Making Atkins Diet Revolution Rolls in a Muffin Top Pan

One of the earliest bread-substitutes low-carbers have used is what Dr. Robert Atkins called "Diet Revolution Rolls." The recipe is actually older than that. It's also in the Settlement Cook Book as 'Diabetic Bread.' That book dates from about the 1940s.

The secret of making it is to use a muffin top pan to make it. A picture of one of mine is illustrated. I have two like this one.

This is a Yorkshire pudding pan. It is pretty much interchangeable with a muffin top pan. They are available in different sizes.

Diet Revolution Rolls

3 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3 tablespoons of cottage cheese
1 package of sugar-free, carb-free sweetener (VERY optional)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Separate eggs. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Mix other ingredients with yolks. Carefully fold egg whites into egg yolk mixture.

Spray your muffin top pan(s) with olive oil pan spray. Put about 1/2 teaspoon of a good oil (olive oil or MCT oil) into each depression in the pan. Fill each pan with equal amount of batter. Bake for about an hour.

from Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution page 225
Carbs per serving (6 per recipe) .5
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Separating Eggs

I'm old enough to remember when women learned to separate eggs as a basic kitchen skill. NOT ONE SPECK of the yolk can get in to your whites. I usually separate eggs by using the eggshell of the eggs, but using an egg separator is better. My mom got her egg separator from some business that was giving them away, with the business's ad printed on it, but they don't do that these days. I bought one at a store somewhere. Here is what mine looks like:

You have to beat the egg white for minutes, not seconds. If you don't have one of those expensive stand mixers, your arm will get tired. I use a regular electric mixer. I guess you could beat the eggs by hand with a whisk if you are very healthy and can't compel your husband or kids to do it for you. ;)

There are loads of YouTube videos that show you how to make Atkins Diet Revolution Rolls. Before you try making your own, maybe you should watch a few. Here is one:



I have made these rolls in the past, will probably do so again, but I hate separating eggs. At least once I got that fatal speck of yolk into the white and the whites wouldn't whip up. I baked them anyway. They were not great.

I have read a recipe called 'cloud bread' which mostly just stretches the batter from 6 rolls to 12. I've made these, they are flatter but good. I use one 'roll' for the top of my sandwich and another for the bottom.

Cucumber sandwich

Take 2 pieces of the rolls out of the fridge. Put mayonnaise (homemade is best) on both sides. Salt the bottom piece (these rolls are salt-free, so bland). I put seaweed flakes on the bottom as well--- I love seaweed. Put cucumber slices on the bottom piece. Cover bottom with top, eat and enjoy.

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The Sad Truth 

I have made these rolls from time to time for years. But I'm lazy when it comes to separating eggs. Recently I have been working on no-egg-separating rolls, which I will be sharing on this blog soon. But this recipe is a low-carber's staple, and so I thought it best to share it first.

Dr. Atkins Diet Cook Book, 1974

One of my favorite Atkins cookbooks is this, the first one. It was written in 1974 by Fran Gare and Helen Monica. The reason I like it so much is that unlike later Atkins books, it doesn't call for Atkins brand ingredients that are no longer available and were never available where I live. It has to use real food!

It contains several recipes I use a lot. There is the cheese pancakes on page 81. I have a notecard at that page where I cut the recipe down from 6 servings to a single serving. I've tried a lot of low-carb pancakes but this is pretty good.

Another recipe I use is the baked fish loaf on page 140. Again I've cut down the recipe from 6 servings to single serving. My version uses a can of tuna (packed in olive oil, from WalMart) as the fish. It's kind of a replacement for my mom's carby tuna casserole. Sometimes I add a few canned mushroom pieces and a spoonful of frozen peas to the mix to make it more Just Like Mom's.

It also has, on page 238, a hot chocolate recipe that I based my own, much better hot chocolate recipe on.

There are other recipes I haven't yet tried or tried only once. Such as: Mock Potato Dumplings, Devilled Salmon Eggs, Beef Stroganoff, Moussaka, Pasta, Mock Macaroni and Cheese, Brownies, Peanut Butter cookies, several flavors of ice cream.....

The low-carb world has changed a lot since this book came out. But there are a lot of things to try in here. You may have to adapt to get rid of ingredients we no longer think are healthy, such as soya powder. But there is a world of things to try in this book. It's also kind of a must-have for a really COMPLETE low-carb cookbook collection.

How do you get a copy since it is so long out of print? Well, I got mine poking around in used bookstores and thrift shops, but that was a few decades ago. Today I'd look at Amazon.com and Ebay for a copy at a good price. I've seen one at over $100 dollars. Don't pay that! I've ALSO seen copies at around $3. Keep checking the used book sources---NOT the rare book ones, they will be overpriced.

Intermittent Fasting makes my house cleaner

One of the things I love about intermittent fasting is that it doesn't just make me healthier and lower my blood sugar, it makes my house cleaner.

How does it do that? Well, I don't have to make breakfast. Which means I don't have to clean up after breakfast. I don't have a working dishwasher and my kitchen sink faucet doesn't work, so I have to wash all dishes I dirty in a dishpan on the table, and dump the used water in the backyard.

Not eating breakfasts--- and sometimes skipping other meals--- lowers my burden of dishwashing and kitchen clean up. And the time I used to spend doing breakfast can be spent doing other neglected housecleaning chores.

Now, I will never be a great housekeeper. I'm just satisfied with being better than the people on that 'Hoarders' TV show. But the little-bit-better that I become because of intermittent fasting shows.

Another way fasting can help is that it gives you more energy. That can also contribute to house cleaning. But I must admit that in the last few years I get less of that extra energy than I used to.  When I first started doing Atkins, the energy rush I got when I went into ketosis was like being on drugs.

Now, when I get into ketosis through ketogenic diets or intermittent fasting, I don't get that. I mostly just feel better than the way I feel when I'm eating carbs, which is not a great feeling.

When I have a hard time sticking to my intermittent fasting, cleaning something or doing other household chores is a help. When you get busy, you aren't thinking about food all the time and you notice hunger less. And it helps with food cravings. The more work you do, the less these things will bother you. SO: clean house! It will help you with your fasting and keto plans to become healthier.

Keto Dairy-Free Chocolate Milk for National Chocolate Milk Day

Today is National Chocolate Milk day, as I've just learned from Twitter, and so I thought I should post 'my' keto & dairy-free chocolate milk recipe.

Chocolate Milk (2 servings)

Mix in a 1 quart wide-mouth canning jar, using a stick blender.

1 cup full-fat coconut milk, unsweetened
1 1/2 cups water
72 drops liquid stevia (Sweetleaf sweetdrops) Vanilla flavor is good.
2 Tablespoons unsweetened Cacao powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Put it in your canning jar and run your stick blender half a minute or so. If you can tolerate dairy (as I can) use 1/2 cup of the coconut milk and 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream.

This recipe is adapted from one in Dana Carpender's Fat Fast Cookbook 2. Dana's got some great keto/lowcarb recipe books, buy some!

Keeping yourself motivated on a keto diet

Sometimes the keto diet life is hard. Some days I'd rather be able to go out to a restaurant or fast food for breakfast, or pour myself a bowl of cereal. Some days I'm just not in the mood to cook, and clean up, and cook some more.

I need to stay motivated to stick to the diet. One thing that I have learned helps is each day I read a little from a low-carb diet book. It helps me feel like the diet really will work if I stick to it. And it helps me think of the diet as more than just a set of restrictions that make my life harder.

I started doing this when I first tried the Atkins Diet, years ago after having bought the book 'Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution' at a Goodwill store. I still do it today. I have loads more low-carb diet books to choose from. Like 'Keto Clarity' by Jimmy Moore.

Now we have a new motivator: podcasts! Jimmy Moore has podcasts five days a week to listen to--- they can be found in my blog list in the sidebar.

Some days, like today, I get distracted. I'm not feeling well, I'm behind on doing the laundry and dishes, one of the barn cats is refusing to mother her week-old kittens.... My life is pretty stressed today.

But I listened to a fresh Jimmy Moore podcast, I heated up a mug of bone broth, and I got started. I may not LIKE being on Keto today, but I can handle it. Maybe I'll even zip over to the grocery store for something meaty for my evening meal today.

How gluconeogenesis can be a low-carber's problem

In the original Atkins diet book, unlimited amounts of meat were allowed. And for younger dieters this could be a help. Any time you were hungry you could eat something.

But lots of us have grown up since then. And found that Atkins doesn't work as well for us as it used to. Why? Gluconeogenesis.

Gluco
Neo
Genesis

What is that? It comes from the fact that when you aren't eating sugars any more, and are staying low-carb, your body can make its own sugar out of the protein you are consuming. So if you eat too much protein, that can give you all the problems that come with eating sugar. Because your body is turning it in to sugar.

Jimmy Moore says that a good keto diet is: high in (healthy) fats, moderate in protein, low in carbs. Protein isn't a health food! It is actually healthy fats such as grass-fed butters, coconut oils and olive oils that we should be eating more of. (And scientific research backs up this claim.)

But if you cut back on protein--- eat a smaller steak--- won't you be hungry? Well, you have to make sure you are getting enough fat. You can't do low fat and low carb at the same time, it's not healthy.

Fasting and intermittent fasting are one way to help with gluconeogenesis. I don't have much appetite in the morning anyway. So I do Intermittent Fasting and don't eat in the morning at all. If I don't eat anything for breakfast, my body can't turn the protein I didn't eat into sugar.

Morning is also when Type 2 diabetics like me have the highest blood sugars. So not eating at this time when I'm not hungry anyway helps get those morning numbers down.

And not eating in the morning means that I'm only getting the amount of protein from my lunch and/or dinner, and so that brings down my protein total naturally.

It's kind of sad, though. When I first tried Atkins I was attracted by the fact that I could eat something at any time that I was hungry. But now that I am older and diabetic, life is tougher. I have to say no to eating sometimes, and I have to say no to larger portions. But it's the only way I have found to keep my diabetes problems under control.
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My stuff.
Weight: 197
I did my IF until noon. Ate a small helping of carb foods because I had to go to the store and couldn't resist temptation. At least I kept the cheat smaller than usual.

My keto diet experiences

My first experience with a keto diet was sometime in the 1990s when I picked up a copy of Dr. Atkins' first diet book in a Goodwill store in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

I read the book cover to cover and tried the diet. I was so surprised how easy it was to lose weight! The Atkins diet, at least in the Induction Phase, is ketogenic. Dr. Atkins recommended that you run out and buy ketone test strips and test your urine for ketones. That way you could tell if your body had shifted over into fat-burning mode.

After that point I started purchasing any diet book I could find that was low-carb or ketogenic in nature. I read all the info in the books, especially if they referenced scientific studies. And I tried low-carb recipes from a lot of different books.

I lost some weight on Atkins. But in time I stopped doing it. The reason was that it was just hard to find low-carb food you didn't have to cook from scratch. And I had to give up going out to restaurants. There were no restaurants in my area that had low-carb items. And my family members liked to take me out to eat.

I went back on Atkins at some point. I think I was on Atkins for a full year when my father died. But I had to go off the diet at that time because I was eating out with my mother, or eating at mom's house.

At some point, my mother gave me her old blood sugar meter when she got a new one from her doctor. I tried it and found out I had diabetes. My mom's nurse-practitioner put me on Metformin. Later another drug--- I think Actos--- was added.

I found that my blood sugar was only staying under control when I was ALSO doing low-carb. Since the nurse-practitioner didn't care what my diet was, that was working out. Except I wasn't losing weight much, since I was older, menopausal, and diabetic. I was more concerned with blood sugar numbers than weight at this point.

I got a bad number on a kidney test and so had to go to a kidney doctor. And then I had to apply for Medicaid and I had to get a new kidney doctor and new doctor-substitute. One of my kidney doctors took me off all my drugs saying they caused the problem. So I really had to go low-carb. A kidney doctor messed me up by demanding I go on a government approved diet (DASH diet) that did nothing to address my carbohydrate problems. But when I got worse blood sugar numbers she said I could do what worked for me.

I noticed that the more I stuck to my diet, the better my kidney tests were. My most recent kidney doctor told me that diet had no effect on kidney disease. Since I had recently read a medical journal article that said otherwise, and heard about others, she became my former kidney doctor.

I had been collecting cookbooks by Dana Carpender for some time by then. She came out with a new one with Jimmy Moore as co-author. That's how I learned about Jimmy Moore's health podcasts. And when he came out with The Complete Guide to Fasting with Dr. Jason Fung, a kidney doctor (nephrologist), I had to buy a copy.

I feel that I am getting very well read on the science behind ketogenic diets and behind fasting. But the follow-through is hard. I still live alone, don't have a dishwasher or running water in the kitchen sink, and have to drive to another state for a grocery store with good selection.

And so, this blog. I figure if I become a health blogger I will be more motivated to stick to my keto and fasting plan. And if I can help other people to become informed or inspired, that's a bonus. Since I am a Christian (Catholic flavor) I think helping others is cool. So, if I can help you--- maybe answer a question or something--- I will.

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My personal stuff.
On Sept 23, my weight was 199 pounds. (My all-time high was about 255 pounds.) My blood sugars, particularly in the morning, have been BAD. (Not saying how bad.) My blood sugar this morning was still BAD, but was significantly down from the 300+ blood sugars I have been getting in the morning. I have been doing Intermittent Fasting in the mornings, eating only after 11am. I'm trying to hold off until 12 noon every day, and stop eating after 6pm.

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Some books mentioned in this post.