Learning to love omelettes

Bringing lunch from home is a bit more difficult for us than it is for high carbers. We don't get the 'slap two pieces of bread together around a filling, if still hungry repeat' option.
Omelettes have become my low-carb sandwich. Every morning lately, I've slapped together an omelette, fried in butter, usually with a cheese and tomato filling, and brought it to work. It probably weirds out my cowerkers, but I feel great after lunch.
Side dishes can be mixed nuts, or cheese, or yogurt, and lately a couple of pieces of 80% Lindt chocolate (which I've finally developed the tastebuds for, yum!).
These foods are very cheap as well.

On the topic of chocolate, at Soklata on Glenferrie Rd, I've seen 99% cocoa chocolate bars. I'm very tempted to give it a try! Yes, there are sweet low-carb chocolates, but I'm on a break from artificial sweeteners. If you're suffering from a sore stomach, or any other gastro-intestinal distress, you may want to check how much sorbitol and malitol you're consuming. For me, that means I have to give my beloved Penguin Mints a big swerve for now, as I can't stop at one, and no more chewing gum. 'Extra' might be sugarfree, but it has sorbitol, and can bring on bowel unhappiness after a fairly small dose.

Square wraps - the *real* reason fast food should be your last resort.

We know the usual reasons to avoid fast food on this WOE. Being in McDonalds being bathed in the aroma of fresh french fries is the best way to end up eating them, even if there are some lower-carb options available. You *could*, in most fast food restaurants, order a burger without the bun, or a salad, but those options are pretty unsatisfying, really. Fast food places and cafes tend to have hidden carbs in dressings and condiments too, ramping the carb count on foods that are nominally okay.
There's an even better reason to avoid fast food, though.
The employees don't care about your order, and their employers don't care giving you good service.

When ordering at fast food places, staff will screw up your order three times out of four. ('Normal' orders attract an error rate too, but more like 25% of the time). They're likely to screw up your order because you need to make changes to the menu, to make additions and subsitutions to get a low-carb meal served to you. You're then putting your next meal, and your gastrointestinal happiness of the next few hours, in the hands of someone who is barely listening to you.

"Yes, yes" said the girl at the counter of Subway one afternoon when I'd come off shift and was ordering dinner. "Yes, we have wraps."
"Low carb wraps?" I repeated.
"Yes, yes". More impatient now.
Well, the wrap looked to be the right color at least. On a previous visit to another Subway another disinterested girl had gotten it wrong, fortunately this Sandwich Artist had not been allowed as many options and the only wraps available were the right kind.
I ordered a cheese steak wrap. On examination of the finished product, there was something wrong with it.
It was square.




As well as being square, and not folded in a way to maintain structural integrity when I ate it later, The cheese had been carefully laid below a bed of salad to ensure it would never, never be contaminated by the steak. Well, in the end I could at least eat it.

I've had enough apple sauce dumped over pork to know that they aren't typically paying attention in cafes either. What the hell is so difficult about 'no apple sauce'?
My usual mainstay, the caesar salad, arrives wearing croutons about half the time, despite (you guessed it) my request that it not include them. I didn't even like them when I wasn't on this WOE, salad is better without soggy bread.
It even happened today. Frustratingly, at a cafe that is pretty good otherwise. Disinterested girl #3 takes the order, notes that there are to be no croutons, and I pay for the order.
I'm back at my desk when I realise the inevitable has happened. If those weren't croutons in my salad, what were they? Bread droppings?

There's some groupthink that low carb diets cause irritability. But if we're irritable, its because we're paying these people for the privilege of not respecting us.

Quickie Review - Marrook Farm BioDynamic Yogurt

I've previously ranted about the only kind of yogurt you can get your hands on being 'sugary' or 'low-fat'. Leaving us with low-fat, but that's not the right answer for our WOE.

Today, at my local organic greengrocer, I saw a glass jar of Marrook Farm BioDynamic Yogurt in the fridge. It has a reasonable 4.7g of carbs per 100g, and is described on the jar as being 'cream at the top' yogurt. Yes, it's a full-cream, yogurt, they LEAVE THE FAT IN IT.
I had about 100g with some low-carb strawberry jam, and it tastes very nice and creamy. Its a different sort of flavor to the Greek-style and 'natural' low-fat yogurt. It's not a bitey yogurt, and in fact it tastes sort of like Philadelphia cream cheese.

Highly recommended if you can get your hands on it. They have a contact number on the jar of (02) 6550 4439, if you want to find a local stockist.

Quote Of The Day

From the Simpsons -

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

A rant on yogurt

If you go to your local supermarket fridge shelf, you'll notice that yogurt comes in two varieties, no or low fat, and 'full fat, plus a couple of buckets of sugar'.
Your only off-the shelf flavored lowish-carb yogurt is the Yoplait 'no-fat' yogurt, the strawberry variety checks in at 10 grams of carbs. It's tasty, but you won't be eating that on Atkins induction. (It's also a canonical example of why you should check 'serving size' vs 'carton size', apparently the good people at Yoplait assume you'll be saving half of your portion for tomorrow, the 5g of carbs listed on the label is for 100g of product, not a 200g tub)
Even the 'natural' yogurts are mostly 'fat reduced', it's impossible to find a low sugar yogurt that isn't fat free. Fat is important on this WOE for satiety, kicking off ketosis, and I suspect it's partly why your skin gets better when you start eating this way. A low-fat yogurt is tasty but doesn't satisfy.
Is it so hard to leave the fat *in* the yogurt? The fat-reduced 'natural' or 'greek-style' yogurts are *always* higher in carbs than the non fat-reduced variety.
It's annoying, but I think I've found a solution, greek style yogurt (full-fat) and Cottees Diet Strawberry conserve (0.6g carbs per tablespoon, according to my new friend Calorie King). Can't get that in a *tub* though.
I'll post a road-test in a few days.

Not all bunless burgers

Welcome to the first post of 'No, I *don't* want fries!' . This blog is all about maintaining a lower carbohydrate existence in the face of Real Life. Real Life serves up stress, strange working hours, holidays (religious and otherwise), sweet sweet danishes, and restaurant staff for whom 'no muffins, please' is a difficult concept (and you're a difficult customer for throwing them off their groove like that!)

I've been pursuing this Way Of Eating since August of last year. There have been mistakes. There have been donuts. But my overall health is great and I've lost the equivalent weight of a 17" monitor (CRT, not LCD).

Not everybody makes this lifestyle work. It's not as convenient as the McDonalds drivethrough or a muffin-latte combo from Coffee HQ on the way to work. I don't think the concept of comfort food exists in quite the same way any more, so there's no burying your sorrows under french fries.

You *can* live this way though and there's many people for whom this is the Right Answer. I'm one of them, so's my SO. And from day to day you need to make decisions, and plans to stay on this track. You don't know, starting out, what's a carb bargain and what *isn't*, what you can eat, what day to day life on this WOE is supposed to be like. That's what this blog is about.