I thought I would take a post to offer up some low carb snacking tips from a veteran lowcarber to anyone out there who may not have had as much experience yet. If you have some tips of your own I hope you’ll share them with the class.

The main thing you need to do if you want to know how to stick to low carbs is that you need to change the way you think about things. Sure, there are baked goods you can eat on this diet that are specially made, and artificial sweeteners and all sorts of ways that you can cheat a little bit without messing things up too badly. But the main thing you need to do if you want to succeed is to get yourself in a mindframe where these types of things don’t really exist. The healthiest and most effective way to diet is to just get in a habit of thinking about healthy, carb free foods as “real food” and everything else as just that crap that everybody seems to keep putting into their faces. That means taking it relatively easy on the low carb snack foods we discuss here unless they are natural whole foods.

Real food includes meat and lots of it. Most people, even after they become convinced that a low carb meal plan is the healthiest way, don’t grasp the underlying concepts. They still hear the word “bacon” and think “heart attack!” Nothing could be further from the truth. If you were to eat bacon and only bacon, a pure all-bacon diet, you would do be very likely to improve your cholesterol and triglyceride ratings. This is because animal fat is good food. Your brain is made of fat, and your body needs fat to burn as fuel, and so you should be eating good high quality animal fats. Vegetable oil is not a high quality fuel for your body because it is too unstable. It breaks down in your body and causes problems with inflammation and free radicals. And besides, bacon makes a quick and delicious low carb snack!

The other thing to think about when you’re planning a low carb menu is that you need to be getting enough protein. By “enough,” I mean you should be getting quite a bit. Probably at least 100 grams of protein every day for a healthy adult. The reason for this is that your muscles are made of protein and so are all your body hormones and neurotransmitters, and you body will gladly sacrifice muscle mass to ensure that your brain keeps working. So if you don’t get enough protein, you’ll lose muscle and then you’ll burn less fat. So eating low carb meals is not enough, you have to also eat good substantial meals. Salad is fine, but you need to add meat to it and make sure you are satieted.

I think that people overstate the importance of vegetables on a low carb diet plan because it’s sort of fashionable and seems like a good middle-ground with the misguided health establishment. The problem is that vegetables have some good things, but I don’t think you really need them that much for the most part as long as you’re not eating a bunch of grain and flour and cereal and sugar. Those things place a lot of stress on your body and so you need to counteract the oxidation with lots of antioxidants. But you don’t need as many when you’re eating very few carbohydrates. So you’ll be fine if you keep your low carb snacks nice and meaty and protein-rich.

The main reason you need the extra nutrients from vegetables on your low carb menu plan is that we tend to mostly eat muscle meat these days, and muscle meat doesn’t have all the nutrients that are found in the offal meats like brains and livers and sweetbreads. So you have to try and balance that out. If you have a taste for them, you would probably do very well to eat a lot of offal meats on your low carb program and then you wouldn’t have to eat as many beggies and you’ll grow up big and strong.