A journey of a young, UK based, Muslim

Now I could have easily written this as a full blown top 50 low carb foods list and let you mix and match your own. I mean I don’t really know what kind of taste in food you have so I decided to mix and match the low carbohydrate foods in a normal intake or daily basis. So that I can not only tell you what low carb foods there are out there but I can also give you a few tips and pointer on how you can consume these wonderful foods with out feeling like your actually on a diet.

You could easily devise your own low-carb menus by mixing and matching any of the listed foods in this post. It all depends on what you want to allow yourself to do. All the low carb foods are yes lower in carbohydrates than most foods but they are not all equally as low as one another. So say if you wanted to allow yourself a high fibre cereal for breakfast, or a pizza for dinner, you could cut back down to very low carb foods for the rest of the day.

A few low carbohydrate tips

There are two types of carbohydrates, the slow burning ones (complex carbohydrates), these release a slow burning energy to you body and are the better of the two. Then you have the fast burning carbohydrates; avoid these especially later in the day. You can tell the difference between fast burning and slow burning carbs by the taste of sugar or sweetness in them. Basically the sweeter a food is the more fast burning carbs it has in it.

Another thing to remember is that you will always only need to count net carbohydrates. Fibre cancels out carbohydrates so for every gram of fibre you can minus off 1 carb.

To give you an example:

Food carb (g) fibre (g) net carbs (g)

Medium apple 21 3.8 17.2

Sample low carb menus for normal day to day eating

Breakfast

· Low-fat yoghurt blended with seasonal fruits

· Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon

· Fried egg with cheese, red and green peppers (sort of like a pizza)

· High fibre cereal with fresh strawberries and cream

· Flat bread with egg salad

· Low carb cereal with low carb soy milk topped with blue berries

· Or a straight good old fashioned egg and beans with low carb bread

· Omelette with vegetable juice cocktail

Lunch

· Chicken Caesar salad

· Greek salad with feta cheese and olives

· Home made vegetable soup

· Nicoise salad with tuna, boiled egg and green beans

· A packed lunch of cottage cheese, pineapple and Chinese cabbage salad

· Macaroni and cauliflower salad

· Panini and Greek salad

· Spicy chicken legs with mushroom salad

· Chicken and sun dried tomato with cucumber salad

· Baked fish with lemon and herbs

· Lamb chops with green beans and hot chilli sauce

· Cheese covered mixed vegetables and spinach salad

· Red pepper stuffed with cottage cheese and spiced vegetables

Dinner

· chicken breast roasted with peppers, tomatoes and red onions

· salmon with home made salsa sauce and stir fried mixed vegetables

· spicy tuna steaks with Chinese style vegetables

· tofu mixed with stir fry vegetables and Asian spices

· peppers stuffed with feta cheese, olives, onions and mushrooms, topped with cheese and pine nuts

· low carb pasta with low carb pasta sauce

· lamb chops with tomatoes and olives, courgettes and mushrooms, served with low carb pasta

· spicy chicken wings served with mint dipped salad and chilli sauce

· spiced beans with mushrooms

· chicken or meat curry served with low carb bread or low carb pasta

· any curry apart from korma (to much sweetness)

Snacks

· an apple

· a chunk of cheese

· a low fat yoghurt drink

· grapes

· green or black olives in garlic olive oil

· nuts or seeds

· celery stick stuffed with cream cheese

· hard boiled egg

· cheese strings

Deserts

· chocolate dipped strawberries

· frozen fruit yoghurt

· peaches with almonds and apples

· fruit smoothies

· brown rice pudding

· mixed berries with cream

· 1 chocolate chip oatmeal cookie

· 2 poached apricots with toasted almonds

Now I’m sure you will agree that makes the low carb diet sound a whole lot more human rather than the usual sense of diets.I love how the diet promotes the intake of vegitables and ateast some fruits and the strawberries and cream has to be a personal favorite. Diets that sound fright-full to most as soon as they hear the word “diet”, hopefully not the case hear. I’ve tried to make sticking to this diet accessible and easy not struggling and frustrating.

Enjoy

Written by Shazad Mirza

Islam4me.co.uk