World's Best Low Carb Cheesecake Lisa C. 5:34 PM

After reading a tirade some comments on my Facebook regarding the sweetener I used in this cheesecake, I feel the need to preface this post by telling you I occasionally use artificial sweeteners with no guilt and no perceivable adverse effects (no headaches, no weight gain, no second head growing from my shoulder). I have lost weight while occasionally eating something sweetened with Sucralose (Splenda). It doesn't affect my blood glucose at all (especially compared to sugar), and that's a great thing to me when I want something sweet, or I am baking for myself and my family for a special occasion. I personally despise the aftertaste of Stevia, and I have gastrointestinal issues if I ingest Erythritol, honey effects me like table sugar, but for ME Sucralose is benign. If you are sensitive to artificial sweeteners, or if you have issues with Sucralose, don't use it! And you find another sweetener works better for you (even sugar), use it! If you find even the thought of sugar or sweeteners or photos of sweet treats spike your blood sugar and make you gain ten pounds, turn back! If you feel the need to lecture me and everyone else on the use of sweeteners I suggest you do it on your own Facebook or start your own blog. Making blanket statements about *anything* is not wise, nor is it intellectually honest, regardless of where or whom you heard it from that sweeteners are the devil. As with anything about low carb eating, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). But for those of you who, like myself, can tolerate some sugar substitutes and low carb sweet treats every now and then, have I got something special for you...

The one piece I hid so I could have it for lunch at work yesterday. Yum!

I LOVE cheesecake! I had a recipe I had been using for a while, but after making it the last few times I decided I could probably find a better low carb recipe, or I could convert a good cheesecake recipe to low carb myself. After scouring the Internets and coming up empty on what I thought would be a good low carb recipe for cheesecake, I stumbled upon a full sugar version that sounded wonderful:  
Perfect Cheesecake on Simply Recipes.
I used this recipe to make a cheesecake for the holidays, substituting bulk Sucralose for the sugar and my own almond flour crust for the graham cracker crust. It got rave reviews from family and friends. It IS a perfect cheesecake, so creamy, rich and delicious! Its high fat content fits in nicely with my low carb, ketogenic way of living, too!

If you've ever been intimidated by the prospect of making your own cheesecake from scratch, fear not. As long as you follow the directions it's really pretty easy, and no more time consuming than anything else from scratch. You can do it! I know you can! And the payoff is delicious.

My pointers after having made this are these:

1. After reading a comment in the recipe post someone mentioned using a crock pot liner instead of foil to keep the water out of the springform pan. I happened to have some, so I tried it and it worked like a charm!

2. I made the sour cream icing from the recipe (with Sucralose instead of powdered sugar) and didn't like it. I ended up scraping it off the piece(s) I had, as did all but one other person who had some. I intend to leave it off entirely the next time I make this.

3. I didn't have a pan big enough to do a water bath, so I picked up an aluminum roast pan at the grocery. That also worked great!

4. I do have a Kitchenaid stand mixer, but opted not to drag it out of the pantry and used a hand mixer instead. It worked just fine.

My crust recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

1 ½ C blanched almond flour

4 T butter, melted

4 t Sucralose (or other preferred sweetener)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375° F.
2. Combine almond flour and sweetener.
3. Mix in melted butter and press into bottom of springform pan.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

Proceed with the recipe for the cheesecake batter from the linked site, substituting the sweetener of your choice for sugar.

Enjoy!

 

Keto-adaptation: When Ketosis is Not Enough Lisa C. 9:36 AM

After close to 7 years of low carb living (with some time off the wagon for bad behaviour), I arrived at a point of some fat gain through carb creep and justifying it by the fact I have a physically strenuous day job. The Primal "80/20 Rule" can be a good one, but easily abused when one can justify things like eating a banana several times a week because, "well, I'm still under 100 carbs today (so much better than a SAD diet!), maintaining weight, 80/20 rule!" These little divergences accumulate and before you know it you're not in ketosis anymore. So that's my deal, but having the desire to get back on track and be better than ever before, physically and mentally, I needed to change my ways. Being in plain old ketosis is awesome and has so many benefits, but with my goals it's not quite enough.

In a little more than 10 months I will have lived on this earth for half a century. I don't know where the time has gone, and I certainly don't feel nearly 50, but there it is. My goal, by the time I hit 50, is to be more lean, and to be as ripped as I possibly can. Basically, to be in the best shape I have ever been in my life. This last month I've been eating a strict Ketogenic diet. The macro ratios I've worked out have me under 20 carbs a day, but most days I'm at zero or under 5. (Work out your macros here: Keto Calculator). Very high fat meals, moderate to low protein, and very low carbohydrates have left me without much of an appetite most of the time. I eat, and I'm satisfied quickly. I have been logging my food intake daily to make sure I am hitting my macros on MyFitnessPal. It is a very good site for tracking, and user written scripts allow for tracking of net carbs. So far I've gone down two pants sizes. I don't own a scale, I don't really care about weight as it doesn't tell the whole story, but this is where I started:

My totally TMI "before" pic.
Soft-ish and curvy, hoping to turn it into harder and ripped.
Can it be done close to age 50?

I had considered doing a Cyclical Ketogenic diet while doing Tabata/HIIT, but as sensitive to carbs as I seem to be, I'm sticking with Keto all the way for now to see how that goes. According to some, carb cycling is not necessary as long as one is Keto-adapted.

Ketosis and Keto-adaptation: What's The Difference?

Ketosis is the state of the body where one is burning fat for energy. It can be achieved through eating a low carbohydrate diet. If one is overweight the obvious benefit is your body starts using your excess fat stores as fuel, even if one does no exercise to at all. Everyone is different, and the level of carbohydrate restriction varies from person to person in achieving ketosis, which is typically measured using Ketostix.

Keto-adaptation, also referred to as Nutritional Ketosis, is also a state of ketosis, but by sustaining a state of strict ketosis over a prolonged period of time (very high fat, low to moderate protein, very low carb) the body not only shifts its fuel source to fat burning, it becomes optimized to use ketones as fuel and "skeletal muscle can directly and readily burn fatty acids as a primary fuel."  The length of time it takes to achieve Keto-adaptation will vary from person to person, some taking as little as three weeks, others a month or more. The key thing that happens in the body in ramping up to Keto-adaptation is the formation of new and more abundant Mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells. Obviously this process takes time. Achieving keto adaptation can be measured with a blood ketone testing meter, and much less reliably with Ketostix. The sweet spot on the meter reading will be between 1.5 – 3 mmol/L for optimal weight loss and performance. Becoming Keto-adapted can benefit those who are simply trying to lose weight, and those who wish to maximize their results from intense workouts.

If you've hit a barrier or stall in your weight loss or workout, try this. It may be just what you've been looking for to break a stall or help with your physical performance. It can't hurt. Heck, even professional athletes are jumping on board, with fabulous results.

I will be updating about my progress as time goes on, and sharing any tweaks, triumphs or troubles along the way. Let me know if you have any questions, and if I don't know the answer I will direct you to someone who does, as best as I am able. There is a lot of good information on the Internet about all of this, along with some bad. Sometimes it's hard to suss out the bad from good, but those who have accomplished their goals via this lifestyle will always have my respect and my ear. If you want to try this yourself, a good place for information and support is the Keto forum on Reddit, along with the Ketogains forum there. Stay tuned...