How to Make a Faux Low-Carb Cookie Plate Filled with Healthy Holiday Snacks

How to Make a Faux Low-Carb Cookie Plate Filled with Healthy Holiday Snacks

Low Carb Styles Special Event Diet The Brutal Way

Don't Have to Give Up Healthy
Holiday Treats on Low Carb

When you're on a low-carb diet, the holidays can be rough. Everywhere you turn, there is candy, cookies, quick breads, and other carby treats enticing you to go off plan. Whether it's an office party pot luck, hot cocoa and marshmallows, warm cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, or the cookie plate the neighbor sent over on Christmas Eve, holiday traditions offer multiple temptations and opportunities to chuck your keto diet and go face down into those unhealthy treats.

As habitual creatures who consistently seek out pleasurable experiences, tradition feels comforting and familiar. In past years, you've understood that the holidays only come around once a year, so there was nothing to feel guilty about if you ate a few too many treats.

Moving into your first low-carb Christmas changes all of that.

You can feel apprehensive and worried. Many past traditions have been disrupted. A low-carb diet is a massive lifestyle change, but switching your mindset from using carbs for comfort to wanting to make healthy snacks for the holidays doesn't happen overnight.

Even if you've been around the keto block for a few years, you might have a tendency to make it through Christmas by white-knuckling the cookie plates and banana bread the best way you can, but that's no way to spend the holidays. Even though you're on a low-carb diet, Christmas can still be fun and exciting!

All it takes is a little creativity and a bit of time to throw together a faux low-carb cookie plate filled with healthy holiday snacks of your own.

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The Ultimate Guide to Cooking a Perfect Turkey for Low-Carb Dieters

The Ultimate Guide to Cooking a Perfect Turkey for Low-Carb Dieters

Low Carb Styles Special Event Diet The Brutal Way

How to Roast a 
Thanksgiving Turkey
with Crispy Skin
(Photo: Gerry, CC BY 2.0)

No matter which low-carb diet you're following, the turkey is the center of attention on your Thanksgiving Table.

High in protein, turkey meat is a nice source of zinc, iron, potassium, and B vitamins. It also has no carbohydrates, so unless you have a metabolic defect in processing proteins, you don't have to limit your portion size.

At least, not for the holidays.

The good news? Going back for seconds on turkey, or even thirds, won't throw you out of ketosis.

For that reason, learning to make the perfect holiday turkey can make the difference between serving up a great holiday meal and one that's just so-so.

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The Truth About Sugar Substitutes

The Truth About Sugar Substitutes

Sugar..!!

The Truth About Sugar Substitutes

I get a lot of questions about sugar substitutes.

In general, artificial sweeteners are allowed and even encouraged on low-carb diets. Low-carb diets claim that sugar substitutes don't raise blood glucose levels, and therefore, can't interfere with fat mobilization. The only caution I've heard over the years is to not use aspartame and count the little packets as 1 carb each.

On Atkins Induction, the packets are also limited to 3 per day.

• But is any of that true?
• Are low-carb advocates telling us the truth about sugar substitutes?
• Or are they just trying to sell us something?

I'm a follow-the-money type of person. I'm always wary when it comes to people trying to sell me on an idea that is to their financial interest for me to swallow and believe.

Because of that, and because it's been years since I wrote about the truth of sugar alcohols on this blog, I did a little more research into the whole topic of artificial sweeteners over the past few days. I was looking for new information and concerns. While most of what I found, I already knew, there were a few surprises.

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Before You Reach for that Thanksgiving Roll . . . (Here's What You Need to Know)

Before You Reach for that Thanksgiving Roll . . . (Here's What You Need to Know)

Are the Consequences
Worth Going Off Plan?

The holidays can be a difficult time to diet.

Office parties, family gatherings, and social events, as well as the holiday itself, puts you around food.

Lots of food.

And usually, the type of food that isn't found on any low-carb plan.

If you're new to a low-carb diet, it's hard enough trying to figure out how low carb works without having to add temptation into the mix, but newbies are not the only ones who might not understand the consequences that come when reaching for that Thanksgiving roll or small piece of pumpkin pie.

If you're considering going off plan for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, here's what you need to know in order to make a well-informed decision.

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Are Low-Carb Meals and Snacks Gluten Free?

Are Low-Carb Meals and Snacks Gluten Free?

Questions??

A Low-Carb Diet
is Not Always Gluten Free
(Photo Credit: Richard Masoner, 
CC BY-SA 2.0)

The gluten-free community isn't very happy right now.

As those in the entertainment world continue to announce that they are going gluten free, not because they have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but because they want to shed a few pounds, we have a horde of groupies and those who have heard that gluten-free diets are great for weight loss deciding that ditching the gluten is an important way to gain better health.

Typically, a low-carb dieter would have no problem with that, but since a lot of these people don't understand what a gluten-free diet actually is, they have put together a weight-loss plan based on their own ideas and incorporated these distorted dieting habits into that new gluten-free diet. Unfortunately, those habits often tell them it's okay to eat a little gluten once in a while.

What has gluten-free folks riled up is that these so-called gluten-free dieters (by choice) are not cheating at home, behind closed doors. They do it in public, particularly after causing a big scene in restaurants where chefs, waiters, waitresses, and busboys are getting sick-and-tired of going to all of the precautions and extra steps it takes to prepare a safe gluten-free meal, only to have the diner order a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. "It's okay if I eat a little gluten once in a while," they say.

While a low-carb dieter would never do that -- at least, not in their normal frame of mind -- I've heard many within the low-carb community voice misconceptions about low-carb diets being gluten free, as if that was a fact. For many low carbers, that isn't true. Most people can't live without their low-carb tortillas, sweets, and baked goods, but what about those who shun low-carb products?

Are clean low-carb meals and snacks gluten free?

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