low carb BBQ sauce we found here), chicken thighs, sweet italian turkey sausage, meatballs, tilapia, crab, burgers, sandwich meats, and steak if we’re feeling fancy. Most rubs and spices we have found to be low carb, so we have a variety depending on what kind of mood we are in.
Pasta
We love Italian food, but pasta is just a straight no go for a low carb diet. Shirataki noodles saved me and my love for pasta. We use the ones from Miracle Noodle. They have so many options and they’re all zero carbs! We are able to make fried rice, spaghetti & meatballs, and fettuccini alfredo (my personal favorite) without ruining our carb count. I first found them through Amazon, but now they are at my local HEB.
Soda
Yes I know soda is bad for you and maybe I shouldn’t put this on my staples list but it is. For me, it is a staple. I don’t drink coffee. If you do, black coffee is zero carbs. But for me, soda was always how I was able to make it through the day. Most diet sodas will be zero carbs. Now not all of them taste amazing, so that part is entirely preference, but Austin and I like to keep Coke Zero (for me) & Sprite Zero (for him) in the house at all times.
Those are basically the foods that I like to stay stocked up on so that I don’t go crazy while trying to eat low carb.
Side Note: This is not all that we eat. These are just the things I try to make sure we have all the time.
I know this was kind of a left-field thing for me to talk about, but I love our low carb life right now. I’ve been thinking about throwing in a few of our favorite low carb recipes in every now and then as well. Let me know if ya’ll would be interested in more low carb based post every once in a while!
