Hi Wanna_Be_ND, I’m not following the Clever Guts program. I just make a point of including fermented foods in my regular eating habits. At first it was a coincidence. When I cut out all the sugars and refined carbs, I found I craved sour, tart, strong flavors. I started with dill pickles and expanded it from there. The fact that they’re full of probiotic goodness was a fortunate side-effect.
There is no suggested limit for carbohydrate, protein or fat in the book. Many people on this forum aim for 50 grams or less of carbs per day because that seems to be a good figure for most people to keep their bodies in ketosis, meaning in a fat-burning state rather than a carb-burning one. Because I am insulin resistant, my daily limit is much lower at 20 grams per day. Most days I don’t get anywhere near that figure. Yesterday I had 9. Protein should be 1 gram or less per kilo of your ideal healthy body weight. I have mine set to 60.
I don’t know a lot about the shakes but I know others on the forum have had success with them. Just be sure the shakes don’t have added sugars or other stealth carbs (commercial products like SlimFast can be sneaky). I used to enjoy the occasional zero carb whey protein shake in the early days. (This was my preferred brand: https://www.amazon.com/Isopure-Protein-Powder-Isolate-Flavor/dp/B002U7YZXY/ref=sr_1_3_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1506961473&sr=8-3&keywords=zero%2Bcarb%2Bisopure&th=1 ). I stopped drinking them when I moved away from artificial sweeteners.
Thank you for the congratulations! I never expected to still be eating 800 cals a day a year later, I assure you of that. I wasn’t sure it was even possible for me to pull off a week. I had no idea what 800 calories even amounted to in terms of real food. Weighing and measuring things, looking up their nutrient stats on MyFitnessPal and talling it all up has become second nature to me. I’m rarely hungry, and if I am I eat something.
I read your profile too and I love your enthusiasm for cooking whole foods with no questionable processing, preservatives and additives. As you said, the big challenge for you is going to be protein without jacking up your carb counts to the point where you’re no longer doing the BSD in any functional way. I rely significantly on meat and cheese to reach my nutrient goals without carbs. I’ve looked into meat and cheese substitutes and they are consistently high in carbohydrates and calories. Lots of beans, nuts, starchy vegetables and grains.
I do indeed have favorite meals. The salad dressing prep method in my first reply to you is my standard proportion, 6ml extra virgin olive oil to 3 ml vinegar, lemon juice or lime juice. I modify it according to mood, adding different spices, fresh herbs, 1/4 oz of softened cheese (I use chevre, blue cheese or cream cheese the most), fresh garlic, etc. To that I add 3 oz of greens (arugula, baby Romaine, green leaf, spinach), 1 oz of broccoli, clover or alfalfa sprouts (not bean sprouts, they’re sugarier than the others), a chopped green onion and a small Persian cucumber. Lupini beans are my latest new addition. All fiber so zero net carbs and they fill you right up.
The easiest thing I make that I could eat by the bowlful is spinach steamed in a skillet with a little water, salt and pepper until it’s wilted. I drain it and chop it up when it’s done because I’m not a fan of how different the stems are from the leaf in texture. Then I top it with no more than 1/4 oz sharp feta cheese. You could easily do the same without the cheese. Maybe throw in a small clove of chopped garlic and squeeze of lemon on top instead of the feta.
I’m a big fan of seaweed which would work very well for you because you got a lot of bang for your nutritional buck out of it. Kelp noodles take a little work to make them right, but the end-result is very satisfying as a replacement for pasta or noodles in soups. I also make my own “mayo” out of silken tofu. I use that in the dressing to give it a creamy note. Speaking of tofu, a keep a block of firm that I’ve pressed and sliced marinating at all times in the fridge. A couple of slices pan-seared in a skillet only takes a few minutes to make and comes out a savory, delicious little crispelle, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.
For a quick snack I eat a couple of Brazil nuts, flaxseed crackers with slivers of cheese or traditionally prepared charcuterie like Serano ham, the above-mentioned sauerkraut/kimchi/miso soup and one 14 gram square of 100% cacao unsweetened chocolate. I realized only last week that I have reached the point where what used to taste like bitterness to me now reads as intensity of chocolate flavor.
If you do decide to include some meats in your diet, stick with grass-fed, pasture raised organics. I did that anyway before the diet for moral and environmental reasons. The BSD added another reason, because their fats are healthier and there is no carb hangover from the poor creatures being fed corn and grain in feedlots. Chicken sausage, chicken breasts and ground turkey are my staples. I largely stick with fresh fish, but I have smoked salmon, smoked trout and canned tuna as staples as well. Again, wild caught, no dragnet, sustainably harvested. It costs a little more, but that’s the case with anything you buy that isn’t an environmental disaster.
Phew! That turned out to be long-winded. I better stop now before it becomes unreadable. 😀
