Thousands of people have experienced amazing quick weight loss with a diet based on the No Carb Foods List. Foods with no carbs help with losing weight because they allow your body to burn the fat stored in the belly, hips and other places instead of the sugars that are found in carbohydrates. The one problem with this type of diet is you can very quickly get tired of eating only one are two types of high protein foods. Luckily, there are some great no carb recipes that are available to you for changing your meals and snacks.
No carbs foods diets have been around since the beginning of time because our ancestors were mostly meat eaters. Almost all meats are no carbohydrate foods and thus they were naturally eating the kind of diet that we are trying to utilize today. Almost all low or no carb foods are found in the meat category of the government’s food triangle. There are a few vegetables that are zero carb foods but the majority will be something from the beef, chicken, turkey, pork, or fish categories. The reason for this is that meat does not store carbohydrates within the flesh. Therefore, most meats are almost all high protein low carb foods. A few shellfish store some carbhohydrates and you have to be careful of meat products that have fillers added. This could include meatloaf, sausages, and hot dogs. You can always look on the package and see how many grams are in a serving. If it shows some grams of carbohydrates then you know the food is not a truly no carb food and instead if it has just a few grams it is a low carb food.
Another great food is eggs. You can eat all the eggs you want without adding carbs to your diet but you do have to be aware of cholesterol. The cholesterol in eggs is stored in the yolk so if you are watching the amount of cholesterol you ingest you can just eat the egg whites. Egg whites are one of the best no carb foods available. You can also buy what I call “fake eggs.” These are the egg mixtures you buy in the box at the refrigerated section of your grocery store. They aren’t really fake, they are made with egg whites colored yellow to make them appear to be scrambled up eggs.
One thing people notice when they are looking at a list of no carb foods is that there are not any no carb fruits. The reason for this is the fruits naturally store carbohydrates. That is why they are sweet. You are tasting the fructose, which is also called fruit sugar, and this fructose or sugar is converted into carbohydrates in the body during the digestion process. Because of this no carb weight loss diets can not include high carb fruits. This is too bad because when we are looking for a no carb snack or no carb snacks we may think about an apple or an orange or a banana but these would be no no’s.
The only fruit I have been able to find is olives. They grow and trees and they have the seed inside the flesh or covering so they are considered fruits but they are not what most people think of as delicious sweet fruit. The fact that they are not sweet is why they fit into this type of diet. The olives are not loaded with sugar like other fruits so they do not contain carbohydrates.
Writing a simple no carb shopping list can be pretty easy. You mostly are looking for meats and animal products. For example, you can have butter and cheddar cheese but milk surprisingly enough has some carbohydrates in it so it is not a no carb food. You no carb grocery list can also contain oils. You can have peanut oil for flavor but you can not have peanuts because they contain carbohydrates. You can also have butter which is good for the flavor and also the butter and oils make it much easier to fry the foods you can eat. A taste change tip would be to fry your meats in different oils. Fore example, one day you could use peanut oil, the next day olive oil, the day after that try butter, and then sunflower oil. Each of these add a different taste to meat and it helps to vary the monotony of eating the same thing over and over.
Don’t forget spices either. Prepared yellow mustard is another one of the zero carb foods and it can really good at helping you with your no carb weight loss. Real mayonnaise is another condiment that can be used. Mixing mustard and mayonnaise together creates a tasty topping for beef and turkey. I don’t really care for it so much on pork or fish. Ketchup on the other hand contains sugar so it can not be eaten when you are striving to create no carb meals.
When planning your no carb menu don’t forget to include more exotic meats. If you or someone you know is an outdoorsman or outdoorswoman and hunts game this a great way to change the items on you diet. Venison and duck are very good meats to eat because they are lean along with being very high in protein. The Indians ate pemmican because the protein in the lean meats gave them long term energy supplies along with the fats added from the animals. Unfortunately, pemmican is not a good for us because it usually contained high sugar content berries. The sugar in berries would break down into carbohydrates in out bodies and that is what we are tying to get away from when trying to diet on no carb no sugar foods.
No Carb Food
There are generally two types of bad carb foods. The first is fruits because of the fructose and other sugars in the pulp. The second is grains. This is why we really don’t have a true no carb bread. Some breads made with grains can be considered low carb bread but if there are any grains at all it will not be no carb food. There are some recipes that claim to be no carb recipes for bread but they aren’t really a bread like you and I would think of them. Through out history breads have been made from grains and as I said grains are not on our allowed food list.
Not eating any type of bread product is one of the hardest aspects of this type of diet. Breads, cakes, cookies, and pies have become a real staple in the United States and other western countries. Wait a minute. These are the countries with the highest obesity rates and the fastest rising obesity rates in the world. Do you think there could be some kind of correlation there? This is what modern science is starting to realize. These foods that are high in carbohydrates may not be good for our bodies at all. A no carb menu is easy to develop and appears to be something our bodies are more in tune to use effectively.
Along with obesity another health problem of gigantic portions is diabetes. In particular, type II diabetes which is also called late onset diabetes. This term meant that in the past people started to be affected by diabetes late in life after they had spent years eating foods that over taxed their pancreas. Eating a high carb diet puts a lot of extra sugars into your blood stream. The pancreas manufactures insulin and this insulin is what converts the sugars into fuel for the body. You can think of the pancreas as a pump that pumps the insulin into the blood stream to convert the fuel. When we eat no carb foods and no carb snacks we are not forcing the pancreas to make insulin and thus we are not wearing it out.
When we eat a diet high in sugars and carbohydrates we are forcing the insulin pump to work overtime and eventually it can not create the insulin effectively. This is why people with diabetes need to take synthetic insulin. Their pancreas can no longer make what the body needs to function properly.
The really scary thing now is we are starting to see a dramatic increase in the cases of teenage and young adult type 2 diabetes. By getting away from a diet based on foods with no carbs and instead consuming foods loaded with carbs we are changing when this disease is affecting people. The list of no carbohydrate foods do not wear out the mechanism for converting sugars because insulin is not required to digest protein. It seems too many that we are forcing the disease of diabetes onto our young people by the diets they are following. It is not only a matter of weight loss and dieting, it is also a matter of life and death or the removal of a limb.
In our history, it has only been recently that we have eaten a lot of grains because we have not been farming that long. Most wild grains are not that palatable before they are manipulated by man with cross breeding programs and other techniques. Take corn for example. In its wild form the ears are only the size of your little finger and are almost inedible. It took hundreds and thousands of years of cross breeding programs to get the varieties we enjoy today. Corn is definitely not a low carb food so the term enjoy may not be the correct one to use. One of the major culprits in our increased rates of obesity and diabetes is high fructose corn syrup. This is made from the natural fructose sugars removed from the corn kernels. The big problem is that these natural sugars are then concentrated thus the term high fructose. This concentrated food is then consumed and the pancreas has to do not only double duty but triple duty in order to deal with it. You can learn more about this at No Carb Food on this blog.
The question many people are asking is what are we doing to ourselves and our children by not eating a diet of no carb foods and low carb foods? It appears as though our bodies are not designed to live off all these carbohydrates we consume today. Our society is getting warning signals in the form of increased obesity and diabetes rates throughout all age groups but primarily our children and young adults. If we would throw out the fast food and start eating no carb snacks we may make headway on solving this problem. No carb fast food is something that people look for all the time. The problem is most fast food is loaded with sugar and grains because they are cheap. Thus, if you are going to eat fast food you are going to be required to eat unhealthy levels of carbohydrates.
Focusing on no carb foods and no carb snacks may take some fore thought but that never killed anybody. On the weekend buy a turkey and cook it up while you are out doing something else. You can have heathy snacks from it for several days. Or precook a cheap roast. Even low cost roasts can be made succulent by slow cooking in a crock pot or in the oven on low. I take a low quality cut of beef and put it in a pan with a couple of cups of water. Cover and cook at 300 degrees for several hours. The water helps to get rid of the toughness of the low quality meat and it also helps to transfer the meat juices back to the roast for more flavor. Cook one of these on Sunday and you can snack on roast strips for several days. The thing is a no carb food list and no carb recipes are not that hard to construct. It really gets down to whether you want to spend the time to lose weight and be healthy or if your life is not worth giving a little extra effort.
Our current western diet would be much better if we included more no carb foods and low carb foods. Our bodies were not made to operate on these high levels of carbohydrates. You can stop the madness now by committing to eating more no carb foods and limiting carbs.
Good luck Melanie,
Your headache will go away as you body gets used to a more healthy diet instead of one loaded with bad carbs. That is the simple ones that are digested to fast and cause blood sugar spikes. Hang in there you will find success.
Melanie…It is great to go no carb however limiting yourself to such a low caloric intake will cause your body to shut down. The other issue is that being so hungry will cause you to give in and binge faster.
Eat no more than 10 carbs a meal x 4 meals. Eat no carb snacks in between meals to keep from being hungry…you should not be hungry.
Best of luck to you!
iv been on egg white anf tuna diet for 3 months, iv lost over 3 stone and loving it no carb high protein is the best diet for weight loss
im having friends over for dinner who are on a no carb diet i have found a recipe for a no carb lamb curry but have no option of what to replace the rice with any ideas??
This is a great article. I have been doing this for eight week now and have lost 11 lbs and over 7inches. I eat only meat, eggs and cheese and have started to add only 10grams of carbs. in a day. When I first started I had sugar withdrawals for one good day then I was fine. When you get a lot of protein you will not crave the sweets or want them. I was a “grazer” and since being on this it is just three meals a day, and sometimes I have to make myself eat. I have had more energy than I’ve had in years and I feel really good.
I just wish everyone out there would do this, we would have alot more healthy people in our country.
Melanie,
I am on my second day and I have a head ache too. But everything else does feel better. I have noticed a difference in how I feel and knowing that I’m going to be losing weight has given me confidence.
This is a hard diet, especially when you’re the only one on it in your household.
Darla,
WATER! Yes water really does help. If I eat a snack I’ll drink water too and it helps to fill me up.
I just want to warn everyone that the body is not capable of processing such high amounts of protien. This excess protien ends up acidifying the blood stream. In order to neutralize the blood, calcium is leached from bones and teeth, then disposed of through the urine. Eating too much protien causes kidney stones and osteoporosis. Most people don’t realize that many diseases are preventable. Also, saturated fat and cholesterol (found only in meat) cause plaque to clog the arteries, leading to heart attack and stroke.
Meat causes these and many other preventable diseases including gout and cancer. Even the World Health Organization advocates a plant based diet. So tell me… Where do you get essential vitamins, antioxidants, and energy. A vegetarian diet is where it’s at. Face it: vegetables are good for you.
Hi Jessica,
I am glad you brought this question up. This is a fallacy that most people believe about a low carb diet. That is, vegetables are not allowed. This is not true, even in the Atkins diet induction stage, the most carbohydrate restrictive, it is recommended that you eat 3 cups of salad vegetables or other vegetable with a low carb count.
My problem with vegetarian diets is that there has also been a lot of bad information passed around as fact with them. For example, often times people think as long as they don’t eat meat they are OK. This leads to eating large amounts of sweets and other high glycemic index foods. This is not a healthy way to eat either.
I think the best thing we can do is spend the time to find out the truth about different eating styles and find the one that works best for each individual. I know a lot of healthy vegetarians just like I know a lot of healthy low carbers.
Thanks for stopping by and adding your thoughts. We need more conversations about our eating patterns.
I also am trying the no or low carb diet. I eat the exact same thing everyday. I have nasal polyps that are blocking my sense of smell, therefore I cannot taste anything. So this part is easy. For breakfast I have a Greek yogurt and frappucino, lunch & dinner it is chicken and salad with either water or sometimes lemonade. Snacks I will have some pecans or almonds. I was also eating watermelon , but I guess I’ll have to stop that. Eating the same thing makes prepping easy for the week, so variety is not an issue for me. The weekends I might change things a little but not by much. I also exercise regularly by walking or aerobics. If i stick to this way of eating, does this mean I can never have a kit kat again, or a cookie, or a piece of cake at a bday party ever again?
I am having a ball low carbing! I have 27 lbs in about two months. I want to loose 40 more pounds. If am sure I will meet this goal before christmas. I can now walk 4 miles a day. I am so happy!!!
Congratulations Charese,
That is really great. If you stay on your eating plan then I am sure you will make your goals also. More importantly, commit to a moderate intake in carbohydrates for the rest of your life and enjoy the benefits for a long time.
I just started a no carb diet I want to lose inches off my waist and some weight. Its been fours days. I don’t like to eat alot of meat so I dont eat alot of food is this ok. I have eggs and fish for breakfast and I take meat and rolled it up in cheese . I bake my food or stream it. so is this a more healthy way of doing a no carb diet. And I drink a lot of water, and crystal lite.
Hi Yvonne,
Thanks for visiting and good luck with your new way of eating. Drinking a lot of water will help your body any time. Most of the time, we tend to be a little dehydrated because we drink everything but water. I didn’t realize this until I went to give blood at a Red Cross blood drive. They had a hard time finding a vein and the nurse said I was dehydrated. I had been drinking coffee and diet soda all day so I didn’t understand that until I learned that these drinks actually have a tendency to get rid of the water in our bodies. Now I drink a lot more water and I feel much better.
One of the keys to this way of eating is to add variability whenever you can so you don’t get bored and also you don’t get too hungry and splurge on something you don’t really want. I think baking and steaming is a great idea.
Day two and I feel hungry a lot so I feel like I’m eating all the time but very small amount but I m thinking more and more about the junk foods but drinking water and talking about it is helping but I don’t Exercise I know that not good but I m so tried I’m doing some wrong
Hi Tor,
What you are experiencing is very common. When we have eaten a lot of carbohydrates for years are bodies really crave them for a few days. One thing that really helped me was walking. It seemed like the physical exercise helped my body to reset. After a few days the cravings went away and I actually hardly have any at all any more. You should be congratulated for drinking water. Many people forget this and it is a very important aspect of a no carb or low carb diet. It is important to help flush your system.
Hang in there and stay with it. I think you will find you feel better every day and you will crave junk food less every day that you stay away from it.
Hi there, my family doctor suggested I try this to lower my blood pressure and to also get healthy. I am of Native American background so it is only natural for me to eat lots of meats. I’ve been carb free for 4 days and lost 8.5 pounds. I have been drinking a LOT of water and still crave sweets..but surprisingly not breads/grains. In time I think this will pay off, for now I am very excited with my results and hope they continue. Good luck everyone!!
Hi B and welcome to the low carb lifestyle family.
I have a friend who is Native American limiting carbs has worked for him. One thing to remember, most of the weight you have lost so far has probably been water weight so don’t get discourage when your rate of loss slows down. Just keep eating what you should and you will see good results. Also, if your experience is like most people, you will see a major decrease in your cravings for sugar as time goes by.
Good luck and keep us informed of your progress.
Im doing atkins for the 3rd time in my life. Ive lost 50,80, and have lost 45 or so on my current stint. This has been over a period of about 15yrs. Im right at 300lbs now. I am going to 240 give or take. Im 6.5 and just a big dude thats a fair weight for me . I was 210 at one time and i start to see some bone structure, i dont like that look. I buy the atkins shakes and candy bars that are mostly 1 net carb and thats how i get by. I can eat meat, eggs, cheese, sugarfree jello, and 1 bar/shake a day and it works for me . I also eat lots of salad, mostly just lettuce, celery, and olives. There is a point in the diet very early on ( less than 2 weeks if you dont cheat) that you will no longer be hungry. The lack of sugar puts the body in shock and things start to change. Water weight…………. shut up, your body is 60-75% water, in order to lose weight you have to lose water.. fat cells have what in them..wait for it….yes water.
Drink lots of water if you do this diet, it will dehydrate you and you wont even know it.
GLTA never stop trying!
hi i am thinking of starting a low or no carb diet, but coffee i feel is an issue for me. can i have any coffee at all? i am not a big eater but still i am struggling to lose 16lbs. and does it matter what time’s you eat at? a lot of diets say no food 4 hours before bed is this the case? exercise is also another issue for me as i have a very busy lifestyle and job.
Hi CH,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree, water is very important and can make a big difference. It sounds like you know how to work the food plan in order to lose weight and I congratulate you on your accomplishments. This time you may want to start thinking about your lifetime maintenance plan before you lose all the weight. I think you really need to decide how much you like your weight loss and whether it is worth staying slim.
Many people have success losing weight but most gain it back again because they can’t manage their eating for the long haul. I hope you can develop lifetime skills that will allow you to stay at your desired weight.
Good luck
Hi Molly, I will answer your questions as I see it.
First, some low carb diets including Atkins do not recommend coffee but I have always drank coffee and it hasn’t seemed to be a problem for me.
Second, for me the time of eating makes a big difference. I always have a good breakfast and then I don’t tend to eat too much later in the day. Also, eating before bedtime is not a good idea.
Third, exercise always helps in both losing the weight and keeping it off.
I hope you will share with us the results of your weight loss plan. It is always great to hear about a success.
Take care.
I am thrilled to discover there are other no carb dieters in the world!
Without carbs I have no hunger pangs. I am healthier in better spirits and have more energy without carbs in my system.
Once the glucose is out of my liver I lose 2 or 3 pounds a week effortlessly.
I started out on an Atkins plan, but discovered it was easier to eat no carbs at all than count them.
I’ve lost 15 pounds effortlessly, just eating as much as I want of what I can have, along with lots of vitamins.
I’d like to answer Jessica, from June 10.
From my experience, to avoid acidifying the blood and leeching calcium, the no carb diet should be high in fat.
In the presence of carbs, fat is a dangerous thing. Without carbs for an extended time, eating fatty foods and egg yolks at will, cholesterol levels go down. Blood pressure goes down.
Avoiding fat while no carb dieting would be a dangerous thing to do to one’s liver.
WE have been taught that fat is the enemy, but this is true only in the presence of carbs.
From my personal experience.
Thank you for sharing your insights Rosalee. I know what you mean about the hunger pangs. They just seem to go away if I’m not eating a lot of carbs. A no carb breakfast starts me off great, I have more energy and great mood control.
Big hello to everyone from the UK!
I am delighted that i have come across this fantastic article today and all your comments!
Today is Day 1 on my 2nd no-carb diet, starting off at 180 pounds! I am really excited about starting this and nervous at the same time about giving in too quickly!
Wish me luck and i’ll definetely be following this great website! x
Hi Manisha
We definitely wish you success with your low carb plan. Please keep us informed of how things are going for you. If there are questions you have I will do all I can to get you good answers.
Is a no or low-carb diet good for a person with diabetes?
Hi Maria,
Yes, limiting carbohydrates can help you to control your blood sugar levels. Sugar and starchy carbohydrates are converted easily into blood sugar and will build up if you don’t utilize insulin effectively. This is the heart of the problem with diabetes. So, any time you can limit foods that will increase sugar levels, the better off you will be.