Healthy Diet at Home

(This is part 8 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet . It explains the path I have traveled in my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also contains links to the rest of the series.) The low carb road I have traveled towards thinness has been long and rugged. Many times along the way, I’ve been tempted to give up. Looking back now, I’ve made little progress in my weight loss attempts since I left my version of Kimkins behind. That’s the cold, hard truth for me. By following a variety of low carb diets, I’ve learned a lot about myself. My health has improved because I was able to discover many of the food categories I need to avoid (gluten, cow’s dairy and corn) but I am no closer to my weight loss goal than I was then. This morning, I weighed in at 173 pounds, and all I could do was sigh. While that makes my before and after pictures still accurate, that glorious one-hundred pound marker I had at o

Do you have nightshade sensitivity or allergy? How about an autoimmune disease? Arthritis? Fibromyalgia? If so, you might not be able to eat certain vegetables, fruits, and spices without suffering pain, inflammation, and other health complaints. You can even stall in your low-carb diet because inflammation can interfere with weight loss. I didn't realize that nightshades were so common among low-carb recipes and menus until I actually looked at which vegetables and spices are nightshades, and then at what most people eat on a low-carb diet. When I did that, I was literally shocked! Low-carb recipes and menus are chock full of nightshades. For that reason, even if you are not allergic to nightshades, you might want to pay attention to just how many you're eating and cut back on them a little bit -- especially if you're having problems losing weight. BASIC NIGHTSHADE PRIMER This is going to be a basic nightshade primer, which I'm hoping a lot of people will find helpful,

How to Plan the Perfect Low-Carb Fourth-of-July Celebration (Photo by Jeffrey Kontur ) If you’re following a low-carb diet, you can still have a fantastic Fourth-of-July celebration without having to worry about popping yourself out of Ketosis. You don’t have to sit on the sidelines or deprive yourself of holiday goodies either. With picnics and barbecue parties the most popular ways of celebrating America’s freedom and independence, it’s easy to surround yourself in colors of red, white, and blue – yet still maintain control over those carbs! All it takes is a little bit of thought and preparation. With that in mind, you don’t want to wait until next Tuesday morning to start figuring out how to stay on plan. If you do, you’ll end up with a plain bun-free burger or hotdog, a boring lettuce salad, a handful of pork rinds, and maybe a few strawberries for color. Eating that way when everyone else around you is chowing down on potato salad, baked beans, corn-on-the-cob, and colorful cupc