Low Carb Diet Plans

So, it is time for an update on my low-carb dieting. Over the past year, I have lost close to 40 lbs, which is a much slower loss than I was hoping for; but still better than not losing any weight at all, or even gaining more weight.
A year ago, most of my weight was flab and very little muscle; but the exercise most days has strengthened my muscle tone, and now part of the weight is muscles and part is flab, but the flab is going away ! (Hooray ! )
This year, I am going to continue the same program, since it is simple for me to do, I enjoy what I eat, and am not having food cravings like I used to have. The doctor explained that my kidney and possibly liver function could be impaired from the medicine that I take for my heart; and one of the things that a ketogenic diet is supposed to help is kidney and liver function.
I want to get more steps that I did last year, too.
My fitness tracker (Jawbone UP24) tells me how many steps I take each day, as well as calories I burn, and the carb-tracker app also keeps track of both exercise and food intake, and I can see graphs and charts showing my weekly and monthly improvements.
Bobby says it is not a good idea for me to walk around the neighbor hood, and he is right.
This is not the safest area, plus I might get too far away and have trouble getting back home if I start having trouble walking. So........ I have decided that I will go down to the new little Walmart Market and walk.
It is close by, and safe, and I can do it in just about any weather.
Plus, I can stop and sit down if I need to do so. So that is added into my game plan for this year, and I really WANT to get down to my goal weight , maybe by this summer if I work hard, but at least by fall.

 

The new exercise bicycle came today, and Bobby set it up for me. My knees are bending just fine for me to ride it, which is awesome news ! The last time I tried the one at the fitness center (last fall), I still could not get the knee to bend enough for the exercise bike; but my persistence and exercise has paid off.
The muscles sure know it though, and I can tell that it has been a long time since I have ridden a bike; so I am going to work into it slowly and then get into using the arms along with it.
Bobby took a picture of me this morning, and I still have a ways to go to reach my target weight; but I am working on it, and getting closer.

 

I have been reading an interesting thing about having a slow metabolism, and it appears that this can actually be a good thing, if it happens for the right reasons. If our metabolism is slow because it is functioning poorly, then this is indeed a bad (very bad) thing. However, if it is working right, and we keep it at a slow rate, then we can probably live longer and be healthier during the years we do live, as well as looking younger.
The slower the metabolism is, the slower we age.
We have been told for a while now that we need to get the metabolism working faster to burn up those calories that we eat and process food. While we do need it to work right and process food properly, the faster our metabolism works, the faster we age, according to science and nutritionists.
After I started reading about the health benefits of enzymes, then I started reading more about raw foods, and how much better they are for us than cooked foods because they still have the living enzymes.
I have no intention of changing to a completely raw food diet; but I do think that it is important to have an ample supply of raw foods as part of what we consume each day.

http://www.beautifulonraw.com/is-your-metabolism-fast-or-slow.html

 

There was a recipe in the Vitamix book to make fresh salsa; so I made some of that; but corn chips are way too high carb, plus all of the other unhealthy stuff they are made with. So, before I made the salsa, I went searching for some kind of a healthy chip that I can make to eat with my salsa. I found this one which is made with almond four and flaxseeds; so it should be low-carb, healthy, and full of lots of fiber from the flax seeds.
I haven't tried making it yet, but it looks like it would taste good.
Instead of going to all of the trouble to make the little rounds and then cutting them into triangles, I am going to just make long re tangled shaped chips. I can make the dough, put it on a sheet of the parchment paper, and another sheet over the top, and then roll it out as thin as possible. Nice I do that, then I will take off the top sheet of parchment paper and use the pizza cutter to score where the lines of the crackers will be, and then bake it.
Once it is done it should break easily into sections. I made some flax crackers to use with my zucchini hummus, and this is how I cut the crackers into the square shape.
Here is the recipe that I am going to use to make the flax seed Dorito chips.

http://ditchthewheat.com/low-carb-chili-doritos/

 

I will email you some........ how about that ?

 

Yesterday I went to ALDI to get more of the cheap 27 cents a dozen eggs, and when I was there, I saw the flatbread that is sold under their own brand name, Fit and Active.
It has whole wheat and flax in it, 9 grams of protein, 17 carbs, and 8 grams of fiber. It was less than $2 for the whole package, which is about the same size as the tortillas are.
The flatbread has a lot more protein than most tortillas have , and with the extra fiber, the net grams are about 9 grams of carb; which is almost as low as the expensive low-carb tortillas.
Our tortilla has about 35 grams of carbs, 1 gram of fiber, and 3 grams of protein; so the flatbread is a definite winner. I checked for Kroger, and they carry about the same thing; but their price is over $3 per package, and on sale 2/$5.
I think that I have seen these on the markdown rack at Kroger, so I am going to watch for them the next shopping trip there.
I just checked Walmart (online) and it shows that they have one that is 15 grams of carbs, 9 grams fiber ( so 6 net grams of carbs) and 9 grams of protein. It didn't show me the price, just said it was an in-store purchase.
So far this looks like the best one I have seen, assuming the price is reasonable.

 

Like some of the others here, I am starting again with a better eating plan. This summer, I went on a vacation with my daughter, Robin, and since it was only for a few days, and I really couldn't control what or where we ate much anyway, I decided just to take a break from the low-carb diet, and enjoy the vacation.
I would have been fine if I had just done that; but once we got home, I just didn't get back on schedule again. Plus, I gave my smaller iPad to my daughter-in-law, and that is what I was using to listen to weight-loss tapes/apps at night; so I also stopped listening to the things that were helping to motivate me.
Now that the cooler fall weather has arrived, it is time to start wearing jeans again............ and mine are too tight ! That was good motivation for me to get back on the program again.
I got an iPad Mini to listen to the motivation apps, and started back with low carb eating again, seriously, and not the half-way that i have been doing this summer.
I already feel better, and I had more energy today when we went to the fitness center to exercise. Losing weight seems to be a much slower process for me now than when I was younger and a lot more active; but I really WANT to fit back into those jeans again !