Greeks on a diet

Most Greek dishes can be stripped of their sugar and carbs and adapted to the paleo construct very easily. See this website: http://www.theprimaldesire.com/tag/paleo-greek-weeks-recipes/ You can still eat cheese, olives, fish, eggs, veggies, etc. and most importantly, use coconut and olive oil. Also, if you try to stick to 1400 calories a day, you can have a moderate cheat day wiith your favorite food. (Aim for 15% carbs; 40% fats; 45% protein; no more than 20 grams sugar and at least 25 grams fiber). Pastitsio can be made less caloric / lower carb by not adding sugar and adding more veggies / meat to the meat sauce; reduce the pasta by half (and look at using low carb pasta); and in addition to making changes to the sauce (make a skim milk, egg custard / tapioca based sauce), reduce by half. Baklava can be made as is just make smaller batches and use less honey (I use just enough rose water and honey to coat the nuts before I add them in, butter the layers, and then use the rest of the honey / rose water over the top). Remember also that traditional Mediterranean foods were based on meat and vegetables primarily and that the two dishes I mentioned were eaten family style and shared by a lot of people.

24clouds wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

Any of the traditional sweets. Yikes.
Most items that use olive or other oils in quantity unless modified to use less or none.
However, I was surprised as to how (relatively) few calories deep fried calamari ends up being, and how many, by comparison, any of the dips with pita or bread.
End of the day, most dishes can be modified (most, not all, baklava, I'm looking at you!) to be downright calorie friendly!
From ladera with less oil, to gemista with changes to the gemisi. Hmmm...getting the urge to make soutzoukakia :-)

Ive had to google soutzoukaki. My family are Cypriot and I'm in uk. See the problem with them for me would be I would fry them into koftedes lol! Dips and pitta and koulouri! Urrrrgh! I had no idea until few days ago!

Step one... anti-stick sprays such as Pam or nothing but a very good non stick frying pan are your new friends! (Well, this applies to me since I limit gratuitous fats)

Interesting suggestions from @Sunna_W about her Paleo take on Greek food.

I come from a more agnostic position where I eat anything and everything.

However I do try and "transform" almost everything into lower calorie-higher volume versions... cause... well then I can have my cake and eat it too so to speak

I also make cabbage rice don't know if it's Greek or not. But I use shredded cabbage, grated carrot and a little bit of rice (some people sauté onions too). Shredded cabbage gets this caremelised flavour when you sauté it. It's very low in calories if you use a bit of oil. I top it with feta cheese.

24clouds wrote: »

Sounds yummy. I now got the problem of working out calories in the rice. I weighed out 160g cooked rice and cannot find anything on system so I'm going with 200calories

If you search for something like "usda white rice cooked" you should get several more or less appropriate entries (and your 200 cals doesn't sound so far off).

More on topic: you guys are making me want to buy a cookbook for Greek food and try my way through it

24clouds wrote: »

Get some grilled halloumi on lol

Halloumi is more Cypriot Greek cheese, Greeks from the mainland like their feta But all cheese has lots of calories so I weigh all