Looking for recipe recommendations to try and decrease the amount of carbs in my diet?
Abby_Moores
Posts: 5 Member
I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
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Replies
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Generally I just cut out the grains, potato, corn, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, winter squash, or other super-high carby side dishes. Instead I go for leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, onions, peppers, some cherry tomatoes, cucumber, or zucchini, which are all much lower in carbs.
One of my fave low-carb meals is sausage & cabbage.
Use pretty much any kind of sausage, could be ground, turkey sausage, Italian link, or kielbasa, as long as it's no sugar or grain fillers added it doesn't matter-- slice it up. Figure on at least 3-4 oz per person, or more depending on your desired protein intake.
Saute it and as the fat renders throw in some slices of onion and pepper if you like (as much or as little as you want). If you're using low-fat meat you can saute it with some oil, butter, or cooking spray. Season w/salt, pepper, garlic powder-- keep it simple, it's tasty enough.
I make it in my insta-pot. After the meat is browned and onions are caramelizing I add about a cup of broth, then I throw in the head of cabbage on top, either sliced or quartered (red or green is fine).
In the insta-pot it cooks for about 6 minutes on high but if you're using a regular pot it'll take longer, till the cabbage is at your desired tenderness. The smaller you cut it obviously the faster it'll get there. You might need more broth in a regular pot, too, to account for evaporation.
When you serve it up you can add some butter if you have the fat allowance, but you don't need to. To make it the absolute bomb, sprinkle it with everything bagel seasoning mix.
Anyway it's a pretty easy, tasty, low-carb 1-pot meal, and you can easily make it in bulk to package it up for multiple meals.2 -
Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
My knee jerk response is... carbs are incredibly healthy and beneficial for your body... just stick to the whole grain ones and avoid refined. Try brown rice, millet, oats, chickpeas, potatos. And include plenty of vegetables.4 -
My partner and I often still eat the same things; I just tweak the proportions.
The MFP default macros are 50% from carbohydrates, 20% from protein and 30% from fat. Before I started keeping an eye on that, I was probably eating a little less protein, and a little more carbs and fat. I have found it useful to increase my portions of meat, non starchy vegetables, and fruit. With fruit, I'm less likely to want carb and fat-heavy baked goods or ice cream.
When we have pasta or pizza, I have less pasta and more protein and veggies, or less pizza and a large salad, with some cottage cheese for a protein boost.1 -
When I was doing low carb dieting, I would just skip the pasta, potatoes, or bread in a meal. Chili doesn't have to have beans, a bolognaise sauce goes well on zucchini, hamburgers don't need a bun, stir fry doesn't need to be served on rice. Breakfast was always eggs served in various ways. Salads or soups for lunch. Biggest things was to stop the sweets. FWIW, while I lost weight on low carb, it wasn't sustainable for me for long. I like bread and rice and chocolate. After I had lost 35 or so pounds, I switched to calorie counting so I could include more of the foods I enjoy that are high carb. The experience of eating low carb did make me learn to look at what foods I really enjoyed and which I ate just because I was used to eating them. i.e. I don't really enjoy potato salad most of the time, but I was raised on it in summer. Same with french fries or potato chips. I can happily skip both, most of the time.3
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Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
When you say you love carbs, what does that mean to you? When you imply you want to "balance out your diet", do you have a specific carb target (for some reason?) or do you simply want to get enough protein/fats so need to reduce carbs to hit calorie level?
The first reply, from @positivelysimful, has a good basic rundown on how to reduce to a truly low carb level.
@spiriteagle99 has more of a "tweak your eating toward more moderate carbs" approach.
Either can be good.
When people say "I love carbs", sometimes they mean things like bread and rice. Sometimes they mean things like pizza (which strictly speaking has all the macros, not just carbs) or french fries/crisps (which have more calories from fats than from carbs!). Sometimes they mean sweets like baked goods and candy. Occasionally (more rare) they mean starchy vegetables, whole grains, baked potatoes, and that sort of thing (more nutrient dense but somewhat higher carb foods).
The dishes I'd suggest would vary depending on what the issue is:
If it's bread/rice kind of thing, I'd go with spiriteagle and suggest just reducing or eliminating those, thinking in terms of things like low carb wraps, lettuce wraps, maybe cauliflower or zucchini where you might otherwise use rice, etc. Another option would be to substitute a slightly lower-carb grain-like thing such as quinoa, or a red lentil pasta for a wheat pasta, etc.
If it's that middle category of things like pizza, fries/crisps, and like high-calorie foods, the solution may simply be reducing frying (oven-baked "fries" can be good), making pizza on a whole-grain tortilla with a little less high-fat cheese or fatty meat and somewhat more veggies, and that sort of thing.
If it's sweets, I personally found that if I made it a point to eat more fruit (around 3 servings/day), my cravings for higher calorie, less nutrient dense sweets (like baked goods) were reduced after a period of time.
If you're truly looking for new recipes, not just carb reduction strategies for remodeling dishes you currently enjoy, then as a start, the MFP blogs have some good stuff:
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/recipes/
I don't use recipes. I "just cook" based decades of experience. I used the "remodel current eating" approach when I first committed to losing weight, and since in maintenance.
Personally, I ate moderately high carbs all during weight loss (150g or so daily), but most of the carbs were from starchy veggies, fruits, and no-sugar-added dairy. I did things like increasing the veggies with less pasta (subbing red lentil pasta, too), eating sandwich fillings without the bread (basically a salad) because I'm not a huge bread lover anyway, and that sort of thing. I find the veggie/fruit carbs pretty filling, as a bonus . . . but satiation seems to differ from one person to the next.
Best wishes!
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Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
When you say you love carbs, what does that mean to you? When you imply you want to "balance out your diet", do you have a specific carb target (for some reason?) or do you simply want to get enough protein/fats so need to reduce carbs to hit calorie level?
I absolutely love breads, pastas, fries, chips, pizza, ect. Unfortunately when it comes to vegetables i somewhat recoil from allot of them. Personally i am currently trying to balance out my diet so it isn't all carb. On the sugar side I'm a bit weak to soda "which im currently trying to move it to an occasional treat instead " Luckily i don't really crave candy so that's not to big of an issue.
@sollyn23l2
@AnnPT77
@spiriteagle99
@kshama2001
@positivelysimful
I Really appreciate everyone's input ty very much!
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Hiiii xx
I totally swapped out full sugary coke for Coke Zero years ago
that was a start x
I make my own chips from potatoes and put them In the air fryer..
A pizza from the pizza shop is high in calories, but you can make your own pizzas and then just chop up some ham,pepperoni and add some cheese
For rice…I use the rice bags that are microwaveable
Using rice from a big bag is full of carbs, but the ones in the steam bags have about 39 I think but of chicken or meatballs and sauce and away you go
I love carbs too! I have treats now and then though
I mean you can still have a curly wurly too! It’s only 99 calories
Just keep counting xx good luck and wishing you lots of love xx1 -
Abby_Moores wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
When you say you love carbs, what does that mean to you? When you imply you want to "balance out your diet", do you have a specific carb target (for some reason?) or do you simply want to get enough protein/fats so need to reduce carbs to hit calorie level?
I absolutely love breads, pastas, fries, chips, pizza, ect. Unfortunately when it comes to vegetables i somewhat recoil from allot of them. Personally i am currently trying to balance out my diet so it isn't all carb. On the sugar side I'm a bit weak to soda "which im currently trying to move it to an occasional treat instead " Luckily i don't really crave candy so that's not to big of an issue.
(snip ID list from reply so I don't re-tag everyone)
I Really appreciate everyone's input ty very much!
This is probably me being weird, but some of the no sugar/no sugar-substitute sodas are IMO pretty good - there's just a light fruit flavor of some type - but it can be an adjustment. I also like plain sparkling water with a little bit of bitters in it (especially grapefruit or cucumber bitters), but I know that's weird.
For the bread, read labels, if you're remotely flexible about choices vs. totally wedded to one type/brand. There are thin-sliced ones (so still 2-bread sandwich but lower calories), ones that are simply lower in calories because of the ingredients, others that are higher in fiber or nutrients for the same calories so easier to fit in and maybe more filling, etc.
Try some oven-baked fries (starting from potatoes, not the frozen ones). It will require a little oil (maybe spray oil), typically, but less oil/calories than in deep-fried versions. There are some higher-protein or lower-calorie commercial crispy snacks (other than chips), so maybe take a look at some of that stuff, too, and experiment a little.
I know that many people don't warm up to veggies, but I hope you'll give some a chance - maybe new ones - and try using them in new ways? Blending cauliflower or winter squash and including it in something like mac'n'cheese is pretty unobtrusive taste-wise, but ups the nutrition, fiber, and potentially satiation from that food. Don't know about you, but many people have a history with overcooked boiled veggies, or canned ones; but find that fresh ones, maybe steamed, stir-fried or (especially) roasted are tastier.
Via web search, you can find recipes intended for picky children that involve making the veggies' presence in the food more subtle. Obviously, as the cook you'd know (no foolin' the cook!), but they can be more nutrient-dense, more filling and easier to shift to than big ol' portions of just veggies.
Best wishes!
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Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
Have you tried to ease into a reduced carb diet? Surprisingly, The first week of seriously altering my diet had me craving some carbs. What helped me over the hump was to included a small amount of carbs in my meal and then reduce the amount over time. I made scrambled eggs; instead of having a hash brown patty or side of home fries; I microwaved a small yukon potato(pricked to allow steam to escape) for a minute and let sit until cool. Then grated using large holes on a grater, and added it and parmesan cheese to my scrambled egg. It provided me that comfort food feel, while allowing me to control the amount of carbs I ate. I can’t totally avoid food or villa use it. I have to find a way to give my body a bit if what it craves! I’ve added a grated yukon gold to soup as well. I’m trying to make peace with my food, not avoid it. Best to you on this journey!!1 -
Abby_Moores wrote: »
I absolutely love breads, pastas, fries, chips, pizza, ect. Unfortunately when it comes to vegetables i somewhat recoil from allot of them. Personally i am currently trying to balance out my diet so it isn't all carb. On the sugar side I'm a bit weak to soda "which im currently trying to move it to an occasional treat instead " Luckily i don't really crave candy so that's not to big of an issue.
I feel that. I'm a major carb addict, grew up eating mostly pasta, potatoes, and rice... not to mention pizza, cookies, ramen, soft drinks, etc. I didn't like most veggies, other than small garden salads my mother rarely made them. If we ate meat it came with potatoes or corn usually; if we ate pasta or rice dishes we probably didn't add any veggies, just some meats. I could tolerate small bits of carrots or peas mixed in but that should be no surprise, they are high carb lol.
In my 20s I read that if you eat something you dislike about 5-10 times you develop a taste for it. I started doing that with one veggie at a time. Started with steamed fresh broccoli with a sprinkle of parm, 3-4 times per week I had it as a snack alone. By the end of the second week I was really liking it which shocked me. Moved on to green beans, spinach, asparagus... getting used to them and starting to like them even more quickly the more I tried with this experiment. Now I really enjoy just about every vegetable under the sun (even kale).
So just keep eating the veggies, trying different ones. You do really learn to like them.
ETA-- okay this quote thing has me really confused I can't seem to get out of the boxes. Sorry.1 -
sollyn23l2 wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
My knee jerk response is... carbs are incredibly healthy and beneficial for your body... just stick to the whole grain ones and avoid refined. Try brown rice, millet, oats, chickpeas, potatos. And include plenty of vegetables.
No offense, but depends on the person whether carbs are beneficial. Some of us don't tolerate carbs well. For some they can cause inflammation or gut upset. For some, they can trigger food addictions. For some, whether it's a whole grain toast slice with almond butter or a piece of chocolate cake with icing, if you're insulin resistant or hypersensitive to insulin it impacts the blood sugar the same way.
Carbs are actually the only macronutrient humans can live without, and can even thrive with very few. Many tribal cultures, from the Innuit of North America to the Maasai warriors of Africa to the Aboriginals in Oceania, etc., have survived on high fat/high meat diets with very, very few carbs (if any) and have thrived with low levels of heart disease, cancer, and no type 2 diabetes.
Not saying you're wrong about eating carbs in general; for some people a more balanced diet is fine and there are certainly carbs more healthy for them than others. For some of us, carbs are the enemy, it's better to stay away. Everyone has to listen to their own body & discuss it with their doctor.2 -
positivelysimful wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »
I absolutely love breads, pastas, fries, chips, pizza, ect. Unfortunately when it comes to vegetables i somewhat recoil from allot of them. Personally i am currently trying to balance out my diet so it isn't all carb. On the sugar side I'm a bit weak to soda "which im currently trying to move it to an occasional treat instead " Luckily i don't really crave candy so that's not to big of an issue.
I feel that. I'm a major carb addict, grew up eating mostly pasta, potatoes, and rice... not to mention pizza, cookies, ramen, soft drinks, etc. I didn't like most veggies, other than small garden salads my mother rarely made them. If we ate meat it came with potatoes or corn usually; if we ate pasta or rice dishes we probably didn't add any veggies, just some meats. I could tolerate small bits of carrots or peas mixed in but that should be no surprise, they are high carb lol.
In my 20s I read that if you eat something you dislike about 5-10 times you develop a taste for it. I started doing that with one veggie at a time. Started with steamed fresh broccoli with a sprinkle of parm, 3-4 times per week I had it as a snack alone. By the end of the second week I was really liking it which shocked me. Moved on to green beans, spinach, asparagus... getting used to them and starting to like them even more quickly the more I tried with this experiment. Now I really enjoy just about every vegetable under the sun (even kale).
So just keep eating the veggies, trying different ones. You do really learn to like them.
ETA-- okay this quote thing has me really confused I can't seem to get out of the boxes. Sorry.
With apologies to the OP for the digression: It's about matching up the quote tags. Quote tags are the 'quote' or 'quote="positivelysimful;c-47663028"' thing matched with a '/quote', with those things I put in single quotes actually enclosed in square brackets.
If it's hard, just type after the last '/quote'. If you start editing within the quotes, it will only come out right if you edit out the 'quote' and '/quote' tags in correctly matched pairs. In the example above, you had deleted the text of a quote from me (which is fine) including deleting its closing '/quote' (and brackets) but left in the starting 'quote="AnnPT77;c-47662760"' (and its brackets).
I fixed it - I think - when I quoted you. If you quote yourself (the post that you couldn't get out of the boxes) you'll see all the tags in the editing box, and can see what I mean.
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positivelysimful wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »
I absolutely love breads, pastas, fries, chips, pizza, ect. Unfortunately when it comes to vegetables i somewhat recoil from allot of them. Personally i am currently trying to balance out my diet so it isn't all carb. On the sugar side I'm a bit weak to soda "which im currently trying to move it to an occasional treat instead " Luckily i don't really crave candy so that's not to big of an issue.
I feel that. I'm a major carb addict, grew up eating mostly pasta, potatoes, and rice... not to mention pizza, cookies, ramen, soft drinks, etc. I didn't like most veggies, other than small garden salads my mother rarely made them. If we ate meat it came with potatoes or corn usually; if we ate pasta or rice dishes we probably didn't add any veggies, just some meats. I could tolerate small bits of carrots or peas mixed in but that should be no surprise, they are high carb lol.
In my 20s I read that if you eat something you dislike about 5-10 times you develop a taste for it. I started doing that with one veggie at a time. Started with steamed fresh broccoli with a sprinkle of parm, 3-4 times per week I had it as a snack alone. By the end of the second week I was really liking it which shocked me. Moved on to green beans, spinach, asparagus... getting used to them and starting to like them even more quickly the more I tried with this experiment. Now I really enjoy just about every vegetable under the sun (even kale).
So just keep eating the veggies, trying different ones. You do really learn to like them.
ETA-- okay this quote thing has me really confused I can't seem to get out of the boxes. Sorry.
With apologies to the OP for the digression: It's about matching up the quote tags. Quote tags are the 'quote' or 'quote="positivelysimful;c-47663028"' thing matched with a '/quote', with those things I put in single quotes actually enclosed in square brackets.
If it's hard, just type after the last '/quote'. If you start editing within the quotes, it will only come out right if you edit out the 'quote' and '/quote' tags in correctly matched pairs. In the example above, you had deleted the text of a quote from me (which is fine) including deleting its closing '/quote' (and brackets) but left in the starting 'quote="AnnPT77;c-47662760"' (and its brackets).
I fixed it - I think - when I quoted you. If you quote yourself (the post that you couldn't get out of the boxes) you'll see all the tags in the editing box, and can see what I mean.
Thank you, I think where I was tripping myself up was editing out long chunks of text irrelevant to my answer. I did know about typing after the '/quote' in brackets, but for some reason it was giving me trouble so I figured I did something wrong at the top and the quotes weren't closing out properly. Thanks for your help 1 -
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positivelysimful wrote: »sollyn23l2 wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
My knee jerk response is... carbs are incredibly healthy and beneficial for your body... just stick to the whole grain ones and avoid refined. Try brown rice, millet, oats, chickpeas, potatos. And include plenty of vegetables.
No offense, but depends on the person whether carbs are beneficial. Some of us don't tolerate carbs well. For some they can cause inflammation or gut upset. For some, they can trigger food addictions. For some, whether it's a whole grain toast slice with almond butter or a piece of chocolate cake with icing, if you're insulin resistant or hypersensitive to insulin it impacts the blood sugar the same way.
Carbs are actually the only macronutrient humans can live without, and can even thrive with very few. Many tribal cultures, from the Innuit of North America to the Maasai warriors of Africa to the Aboriginals in Oceania, etc., have survived on high fat/high meat diets with very, very few carbs (if any) and have thrived with low levels of heart disease, cancer, and no type 2 diabetes.
Not saying you're wrong about eating carbs in general; for some people a more balanced diet is fine and there are certainly carbs more healthy for them than others. For some of us, carbs are the enemy, it's better to stay away. Everyone has to listen to their own body & discuss it with their doctor.
Then just don't eat carbs.0 -
sollyn23l2 wrote: »positivelysimful wrote: »sollyn23l2 wrote: »Abby_Moores wrote: »I Love carbs, Always have. Looking for recommendations for alternate healthy-ish dishes? preferably not overly expensive, hopefully can balance out my diet. If anyone happens to reply with some i'd greatly appreciate it.
My knee jerk response is... carbs are incredibly healthy and beneficial for your body... just stick to the whole grain ones and avoid refined. Try brown rice, millet, oats, chickpeas, potatos. And include plenty of vegetables.
No offense, but depends on the person whether carbs are beneficial. Some of us don't tolerate carbs well. For some they can cause inflammation or gut upset. For some, they can trigger food addictions. For some, whether it's a whole grain toast slice with almond butter or a piece of chocolate cake with icing, if you're insulin resistant or hypersensitive to insulin it impacts the blood sugar the same way.
Carbs are actually the only macronutrient humans can live without, and can even thrive with very few. Many tribal cultures, from the Innuit of North America to the Maasai warriors of Africa to the Aboriginals in Oceania, etc., have survived on high fat/high meat diets with very, very few carbs (if any) and have thrived with low levels of heart disease, cancer, and no type 2 diabetes.
Not saying you're wrong about eating carbs in general; for some people a more balanced diet is fine and there are certainly carbs more healthy for them than others. For some of us, carbs are the enemy, it's better to stay away. Everyone has to listen to their own body & discuss it with their doctor.
Then just don't eat carbs.
Your funny lol. Cheers 0 -
There is nothing wrong with carbs. Some of the healthiest foods on the planet are carbs and we need them for fiber, vitamins, and energy. I eat vegetarian a lot of the time so tend to eat many carbs. When im trying to increase protein and decrease carbs somewhat I eat some of the following meals:
Omelette with veggies
Greek yogurt with berries
Shrimp Saganaki
Tandoori shrimp or tofu Tikka masala with a cucumber and tomato salad
Air fryer salmon
The last 4 recipes are on Pinterest. I also eat high protein pasta and tortillas and eat higher protein vegetable foods like lentils.2
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