Low carb recipe: Tiramisu

Individual Tiramisu portions in a low-carb style are quite easy, although messy, to make (I got grated chocolate all over the place making these).   Compared with my usual Tiramisu recipe, this is incredibly low carb; 8.5g per portion vs. 35g per portion (and it's debateable whether all of that carbohydrate is usable given some of it is from Xylitol).  And still blimmin' lovely!

The "Total Sweet" sweetener I've used is, in fact, Xylitol and there are other brands available but this is the one I can get hold of easily.

Low carb eating

Some of you may be wondering "what the hell can you eat on this crazy 'diet'?".  So, here's what I've had over the last 12 days.  You have to remember that I used to have 3 meals a day, plus 2-4 snacks so the evolution to 2-3 meals a day is quite a change for me.  It starts off a bit randomly as there's some things we needed to use up etc.:-

Day 1
Breakfast:- Greek yoghurt with whey protein and blueberries
Post-training:- pecan nuts
Lunch:- spinach and leek soup topped with parmesan, followed by tuna pate on 2 oat cakes
Dinner:- stir fried roast chicken, chorizo, mushrooms and red peppers and a mug of tea

Spinach and leek soup with poached egg and parmesan

Day 2
Breakfast:- Greek yoghurt with whey protein and blueberries
Post-training:- macadamia and brazil nuts and a chunk of chorizo
Lunch:- spinach and leek soup topped with a poached egg, Hollandaise sauce and parmesan
Post training:- shake: blended ice, whey protein, 50g strawberries, olive oil
Dinner:- fillet steak topped with stilton butter, fine green beans and mushrooms

Day 3
Breakfast:- bacon and poached eggs with a fried tomato
Post-training:- Brazil nuts
Lunch:- salad: romaine lettuce, chicken livers in coconut oil, stilton
Post training:- shake: blended ice, cream, whey protein, 50g blueberries, olive oil
Dinner:- slow cooked pork ribs with creamed cabbage and a mug of tea

Fillet steak, beans, poached egg, mushrooms and stilton

Day 4
Breakfast:- bulletproof coffee (filter coffee blended with 50g unsalted butter)
Post-training:- poached egg with Hollandaise sauce and parmesan cheese
Lunch:- slow cooked pork rib and spinach and leek soup with parmesan cheese
Dinner:- salad: romaine lettuce, chicken liver in butter, stilton and walnuts with half a bottle of dry champagne (we were celebrating!), followed by a 30g bar of Montezuma chilli chocolate

Day 5
Breakfast:- bacon and poached eggs with a fried tomato
Lunch:- salad: romaine lettuce, roast ham, cheddar and walnuts
Dinner:- roast chicken with green beans and creamed cabbage with a bottle of Becks Blue

Day 6
Breakfast:- bulletproof coffee
Lunch:- salad: romaine lettuce, tomato, roast chicken and walnuts with a mug of tea
Cinema snacks:- cheddar and Marmite, peperami, peanut butter and celery and a boiled egg

Salad with bacon, avocado and stilton

Day 7
Breakfast:- bacon and poached eggs with coffee and cream
Lunch:- braised chicory with roast chicken and chicken liver in butter
Dinner:- salmon fillet with courgettes in a cream and parmesan sauce with bacon and a poached egg


Day 8
Breakfast:- a couple of slices of very thick streaky bacon and coffee with cream
Lunch:- tin of tuna with 2 boiled eggs and romaine lettuce with a stilton, cream and cider vinegar dressing

Roast chicken, roast tomatoes and creamed cabbage

Dinner:- scallops wrapped in pancetta with creamed spinach; slow roasted pork belly with crackling, wild mushrooms and greens with half a bottle of dry white wine and some very dark chocolate

Day 9
Breakfast:- nothing
Lunch:- salad: chicken Caesar salad with no crutons and extra cheese
Post training:- sliver of pork pie and a chunk of chorizo
Dinner:- baked sea bass in butter with steamed broccoli tossed in flaked almonds and coconut oil with 1 bottle of Becks Blue

Day 10
Breakfast:- greek yogurt (2%), whey protein, 50g blueberries

Asparagus with poached eggs, hollandaise and parmesan

Lunch:- cream of spinach and courgette soup with chorizo chunks
Dinner:- ribeye steak, cauliflower puree, 1 small glass dry white wine followed by cheddar with a smear of Marmite and a mug of tea

Day 11
Breakfast:- smoked salmon and scrambled eggs with a mug of tea
Lunch:- salad: celery, romaine lettuce, avocado, bacon, stilton and a coffee with cream
Post training:- shake: blended ice, cream, whey protein, 50g blueberries, olive oil
Dinner:- Meatzza, a chocolate whisky ball and tea

Day 12
Breakfast:- steamed asparagus with 2 poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce and grated gruyere
Lunch:- salad: romaine lettuce, stilton, avocado, bacon and walnuts

Dinner:- roast chicken, roasted tomatoes, creamed cabbage and tiramisu(!)

Individual tiramisu

Eating 150g fat a day

150g fat.  That's the average amount I've eaten, per day, for the last 11 days.  33g carbs (though it's getting to stabilise around the 25g or less mark now) and 130g protein.  So, less than 7% of my daily kcals from carbohydrate and over 2/3 from fat.

As I mentioned 9 days ago; after an interesting tweet from @SportieDoc and reading the book she recommended (Taubes - Why We Get Fat and what to do about it), and another (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living), I've been trying very low carb nutrition.  It's been interesting and weird and it feels like hacking my metabolism, which it pretty much is; I'm trying to flip a switch to get my body to use primarily fat as a fuel for most of what I do.

Sunday morning breakfast

I've been eating bacon and eggs, smoked salmon and eggs, coffee with butter blended into it for breakfast and sometimes nothing at all because I'm not hungry at all! I've been making spinach/kale/courgette soup with and without cream, chorizo or stilton added in, or a caesar salad (no crutons), or chicken bacon and avocado salad for lunch, or sometimes nothing at all because I'm not hungry.  And for dinner... steak, salmon, pork belly and all with creamed spinach, cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower etc. on the side.  And it's been -delicious-.  And I've not been hungry between meals. And I've not had "intrusive thoughts of food".

The first day of this experiment felt like a normal day but with mind-bendingly tasty foods.  Day two, was pretty similar and I felt no different.  Days three and four I started to notice a change... I was feeling more alert and then increasingly full of pep to the point of almost irrepressible.  Most interestingly I was eating three times a day and not feeling hungry at all in between, not feeling hungry when I woke up, not thinking about food aside from working out what to make at mealtimes as I'm not routinised into a set of recipes yet.   I wasn't missing or craving breads, potato, rice, couscous, pasta etc. and didn't feel like I wanted anything sweet; moreover I was drinking much less tea and a cup or two of filter coffee a day.

Day 8, we went out for dinner at our local favourite restaurant and had a starter of scallops, wrapped in pancetta and creamed spinach, followed by slow roasted pork belly with crackling, wild mushrooms and greens and half a bottle of dry white wine.  The wine hit me like a truck.  I was giggly half way through the first glass and wrecked by the third.  I ate too much and though I didn't finish my pork, I ate all of the crackling (*heavenly*) and really should have stopped earlier than I did.  When we got home, I crashed out to sleep, leaving my tea to go cold.  The next morning, I felt terrible until I got up and was fine in minutes; then didn't eat until 2pm when I was out for lunch with a friend.  I didn't really feel hungry at lunch time either, but had lunch to be sociable and to see what's possible in a pub (Caesar salad with the crutons left out).  Still feeling perky and sharp on that day (day 9) and not having any trouble with energy or stamina during my training sessions, no afternoon slump in attention or perkiness at all.

Day 11, Saturday this week, I started feeling a bit sluggish and very very cranky in the morning and the same this morning (day 12), though a little less so.  Friday's and Saturday's first run felt awful; I felt like I was dragging my legs through treacle, but the second run on Saturday (hill sprints) felt lots better.  I get the impression I'm going through yet another stage in the adaptation process.  I'm starting to get some good ideas for meals beyond the obvious ones, thanks to Abel & Cole for some of the green leafy veg ideas.

I'm still reading lots of articles (like Joe Friel's one on becoming a better fat burner, and Dr Runyan - a diabetic Ironman finisher) and books and looking forward to cracking through The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance to get a bit more understanding about what I need to be doing and how I get to being a proper fat-fuelled athlete.  What is still very clear is that the details an fine tuning are not well-known or understood, and in fact not known much at all, and that there is an appreciable amount of thinking that low-carbohydrate fuelling probably has a detrimental effect at the top-end exertion level; but then I'm not a 100m runner, or even a professional athlete at any sport and I'd rather be able to get through the bike leg of a 70.3 without needing to stuff my face with bars and gels than gain an extra 3-4 minutes off my time through top-end power (as I'll gain those 3-4 minutes back through not faffing about eating on the bike).

Oh, and I've incidentally lost 1.9kg since I started (OK, yes most of that will be glycogen and water, but still...)

The experiment continues!

Blast from the past (thanks LJ)

Thanks to LiveJournal, I'm reminded today of the beginning of my journey to a healthier and happier life.  I'm not completely equating weight loss with being happier, but the process of doing that is what started me down the path to so many things; new hobbies, new health, new love of sport, new love...

LiveJournal sent me an email, out of the blue, telling me they'd migrated my photos to a new service and the process was now complete.  To be honest, I'd forgotten I ever put much up on LiveJournal, I created the account mostly to be able to read other people's stuff.  So, I logged in and had a look at what was there.  And found this:-

My original weight loss progress chart from when I started on May 8th 2006.  It shows that I recall incorrectly that my start weight was 94kg; it was "only" 92kg then.  And it stops short of where I got to (another 5kg off over the next couple of months).  But still.  It shows the incredible progress and mercifully few, mercifully short spikes and plateaus.  I had an "easier" time than many.  But there were reasons for that.  I wish I knew what I'd done with the spreadsheet for this.  I'd import the rest of the data from WLR and complete the chart to date.  I think I cleaned it out a long time ago though.

Not so cute kitty

I'd been looking for decent images to explain to people about the cat's eye that caused me to crash because I think people think I was just useless.  And I've finally managed to find some.

On a large proportion of roads in England that you'd normally cycle on, cat's eye reflectors are usually like this:-

OK, they're not often blue, but they're usually low, square, smallish and made of rubberised plastic.  Quite cute really.  A bit of a bugger if you hit one at speed, but probably recoverable for most people.

This is what you get on older motorways, major multi-lane roads and the road I crashed on near Galway:-

Tall, mean metal and glass buggers, with a blimmin' huge metal housing around it and a ridge of tarmac.  Not so cute.  Yes, the bit in the middle is designed to compress downwards when a car goes over it, with the effect being that wipes the glass bits and keeps them cleaner than they might otherwise be.  Can you guess what happens when you're cycling at a reasonable speed (around 35km/h, say) and your front (or back) wheel strikes that ridge in the metal housing?  I'll give you a hint...

That is all.