And if you eat a protein-laden snickers with a zero-calorie diet coke, then -- wait. That is part of the 'dinner plan' that led to my weighing 500 pounds. OK, maybe that is not the best idea.

Sophie25,
I'm probably going to get ripped on as bad as you, but I eat cereal about 2 or 3 times a week for breakfast. I keep a container that is a mix of Hi-Lo brand Vanilla Almond, Wheaties, and plain Cheerios. I eat exactly a 1 1/2 cup portion with 3/4 cup of Calorie Countdown Dairy Product (3 net carbs per cup).

Sorry to all the purists, but I too LIKE cereal, and cannot make myself eat eggs EVERYDAY. If I have this for breakfast, I make sure to eat a few less carbs the rest of the day.

I am also into ongoing weightloss phase and only have about 10 pounds left to lose, so I am eating around 40-50 carbs a day.

Without cereal, you would eat eggs every day??

You need some lowcarb cookbooks. Unless it's some religion that believes there are only two allowed foods that can be eaten prior to 11:00 AM or something. :-)

I do know that I can eat things other than cereal and eggs for breakfast. Sometimes I cook a pound of bacon and snack on it throughout the day. The point I was trying to make is that some people, me included, REALLY like cereal. Giving up Wheaties was pretty tough for me. I like cold cereal in the morning, and it doesn't give me cravings and I'm not hungry earlier for lunch or anything from eating it.

I only recently added more carbs and this one of those foods that I chose to add.

I think it's nice to see a positive example among all the others not-so-positive. This sounds like just the facts about cereal when it does work for someone.

However I would have all kinds of bad reactions to that cereal routine. Cravings and displacing other food for me. Plus I am making food habits beyond weight loss. Less processed food, and "dairy product" just reminds me of fat free cheese (shudder).

Hey no name calling. OP asked what we thought ...

I think when a person has been low carb successfully for quite some time, and they are gradually adding back some carbs, and they try Thing X in small quantity and that works ok for them, then that is a good example.

For me and others I have encountered however, it was our lifetime addiction to these base food ingredients that was part of being fat, and it was making any excuse to try and have them that often wiped out eating on-plan altogether when our body reacted to our eating them.

For example, when my daughter was smaller and had milk at breakfast, there might be 1 - 2 Tablespoons of milk left in her little carton at breakfast or sometimes cereal bowl. Not enough to matter carb-wise. Alternatively sometimes it was a single bite of toast. I had a horrible time not screwing-up on lowcarb, often craved carbs and thought of food all day, it was just such a bloody CHORE, this eating plan. Then I discovered that if I did not ingest even that only-a-mouthful of milk from her leftovers, or that single bite of bread, and instead had protein+fat at breakfast, the difference was dramatic. I didn't think about food all day. I was full all day. I didn't care about carbs.

It took a long time before it finally sunk into me that people who are 30# overweight may not have substantial food reaction issues, but people seriously overweight definitely usually do; that is literally often part of what contributes to serious obesity to begin with.

For those people, who I might add are often the majority of new lowcarbers, telling them to go ahead and make their few carbs out of grains/sugars for breakfast will (a) give them the excuse to stay on the addict grains-are-drugs hamster wheel that has already made them fat, and (b) as a result often make their successfully lowcarbing vastly less likely, which is rather a life and death issue at much more than 50# overweight, depending on other factors.

But it's true -- some people are not "visibly affected" by using their few carbs for sugars in the morning. Or, they might be able to eat one kind of grain (high fiber irish oats) and be ok (I can do that) but eat any other (esp. wheat) and be doomed, or milk vs. cream can make the difference, everyone is an individual.

As a general policy I find that people relatively new to lowcarb I give different advice than those longer term successful with it, and those with 20-30# to lose different than those with 70#+. This may not always seem 'fair' but it's based on my observation that the fatter you start, the more food ingredients are probably one of the hidden problems in your life.

Best,
PJ

Cereal is not healthy.... if your going to eat cereal because you like it cold, eat fruit at least your getting something good for you inside you.....
I see you say 30 carbs, how about looking below all that and read the one that say other carbs added.. which is always high.
So its much higher than you read..

Someone who has 25 pounds to lose most likely has very different metabolism issues than someone who has 80 pounds to lose. It's very likely you haven't destroyed your metabolism, but people have more than 50 pounds to lose often have very different issues regarding this.

That doesn't make cereal healthy in any way. Sure it tastes good; sure it has interesting packaging. Does it spike people's insulin. Yep, it sure does.

I used to eat cereal daily so it was hard to give up, it took me over a year, but I substituted one of my own when I had a craving. Its made with 2 Tbs wheat bran, 2 Tbs flax, 2 TBS Uncle Sam low-GI cereal and 1Tbs wheat germ. It's like eating a small bowl of grape nuts with half&half or cream w/splenda. I never tried adding fruit to it.

No, no, no, never, don't do it, no.

Total is great, though. My friends used to buy it just for the Amtrak coupons and I ate it all up.

More to follow...

I really loved cereal all my life and couldn't imagine breakfast without it. It's a funny thing that I don't miss it at all now, but for me it was an addiction. Once I got over the withdrawal, it was no problem.

I never did get bored of eggs for breakfast, but I don't do it anymore. I don't eat breakfast at all now.

I'll always remember this commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9eC9TJ0e84

To this day, I wonder: Why not? What's the difference from having a plate of cookies and a multivitamin?

Here's a good cereal:

1/4 cup walnut halves
1/4 cup fresh blueberries
Splash of Native Forest brand organic light coconut milk.

It's good!

You can also have berries topped with your own 'toasted' almond slices. Buy plain almond slices with the skins on and 'toast' them gently in a frying pan on medium-high heat until they turn golden brown. Watch them carefully though, as it only takes about a minute, tops - to 'toast' your own almond slices.

I haven't tried this one myself, but after reading about all these people enjoying full-fat plain Greek yogurt, I thought that making your own LC yogurt and berry 'parfait' sounded good. Layer the yogurt in a glass or cup, with some home-frozen berries and toasted nuts. I mentioned the idea to a friend of mine and she said it was pretty good. (just that I don't eat dairy, so can't vouch for the taste myself).

Anyway - just throwing out a few 'non-egg' breakfast ideas and other alternatives for cereal.

You are lucky that you didn't get bored of eggs. I do NOT like eggs. I eat them simply because they are a big part of this eating style.

I recently bought some low carb pancake mix which is really good, so I am going to make up a bunch of these to freeze and microwave in the mornings with sugar free syrup as an alternative to eggs, and my cereal. I am still going to eat my cereal mix a few days a week.

Am I the only one who sees the glaring contradiction between these two sentences? Look, if it's tough to give it up, then you have cravings. That's what a craving is.

Nowthen, we've all heard the line "It's really up to you what you eat", and this is quite true. But it's one thing to say to a person "I'm not going to tell you what to eat", but if you come onto a low carb board and ask for advice then you are going to get the truth. And that is that breakfast cereals cause all manner of disease as well as weight gain. The fiber-containing ones are even worse. And I will not recommend them to the OP just because somebody here says "but I enjoy them!".