Hi, it has been a while since I have been on here... I plan to drop in every now and then, this topic caught my eye
It is possible to low carb and be a proper vegetarian, I have been doing it since May 2009. We have to be better organised and you need to learn to prepare and cook if you can't do that already. If you don't enjoy what you are eating, you will feel deprived and you won't stick to it - this has to be a diet for life which will meet your nutritional needs.
I think one of the reasons that people would question if it is possible to low carb and be a vegetarian is because a lot of vegetarian food is simply horrid - which I think is why some people say they were vegetarian for so many years before giving it up. A lot of veggie food isn't actually prepared and eaten by vegetarians, it mostly seems to involve pasta, rice and baked potato, a tomato based sauce and cheese :? I have been a veggie since August 1985 and have eaten some pretty grotty meals as well as some truly delicious food in that time. I am quite a good cook, which helps a lot. And I have fed people who didn’t realise I was a veggie until all the food was gone!
My diet and my health has improved considerably since I have been low carbing, I have more energy and I have tied some health issues (headaches and a recurrence of my roseaca, mainly) to running high blood sugar numbers. A number of minor health problems have cleared up and my skin looks better than it has for years since my blood sugar levels reduced :mrgreen:
Managing your diet to accommodate your daily rhythms is very important. Testing helps you to understand your own diabetic body. I get dawn phenomenon that means high numbers lasting until about noon and have a couple of breakfasts that keep carbs to a minimum (flax/coconut porridge, protien shake or scrambled egg). I have minimal carbs in the morning and eat about 4 times during the days to try to manage blood levels.
I have been in the 5% club since 3 months in to low carbing. I think I’m currently on about 50-80 grams a day and don't restrict fat (coconut oil, butter and olive oil for cooking). I had quite a lapse over the winter, when I was really fed up and comfort eating resulted in an HBA1C of 5.9%, but I’m fairly confident it is a lot lower now.
I have managed to maintain a 20 kilo weight loss on a low carb diet. I need to lose a lot more (another 40 kilo) but have hit a bit of a wall. This is probably to do with menopausal issues as well as my menstrual cycle affecting my blood glucose levels. I have also been dealing with chronic pain from a foot injury a few years ago, which affected my ability to exercise. Dealing with chronic pain is a drag and this has affected my mood – when I am likely to comfort eat – and I had a major lapse at the beginning of this year.
I have also felt quite undermined by the support I have had from my GP surgery – they changed the diabetes care to another doctor who I have seen for other health matters and got on ok with, but with diabetes management she simply undermined my confidence. We now have a specialist nurse who understands carb restriction/low carbing and she is very supportive. However, as a vegetarian, I have never had good dietary advice from the NHS! My own GP is doing my diabetic check-ups again, whilst he may not approve of how often I test, he will at least discuss things with me. This has helped me get back on track.
You need to pay attention to some of the nutrients you need as some are more readily available in animal based food. For example, walnuts and flax/linseed are good vegetarian sources of omega 3. D3 is an issue in the UK, I burn very easily and so I take a vegetarian D3 supplement. You need to consider where you get your B12 from. After my lapse over the winter and some health problems and pain I started to take a multivitamin in the winter to make sure I got what I needed. I also drink a lot of green tea – there is a variation of taste between brands, so you may find one you like if you think you don’t like green tea.
I eat a very varied diet. A quick lunch for work includes a box of chopped up cheese and cucumber pieces. I eat a lot of salads and raw food (raw foods have less of an impact on my numbers) and my diet has a very Mediterranean/Asian bias. Cooking food affects the way your body responds to it, for example raw carrots are fine, but cooking them will give me quite a spike. Generally, I have found raw has less of an impact on my numbers. Making a decent salad dressing is important to keep thinks varied. I eat eggs, cheese, tofu and some pulses and have found ways of making a little bit of chocolate go a very long way :mrgreen: I have a slow cooker and make soups and stews in the winter and I am still experimenting with low carb bread so that there is something to chew with a soup.
I have also found places where I can get something to eat if I have not been organised enough to make lunch or there has been a last minute change of plan – M&S pre-prepared salads, but not the ones in the lunch time area, look in the eating at home section, there are several options, including a vegan one!
Hunger is the enemy! I don't usually get that hungry outside of meal times, but if I get hungry because I have not planned ahead I will eat cr*p, although the cr*p is now far less carbier than it was in January 2009! Make your freezer your friend, and remember to cut it up before you put it in there
Get some small plastic boxes that you can decant a snack portion of something like nuts in to and put them in the fridge or take out a piece of cut up snack from the freezer – my ability to judge portion size seems to be impaired if I’m hungry or in the midst of a pre menstrual carb craving!
I have just recovered from foot surgery which left me very dependent as I could not stand for a few weeks and I was a bit worried about what I would be able to eat when I was dependent on someone else. I cooked ahead and froze things in individual portions for while I was in bed. I have eaten quite well while I have been recovering. One of my persistent worries since I have been low carbing is how I would have coped if I’d been in hospital after the op.
I have virtually every low carb vegetarian cookbook ever printed on my kitchen bookshelves, I don't think there have been any new ones published for some time. What you need to remember is that they were written so we could join in with Atkins dieters when it was really big a few years ago. They may mention the benefits of low carbing for health reasons, but they were written from the perspective of a weight loss diet aid rather than managing diabetes. I find this means that I often adapt recipies, for example they often suggest you use the low fat version of an ingredient, which can really affect the carb count.
I have also found that a lot of more general low carb cook books have lovely veggie side dish recipes in them which can be scaled up to a main course. My favourite veggie low carb cookery book is the Celia Brooks Brown one, although this is out of print you can still get it for between £10-15 if you look on Amazon and eBay it is a wonderful investment, my kinf of food :mrgreen: In general recipie books, I like Neris and India’s Idiot proof diet book (the aubergine and feta pie is to die for) and a couple of my regular meals have come out of that book, and also the Low Carb Gourmet. I buy low carbing books whenever I see them in book sales, and have got several quite cheaply, there is always something you can adapt. I’m not that huge a fan of Rose Elliot, but have her books and she has provided some of our regular meals for us, including the protein shakes that are the basis of my minimal carb breakfast. I have also adapted recipies from my general recipe books. Online is also a great source of ideas for things to eat.
I have looked around online at a lot of low carbing sites and was taken aback at the strength of anti vegetarian sentiment on some of them, usually the ones extoling the virtues of low carb lifestyles, rather than the recipe based sites. I suspect that this may be in part due to the poor quality of mainstream vegetarian food for people who had already made up their minds based on what they see when eating out :sick: My evidence for maintaining my low carb vegetarian diet is how much better I feel and look since I have been on it :mrgreen: people who eat animal products seem to me to have the same range of health problems.
