Homemade Taco Seasoning

In the past, before I had a fully stocked kitchen with every spice I'd ever need, I used to look longingly at the taco seasoning packets in the grocery store. I wanted to make my own low-carb taco dishes so badly, but I couldn't bring myself to buy the pre-mixed stuff full of sugar, starch, flour, artificial color, and preservatives.

Finally, I moved out of my Manhattan studio and into my Brooklyn two-bedroom with a whole kitchen shelf I could dedicate to spices, and taco seasoning was one of the first things I made for myself. If you make your own already, you probably use this one from allrecipes.com, because it has thousands of positive comments. And for good reason: it's perfect.

The recipe on AllRecipes is great, but it only makes one ounce of seasoning. I quadruple the recipe so I can keep a jar of taco seasoning on hand all of the time.


INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons paprika
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
1 Tablespoon and 1 teaspoon sea salt
1 Tablespoon and 1 teaspoon black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix!


I store mine in this huge honey jar my boyfriend finally emptied, but any airtight container will do.

The most basic thing I do with it is brown a pound of ground beef in a saucepan,
drain the fat,
add 1/4 cup water,
mix in 3 Tablespoons of the seasoning,
and simmer it on the stovetop until the water has dissolved.

I'll post some of my favourite recipes that use taco beef and taco chicken in separate posts soon.

The Perfect Bacon Bowl: Is Everything Really Better with Bacon?

My BFF, Tracey, has been my BFF approximately our entire lives at this point, so she of course knew that I'd been seeing the commercials for the Perfect Bacon Bowl and was intrigued. Meaning I wanted one really, really badly. Well, mine came in a set of four, and I'm now the proud owner of them thanks to her. But are they as mind-blowingly awesome as they seem? My boyfriend and I decided to find out.

They really seem like the simplest thing right out of the box, lightweight like plastic but obviously made of something that can stand the heat of the oven. The booklet that arrives with them has instructions for use and a few recipes, but of course the first recipe was for bread bowls. NO!


First, we draped two half-slices of bacon across the dome of the bowl in a criss-cross pattern:


Then, we wrapped a second slice around the bottom of the center dome. It was long enough that the ends overlapped, which was no problem at all. Finally, we wrapped a third slice around the top of the center dome. The bacon easily stuck to itself, so there was no sliding around.


We nudged the bacon up and down until there were no exposed areas. We were serious about forming these bowls.


We put them in a glass baking dish, and 35 minutes later, we pulled these beauties out of the oven:


All of the extra fat was captured in the base of the bowl (to be poured over Brussels sprouts later). The finished bacon bowls weren't easy to pry off, but even with all of my clumsiness, I still got mine off the form in almost one piece. And the little piece that stayed behind was a nice crunchy little treat that I couldn't help but eat the moment I finished taking this picture. The inside didn't look as crunchy as the exterior, but I didn't notice anything but crisp bacon when I was eating it later.


My boyfriend made his famous scrambled eggs with even more bacon and filled the bowls for us:


And then we were ready for dinner:


The verdict? Yep, mind-blowingly awesome. But basically not functional as bowls. The moment we took a first bite, the remaining eggs tumbled out onto our plates, and after that, we were taking a bite of bacon bowl and then eating a forkful of egg. So I want to say the bacon bowl is mostly just novelty . . . except that somehow, this was THE BEST-TASTING BACON. Seriously, I don't remember eating more delicious bacon. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, excited by the prospect of a bacon in bowl form, but maybe something about the Perfect Bacon Bowl just makes the bacon cook better. We'll have to see how my second attempt turns out.

A Low-Carb Success Story in Progress

I've lost 40 pounds since May of last year on a low-carb diet. I don't want to post dramatic before and after photos of myself where I look sad and sloppy in the "before" photo and upbeat and put-together in the "after" photo, because I don't consider my current body an "after" yet and because 40 pounds in seven months isn't some amazing feat. But I did want to talk about how I'm doing it, both for anyone who might read this and for myself in the future.

1) I've found recipes I love and don't mind making often. When I would low-carb in the past, I was living in a tiny New York City studio with zero counter space, no oven, and no freezer. The things I cooked for myself were usually compromises–whatever I could make on a stovetop with as few ingredients as possible–and that's if I even cooked for myself at all. Once I moved into a larger apartment, I began to find easy recipes that really worked for me, things I truly loved eating and that made me feel like I was lucky to be on a low-carb diet, if you want to call it a diet at all. I plan to talk about those recipes in separate posts, but my low-carb Pinterest board is a great place to start if you want to get some ideas.

2) I don't deny myself the things I crave. Right now, I'm at the end of a two-week period in which I've told myself I'm not going to have any cheat meals at all. I've lost about eight pounds in those two weeks. The other night before bed, I tried to think to myself what I might want for a carby cheat meal once the two weeks are up, and I genuinely couldn't think of anything I was craving. I wondered why, when the mere thought of pizza or ice cream has set my heart a-flutter in the past, and I realized it's because I've been eating everything I want to. I've made skillet pizzas when I've wanted pizza, I've made buffalo chicken dip when I've wanted buffalo chicken fingers, I've made so much ice cream in my ice cream maker. Seriously, that thing has changed my life. Ice cream is one of my biggest cravings and probably my favourite food. I can do without a lot of things, but I can't do without ice cream. So now I keep a quart of the homemade, low-carb variety around at all times and find that a small scoop satisfies me like I never would've believed. When I go out to eat now, I usually don't even care about dessert, because I know my favourite thing's already waiting for me at home.

3) I rarely eat more than one carby meal in a day. I've found that I can at least maintain my weight if I stick to eating empty carbs only once per day. So if I know I'm going to want to go on a late-night cookie binge while I'm visiting my family for Christmas, I try to eat low-carb throughout the day. I was in Ohio for a week for Christmas this year and had a couple of days where I had to eat multiple carby meals in one day because other people were feeding me, and I still managed to only gain one pound because I was eating low-carb as often as possible. The idea that I could eat one carby meal every day if I wanted to once I get down to a weight I'm comfortable with is so comforting to me.

4) I go to the gym, sporadically. Even though I know I'll feel relaxed and proud of myself once I get back to the apartment, I dread going to the gym, so it takes a bit of motivation to get me there. Some weeks, I'll go three times and use the elliptical or walk on the treadmill for 30 or 45 minutes. Other weeks, I won't go at all. I don't guilt myself for not going, but I do feel pretty awesome when I do. Walking up stairs later and noticing that it's easier feels like a real reward.

5) I weigh myself. I know there are a lot of reasons not to weigh yourself when you're dieting. I'll admit that it's a real downer for me when I expect I've lost weight and find that the scale tells me I weigh the same thing I did three days ago. But it's also a great way for me to make sure I'm on the right track with the things I'm eating. During this two-week period of eating no cheat meals, I'd lost two pounds when I weighed myself one day, but when I weighed myself three days later, I was the same weight. I'd had low-carb peanut butter fudge made with no-sugar-added peanut butter, and I'd had a cup of coffee with half & half because I was out of heavy cream, and those were the only new things I'd introduced into my diet, so I figured it had to be one of those. I made sure not to drink any half & half the next day and had lost another half-pound when I weighed myself again. Had I not been weighing myself, I wouldn't have known that I could be doing something to mess up my weightloss. Eventually, losing weight won't be the point, and I won't need to keep a close eye on the scale. But for right now, when I'm trying so hard to get back to a weight I'm comfortable with, it's dumb to sabotage what's giving me motivation with something like half & half.

6) I've realized that low-carbing is actually pretty awesome. I know it's not for everyone, and I don't fault anyone for wanting to go a more traditional route like a low-calorie diet. But when I'm eating a scoop of the dreamiest ice cream made with heavy cream, or when I'm chowing down on a cheese and meat plate at a restaurant, or when I'm eating Brussels sprouts with extra bacon and extra sausage, I'm so happy that I've found a diet that lets me eat the richest, most satisfying foods.

Obviously I could've lost more weight by now had I done things differently. Had I not eaten so much ice cream, not eaten as many cheat meals when I was out with friends, gone to the gym more often, I would've lost more than the five pounds per month I averaged. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would've been so happy, and I'm not sure I would've been able to stick to it so easily.

How's low-carbing going for you?

Sticking to My Diet . . . Sort of

I've been absent from the blog since October, but I'm so happy to say that I haven't been absent from low-carbing. Of course I was a cookie-eating fool during the Christmas season (I scorn anyone who says Christmas eating should last a day, not a month), but before and since that, I've been limiting my quote-unquote bad meals and finding that I'm actually enjoying myself. Since I spend most of my evenings with my boyfriend, whose tiny Manhattan apartment lacks both a freezer and an oven, I eat take-out almost every night. Not only is it really difficult for me to find low-carb food to order, but he doesn't like most of the restaurants that actually have options for me, so it's just simpler sometimes for me to eat whatever he's eating.

As a trade-off, I just make sure to eat healthy, low-carb breakfasts and lunches. Knowing that I'm going to have chicken parmesan for dinner makes a spinach-filled low-carb wrap a really satisfying lunch and keeps my hands off the candy bowl all afternoon. I haven't been losing tons of weight this way, but I have been losing a little, and I'm certainly not gaining anything, which is a big, big deal for me.

But last night, I had a friend over to my apartment, and we ordered Mexican food. Which also somehow included jalapeno poppers (what?). I brought a leftover cheese quesadilla and some of those poppers to work today with the intention of doing something–I'm not sure what–other than eating them, because I'm planning to go to dinner tonight with another friend and want the option to order whatever I want. But of course they were calling to me by lunchtime, and I went ahead and ate them with no regard for my plan.

And they were terrible! They didn't taste good after being in the refrigerator all night, and I didn't even get the social fulfillment that comes with eating bad food among friends since my co-workers were eating salads for once.

You know the only thing worse than eating unhealthy food when you didn't mean to? Eating unhealthy food and knowing the healthy stuff would've actually tasted better.

Why We Get Fat

Tracey and I got a couple of comments here yesterday for the first time in a long time, and it made me realize that hey, people still care about low-carbing and that hey, we haven't written here for nearly a year. Crazy!

You'll be happy to know that we're still at least semi-low-carb. I say semi, because we both still absolutely believe that this is the right way to eat, but we still have all of these great feelings attached to foods we know aren't good for us. And don't hate us, but we don't exactly want to do anything about it just yet.

We've both been eating low-carb breakfasts and lunches and then whatever we want for dinner, which is keeping our weights steady but not allowing us to lose anything. For us, just maintaining is a pretty big deal. Tracey has been keeping up with low-carb blogs and podcasts all along, but I have to admit that I stopped paying attention and stopped caring for a while. Here's something I wrote back in July, when I was coming around to low-carb again:

I picked up Gary Taubes's Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It knowing what it'd say, "We get fat because we eat grain and sugar." I thought it'd give me some motivation to stop listening to everyone around me who continues to tell me that all I have to do is eat "right"–meaning low-calorie–and go to the gym. What I didn't expect is that it would give me brand new insight not just about why we get fat but why I specifically get fat.

I believe Taubes when he says that people are just wired differently and that I'm just one of those people who can't eat carbs without consequence. After all, lots of people have terrible reactions to dairy or gluten. Lots of people get angry when they drink alcohol. I'm just a person who can't handle my sugar very well. It almost seems more manageable when I see it in those terms; I can do it, but I have to do it a little differently than all of those low-calorie/gym people.

When I see my my co-workers eating chicken fingers and pizza for lunch, I have to remember that they're not trying to lose weight. When I see my friends with the crazy metabolisms scarfing down cupcakes, I have to remember that diabetes and double chins aren't even on their radars. I have to remember that celebrities, people whose job it is to look good, eat low-carb.

I have to remember that it's not just for weightloss, it's for overall health. I have to remember that it's not the end of the world if I feel like I need to eat something carby as long as it's a one-meal break or a one-day break and not a one-month break or a one-year break. I HAVE TO REMEMBER TO STICK WITH THIS.

Let's do this.

Low-Carb Flaxseed Pancakes

I'm forever trying to find low-carb breakfasts that I actually look forward to eating. I don't care much for savory foods in the morning, so discovering that flaxseed makes a wonderful pancake was a major event for me.

Here's what you need:

3 medium eggs (or two jumbo eggs)
3 tablespoons flaxseed meal
3 teaspoons Splenda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix everything (I use a measuring cup and a fork) and pour into a skillet or onto a griddle on medium heat. (I like to melt a little butter onto mine first.) Cook for a few minutes until the sides become firm and rounded and then flip over.



I like to melt a tablespoon of butter onto mine and then sprinkle it with cinnamon and Splenda, but this would also work great as a savory wrap with eggs and sausage.

Makes one huge pancake or several small ones.



My pancake kind of fell apart this morning while I was trying to get it out of the skillet with a much-too-small spatula, but it was still delicious. The texture is pillowy and bready, just like a carby pancake, but it has an earthier taste. It easily keeps me full from 7 a.m. until lunchtime.

I can also see this being a really easy pizza crust without the vanilla, cinnamon, and Splenda and would love to know if someone uses it for that before I do!

Back on the Wagon?

I'm pretty mad about it, but I'm back to low-carbing. When I first read the Atkins book three or four years ago, it made such sense to me that I was incensed when half the low-carb blogs I found had been abandoned. I think it's so annoying when people are constantly hopping on and off the low-carb bandwagon. But now I understand how it happens, because it keeps happening to me.

The first time I tried Atkins, I was SO SERIOUS. I took the book at its word when it told me I couldn't have caffeine, and I got scared when other people told me sugar-free candy made them stall. I gave up soda and only ate 2 ounces of cheese per day and limited my heavy cream to mere teaspoons.

By the end of my low-carbing, I had lost 33 pounds, was going to the gym regularly, and fit into clothing sizes I couldn't remember wearing my whole life. I looked great, and looking back at those pictures now makes me sad. The problem was that I felt like I was eating unhealthily. I was living on sugar-free pudding made with heavy cream, crustless pizzas with half a package of pepperoni on top, and all the mayonnaise I could handle.

So I decided that I was going to start eating only "natural" foods and counting calories. Of course I eventually forgot the natural part and turned meals into a game of How Many Chicken Fingers Can I Fit Into 1200 Calories Per Day?. I gained all of my weight back plus more, as everyone seems to. Since then, I've casually low-carbed, meaning that I eat right for a day or two and then decide it's fine if I have just one pita and then one bag of chips and then one cupcake.

I've been quietly maintaining about the same weight that way for a while, but I'm sick of it! I'm sick of rifling through my closet every morning for something that actually fits. I'm sick of feeling hungry yet bloated after every carby meal. I'm sick of knowing I could change everything if I could just stick to the way of eating that I actually believe in.

So, here goes. Again.

Friday Meatspiration (or Cheesespiration, Maybe)

I just had my first piece of pizza without the crust in a loooooong time.

I remember when Tracey and I first read the Atkins book several years ago and were so convinced that every stick of sugar-free gum and every can of Diet Coke was going to throw us off the weightloss train; we'd stress about the tiniest carb intake. My company would order pizza every Friday, and I'd only eat the white pizza because I thought the tomato sauce had too much sugar. But the white pizza had fresh mozzarella, which I figured wasn't hard enough to count as one of the acceptable cheeses on Atkins. Fridays felt like a field of land mines to me.

Then, when I got interested in the Belly Fat Cure last year, I started allowing myself a whole slice of pizza if I ate one without the crust first. Those initial toppings would seem so dumb to me when all I wanted was to get at that second slice with the crust still intact. The problem was that once I gave myself the freedom to eat some crust, I'd end up going back for the leftovers with my co-workers a few hours later and have another whole slice. And sometimes two. I'm not good with an un-strict diet.

Now, I'm trying to eat according to the primal blueprint with some protein shakes added in for convenience, so I made myself eat a salad for lunch today with the promise of a crustless slice for a snack later, and boy, did it taste great.

Maybe treating diet-appropriate foods as if they were treats is the way to go.

Microwave Flaxseed Bread

Sorry for being so silent lately. Tracey has about 100% less free time now that she's out of grad school and has a job, and I've been moving to a new apartment and obviously paying too much attention to my other blogs. Rest assured that we're still on the wagon and talk daily to each other about our struggles and successes with low-carb.

I happened to have a really positive "cooking" experience last night that made me excited to have chosen this way of eating, and I'm sure you know well how important these little motivations to keep going are.

I made a flaxseed bread shared by TNT Man, a friend of our friend Grace. Since I spend almost all of my time at my boyfriend's small apartment with a stovetop and microwave but no oven, I never get to try any of those low-carb bread recipes that keep most low-carbers from going crazy when a muffin craving hits. But this one's made in the microwave!

Microwave Flaxseed Bread

1/4 cup ground flaxseed meal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 teaspoon sweetener (I used a packet of Truvia)
1 teaspoon butter

Mix all dry ingredients in a straight-sided coffee mug. Add egg and butter, and beat until smooth. Microwave on high for 1-2 minutes until it reaches your desired consistency (the top will be a little firmer than the bottom). Allow to cool slightly, then loosen edges with a blunt knife and remove from coffee cup and cut into slices. This is a lot like a nutty whole-wheat bread and can be toasted.

It comes out looking like a muffin and tasting like nut bread. It was somewhere between sweet and savory, so I could see using it for sandwiches or icing it with low-carb cream cheese frosting. And it's all fiber and protein!

A Healthy Weight Does Not a Healthy Person Make

You might have seen the CNN article yesterday about the human nutrition professor who lost 27 pounds in two months while subsisting on a diet mostly made up of Twinkies, Little Debbies, Doritos, Oreos, and the like.

He wanted to prove that what matters most in losing weight is calorie-counting, not nutrition. And when it comes to the markers society traditionally uses to measure health, this "convenience store diet" was a real winner: his body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent, his "bad" cholesterol dropped 20 percent, his "good" cholesterol increased 20 percent, and triglycerides level decreased by 39 percent.

The professor questions, "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?", and I'd tend to agree, especially after these past few years of reading low-carb research. I know I can lose weight on a low-fat, high-carb diet, but I don't think the constant sugar high is good for my long-term health. And I'm positive I could never sustain a low-calorie diet, especially one centered entirely on sugar.

At least the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet, as counter-intuitive as it seems, has a couple of lower-carb options; the creator of the Belly Fat Cure recommends 3 crunchy tacos (at 39 carbs total) for an easy meal option.

And those tacos will keep you full for hours, unlike the blood-sugar-spiking Twinkies, which must have left the professor starving half the time.

Back on Track

I went on vacation and never got to individually thank all of you for your comments on my post publicly bemoaning my inability to commit to my diet, but I really think your support finally pushed me to start caring more about what goes into my mouth.

For the past 10 days, I've made conscious food decisions based on the Belly Fat Cure, and I've lost 6 pounds in the process. The weight isn't "falling off of me" like it does some low-carbers who are super-diligent with their counting, but I'm not interested in dropping a dress size if it's going to make me completely miserable in the process.

At my monthly dinner outing with co-workers on Thursday, I ate three corn tortillas with my fajitas but left behind the other three. During my company's lunch on Friday, I ate a slice of pizza but threw away the edge crust, which I didn't care about. On Saturday, I ate a handful of French fries and gave the rest to my boyfriend. On Sunday, instead of pigging out on Halloween candy, I ate a single-serving Haagen Dazs, which has 17g of sugar, instead of eating half a pint like I usually do, which is more like 60g.

I've seen that it's entirely possible to be physically healthy while still being completely happy with the food that's available to me. I gave myself a set list foods that I could easily make or buy and that I found really delicious. I discovered that I didn't even crave dessert when I allowed myself a little bit of bread or some complex carbs like beans in my meal. And when I did need dessert, I went for a can of diet soda, a stick of gum, or some Greek yogurt.

I'm just really scared this feeling will pass as quickly as it arrived, you know? It turns out it's SO EASY to make good choices with what's available to me if I just get into the habit of doing it. But it's just as easy to slip up and make a habit of eating the old way, too.

Why Can't I Commit to Dieting?

I've stopped weighing myself. I don't think I'm losing any weight, and I don't want to know about it, because I'm plenty happy casually low-carbing and feeling the improvements in my energy level, my joints, and my skin. The problem is that I ultimately do have a goal of losing weight, and it's upsetting to me that I can't commit to it.

I can't commit.

Two weeks ago, it was my birthday. Last week, it was my boyfriend's birthday. This week, it's a trip to Ohio to see Tracey and my family. Next week, it's Halloween. Then it's Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Eve. There's just plain never a good time to get serious, because I already have cheats planned.

In theory, low-carbing is so easy. Especially with a plan like the Belly Fat Cure, where I can eat as many as 120 carbs per day, 40 carbs at a time, and 15 grams of sugar. That's a LOT. Back when I was doing the Induction phase of Atkins a couple of years ago, I was so serious. The carbiest thing I allowed myself was a sprinkling of carrot on my salad. When my office had weekly birthday celebrations, I'd cut the cake for everyone else and then walk back to my desk if I felt myself being tempted. At restaurants, I'd alter my meals significantly to cut carbs, not thinking a thing of asking for grilled instead of fried chicken or broccoli instead of pasta. Now, I use eating out as an excuse to dip into the bread basket.

The fact that it seems like everyone else has no problem sticking to their low-carb plans makes it much worse. I know that the Belly Fat Cure is working for lots of other people, and I know it'd work for me if I was just willing to put in the work for more than 5 days at a time. The creator of the diet, Jorge Cruise, even offers easy meal ideas from well-known fast food joints that I have access to. Yet when my boyfriend and I were craving Taco Bell on Sunday morning, instead of getting the three hard-shelled tacos Jorge suggested, I went for the XXL Chalupa (which has 50+ carbs) just because I told myself I was off the diet for the weekend and wanted to try the thing.

I'm concerned that even if I get more serious, I'm still going to need to cheat when my boyfriend and I go out to dinner and I review our meal for my food blog. But I know it's self-defeating to say, "I'm not going to even bother trying to commit as much as I can if I can't commit 100%," because even a little bit of low-carb eating goes a long way toward health.

I just want to be able to announce to the world that I'm changing my life and suddenly have all of my temptations go away. I don't want to live in a world where I can't have a chalupa, but I don't want to live in a world where I'm overweight, either.

How do I decide which is more important?

Why I Love Low-Carbing: the Butter Edition

On Monday night, I decided I needed to use the French-cut green beans that were slowly thawing in my tiny half-refrigerator that barely also functions as a freezer. I was lazy and threw them into the microwave with some real bacon bits, sea salt, and fresh ground pepper. I sprinkled a little basil on top, because what the hey, I had it sitting around.

I pulled them out of the microwave a minute later, stuck my fork deep into the bowl, pulled a few juicy-looking bean strips out, crunched down, and thought, "Eww, vegetables!"

I looked around my kitchen, trying to think what I was possibly missing, and in a moment of clarity, I added a pat of unsalted butter to the bowl and mixed until it melted amongst the beans.

It was delicious! And healthy, too! And all I could think was, "I could never do that on any other diet."

Vitamins and Protein Powder

Once upon a time, Tracey’s mom consulted her local GNC employees about a low-carb protein powder and came up with SEI Pharmaceuticals’ Max Protein. It has a bit of a clumping problem that makes it very annoying to clean out of shaker bottles, but it’s delicious and very low-carb at 3g carbs and 1g sugar for a 30g scoop.

However, it’s $50 for 2 lbs., which didn’t bother me before when protein shakes weren’t a habit of mine, but now that I’m sometimes having multiple shakes in one day, it seems pretty excessive.

A muscle-building friend of mine talked me into buying the protein powder he uses, which is Dymatize Elite Gourmet. It has 5g carbs and 0g sugar for a 32g scoop because it’s made with sucralose, no clumping, and a different but still great taste. And it’s only $29 for 5 pounds, so it’s a major savings.

The problem is that the Dymatize contains almost no vitamins, whereas the SEI is loaded with them. I read a blog where a woman was breaking a multivitamin into her protein shakes to make them more nutritious, and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on that.

Does it matter if my vitamins are part of the original powder or something I add myself? Does it matter if I have the vitamins in the shake or alongside it?

I kind of assume that taking a multivitamin right before or after I drink my shake is the same as breaking it up into the shake itself, but I’m no doctor of vitamin-absorption.

Guest Post: No Carb Digestion, or Why My Farts Don't Stink

Tracey and I like to think that we're leading our friends toward the low-carb light every day, but it turns out that some of them find their own way. One such friend is Ryan Cordle, who's lost an incredible amount of weight eating Paleo-style. I invited him to guest post for us whenever he liked, and I'm so pleased that he chose a topic Tracey and I often talk about but have not-surprisingly never gone public with. Thanks, Ryan!

Marriage is a very romantic, intimate, and beautiful thing. Part of that intimacy is deciding, consciously or not, how to deal with situations in private that may be slightly taboo in public. For example: farting. All couples decide whether or not they will freely fart in front of one another. My parents do not fart in front of one another. Perhaps they are a bit Victorian, but in my house growing up, farting was not something you did in the presence of a lady (later I learned that ladies fart, too). Therefore, if you must fart, you excuse yourself to the bathroom and let it rip.

Other families are much more free with their farting habits. The parents encourage their children with games like Pull My Finger. I always saw this family on TV and realized that for others, farting is not a shame to hide but an event at which the whole family laughs. I imagined mothers, fathers, and their 2-3 children sitting around the table after dinner, pulling one another's fingers and having a merry time.

My wife and I are somewhere in the middle. We will fart in each other's presence if it hits us. It's not something we brag about, and I never had the confidence to ask her to pull my digit. However, we do have a rule to regulate our has habits: on long car trips, the guilty farter is responsible for rolling down the windows. But my wife could tell you that the window rule no longer applies to me.

I have been eating a very low-carb "paleo diet" for 75 days and have lost 47 lbs. Obviously, there are a lot of benefits to eating low-carb, like losing weight, looking like gold, and forgetting what it feels like to be hungry. Yet, I submit to you there is an even more glorious product to this way of eating: my farts don't stink.

From a scientific perspective, it makes perfect sense. The innumerable bacteria that call our intestines home love starch and sugar. Those substances allow the bacteria to thrive and make baby bacteria at a significant rate. All of that bacteria eating and reproducing leads to an excess of gas in our digestive tract that must come out. This is why the bean is the magical fruit that makes us toot. Bacteria seem to love beans and other carbohydrate-rich foods.

So when I cut out nearly all starch and sugar from my diet, the bacteria went hungry. And when those bacteria go hungry, they don't produce much gas. Which makes road trips much more pleasant for my wife.

I still fart occasionally. I usually have to let one go in the morning when I go the gym, or sometimes after work, but that is it. Why don't they stink? I have no clue, but clearly it has something to do with what my gut flora is eating, and to me, it is a sign of good health that I do not have a stench leaving my butt on a regular basis.

The Easiest Low-Carb Dessert Recipe Ever

Since I spend most of my time in my boyfriend's tiny apartment in Manhattan with no freezer and no oven, dessert recipes that are actually doable for me are entirely too scarce. So when I saw this suggestion in the comments section of one of the other low-carb blogs Tracey and I read, I was intrigued and added the ingredients to my shopping list.

Here's the entire recipe:

Mix sugar-free pudding powder into full-fat Greek yogurt.



I bought the 17.6 oz. Fage Total Plain and mixed about a quarter of a packet of Jell-o butterscotch pudding into it.

The tang of the yogurt was still present, but the pudding powder made it plenty sweet. I can imagine using chocolate protein powder, a little natural peanut butter, or some calorie-free Walden Farms strawberry syrup in future mixes.

And the best part is that the Greek yogurt is only 7g carbs for 1 cup. It does have 7g sugar for 1 cup, but yogurt is great for my gut, and I'm never going to eat a whole cup of the stuff at a time, anyway.

Thank you, unknown commenter, for you have changed my life.

Friday Meatspiration

Haute hot dogs with unusual toppings have been trendy here in NYC for a couple of years now, and I've approved of every last concoction.

A schmear of cream cheese and everything bagel seeds? Totally. Pineapple? Okay, sure. Avocado? If you say so.

But Bachelor Girl sent us a link last week to this hot dog balloon featured on Craft Gossip, and it's really testing the limits of what I consider appropriate hot dog condiment:



At first, I thought it was a heart-shaped hot dog with a ketchup kite string and a mustard middle. Even though I've never seen the sugar-free ketchup that the rest of the U.S. is apparently enjoying here in NYC, I figured a packet of regular ketchup here and there is no problem.

But then I realized that the yellow filling is egg. Am I being a baby, or is that objectively weird?

Worth the Hassle to Be Healthy

Kim of the wonderfully elitist Good Hair, Kim Luck commented the other day on Tracey's post about people naysaying low-carb dieting as "not real weightloss" and said:

I couldn't be paid to care if the way someone chooses to drop pounds includes drinking heavy cream through a straw.

And I was obviously like, "BFFs!" It also reminded me of a recent trip to Starbucks.

I'm not a big fan of Starbucks' coffee, but I'm a big, big fan of the fact that they'll sell me a cup of heavy cream for the price of a glass of milk. If I find myself with absolutely no desire to think about what to have for lunch, I just pop down to the Starbucks in my office building, buy a cup of heavy cream, and mix up a protein shake. No one has ever questioned me or even looked at me funny there.

I was on my way home from work the other day, though, and decided to stop in the Starbucks I pass by anyway rather than:

• go out of my way to the grocery store, or
• stop at the bank to get cash, since corner bodegas are known for only taking cash.

"May I have a grande cup of heavy cream, please?" I asked the barista.

"A cup of what?" he asked.

"Heavy whipping cream," I said.

"Do you . . . want ice in it?" he asked.

"No, thanks," I replied. "Just the cream."

He poured the cup halfway full and then said, "You don't want anything else in here?"

I said, "Nope, all cream."

He said, "Let me fill it up for you."

I said, "Uh, yeah, thanks."

"Are you gonna drink this?" he asked, looking so weirded out.

"Sure," I said. "I'm going to mix it into smoothies and cook with it and stuff."

He handed it to me, saying, "You are the first and last person who will ever ask for this."

I laughed, but this sort of thing happens way too often for comfort, especially since I eat practically every meal out. Whether it's a McDonald's cashier telling me "we don't do that" when I ask for a bunless burger or a deli including the rice with my grilled chicken when I ask them not to, low-carbing takes a little bit of gumption.

Sometimes I don't want to deal with the strange looks and just take the bun off later myself, but usually I remind myself that any amount of hassle is worth my health.

Friday Meatspiration

A man and a woman had a little baby; yes, they did.



They had three-ee-ee in the family . . .



That's a magic number.

Taking Control

For me, the scariest part of dieting–or changing your lifestyle, as it were–is knowing that it’s all up to me. It’s pretty easy for me to say, “Well, I’m a restaurant reviewer. I have to eat this crème brulee.” Or, when I’m not trying to lose weight, to say, “It’s not a big deal if I eat three ginormous slices of pizza for lunch, because I so rarely have pizza.”

But when you’re actively trying to become healthier (and hopefully thinner!), you realize that every single thing you eat is going to affect your weightloss. My office, for instance, made Pop-Tart ice cream sandwiches to celebrate the month’s birthdays on Friday, and all of the leftover ingredients are hanging out in our cupboards and freezer. My co-workers are doing things like topping ice cream with pudding and using Pop-Tarts for bread on their turkey sandwiches, and every time I see this happening, I think, “WANT!!”

But then I remember that one Pop-Tart is going to make my bloodsugar skyrocket, make my cravings for other sugary crap explode, and stop my weightloss for at least a couple of days. It’s almost never worth it.

The problem is that I then start to obsess a little over not eating anything that might hinder my diet. When my boyfriend suggests we order kebabs and hummus for dinner, I’ll think, “I know chickpeas are low-glycemic, but they still have way more carbs than the chicken breast and salad I was planning to make for myself. Do I want to risk it?”

That’s just ridiculous, because the meal is totally healthy. And I don’t want to be someone who has to live on eggs and protein shakes to lose weight, because that’s not sustainable.

I have to find the balance between taking control and losing control.