Low Carb Tips: Replacing Carb-Heavy Foods in your Diet

As you guys know in June I changed my eating habits very drastically. I decided to keep track of my carb intake for 2 main reasons – 1. because I wanted to lose weight/feel better about my appearance and 2. because my family has a history of diabetes and carbs are a diabetic’s enemy. You can read about my journey here: when I started, my 10 lb mark, and 20 lb mark. I actually haven’t lost much weight since then, only 2 pounds down. But I am seeing a difference in my clothes, a continuing improvement on my endurance, and an increase in the amount of weight that I can lift. Thanks to my Nike Fuelband SE, I’ve been able to make strides in my fitness by keeping track of my activity and challenging to push harder than the workout before.

For my eating habits, one of the hardest things for me to do was give up chips and french fries. Those 2 things I can never resist. They’re my weakness. But what I’ve learned to do was find a replacement that could satisfy my craving for those things by replacing them with items that have similar properties. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Chip replacement: chicharron (the one with the fat off). Baken-ets have been my best friend when it came to a chip replacement. Zero carbs people. Now don’t get it twisted, not saying you can eat the whole bag in 1 sitting obvi 😛
2. Pasta replacement: shirataki noodles. 3g of carbs for half the package. I have to say, these don’t taste anything like regular pasta. The texture is very different. Some hate it, some like it. I like it!When you open it and touch it with your hands if feels like an overcooked noodle. But it’s not! It actually holds its shape very well. I don’t know if I’m doing a good job at selling this one lol. The trick is to really drain the liquid from the noodles. Either strain it and give it time to dry or pat down with a paper towel. I stir fried the noodles with some soy, sesame oil, long green beans, and tofu. Recipe to come in a couple weeks 🙂
3. Sandwich Bread replacement: low carb tortilla. I love certain types of bread – french bread, sourdough bowls, baguettes, and other artisan breads. That I haven’t found a replacement for, unfortunately. But for my sandwiches? I buy Mission’s Carb Balance Tortilla. Though it has the highest amount of carbs on this list (19g of carbs per tortilla) most of it is from fiber (13g) which is good.
4. Rice replacement: cauliflower rice. I haven’t had cauliflower rice in a while but it’s a great alternative if you need that texture. Cooked cauliflower is 5g of carbs per cup. That’s over 8x less carbs than 1 cup of rice. Imagine that 🙂 Charlie has a great cauliflower fried rice recipe. I’ll have to bug him to share that with us!
5. Mashed Potato replacement: cauliflower mash. This is a spectacular alternative to mashed potatoes! Charlie and I lived off of this when I first went low-carb. Then we got tired of it cuz we had it so much lol! Add a little bit of salt, pepper, even 2 tbs of fat free cream cheese (2g of carbs) and you’re golden!

You can also read some more tips about my low carb diet here.