Make Easter Eggs the Center of your Low-Carb Holiday

Make your low-carb Easter holiday fun and enjoyable
by letting Easter Eggs take center stage!

The Easter holiday can be a challenge with its Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies, and marshmallow rabbits. But for low-carb dieters, it doesn't have to be.

Want to know the solution?

Why not make Easter eggs the center of your focus instead of Easter baskets filled with nutrient-depleted off-plan foods!

In this post, I'm going to give you dozens of new ideas for decorating Easter eggs, so you can let your creativity really shine through this year!

When you choose to live a low-carb lifestyle, you have to give up many holiday traditions that focus on food

This is because sugar restriction isn't something you do temporarily. When you switch to low-carb living, sugar restriction is for life.

If you're a social bunny, however, this lifestyle change can be problematic, especially at Easter time.

Luckily, an Easter dinner can easily be adapted to fit your carbohydrate tolerance, regardless of where you are in your low-carb journey, but if you ask any child what the most important aspect of the Easter holiday is, they’ll probably tell you:

An Easter basket filled with candy!

Jelly beans, chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs often take center stage throughout the Easter holidays.

However, there is one strong holiday tradition attached to Easter that the low carber does NOT have to give up:

It's the: Incredible, Edible Egg!

I realized this while browsing through the low-carb videos over at YouTube, looking for an Atkins Success Story.

I wanted a video with distinct “before” and “after” pictures that I could display at the bottom of an article I’d written for Info Barrel about Atkins Induction. While I was doing that, I ran into a short video that spotlighted Dr. Westman and his take on low-carb foods.

Most of what he said was basic and familiar, but he did say something that caught my attention:

"In order for a low-carb diet to be successful, we have to find foods to eat that are more tasty than the foods we were eating before . . ."

What Makes a Low-Carb Diet Sustainable?

Unlike typical low-calorie diets, which continue to predominantly use glucose for fuel, carbohydrate restriction requires you to continue using the alternative metabolic pathway, even after you reach maintenance.

If you don't continue to restrict sugar and other high-glucose foods, you'll quite likely regain the weight back.

Some people can add back a few more carbohydrates than what they were eating during the weight-loss phase. I'm definitely not suggesting that you can't.

Many people have no problems maintaining their losses eating sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, and even whole-grain bread.

However, if you are insulin resistant at the end of your weight loss journey, you'll never be able to eat like you did before.

You will always have to restrict the carbohydrate content of your diet to some degree.

How you ate before is what led to the body storing all of that excess energy in the form of body fat, so you don't want to go back to mindless eating.

For example, when I moved into the maintenance phase, it was not a free-for-all like many dieters dream that maintenance will be. I have to carefully monitor my calorie and carbohydrate intake so that I don't go over 60 to 120 grams of carbs per day and stay within my calories for maintenance.

While this is certainly higher in carbs and calories than a typical low-carb diet, it is no where near the 300 to 500 grams of carbohydrates that I was eating before I went low carb.

Today, I've been eating at this low-carb level for so long that I can pretty well stay within that tolerance without actually counting those calories, but in the beginning of the maintenance phase, I had to carefully watch everything I put in my mouth.

Maintenance isn't a free-for-all.
You still have to keep a close eye on your carbs.

The very act of restricting calories means you'll have to limit the amount of carbohydrate you eat, and maybe fat grams, as well, depending on your particular metabolism and genetics.

If you don't, if you go back to eating what you ate before, you'll eventually return to the weight you weighed before, and possibly even more.

The trick to lasting weight loss is to make low carb pleasant and sustainable. It has to be a way of life.

Low carb has to be something you do because this is how you eat now, and not something you do on a temporary basis to reach some arbitrary number on the scale.

The woman who owns the house of the basement we were renting in Utah was diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor put her on some kind of pills and a low-carb diet. It's was a real struggle for her because carb restriction was forced upon her.

It wasn't something she chose to do.

And like so many low-carb dieters, she expected the changes and rewards for compliance to be immediate.

They weren't.

In fact, she gained 6 pounds in the first month. My hubby tried to reassure her that eventually, she would adjust to the changes.

"We've been doing this for so long now, this is just how we eat," he said.

She nodded and assured him that she was getting more used to eating this way, but she still wasn't happy.

Low-Carb Strawberry Shortcakes can be
more tasty than what you ate before.

When you place particular foods at the center of your life, and all of a sudden, those favorite foods are gone, giving them up can be one of the hardest things you will ever do. Like losing a loved one, many go through the various stages of loss and grief.

Since hubby and I are gluten free, I completely understand that.

However, if you entered into the low-carb world willingly, or even because you thought low carb would get you what you want, sustainability is what keeps you from throwing in the towel when the going gets rough.

And what better way to embrace sustainability than to take Dr. Westman's words to heart.

To be successful, seek out low-carb foods and recipes that taste better than what you were eating before. That idea rocked my world when I first heard it because it brought something into focus that I had been struggling with:

The sense of taste, and the pleasure that eating provides, plays a large role in whether a low-carb diet is sustainable – or not.

If you don’t like the low-carb foods you're eating, or the primal foods or paleo foods or whatever you’re doing, you won’t stick with the program for the rest of your life.

You'll be quick to bail when the scale doesn't reward you like you thought it should.

The bottom line is this:

You have to enjoy what you’re eating.

You have to enjoy what you’re doing, or you’ll reach a point where you don’t care if you’re inside or outside of the carbohydrate-restriction wagon.

So with that thought in mind, I decided to look at Easter from a different perspective.

Yesterday’s Easter Eggs

When I was growing up, we always went to the park for their Easter Egg hunt on the Saturday morning before Easter. I never found any eggs. The park divided us up into age groups, and the eggs for my group were too difficult to find, but we always went and participated anyway.

However, our personal Easter Egg hunt at home was fun and exciting.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon coloring the eggs, and then my dad would hide them around the yard while we anxiously waited inside. After church, my siblings and I would have a contest to see who could find the most eggs.

Back then, before the Internet age, we didn’t do anything spectacular with the eggs. We simply used an Easter Egg Coloring Kit, which offered us little colored pellets we dropped in water.

That’s it.

The longer you left the hard-boiled eggs in the colored water, the darker the eggs became.

How We Colored Eggs When I was Growing Up

When I was a little bit older, the kits started offering special crayons and stickers.

The crayons showed through the colored dye, but they didn't like to stay in place and often fell off long before dad could hide them.

Today, the web offers lots of opportunities to spark new and unique ideas for Easter Eggs. You don’t have to settle for simple, colored eggs if you don't want to. You can get your mind and emotions into the holiday and really let your personality and imagination come to life.

How to Make Adorable Easter Eggs for a Low-Carb Easter 

Even if you're not particularly creative, you can easily take your inspiration from other items you have at home or items that made a big impact on you. 

Remember those antique blue and white plates that grandma used to put on display? When I was growing up, those blue and white plates were never used, not even for company.

If you don't feel confident enough to come up with your own color combinations for Easter, then don't. 

Simply, borrow the colors that were used to make those fancy plates. Look how nice the simple white flowers with a yellow center look against the dark blue background. While this egg was actually hand-painted, you don't have to go to that extent.


Instead, take a stroll down the aisles of your local Walmart, crafts store, or material outlet to see what types of sewing notions and supplies might spark your interest. 

Buttons, rick rack, braid, ribbons, tiny bows, yarn, or even iron-on appliques can offer a wide variety of resources to turn a plain colored Easter Egg into a masterpiece.

Colored Hard-Boiled Eggs Wrapped in Beads

Alternatively, you can raid your old jewelry box, or take a visit to your local thrift store to see what old treasures might be available. Colored Easter Eggs will take on a whole new look when you wrap them in strings of tiny beads.

The idea is to make your eggs something special.

• Something different. 
• Something fun. 

You don't have to hand paint them like the blue egg above. Just glue a piece of braid or ribbon to the egg, around the middle to divide it in half, and then dot it with other interesting trinkets, stickers, or paint. I have actually seen white-flower trim for dresses and blouses that would be very similar to the egg painted above.

The Idea Isn't to Copy What Others Have Done

When you look at what others have done, don't say, "That's too complicated for me," and then turn away. 

The idea isn't to copy what others have done. Sit back, look at the display for a while, and check out the principles they used to spark your own imagination and creativity.

The above giant Styrofoam-covered eggs are decorated with tiny appliques and trims. The small Easter basket is creatively folded wide ribbon. Each egg is unique. Yours can be too. 

We tend to place so much emphasis on food when it comes to holidays, that we often give little time or thought to what makes Easter exciting!

It's not always about having loads of talent. Sometimes, the best displays are made from whatever you already have on hand. 

Take the Easter Bunny above as an example. I was drawn to this picture because I'd never thought about using a tangerine for a bunny's head before.

The ears are simply cut out of heavy paper. The eyes are a standard fabric-store item that I've seen in the craft section of Walmart. 

The rabbit doesn't even have a body; it's placed so it looks like he's hiding in a grass-like plant. The hard-boiled eggs aren't even colored. They are simply used as is, so their white color adds more of a contrast with the dark green grass.

Hard-Boiled Eggs Can be Used
for a Christmas Manger Scene

The Easter Story actually starts with Christmas, and the birth of Christ, so look how clever this simple display is. 

It uses brown eggs turned into faces with a marking pen, some colored burlap cloth to turn the eggs into Mary, Joseph, and the Christ-child. There's even a roughly woven tiny manger.

You don't have to use bunnies and symbols you're uncomfortable with. Create an Easter Egg display that holds the true meaning of Easter for YOU.

So what could you do with colored markers? 

• Foil?
• Tissue paper?
• Sticky shelf paper?
• Material scraps?

How about patchwork eggs sitting on a decorative pillow? Or a face with a fabric flower arranged for the hair? 

In my own neck of the woods, it's been raining and snowing. Cotton balls could be attractively stretched a bit, and arranged around the decorated Easter Eggs for the base of the display, resembling snow drifts.

Even decorated eggs sitting inside a fancy bowl would look nice for an Easter Dinner Centerpiece.

Painting eggs can be simple or complex, depending on how much work you want to put into it. Some people use water colors, as above, while others use a more hearty paint that will bead up and look more intricate, delicate, and lace-like.

The how-to isn't as complicated as you think, though it is very time consuming and takes a lot of practice. While the flowers, butterfly, and duck above were likely made using a tiny brush, the centers of the flowers use the same technique as more lacy applications.

I honestly didn't know HOW to do this until I ran into the above photo on Pixabay. She is using a toothpick dipped in paint to make the design, which is nothing but dots. Tons of dots.

But Easter Eggs don't have to be pretty.

They can be turned into anything that has a similar shape. In fact, decorating Easter Eggs isn't much different than decorating a pumpkin.

All it takes is the ability to see relationships, such as turning them into a bouquet of balloons. However, an egg's irregular shape can be used to your advantage, as well.

Try painting an egg to look like a football and have some type of action character cross the goal line with it. You could also set your eggs up to look like they were once round, and are now being squashed.

To do that, place a child's 4-wheel truck on top of one of the eggs, or have an action figure put their foot on it in triumph.

You could also flip the whole egg idea completely on its head, and use the eggs for the foundation of your display instead.

Okay. Not everyone is creative. I get that. But look at this:

It reminded me of Humpty Dumpty falling off a wall built of sugar cubes that I placed on a sheet cake once. And then I ran into an egg where someone did exactly that:

Granted, you wouldn't want the cracked eggs to be sitting around for longer than Easter Dinner, but it certainly makes the point that you don't have to have a special flair of creativity to be able to have a little bit of low-carb fun to your Low-Carb Easter Holiday.

See what I mean?

The above eggs simply have glued-on moving eyes, and eyebrows, nose, and smile added with a black marker. Obviously, if they were dyed in a variety of bright colors, they would be more striking and memorable, but the point is:

You don't have to put out more effort than you want to.

There's no special talent needed to add a touch of fun, and since we're trying to remove food from being center stage of our lives, getting into the Easter holiday by decorating those hard-boiled eggs you're going to make anyway is a super-good way to do exactly that.

Remember:

Sustainability is the name of the game, and the way you bring sustainability to a low-carb diet is to discover ways to make your eating style so fun and tasty you won't want to stop.