Hey guys, it's been awhile since I've posted, but I'm still counting and on plan

Anyways, I have been a calorie counter from the beginning and will always primarily be a calorie counter. That's why I'm putting this in the CC forum as opposed to the low carb forum. But I think it's time to cut waaaay back on carbs. I've been stuck at the high end of my maintenance range (128-130) for a few weeks even though I've been eating at the low end of my calories (1200ish) and it's ticking me off. Some of you may have followed the Great Megan Saga thread of my most recent adventure, but for those that haven't, this last month has been off the charts as far as personal stress goes. That said, my healthy diet has been moved to the back burner. Like I said, I'm still counting, but instead of taking time to plan healthy meals, I'm eating the same easy foods that fill me up day after day after day. And those same foods I'm eating everyday are NOT balanced and nutritious.

I'm afraid to even post this because of how unhealthy it is, but this is literally what I've been eating every single day for the last three weeks or so. This isn't all that I'm eating, but I eat these foods everyday and then add a few different things each day to total about 1200.

- Morning: 1 cup coffee w/fat free creamer and a splenda packet. I'm an intermittent faster so I don't eat until the afternoon. I haaaaate breakfast, always have.
- Lunch: 3/4 cup oats for oatmeal with 1/2 cup skim milk small salad (lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber)
- Snack: 1/2 cucumber
- Dinner: 1 baked skinless boneless chicken breast and 3/4 cup oats for oatmeal
- Evening snack: Popcorn (1/4 cup air popped) kernels

Pretty bad, I know. Not nutritious.

So, I'm finally able to focus on my diet again. I've always felt that a calorie is a calorie, so I've never watched carbs or fats or anything. But I'm going to try low-carb since that seems to be my weakness. I'm barely squeaking any protein at all into my current diet.

Any tips on starting out? I love egg white beaters, love chicken, love fish and seafood. I'm really not too picky. But I'm trying to plan some meals and a grocery list, and all I can come up with is a chicken breast, tuna salad wraps, scrambled eggs and veggies...and add cheese and such when I can.

Hi, I also count calories ( around 1500 a day ) and watch my carbs, I dont do low carb, but I am pretty low on them some days...here are a few ideas for you

meatloaf - dont use alot of ketchup though or any bread crumbs
crustless quiche
hamburgars ( lean ) without bun
breakfast bowls ( just eggs, cheese, and your breakfast meat )
low carb tortillas with any fillings you want, I also use these for pizza crusts
lower sugar peanut butter ( also good on the low carb wraps )
low carb pasta - I use this alot - Kroger sells it, brand is Dreamfields
hard boiled eggs

plus there are alot of sites that have a ton of low-lower carb recipes...just google for them.

Good luck ...it is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it ...oh and I also eat very dark chocolate because once in a while I do need something a lttle sweet, I dont do anything with artificial sweetners so I need this chocolate sometimes...usually the 76% cacao kind...

Carri

Megan, glad to hear from you. Hope all is well. I know from your previous posts that you are a good cook. Some suggestions you might try , roast beef, or steak, I'm thinking of your low carb ideas,have you tried ground turkey? Jenny O ground turkey breakfast sausage patties are delicious , you might have that with eggs for lunch. You do need some veggies, too. Oats once a day is enough. I make hamburgers , without the bun to save carbs, same with egg salad sandwiches, no bread , tuna salad same thing, skip the bread. Good luck.

I will be interested to read the replies that you get. I am losing steadily, but have been wondering the last couple days how my body would react to a lower carb diet. Still counting calories and not drastically cutting carbs, but switching out my chocolate, kind bars, rice, pasta, popcorn for more protein, fruits, and veggies. Just to see what happens.

This is what I'm trying. I'm not doing Atkins or trying to stay under 50g of carbs or anything. Nothing drastic. But it's just obvious that so much of my diet is carby that I'm curious to see what would happen if I eliminated some of that. I've never watched carbs before, so I'm interested to see what would happen if I changed it up a bit. I've challenged myself to go two weeks without oatmeal or my beloved popcorn, and just those exclusions removes about 700 calories from my daily plan!!! So I'm going to try to fill in those 700 cal with lower carb options. Instead of replacing the oats with rice, I'll try something else. Finding that "something else" is tricky. I've been trying to imagine a well balanced meal, and I see a meat, a vegetable, and a starchy side. Like a chicken breast, wild rice, and broccoli. Not that that's terrible, but again, trying the low carb thing to see what happens.

And thanks for the suggestions, guys I'm about to go grocery shopping, and I'm going to be on the lookout for low carb options. Low carb tortillas and such.

I can handle meats, I do like cooking so I can come up with a zillion chicken/pork/beef/fish recipes. My problem is what do I have WITH the meat. Salads and non-starchy veggies, I know. Also, what to have for lunches.

[QUOTE=mkendrick;3813055]I've been trying to imagine a well balanced meal, and I see a meat, a vegetable, and a starchy side. Like a chicken breast, wild rice, and broccoli. Not that that's terrible, but again, trying the low carb thing to see what happens.QUOTE]

That is what I picture. Nearly every meal I eat includes a starch, plus my snacks are almost always a starch. So, I am just thinking of shaking things up for a week. I think I will still have a serving of rice/pasta/potato with dinner, but eliminate the starch from breakfast and lunch and take more of a whole foods approach, especially with snacking. Instead of picking popchips or dark chocolate, I'll have a piece of string cheese or some berries. Just to see what happens with less sugar and starch but the same amount of calories- if a calorie is truly a calorie to my body, no matter its source. I am not going to look for carb alternatives. Gonna stick with a protein and a veg for lunch, plain Greek yogurt and a fruit (no interest in eliminating natural fruit sugars/carbs) or eggs for breakfast.

This morning I had one whole egg, one egg white, with a 1/2 oz of goat cheese. Snack was 100 calories of almonds. Lunch was lettuce, yogurt based ceasar dressing, grilled chicken, 1/2 T parm, 1/2 oz goat cheese. Dinner will be chicken, mixed veggies, and 1/2 cup of brown rice. Just simple, good foods this week to switch things up. An experiment to entertain myself.

I say don't think "low carb"...but rather "high protein". I'd shoot for 100g/day. I find that the more protein I eat, the leaner I become, the more the scale loves me!

Megan, I count both calories and carbs (more of a focus on the carbs) and I just wanted to point out that your sample recent menu above has hardly any fat in it. So in addition to thinking "more protein" (I agree with joyfulloser) also think "more fat." That's scary for a calorie-counter but the fact is you shouldn't try to eat both low-carb and low-fat, if that's what you've been doing in the past. Buy fatty meats, eat whole-fat cheeses, cook with oil, etc.

Awesome thread for me too. Thanks for starting it.

For the past few weeks I am been trying not to eat any "bread" carbs most days the week. I do have some the odd day, it works good - as long as I don't keep messing up the weekends.

Typically I have hard boiled egg, yogurt and fruit for breakfast. Some kind of meat and salad for lunch and meat and veggie's for dinner. I find myself eating more cheese then I would normally! I am trying to stay around 1200 calories a day but do have some higher ones.

I made stuffed pepper's one night for something different, never done it before - with no rice to keep it lower carb. They were good! Recipe is on my blog if you are interested. Another one I am going to do is shepard's pie with cauliflower top.

I'm pretty sure it's Kaplods who uses the term "carb-conscious" to describe her WOE, and I like that term to describe what I do.

I kind of view grainy carbs as sort of empty calories. I know they're not, and "empty" probably isn't best word for me to use, but what I mean by that is they don't give me the same satiety or nutrient factor as veggies, fruits, lean protein, and fat. So when I'm planning my food for any given day, I go to grains last to round out a particular meal/snack. However, I do eat grains pretty much every day, usually in the form of a low-carb wrap or tortilla (I choose these for the low calorie count, not because they're specifically low-carb).

I've had a container of frozen brown rice in my freezer forever, but I can't make myself eat any because 1 cup is 230 calories. Do you know how many vegetables I could eat for that amount? Or I'll always choose to have a tablespoon of olive oil on my veggies, rather that the rice, because I know olive oil makes me feel really full and satisfied. Rice is just going to make me want more rice, I think.

In any case, I don't aim for a particular number of carbs, but I do look at my macronutrient ratio on Livestrong and like it if my carbs (which on Livestrong includes vegetables and fruit) are around 40-45%. A lot of low-carbers would say that's too high, but it totally works for me.

I hope the grand experiment helps!

I saw this post yesterday and immediately started monitoring my carbs. Today I am down 1.5lbs and I know it is because my muscles were holding so much water because of the carbs. I did low carb before (lost 100lbs) and really didn't want to do it again, but I see now, I need to monitor my carbs. I don't workout enough to rationalize my eating so many carbs, so I am not going to go over 100 total (no subtracting for fiber) and see where that takes me. THANK YOU for starting this thread!!

Thanks for the replies everyone I do like the concept of "carb conscious" as opposed to low-carb. I think my main thing is...I do NOT need to be eating oatmeal twice a day and popcorn. I'm not necessarily doing low-carb, I'm just shaking myself out of an unhealthy routine and getting my diet balanced again.

My food choices are fairly pitiful right now since I haven't figured out what exactly I want to be eating. So my options are kinda limited. Here's what I had yesterday:

- Lunch: 5oz tuna salad with low-carb WrapUp wrap, veggie salad (romaine, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, no dressing)
- Snack: Cucumber
- Snack #2: Celery with peanut butter
- Dinner: Chicken breast, steamed broccoli, salad (spinach with feta cheese, greek olives, avocado, and a tiny bit of balsamic dressing)
- Snack: A whole green pepper cut into strips and dipped into 3tbsp hummus
Total: 1,180 calories, 73g Carbs, 115g Protein, 57g Fat, 29g Fiber.

I didn't like it, to be entirely honest. It was good healthy yummy food, and I didn't feel hungry. But I felt actual anger when I was eating the hummus and green pepper instead of my big bowl of delicious popcorn. I felt like a kid throwing a tantrum because I wasn't getting what I wanted, lol. Some of that may be carb withdrawal, some of it is just that I'm a creature of habit and this was NOT my routine menu, and I may just need to tweak the foods I'm eating so I enjoy them more.

I like protein, but I do not like eating fat. I don't have a fat-phobia or anything, I know it's healthy for me. Some people say that fat fills them up and keeps them satisfied...not me! For 210 calories, I ate 2 tbsp of peanut butter and celery. I finished that snack in about 10 minutes and immediately wanted to eat more. For 240 calories, I can eat a huuuuge bowl of air popped popcorn that takes me about an hour to eat and I feel full and satisfied. The volume of high-fat foods for the calories is just too little to be worth it for me. I'd rather eat a large volume of low-fat foods, whether it's carbs, protein, veggies, w/e. From my experience, my "full, satisfied, and happy" level seems to ONLY be affected by volume as opposed to macronutrients. It's almost 99% a psychological thing. If I am eating a lot of food that takes up a lot of room on the plate and takes me a long time to eat, I WILL feel satisfied no matter what that food is.

I'm going to ignore my inner-3yo's tantrum about wanting oatmeal and popcorn for a bit longer though. I went from 129.2lbs yesterday to 128.4 this morning. I'm betting that's more of a fluctuation than an instantaneous reaction to one day of eating lower carbs, but it was encouraging to see nonetheless.

And I tend to not think necessarily "low carb" but eating the "right carbs" and focus on protein, like they say dont eat anything white ( potatoes, rice, pasta etc ) ...and I dont eat simple sugars ( candy or cake or sodas etc ) ...I do allow myself to have bread ocassionally and a pce of dark chocolate here or there ( at least 70% cocoa or more ) ...all you have to do is make the right carb choices...you can still have some...I usually like to keep my carbs at 60-80 per day...it can get a little old at times but the weight comes off alot easier in my case

How funny, today when I was adding 1 T of olive oil to the pan, the exact thought crossed my mind, "I can have a bowl of popcorn instead of this little tiny tablespoon of fat." Then I remembered the scale showed a 0.6 drop this morning, and decided to continue the experiment. I am not hungry. I just prefer volume.
Yesterday:
B: One whole egg, one egg white, 1/2 oz goat cheese, 100 calories almonds.
L: 3 oz chicken breast, lettuce, yogurt based ceasar dressing, 1/2 oz goat cheese, 1/2 T parmesan.
D: 6 oz grilled salmon, cauliflower.
Snacks: Cranberry, almond, and cashew trail mix, strawberries, 2 T Cool Whip.

Total= 1152 calories, 53 grams carbohydrates

Today:
B: One whole egg, one egg white, 1/2 oz goat cheese.
L: Fajitas minus the tortilla.....6 oz chicken breast, 1 T olive oil, onion, pepper, mushroroms, 1/2 oz cheese.
D: 6 oz chicken breast stuffed with mushroom, spinach, laughing cow cheese, green salad with cucumbers and tomatos and light Catalina dressing.
Snacks: Strawberries, apple, 1 T natual PB, mozzarella cheese stick
Total= 1206 calories, 64 grams carbohydrates

I was worried that the lower carbs would mean less energy for my running, but I felt great and made today my longer run day. I guess maybe you have to cut the carbs more drastically to get the lack of energy, sluggish feeling I hear about.

I don't have any tips for you but good luck.