Try these easy, gluten-free and low-carb substitutes – almond meal, paleo seed bread, konjac, natural low-carb sweetener, plus ways with cauliflower that are almost too good to be true.

Going low-carb can be an effective diet strategy for shedding excess fat and keeping it off – apart from multiple other benefits that I will get to in future posts.

Here’s how I used easy comfort food substitutes to help Roy lose 35kg – and they certainly worked for him! An amazingly effective tool in lifestyle and body transformation, they can be useful for anyone practising keto, or simply cutting back on carbs for blood glucose control, metabolic flexibility or general health, wellness and longevity.

How not to fall off the low-carb wagon

Howewer, there are limits to how long one can go without cake, toast, pasta and a proper G&T. That’s the main reason for falling off the low-carb wagon, and for the weight coming back. And if the weight comes back, what was the point of  the losing it in the first place?

So, three cheers for almond meal (instead of flour), konjac (instead of pasta), paleo seed bread (for toast) and Nexba sugar-free tonic!

The first few days, weeks or months of a low-carb weight-loss plan tend to be easy. You’re still full of virtuous intent, and it’s all a bit of a novelty. You’ve stocked the fridge with salads and veggies, you’re dutifully sipping green tea all day long, and everyone – especially yourself – is impressed by your heroic self-control. What’s more, the bathroom scales make gratifying noises. Never mind that what’s coming off is mainly water-weight.

That’s how it was for us, too. Then we started to miss certain things: the occasional cookie or cake with our coffee. For me, a G&T on Friday night – and I don’t like the taste of sugar-free tonics, or the idea of the artificial sweeteners in them. Fettucine under Bolognese sauce, or in a wok-fried prawn recipe. Bread to toast and spread with the Anchovette fish paste that most South Africans love so much – or butter, peanut butter, tahini, Marmite/Bovril/Vegemite: whatever your personal poison may be.

I won’t pretend there’s a substitute out there for everyone’s favourite carbs. If croissants are your poison, for example, I’m afraid you’re on your own; and the same goes for chips, aka potato fries. Sob.

You might ask: How about the occasional weekend treat of oven-roasted skin-on potatoes drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with Maldon salt, rosemary and cracked pepper? Reality check: it may be relatively nutritious, but it’s not low-carb. Neither are sweet potatoes.

So, if you’ve resisted nipping out to the local chippie and are still with me, I’ll crack on with just five incredibly useful low-carb substitutes:

#1 Almond Meal

Almond meal is a terrific low-carb flour substitute when you’re craving cookies, brownies or carrot cake.

I occasionally make a delicious and totally grain-free carrot cake that I cut up into modest portions and freeze for when those cravings strike.

Fortunately, the neighbours – son Carl and daughter-in-law Carrie – have one of those pricey Thermomix machines that are capable of grinding/milling whole almonds finely enough to use for this purpose.

Unlike a Victorian sponge, say, carrot cake is incredibly forgiving when it comes to swapping ingredients according to what’s in your pantry or fridge, and even getting creative with temperatures and baking times.

It can be topped with  Carrie’s dairy-free cashew cream icing, which I virtuously made a couple of times. (Here’s another good option, this one from Minimalist Baker.)

Or – if I can find a suitable excuse such as a birthday – I might go crazy with the wickedly easy but definitely neither low-carb nor sugar-freee Philly ready-made cake icing (sold in WA at Farmer Jack’s, and possibly other supermarkets too).

An ideal compromise might be a frosting composed of Philly cream cheese and some sort of low-carb sugar substitute. (I won’t link any recipes here, as they’re easy enough to search.) I’ve got a packet of Natvia icing sugar ready and waiting in my little pantry.

Low-carb blueberry muffin recipe

For everyday treats, I thought individual muffins would be a good idea: they’re easy to freeze and then thaw as you need them. So I bought a couple of muffin tins and found an easy recipe that doesn’t require an electric mixer. A mixing bowl and a wooden spoon do the trick.

The ingredients? – 2 cups almond meal, 2 tsps baking powder, ½ cup Natvia baking sweetener, 4 eggs, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla powder, 1/2 cup coconut oil, any sort of milk, enough to achieve a thick but not too-thick batter, and a cup of frozen blueberries to fold in before baking at 180 degrees Centigrade for 20 minutes or until golden and springy to the touch.

Next on my To Bake List? Carrot cake muffins topped with cream cheese frosting sweetened with Natvia icing sugar!

#2 Konjac noodles

Virtually calorie-free* – and of course gluten-free – yet packed with gut-microbiome-feeding fibre, these nutritious noodles are made from the corm (an underground stem) of the konjac plant, or elephant yam. It grows in various parts of Asia, and has long been a staple of Chinese and Japanese cuisines.

The fettucine-style option is my favourite, though there’s also a spaghetti, a fine noodle and even a rice-shaped version. It’s great stirred into a Bolognese sauce, or tossed into any sort of stir-fry. They cost about A$4 a packet here.

*That’s right – calorie-free! Or at 5 calories per serving, so close to being calorie-free as to make no difference.

#3 Paleo bread

Referring to our pre-agricultural forebears, Paleo implies grain free – and therefore gluten-free, which works for me. I’ve baked a couple of almond-meal-based loaves, and they were delicious; the same goes for corn-based bread, which tends to be higher-carb.

But baking can be time-consuming, and not particularly cost-effective when you’re forking out for the various low-carb and gluten-free ingredients. Fortunately, our local Farmer Jack’s supermarket sells a range of Venerdi loaves imported from New Zealand, which includes a fabulous Paleo Super-seeded one. It toasts beautifully!

Unusually, this loaf contains more seeds than nuts: it’s 25% sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, linseed and poppy seeds; plus free-range egg, tapioca starch, almond meal, coconut oil, honey, coconut flour, cider vinegar, guar gum, yeast and salt. It works out at about a dollar a small slice, and it’s well worth it.

But their stocks tend to run out, so it’s not always available. Yesterday, luckily, I found two Venerdi Organic Sourdough loaves on Farmer Jack’s shelves and triumphantly snapped them up. They turned out to have an even higher proportion of seeds, over 50%! – and are also gluten-free, while delivering only around 5g of carbs per slice.

Unlike the Paleo Super-seeded loaves, however, they sadly come unsliced. And as I am hopeless at slicing a loaf properly – it always ends up as a wasteful wedge – that job falls to Roy.

Then I loosely bagg the slices in Ziplocs and pop them into the freezer, ready for when nothing but toast will do.

#4 Natvia 100% Natural Sweetener

Whether for baking low-carb brownies, muffins or carrot cake – or just adding a spoonful to a cup of hot cacao, this sugar substitute does the trick for me.

Protein bliss-ball recipe

I also use it in my protein “bliss ball” recipe, along with grass-fed whey protein isolate, organic cacao, ground flaxseed, peanut butter and/or tahini and coconut oil: all blended up, shaped into lumps, rolled in a lot of dessicated coconut and kept in the freezer for emergencies.

I freely admit to total failure in my attempts to wean Roy off his two Equals per cuppa whatever. He’s been using the stuff for decades. (Advertised as Australia’s favourite sweetener, Equal is aspartame-based, and aspartame has been linked with cognitive problems, headaches and even brain tumours. Click on Dr Mercola to see what he has to say about it.)

For a G&T, Nexba – unfortunately only in Australia (but expanding globally, initially to the UK and South Korea)- makes two tonic waters: Nexba Classic Sugar-free Tonic Water (1L), plus a lime, cucumber and mint version that pairs perfectly with Hendrick’s Gin. I mention it here because the sweetener they use is the same palatable mix of erythritol and stevia that works for me in my kitchen.

#5 Cauliflower

Bangers and mash? Substitute the potato mash with cauli-mash, dolloped with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. Roy was a die-hard potato-face, but after a couple of years of cauli-mash he says he doesn’t miss the real thing. And I genuinely prefer it – I find it easier to digest.

Cauli-rice is another good option. I haven’t got around to incorporating it into our meals, partly because Roy was never into rice (except rice pudding – what a Pom!), and we easily got used to having curry without rice. (Sometimes I serve my veg curry on a pile of steamed cabbage, maybe tossed in a bit of grass-fed ghee.)

But we recently ordered nasi goreng made with cauli-rice at Health Freaks Café at our local mega-mall, Lakeside Joondalup. It included charred corn, carrot, peas, red and white cabbage, capsicum, fresh chilli, coriander, soy sauce and crispy shallots, and came topped with a fried egg. It was great!

And all for a total of just 364 calories, plus another 100 or so for the extra fried egg we added on for more protein.

I suppose it’s a good thing that they list the calorie content of menu items here, as they do at the Jamaica Blue cafés – but it makes choosing something a whole lot more difficult. Nearly 2,000 kJ for a slice of banana bread? That’s 500 calories! No, thank you.

These are just a few ideas for carb-substitutions – and the processed, packaged stuff represents only a small part of our diet. Most of what we eat is real and minimally processed food.

Next up? Something on the fascinating theme of biohacking!