A New Way of Life by Eating

About three weeks ago, on my blog entry “Eating Myself Healthy”, I told about my goal to have low-carb days and then normal days when I can eat a bit of bread, pasta, potatoes, etc. I’ve been on a low-carb diet for a bit over a week now, and that’s not really such a long time, but it’s a start. For the first days I thought of eating low-carb every other day and pasta, potatoes and bread on every other day – but all of a sudden I realized I haven’t been having carb days more than only a few at the first few days and then even those days started to be low-carb days as well. I didn’t really plan that but it just happened and I have not struggled at all so far, meaning I have not missed bread or pasta or potatoes at all!

From the beginning of this new diet of mine, I read more about low-carb diet from the internet and as I got deeper with my search, I actually started to find what I was looking in the first place! All I had to do was to adapt the meat into something else, like I have done now for the past five years. I already knew that tofu is a great source of protein and now I found out that it’s very low in carbs. I haven’t really been eating as much tofu as I did at the starting point of my vegetarianism, but I feel I have rediscovered it again thanks to the low-carb diet. I eat it with a whole new attitude now and have learned to season the natural tofu in more different ways which helps a lot when you’re eating tofu almost every day... I learned that eating tofu don’t have to be boring.

The magical internet also confirmed my suspicion about seitan being a low-carb food, which is great because I love eating seitan!

 
My new favorite, which I have been eating almost every morning, is scrambled tofu. It’s so good! Even it’s supposed to mimic scrambled eggs in appearance and taste, I don’t really think it has to... I mean, when I’m doing something which is considered to be a “copy” of some meat dish or something came from an animal, I do not need it to taste as the real deal (meat or eggs, or whatever). I would be absolutely horrified if seitan would taste exactly like meat. I don’t miss that, I don’t want that! I think it’s a skill to make a block of natural tofu to look more appetizing than it is when you start to prepare it. I don’t think vegetarian or vegan food is supposed to taste like meat or eggs, even if does resemble it in the way it looks.

Because of learning to make scrambled tofu, I found a new ingredient; nutritional yeast flakes. I had heard about them, but I had never bought or used it myself. I was so suspicious would they taste like yeast or something else horrible, but I like them a lot when I tasted them for the first time!

I was babbling about low-carb diet to my mom and she said that she have a whole pile of books about different diets and recipe books. I remotely remember seeing books about the GI Diet (Glycemic Index Diet) and GI diet recipe books on our kitchen’s shelves of our previous home. On one of the recipe book’s cover it said the recipes are without sugars and fast carbohydrates – just like low-carb diet. So I started to leaf through these books and I was so excited! I have been reading these books a lot in the past days, trying to get ideas for what to make for food on the next day but all of the recipes are mainly for meat eaters and if the recipe is vegetarian it always seems to have eggs in them. There were also some books about weight control and exercising, etc. I’ve also been buying fitness magazines from grocery stores and flea markets...

Before I was counting calories like a crazy person, but now I’m mainly counting carbs (and fat content, of course). I’m not counting them exactly (so that I won’t get too obsessed about it) but very near what it would be. My mom is wondering how I can do that, but counting calories has become a habit of mine so starting to count carbs is no big deal. And the results of my new diet are already showing – I lost 2,4 kg in five days! I read the first 5-10 pounds can be water weight but I’m still more than satisfied! I have also started to keep a food diary to keep up what I have been eating and how much carbs I’m getting from the food... That’s really helpful!

One of the main thing about this new diet was that I learned about good carbs and bad carbs – Meaning I actually can eat bread and pasta, after making sure they are whole wheat and that I remember to read the Nutrition Labels of everything I eat. During my first week I ate rye bread for a few times and after that I have eaten low GI bread for a few times and once a bit of whole wheat pasta (with basil and tomato sauce and light mozzarella).

I was surprised that the whole wheat pasta tasted just like “regular” pasta. I won’t be missing that!

I had never believed in low-carb diet, but now this will become my new way of life just like my vegetarianism!