Life after Carbs {Low Carb Peanut Butter Cookies}

I survived week one following the South Beach eating plan without much difficulty.  I even survived skipping my traditional Mother’s Day scone.  My husband is even in on the action.  I learned a few things in the process…

Salads require a lot of chewing.
Chewing takes time.
Slower eating puts made me focus on the meal.
A slow meal with focus resulted in me being satisfied while eating less.
All of the above applies to chicken and steak too (lean proteins of choice).
Well really applies to most real whole foods.

also…

Assigning a purpose to my food changed my outlook.
Eating with a purpose made me more aware of how each bite of food was contributing.
I also took more notice of hunger levels and cravings.
With the benefit being the focus, I made better food choices .

Nothing earth shattering in the fact that it takes a lot (relatively speaking) of time and effort to stuff yourself with vegetables and lean proteins, last week just made me more aware of it.  Being satisfied with less and making better food choices lead to great success in the first week.  Success in the form of sticking to it and feeling more even.  Really, like any diet, it just comes down to awareness.  Awareness of calorie in-take, portion size, nutrition, etc… is the key to any successful eating plan.  Changing things up helps too.

I also learned that while this new eating routine is great at keeping my blood sugar stable it results in some wicked headaches.  Hopefully those will subside after this initial phase of carb restriction.  Also, I miss fruit.  And diet makes me crave dessert when I would not normally give it second thought.  It’s all about wanting what you can’t have I suppose.  While I did not invest too much time creative meals the first week, I knew Mother’s Day called for some research so I could indulge a bit.

The internet is such a wonderful thing.  First my dog jumped on my laptop and turned the display image sideways.  Took a simple Google search to fix that problem, who knew that was a feature of my laptop.  Second I found this low carb peanut butter cookie recipe.

The recipe is actually similar to the recipe my daughter taught me for Peanut Butter Blossoms, minus the Kisses of course.  The recipe calls for Splenda in place of the sugar.  I also used the brown sugar Splenda.

I am not a huge fan of using artificial sweeteners.  I mean it took my about six months to ween myself out of the little yellow packet in my coffee everyday.  Besides I figure it the case of this cookie recipe it would leave a bad after taste.

I am happy to report I did not eat that whole plate of cookies.  But I sure as hell wanted to!  No aftertaste that I could detect, these tasted like the real deal.  So the most important thing I learned this week, there is life after carbs <insert choir of angels>.