Monday, January 19, 2009

My Low carb favorites

1/19/09 - 29w5d

I have been on a low carb diet for 10 weeks and it's getting to the point where I am tired of half a cup of bran wheat flakes and egg whites for breakfast. I have been good about my portion size guidelines: half the plate should be free vegetables, 1/4 protein and 1/4 carb. My glucose readings have been good too. This is mainly due to sticking with what has been working for me.

Granted there are those rare days when I try something and it doesn't agree with me. Black Eyed Peas' Chicken Fried Chicken is not my friend. It's good, just not good for me. It's weird because I can eat Treebeard's chicken fried chicken with a side salad and and a side of green beans and my glucose is fine. It must be something in the breading.

I started putting a little variety in my diet by slowly adding new foods. Then I see how my sugar levels react. These are a few of my favorite low carb/low sugar products:

Voortman Sugar Free Vanilla Wafers - This was the first sugar free snack item I bought while awaiting the results of my glucose tolerance test. I loved these wafers as a kid and thought they would surely be ok to eat. A serving size is three cookies and at 17g carbs per serving, is a little higher than a normal snack for me. These cookies are so light and sweet that I eat just one wafer. I could eat the whole pack but I have to exert some self control.

Breyer's Carb Smart Vanilla Ice cream - This is the best tasting Splenda ice cream ever. It touts 4 net carbs per 1/2 cup serving. I like this better than the Breyer's no sugar added variety because the carb smart has a smoother vanilla bean flavor. I can eat a good size bowl as a snack and my glucose is still good, even when I pair it with 1 sugar free oatmeal cookie.

Voortman Sugar Free Oatmeal Cookies - I decided to try another item from the Voortman sugar free family. I like oatmeal raisin cookies and although these cookies are sans raisins, they are still really good. The cookies are not as soft as an Archway oatmeal raisin cookie. However, being able to eat one Voortman cookie at half the amount of carbs, I can live with that. A serving is one cookie at 10g carbs. When I want something sweet as a snack, having one cookie is enough to satisfy that craving.

Heinz reduced sugar tomato ketchup - Heinz has a reduced sodium variety also and it would have been awesome if there was one ketchup that was both low sugar and low sodium. I guess that would have been called a tomato. This product has 75% less sugar than regular ketchup which brings it to 1 g per Tbsp. When I eat ketchup with burgers or eggs, I eat lots of ketchup so this product helps me keep my carbs low.

I bought a box of Pillsbury Yellow cake mix that is made with Splenda and has half the sugar of regular cake mix. I will try it out and see if it taste like fake sugar.

This is my recipe for a healthy, carb conscience, peanut butter and jelly sandwich recipe:

Nature's Own double fiber wheat bread - it has Omega-3's (DHA/EPA) and is only 8 g carbs per slice. It is the softest double fiber wheat bread I have found. I am a white bread type of person when it comes to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but this makes me feel I am eating healthy, I think it's the sprinkling of oats on top that do it.

OR

Nature's Own Wheat 'n Fiber bread - has 9 g carbs per slice.

Simply Jif creamy peanut butter - is lower in sodium and 33% less sugar than regular peanut butter. It has 6 g of carbs and 65 mg sodium per 2 tbs serving. I compared it to regular Jif which has 7 g carb and 150 mg sodium. I love this peanut butter that sometimes I may go over the 2 Tbsp serving limit per sandwich.

Polaner sugar free seedless raspberry preserves - it is sweetened with Splenda has 5 g carbs per 1 Tbsp serving. I don't even use a full tablespoon so that makes it even less carbs for the jelly.

That's 29 g carb for a yummy peanut butter jelly sandwich. At less than 30 g carb, this can be a great snack or a meal.

2 comments:

Lizzie said...

Thank you so much for leaving this link on my blog! This low-carb thing is hard.

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