Two Week No Carb Challenge – My Experience – Q&A

That is my two-week no-carb challenge complete! 6^th Feb. – 20^th Feb. 2020. Thank goodness it´s over! You might be wondering why I did this to myself, how I felt during the two weeks, what the “results” were and what I have learned from this experience.

This is a very long post, so feel free to skip to a section that interests by clicking on one of the following links:
1. Why did I do this two-week no-carb challenge?
2. What were the main struggles of this diet?
3. What foods did I miss the most?
4. What food did I enjoy eating on this diet?
5. Overall thoughts on food during the challenge (convenience, cost, health).
6. What were the results of this challenge?
7. What have I learned from my two-week no-carb challenge?
8. Why I won´t be continuing a low-carb diet.

*Disclaimer* I am NOT a doctor or health care professional. Everything outlined above is my own opinion, based on my own experiences with this diet!

1. Why did I do this two-week no-carb challenge?

Why other people might do it:

Two weeks without carbs. That means no bread or pasta, grains, pulses, sweets, cakes and many fruits and vegetables! What does that leave you with? I asked myself the same thing!

A diet containing little to no carbs, also known as the keto (ketogenic) diet, has become increasingly popular over the last few years. This diet is based on eating mostly fat, a little protein and hardly any carbohydrates. A lot of people claim that it helped them with weight-loss and has improved their mood and wellbeing.

Low-carb vs. Keto

There is a slight difference between a low-carb diet and a ketogenic diet. I probably never really entered “ketosis”, because for that you are meant to be getting 75% of your calories from fat, 20% from protein and 5% from carbs. My calorie intake over the last few weeks was more about 65-70% fat, 25% protein and 10% carbohydrates. And I wasn´t eating anything anyone would consider “carby”! No pasta, bread, potatoes etc. The 10% carbs were coming from things like onions or tomatoes!  But I just couldn´t live without never adding any of those to my meals!

Why I did it:

Those are not the reasons why I set myself my two-week no-carb challenge. My main reason to do this, was that I realised I was eating almost just carbs. It wasn´t that I was eating unhealthily, I tend to cook very healthy meals and watch what I am eating.
But it´s almost always a carbohydrate (rice, pasta, bulgur, etc.) with loads of vegetables. I was consuming hardly any healthy fats and had cut back my meat, and therefore protein intake, substantially.
In the evening, I also ALWAYS have a little snack with my cup of tea. This might be some fruit or chocolate, or some cake/biscuits I have baked. And over Christmas and January, I was baking a lot and eating a lot of cake…

So, I decided it was time to cut the sugar!

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This is an example of what a typical day would look like for me in terms of food:

Breakfast: Oats, Granola, Yoghurt, Banana and Fresh Fruit, Overnight Oats or Porridge

Lunch: Homemade Sourdough Bread as a sandwich or with some homemade soup

Dinner: A pasta dish (e.g. creamy hummus linguine) or rice dish (Risotto, Vegetable stir-fry)

After-dinner snack: Chocolate/Biscuit/Slice of Cake/Ice Cream/Fruit

So, a high-carb breakfast (oats, banana and sugary granola), lunch (bread and starchy soup (e.g. vegetables, lentils)), dinner (pasta, rice, etc.) and carbohydrate-laden dessert.

Now, by no means am I saying that carbohydrates are bad, but I felt like maybe it was a bit excessive and I should try to include more calories from the two other major food groups: protein and fat.

So I said to myself: “Let´s try this. Go straight to the extreme, cut out (almost) all carbs (it´s impossible to cut them out completely I discovered, see below) and do it for two weeks!” To me, two weeks seemed doable.

2. What were the struggles of this no-carb challenge?

I can already see people reading this thinking “two weeks isn’t enough”, “You didn’t reduce carbs properly”, “You weren´t doing real keto” etc. My aim wasn´t to fully reach ketosis (and I probably didn´t) and I feel like I couldn´t have reduced my carb intake any more than I did. Otherwise, I couldn´t even have had some vegetables to fill me up. But I did cut out all of the “real” carbs such as bread, grains, etc.

I struggled quite a bit during these two weeks. Every time I thought my body was getting used to it, I had another crash. I felt lethargic and had no energy and quite often felt really dizzy. My brain felt a bit “foggy” and I found it hard to concentrate.

I also noticed my energy levels were low when it came to working out. Often, I couldn´t cope with the usual intensity of my morning workouts and either skipped them completely or chose a much easier, lower impact one. Some days, I even struggled just doing my normal walk to Foresterhill (about 30 minutes each way), which I do every day! And that wasn´t great.

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3. What foods did I miss the most?

Where do I begin?!? I really missed my morning oat and granola breakfasts, as well as being able to bake bread and make sandwiches for packed lunches.
I really missed fruit, of which I tend to eat quite a lot: a banana and blueberries with my breakfast, some grapes or an apple with my lunch, tangerines as an after-dinner snack…

The same goes for vegetables. That was something I thought would not be a problem at all on this diet, but turns out, that a lot of the vegetables I love to eat have quite a high net carb content: tomatoes, even onions (!!!), carrots and of course things like peas, sweet potatoes, parsnips, etc… In fact, most things I assumed might be fine, turned out to contain “hidden carbs” – so that was a real bummer. Check the food labels, guys, before you challenge yourself to two weeks of no carbs….(although don’t!).

Most of all, I missed a little “indulgence” with my cup of tea in the evening. I know it´s a bad habit, but I just love a piece of chocolate or a biscuit at night. Plus, if you couldn´t yet tell from this blog, I absolutely LOVE baking. I really missed just the actual action of baking, and even when I baked, it was “torture”  because I couldn´t taste anything I had made!!!

4. What foods did I enjoy on this low-carb diet?

The good thing was, that I did manage to find a few recipes over the last few weeks that I really liked eating. A yummy side-dish I had with meat or a salmon fillet, was leek and spinach, mixed with some feta and cream cheese. That was really good! One of the biggest “revelations” for me was cauliflower rice! I never liked it in the past, but think it is an absolute winner now! Especially, as you can buy it frozen, in portion-sized, microwavable bags from Morrisons! I will be buying that a lot in the future!

I have written up and posted the other recipes that I made over the last two weeks, that I will definitely be making again, so go check them out by clicking on the links below:

• Mixed Nut Granola
• Sugar-free Breakfast Bowl
• Omelette “Wrap” with Avocado and Smoked Salmon
• Roasted Cauliflower and Bacon Soup
• Creamy Chicken and Coconut Curry with Cauliflower Rice

5. Overall thoughts on food during my two-week no-carb challenge.

Day-to-day life – a real inconvenience!

Mostly, being on a low-carb diet is extremely inconvenient. You can NEVER be spontaneous and really need to plan every one of your meals all the time. You cannot eat out, or grab a quick snack on the go. No quick meal deal from Tesco´s or a chocolate bar from the vending machine if you are feeling peckish when you are out and about. You CANNOT EVEN have a BANANA!

It´s also an “unsociable” diet. Because you can´t really go out to lunch/dinner with your friends (I had to postpone a few events even) because everything has carbs in it! Even if you order a salad it would probably come with a dressing high in sugar or something. It´s impossible! Another big one for me, when friends bring in homemade cakes or similar for everyone to try and you have to say no – argh – so annoying.

No snacking…😥

Generally speaking, it also means snacking is very difficult unless you just want to eat avocados or almonds all the time (which is pretty much what I ended up doing… I really often had a handful of my Mixed Nut Granola). I know, some people might say that not being able to snack is a good thing. But sometimes, I just NEED something in the afternoon to me you through the rest of the day, or a little something when I´m watching TV at night – and this diet was not good for that.

The Cost!

Finally, this diet for me was EXPENSIVE. As a student, I don´t want to be spending loads of money on food. Hence why I buy things like pasta, pulses/legumes and vegetables. I know, I had things like salmon and beef over the last two weeks, but that´s just because I wanted something different! And even chicken or turkey, as well as cheese can be quite expensive. So not a very budget-friendly diet I must say…

Health

This is the thing I disliked most about this diet – the way it made me feel. Throughout the two weeks, I felt extremely weak and lethargic. I got tired really easy, felt dizzy A LOT, and even though I had eaten a big dinner, towards the end of the two weeks I felt really hungry at night.

The Recipes:

COOKING

As I mentioned above, there were a few things that I made that I really enjoyed and will be making again in the future. However, with many things I made, I really disliked the high-fat content. One example I can think of is when I made “lasagne” (courgettes instead of pasta). I used 20% fat beef mince, plus cheese and the whole meal was just DROWNING IN FAT. It was a bit sickly, to be honest. I definitely know why I would only ever buy beef mince with 5%, and I also much prefer the low-fat yoghurt to the Greek yoghurt I ate during my two-week no-carb challenge.

BAKING

I also tried some “baking” during this time (because I felt so deprived of it) but the results were pretty horrible. “Keto bagels” made with mainly mozzarella cheese – pretty greasy and tough. A “Keto Chocolate Bread” made with grated courgettes – so disgusting I couldn´t even force myself to eat it and it went straight into the bin. Same with some “Coconut Flour Naan Breads” I tried to make. Absolutely H-O-R-R-E-N-D-O-U-S.
I still have coconut flour left from these attempts, so please, let me know in the comments below if you have any good recipes that I could use it for (don´t have to be keto!).

6. What were the “results”?

This is probably what a lot of people are interested in – did I lose any weight? The answer is yes, and quite a lot actually, seeing that I only did the challenge for two weeks. I do, however, do a lot of exercise every day so that might have accelerated the process, too.

In the two weeks, I lost 1.8kg and a few centimetres all around. 2 cm from my hips, 1.5 cm from my waist and a little on my thighs.

Once I start eating carbohydrates again and re-fill all my glycogen stores (😅), I don´t know how long that weight will stay off. Although it is probably not the healthiest way to lose weight, perhaps if you are wanting to lose weight quickly, for example ahead of a big event/party, then a few weeks of this low-carb diet could help you with that. Otherwise, for long-term weight loss, there are probably better and healthier ways of doing it.

I had hoped that my skin would improve, especially the spots that appear when I eat a lot of sugar, but no real success in that area if I´m honest.

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7. What have I learned from my two-week no-carb challenge?

So, what have I learned from this whole experience? Probably that I don´t think it´s a great idea to cut out carbs 😂!

Honestly though, I really don´t think cutting out an entire food group is a healthy option in the long-run. The brain´s main source of energy is glucose, and I definitely felt the effects of depriving myself of it. That doesn´t mean though that I think I should, therefore, be eating insane amounts of sugar/carbs all the time, but everything in moderation.

I do think that previously I have been basing my meals largely around carbohydrates and neglected the other two food groups, i.e. protein and fat, too much. These two weeks have taught me, that it is possible to have yummy food, whilst reducing the amount of carbs and focusing on protein and fat instead.

My aim for the future, therefore, is to balance the three food groups more when it comes to eating. I think the easiest way for me to do so, is to replace some of my high-carb breakfasts or dinners with a lower-carb option at times. I don´t think that will be a problem, as I really enjoyed the egg-based breakfasts I ate (e.g. the Omelette “Wrap”) and also some of the dinners. Finding cauliflower rice as a substitute for rice was a fantastic discovery and will feature in my meals more often now!

8. Why I won´t be continuing a low-carb diet.

It´s probably clear to you from what I have outlined above, that I will not be continuing a low-carb diet.

For one, because it made me feel terrible. The dizziness, the lethargy, the nausea – I don´t need that! I might have got over that eventually, but I just don´t think that there are long-term benefits to this diet.

Also, if you haven´t yet noticed from my blog, I LOVE my food. My favourite time of the day is when I am cooking and more so BAKING. That, for me personally, was one of the biggest struggles during this challenge. I felt like I couldn´t make a lot of the food I love and I just missed even the actual action/activity of baking, let alone the eating. For that reason alone there is absolutely no way a low-carb/keto diet could be for me in the long run!

I really hope you enjoyed this post and it has answered any questions you might have had about completing a two-week no-carb challenge. If you want to see all the meals I had during my challenge, check out my Facebook page.
If you have any more questions, please leave a comment below!