Ideas for a 3000-cal low-carb diet

gnolan

Ideally i'd like to keep the carbohydrate count down as low as 50g. Have only started this as of Monday. Have felt like sh!t the past few mornings but have to say i feel great at night, i feel like i could stay up all night for some reason.

My diet at the moment is the following:

Breakfast: 2 eggs, flax meal bread with tomato and cottage cheese

Snack: 10?? almonds

Lunch: Chicken/Fish with salad

Snack: More nuts, brazil

Dinner: Beef stew/Chicken casserole/ Lean meat/fish with green veg
Maybe stir-fry, no rice, potatoes or pasta

Snack: Can of tuna / Maybe some peanut butter

Although this looks substantial enough it seems to be just scraping 1600cals. It comes to around 50g of carbs if you include 1 spoon of honey in each cup of coffee i have. Doubling portions would be very difficult. I'd appreciate some ideas on how to get in a good few calories without the carbohydrates.

ronbyrne2005

Why only 50grams? Why not move carbs up to 100-200grams but of very good quality. Porridge, wholegrain rice etc. If you dont want that then eat lots of nuts high in healthy fats.

gnolan

ronbyrne2005 wrote: »

Why only 50grams? Why not move carbs up to 100-200grams but of very good quality. Porridge, wholegrain rice etc. If you dont want that then eat lots of nuts high in healthy fats.

Well i'm trying to shift that last bit of weight, so why not 50 grams? Even 75 would be ok. I don't see a problem with limiting my carb intake this much; aside from the calorie intake restriction.

Nuts are great i know, but its difficult eating handful upon handful, i get in as much as i can, but i'm hoping for some suggestions on something that i might be forgetting.

ronbyrne2005

tuna in brine or sunflower oil? Or more oily fish.
Maybe a few protein shakes mixed with flax seed oil. Im not sure minimising carb intake to such a low level will lead to fat loss once calories levels are same, in fact if caloris are too low your body made enter starvation mode and hang onto that fat.

gnolan

ronbyrne2005 wrote: »

tuna in brine or sunflower oil? Or more oily fish.
Maybe a few protein shakes mixed with flax seed oil. Im not sure minimising carb intake to such a low level will lead to fat loss once calories levels are same, in fact if caloris are too low your body made enter starvation mode and hang onto that fat.

Yeah was thinkin i might have to resort to protein shakes to get the calories i needed.

I understand what you mean about the calories being so low. But this is really why i wanted suggestions about upping them to 3000cal. My maintenace level is just over 3000 and i'm having a lot of trouble making up the extra...1400cal!

I guess i could try eating more fish alright, just a question of where to fit it in during the day.

hepcat

You could try as a high calories low carb snack, guacamole or hummous with carrot sticks. You don't seem to have any fruit so you could add bananas apples etc to your list of snacks.

brianthebard

Steak for breakfast, with or without fried/poached eggs, and four eggs as part of one of the snacks? would be a start, although still a long way from 1400 cals. I don't think protein shakes are the answer here, you'd need a hella lot of powder to make up 1400 cals.

Kev M

If you're going to go as low as 50g of carbs then you might as well cut them out completely. The only thing 50g of carbs will do is fu#k up your energy levels.

gnolan

hepcat wrote: »

You could try as a high calories low carb snack, guacamole or hummous with carrot sticks. You don't seem to have any fruit so you could add bananas apples etc to your list of snacks.

Thats a good point, i made my own hummous a while back, actually forgot about that one, guacomole should be fairly straight-forward too.

brianthebard wrote: »

Steak for breakfast, with or without fried/poached eggs, and four eggs as part of one of the snacks? would be a start, although still a long way from 1400 cals. I don't think protein shakes are the answer here, you'd need a hella lot of powder to make up 1400 cals.

If i could afford it i definitely would. Was just looking it up there, you're right, only about 120cal per 30g scoop of whey, not ideal really.

Kev M wrote: »

If you're going to go as low as 50g of carbs then you might as well cut them out completely. The only thing 50g of carbs will do is fu#k up your energy levels.

Can you explain that? As far as i can see, cutting them out completely is nearly impossible; no fruit, no veg, no nuts, no seeds, no beans....and so on.

MagicMarker

You could have the whey with milk, it would have some carbs but 500ml of low fat milk is approx 250 calories, add a table spoon or two of peanut butter* to that and you're laughing.

*Warning, adding to strawberry flavour whey may not be the best decision, but still completely drinkable!!

gnolan

MagicMarker wrote: »

You could have the whey with milk, it would have some carbs but 500ml of low fat milk is approx 250 calories, add a table spoon or two of peanut butter* to that and you're laughing.

*Warning, adding to strawberry flavour whey may not be the best decision, but still completely drinkable!!

In general i'm trying to avoid wheat and dairy (for a number of reasons) which is a pain in ass. Aside from that 1/2 a litre of milk would amount to about 25g of carbs...i think. Thats a fair whack for me. I know it seems a bit anal, but i'm sure there's ways around it, which at the moment looks like eating a few kilos of nuts and fish every week!

Kev M

gnolan wrote: »

Can you explain that? As far as i can see, cutting them out completely is nearly impossible; no fruit, no veg, no nuts, no seeds, no beans....and so on.

Some nuts would be okay i.e. raw almonds/cashews. Otherwise have a good multi-vitamin. All that fruit and veg stuff is over-rated

colmconn

don't forget oils as well. a single shot glass of something like almond oil can contain a considerable amount of calories. I used to just knock back shot glasses of almond oil as part of breakfast until a couple of weeks ago. now I just mix it in with the scrabbled eggs. It gives them a very silky texture.

adding more oil to your diet can allow you to up the calorie count very significantly and more importantly compactly.

Don't forget you can drizzle olive, avacado, almond, walnut oils over your veges for added flavour.

the only carbs i get at the moment are from veges.