Linda's Diet Delites Blog

Low Carb – The Many Variations

Low carb diets are known for being a great option for weight loss, but what does a low carb diet really mean? Is it as simple as lowering your intake of carbohydrates in order to lose a few pounds? Not necessarily, according to the powers that be in the diet world. There are many variations of low carb diets that can make it very difficult to know which one to choose. Read on to learn about the most popular low carb diets and the differences between them so you can better determine which one will work for you.

The Atkins Low Carb Diet

The most well-known, and likely still the most popular form of a low carb diet, The Atkins Diet has been around for decades and was the first of its kind. It allows for a very limited number of carbs in the diet, with the first few days being even more limited than later in the diet, and is likely the most extreme form of low carb dieting that people choose. It is the topic of much debate about whether the unlimited amounts of protein and limited carbs are healthy (although studies have shown that those on Atkins don’t have an increase in bad cholesterol, and in fact have an increase in good cholesterol instead). In addition, the process of putting the body into ketosis (a stage in which you consume so few carbs the body is forced to burn its own fat for fuel) can actually harm muscle mass and create a state in the body that offers quick results in a manner that is hard to maintain on a daily basis. However, it is still being debated and studied regularly, and there is likely a reason it is still the most-used low carb diet.

The Diabetic’s Low Carb Diet

For many, the entire reason for going on any type of low carb diet is due to a predisposition for (or even a diagnosis of) diabetes. However, this type of diet is not limited only to those that are at high risk of developing the disease. Adopting a healthy low carb diet and maintaining it is one of the best ways to keep this and other diseases at bay. Because carbohydrates are processed in the body as a sugar, lowering the intake of carbs naturally leads to more regulated blood sugar levels.

According to WebMD, one study showed that diabetics on a low-carb diet designed specifically with diabetes in mind were able to cut their insulin dependency in half over a 22-month period. The diabetics’ low carb diet is one of the low carb variations that is specifically designed to regulate blood sugar levels, and it is restrictive, but not quite as restrictive as the Atkins.

Low Carbs in Phases

The South Beach Diet is a popular type of low carb diet that utilizes phases to create weight loss and better health. The beginning requires a strict Atkins-style form of carbohydrate restriction in order to eliminate the sugar and starch cravings that most people typically endure. Once the beginning strict low carb phase is passed, healthy carbs can be reintroduced to the diet. Many believe that this type of low carb diet is one of the best variations because it may be easier to stick with over time than a more restrictive type.

Eating Like a Caveman

The paleolithic diet is one type of low carb diet that offers a variation that goes by one simple rule – eat like a caveman. This variation on the low carb diet requires that you eat as you would long ago, before so many processed foods were readily available. Sugars and other modern day foods are banned, and meats are allowed in abundance (just as it would have been during paleolithic times). While dieters on the “caveman diet” typically show success in weight loss and health, in some ways it is more limiting than the Atkins form of low carb diet. Atkins promotes protein bars and other store-bought processed foods as part of the daily low carb diet, but the paleolithic diet frowns on these types of foods. Eating in an all-natural way that is also low in carb is of course a healthy option in most cases, but it might not always be easy to stick with.

Whatever type of low carb diet you choose to follow, you are sure to experience weight loss if you stick with it. And of course, it is always a good idea to check with your healthcare provider to make sure that any diet you consider undertaking is safe.

When you do choose your preferred variation of a low carb diet, be sure to stop by our store at Linda’s Diet Delites to find a variety of low carb snacks, mixes, breads and more!

Benefits of Liquid Raspberry Ketones Vs. Pill Form

Raspberry Ketones as a Dietary Supplement

Raspberry ketones are a great new dietary supplement that are beneficial in weight loss as well as many other health benefits, and without any reported side effects thus far. There are many different types of Raspberry Ketone dietary supplements available on the market, including those that contain green tea as an added dietary bonus. But what is the difference between raspberry ketones in liquid form and pill form?

Liquids are Easier for the Body to Absorb

Pills must be broken down by the body’s digestive system, which can sometimes interfere with the complete absorption of any type of pill, including raspberry ketone dietary supplements. By choosing liquid raspberry ketones, your body will be able to quickly and efficiently absorb the supplement.

No Swallowing Pills

If you hate swallowing pills or tablets, a liquid raspberry ketone supplement is definitely your best option. After all, what good is a supplement if you rarely take it because you hate having to swallow pills? Instead, you can simply take the liquid or even add it to a beverage for more convenience.

No Other Liquids Required

If you remember to take your dietary supplement (or are scheduled to do so) at a time when you are not at home or are otherwise on the go, the convenience of a liquid raspberry ketone dietary supplement cannot be beat. The lack of a need for additional liquid makes it simple to take your supplement the minute you need to, regardless of whether or not you have something to drink on hand.

To experience the many benefits of raspberry ketone dietary supplements, visit our store at Linda’s Diet Delites, where we offer this and a variety of other great healthy dietary supplements.

Rethink Your Diet for the Summer Months

When the summer months arrive, dietary needs often change. Because there is more heat during the day, as well as the likelihood of being more active than during cold winter months, you will want to consider changing your intake of certain foods and drinks. In addition, the exposure to even more food during the summer can interfere with a healthier diet and lifestyle. Barbecues and parties, as well as weddings (with their fattening receptions) are all opportunities for exposure to food that doesn’t bode well for your body. Read on to learn a few tips for changing your diet to accommodate summer needs, as well as how to avoid those summertime diet pitfalls.

Better Hydration is a Requirement

Whether you eat low carb or not, better hydration is important during summer months. Consuming more water is always the obvious, and most talked-about, solution. However, if you don’t care for water, or you find yourself always coming up short of the recommended 8 glasses a day, you do have other options. By drinking less caffeine, which is dehydrating, you can allow your body to be more hydrated using the water you do consume. In addition, by adding in fresh berries and melons to your low carb or other diet, you will instantly increase your water intake. This is the best time of year to do so, since most fruits are in season and they feel light on the stomach.

Consume More Salads

If you like salads, mid-summer is definitely the best time to eat more. They are fresh and filling, and offer a variety of nutrients in a natural way. However, it is important to watch your dressing, including the amount and the type. Many salad dressings can be high in calorie count, carbs and an excess of a variety of negative contents. When possible, opt for a low carb salad dressing or low fat free salad dressing to accommodate your summertime salads. It is also a great idea to squirt lemon juice or another citrus flavor on the salad and use that as the only dressing on occasion.

Frozen Treats can be Tempting

When the weather heats up, it can be tempting to delve into an ice cold ice cream cone or a fruity snow cone. However, either of these are full of diet-ruining qualities. Instead, you can stock up on sugar free ice cream treats or healthy frozen snacks that will quench that craving for something cold without doing damage to your healthy lifestyle.

Hot Dogs and Hamburgers Damage any Low Carb Diet

In the past, this has been the case – either you skip the hot dog or hamburger altogether (which is not only difficult, but sometimes offensive to the barbecue host), or you eat it without the bun. Although it is possible to eat a hot dog or hamburger without the bun to achieve your low carb goals during the summer, it’s just not the same. Thankfully, low carb bun options have become more readily available for those summertime favorites, and now it’s possible to enjoy the same foods as others without ruining your carb count.

Whether you are in search of low carb and low calorie frozen snacks or you need some low carb buns to get you through the summertime months, we offer the perfect low carb healthy options for you here! (We also have a wide selection of gluten free and sugar free foods as well to accommodate almost any special diet!)

Red Raspberry Ketones – A Healthy Weight Loss Supplement?

Are you searching for a supplement that can assist you in getting that beach body without resorting to diet pills? There are many different kinds out there, but many of them provide negative side effects, such as bowel issues, shaky hands, heart damage, and more. If you are looking for a healthy alternative that can boost your weight loss efforts, raspberry ketones may be a great option for you! If you haven’t heard of raspberry ketones for weight loss, or if you have heard of them but are hesitant to give them a try, read on:

According to The Dr. Oz Show, raspberry ketones are safe and all-natural, being comprised of the primary compound of red raspberries. Raspberry ketones work in a similar way as coffee bean extract or green tea – their natural compounds promote the increase of the metabolic rate within the body, ultimately helping you achieve your weight loss goals.

Additionally, red raspberries have been used for centuries as a natural remedy for many medical conditions. These including easing menstrual symptoms and some gastrointestinal conditions. There are no side effects associated with the use of raspberry ketones, whether they are taken as a natural remedy for one of the conditions listed or as a weight loss supplement. However, some studies have shown that raspberry ketones can act similarly to estrogen within the body, so if you have any medical conditions related to the hormone, such as breast cancer, it is best to consult with your physician before taking this type of supplement.

When deciding to take raspberry ketones as a weight loss supplement, you will likely run onto many different versions to choose from. Liquid raspberry ketones are one option that will offer a more immediate effect on the body than pills. However, some pills will include a combination of raspberry ketones and green tea – both of which are widely known for their weight loss assistance. The best way to determine the right one for you is to browse many different varieties and compare costs and your personal needs in order to find the best variety of raspberry ketones dietary supplements for you.

While raspberry ketones have shown promise as a weight loss supplement, they work best in conjunction with a healthy low carb, low sugar diet. To stock up on great low carb foods to achieve your weight loss goals quickly, visit us at Linda’s Diet Delites!

Move Over Green Tea: Green Coffee Extract Now The Up-And-Coming Diet Supplement

Not to be mistaken for green tea, green coffee extract is being shown to significantly increase metabolic rates and help people lose weight — even without diet and exercise. Is this another fad diet, or something to really look into?

Just when you were feeling particularly green by drinking green tea as part of your diet regimen, now green coffee extract is making its way onto the diet scene. And unlike green tea, this stuff is actually showing to be effective.

what is green coffee? no, its not some environmentally-friendly bean, or some ultra-exotic variety from the inaccessible mountains of Ecuador. Rather, it is simply an unroasted coffee bean. “Green coffee” is a term long used by coffee producers as the raw product, before it has been roasted and processed into the coffee that know, love, and are addicted to. You may not know it, but the process of making coffee is among the most complex and laborious in the entire agriculture industry. Coffee beans are actually found within a coffee plant’s berry. This means that the berries have to be picked, the bean needs to be removed from the fruit (the fruit, by the way, is also said to have nutritional benefits), dried, and then roasted to varying degrees. Only then does it become the coffee bean that we brew with.

The problem, however, is that the roasting process also takes away all of the benefits of coffee. This is why leading coffee research has suggested that the less roasted your coffee is, the more beneficial it can be to your heath. And this is precisely why green coffee is being found to produce health benefits: it remains all of the nutritional and medicinal qualities of the original “green” coffee bean.

Quoting a recent study conducted by the ACS, i09 states: “The study used doses of an extract of unroasted (green) coffee beans, with low doses of 700mg, and high ones of 1,050mg. The research was small in scope, just 16 obese people over the course of 22 weeks, all of whom acted as their own placebos, alternating between low-dose, high-dose, and an inactive supplement, each for a third of the time. With no changes to diet or exercise, at the end of the 22 weeks, the participants had lost an average of 17 lbs, dropping 16% of their body fat.”

What’s particularly interesting about this study is that the participants only took the green coffee extract 50% of the time — the other 50%, they took a placebo. This means that if the participants had taken the extract every day, their weight loss could have doubled. And if a dieter used green coffee with a diet plan, maybe even more?

Interestingly enough, it appears that green coffee extract basically works as a kind of natural sugar and carb blocker. The effects of the extract “are due to chlorogenic acid, which is thought to reduce the absorption of glucose and lessen hyperglycemic peak.” So, one can imagine how this newfangled diet supplement could actually work quite well with a low carb diet.

Anchor Bar Buffalo Wing Sauce: Naturally No Carb

One of the things you discover when you first begin a low carb diet is how many everyday foods are loaded with sugar and carbs. Ketchup — a condiment rarely thought of as “sweet” — is loaded with sugar. So is barbeque sauce. Both of these condiments can be hard to part with for low carb dieters.

Fortunately, there are still some tasty condiments that you can use on proteins that won’t add any carb count to your meals. Anchor Bar’s Bufdfalo Wing Sauce is one of them.

There’s nothing purposely “low carb” about Anchor Bar’s Buffalo Wing sauce — it just is, and always has been. It leverages a list of no-carb ingredients for that original buffalo wing taste, made with only Cayenne pepper, vinegar, salt, garlic, margarine and other secret ingredients. All blended together for a rich, smooth fully prepared sauce. No mixing, no mess, no guess work.

It really is a perfect alternative to barbeque sauce on all kinds of chicken dishes.

Julian Bakery’s Zero! Cookies Really Live Up To Their Name

For anyone who loves sweets, snacks, and desserts, there’s a sobering reality that everything that tastes good seems to add far onto our bodies. That’s just the way food works.

The inventive folks at Julian Bakery have not gotten that memo, however, as evidenced with their new Zero! Cookies.When you think “zero,” the immediate assumption is that these are zero carb cookies. And you’d be right. But Julian doesn’t stop there — they take their Zero! Cookies to a whole new level of what “zero” actually can mean.

In addition to being sugar free, Zero! Cookies are also completely starch free, and made with only premium ingredients. The result is an amazing taste and texture — just like a real cookie — but without the real effects of eating one. These cookies are made fiber and sweeteners that are not at all metabolized by your body — it’s like you never even ate them!

Just to give you an idea of how amazing these cookies are, Zero Cookies have less digestible carbohydrate calories in a dozen large 2-ounce cookies than a cup of broccoli and more fiber in one cookie than in 3 cups of broccoli. In fact, there is less digestible sugar in an entire container (10 cookies) of Zero Cookies than in 1 side of an Oreo Cookie without the cream. Amazing!

Many times, low carb dieters are afraid to venture back into eat sweets, even if companies claim that their sweets are low carb. If you’re one of these dieters, then you can res assured that their new Zero! Cookies will not ruin the hard work you’ve put into your diet.

Thanks for reading our article! Did you know that Linda’s Diet Delites carries a wide range of Julian Bakery products, including Zero! Cookies? Take a look at all the low carb and zero carb products we have to offer.

Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blackstrap Molasses

From Wholesome Sweeteners, “Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Certified Organic Molasses is a blackstrap molasses with a rich, full-bodied robust flavor that adds natural color and opulent caramel molasses tones to recipes. It is especially good in molasses cookies, in other baked goods, breads, sauces, BBQ sauces and in marinades. It can be used as a one-for-one replacement for refined blackstrap molasses.
Wholesome’s Organic Molasses is actually the end product, or by-product, of the production of our Organic Sugar. It is loaded with vitamins, minerals and trace elements naturally present in the sugar cane plant and is a good source of iron, vitamin B6, potassium, calcium and magnesium.The Fair Trade Certified logo is Wholesome’s guarantee that our farmers’ cooperatives are paid directly for the cane grown and milled. This means that the farmers can compete with factory farms, cultivate the quality of their crops, send their kids to school and build thriving communities. ”

Wholesome sweeteners Organic blackstrap Molasses is available online at Linda’s Diet Delites! Take a look!

Tumaro’s Gourmet Low in Carbs Tortillas

There are plenty of low carb tortillas on the market today. Unfortunately, not many of them make the grade when it comes to taste. Usually there’s a sliding scale: the lower in carbs, the lower the taste. If you want the authentic Mexican flavor and texture of a good tortilla, you’re going to have to be willing to ingest some serious carbage.

Tumaro’s Gourmet Tortillas are overturning this paradigm, however, since they manage to craft a really tasty tortilla that is low in net carbs. At just 4 grams of net carbs, you can incorporate one or two of these tortillas into your next Mexican meal — or use one for a wrap — without feeling like you’ve gone overboard. Taste-wise, Tumaro captures that moist, rich texture of a flour tortilla by using oat fiber, whole wheat flour, soy bean flour, wheat gluten, and canola oil to create a really authentic tortilla.

Tumaro’s delicious bread replacement products are ideal for wraps, burritos, quesadillas, fajitas, tacos, and enchiladas. Low-in-Carbs tortillas are cholesterol-free, trans fat free, and delicious!

Linda’s Diet Delites carries Tumaro’s Gourmet Low in Carbs Tortillas! Take a look!

Mt. Olive No Sugar Added Sweet Relish

If you’re like me, then giving up hamburgers and/or hot dogs on a low carb diet can be really tough. Luckily, you can now pair a nice low carb hot dog bun with your hot dogs — and the same for hamburgers. But what if you want to add a little relish to the experience? Unfortunately, most relishes have tons of sugar in them, making them a no-go for a low carb diet.

Mt. Olive, on the other hand, has a low carb solution for your relishing of relishes.

Mt. Olive is a classic name when it comes to pickles and relish — it’s one of those stalwart brands that you’ve seen your entire life at the grocery store. That’s why Mt. Olive No Sugar Added Sweet Relish is so good — it comes from a truly reliable brand, but without all the sugar.

Simply put: one tablespoon of Mt. Olive No Sugar Added Sweet Relish has just 1 gram net carbs. That’s a perfect service for a hot dog or hamburger. Their secret is to use Splenda in place of regular sugar.

Because of the complex flavors of relish, the Splenda works splendidly. There is no aftertaste.

Looking for Mt. Olive No Sugar Added Sweet Relish? Linda’s Diet Delites has it online! Take a look!