“Lazy” LCHF diet?

DCUKMod

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From your list of meals, here's how I would tackle each day, if I couldn' do anything else:

Sunday - roast dinner with veg - fine - no spuds or yourkies
Monday - breaded chicken (Kiev, nuggets, or escalope) veg left over or baked beans and roast potatoes chopped and fried. Remove the breaded coating on the kievs, have leftover veg and swerve the potatoes
Tuesday - sausage chips/mash baked beans or peas. Sausage, with peas, and no potato is the better option
Wednesday - shepherds pie (carrots inside) and mash or spaghetti bolognese. Shepherds pie - leave the roof to one side
Thursday - grilled gammon, fried eggs, baked beans and chips or breaded chicken wraps Gammon and fried egg - yummy. Maybe they'd do an extra egg?
Friday - fish or fish fingers peas or beans and chips Remove the crumbs or batter from the fish. Peas.
Saturday - burger or hot dog and chips Bunless burger (what it says on the tin)

Where your dinner looks lonely on the plate, you could use bagged salad to augment and add colour, maybe with some coleslaw.

There's something every day. By eating as I guggest and swerving what I'd call the big carbs (portions of chips, potatoes, pasta and so on), you're already making headway, and as you become more experienced you'll find more swaps that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Diabetes.co.uk does have a Low Carb Programme, which is available, by prescription, via your GP. It doesn't have a specific meal plan, but does do lots of suggestions and recipes. It is al so a structured educational programme, aimed at empowering people, living with T2, prediabetes or obesity.

You could ask your GP about that?

The website is here: https://www.lowcarbprogram.com/ , and in the NHS App Library: https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/low-carb-program/


Good luck with it all.
 

Brunneria

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Hi @Fndwheelie

Great suggestions above.

Just a couple of suggestions to add

My husband has made a v simple and easy swap by replacing potatoes with cauliflower cheese.

Now, in our household, i prefer to make it from scratch, but his appetite for not-pot-cauli-cheese is fairly voracious, and my life is too short to spend cooking vast vats of it, portioning and freezing. Soooo boring.

So now, we compromise. Every so often, i cook up a massive batch for the freezer, but also, every time we do a shop, we buy these too:
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/258302991
They will freeze if necessary.
10g carbs per half pack.
Obviously not as low carb as homemade, but a heck of a lot lower carb than the equivalent portion of potato.

If you wanted to eat the meals from the menu you mentioned, you could do so, just ignoring the carby stuff and replacing it with a dollop of cauli cheese.

Plus, cauli cheese is a complete meal in itself if you want, especially with a bit of mattersons sausage cropped on top.

My Mr B has been known to live off cauli cheese, when I scamper off for a few days.

On the same theme, Tescos (but all the supermarkets offer a similar range) offer these

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256751640

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256111494

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/303434714

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/303434651

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/294083203

Do your carers shop for you? Or could you do a supermarket order online? I’m guessing that since you have conquered the dcuk forum, you could easily conquer a supermarket online ordering process. :D

I understand that the delivery men will bring the order into your kitchen, and leave it on the countertops, so you wouldn’t have to worry about anything more than placing it into the fridge.
There is, of course, a delivery charge, but these vary significantly throughout the week, and if you can book a delivery at less popular times, you can reduce that charge significantly. :)
 
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copilost

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i prefer to make it from scratch,
Hi Brunneria, can you give me some guidance on how to make the cheese sauce? Obviously my old flour based one is out (couldn't believe how many carbs in a tablespoon of flour). I made a cauliflower cheese using cream, cream cheese and hard cheese but it turned out more like cauliflower cheesecake! I was thinking maybe substitute in some greek yoghurt or creme fraiche?
 
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Mr_Pot

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Hi Brunneria, can you give me some guidance on how to make the cheese sauce? Obviously my old flour based one is out (couldn't believe how many carbs in a tablespoon of flour). I made a cauliflower cheese using cream, cream cheese and hard cheese but it turned out more like cauliflower cheesecake! I was thinking maybe substitute in some greek yoghurt or creme fraiche?
Depends how big your portion is and how low want to keep your carbs but...
When I make cauliflower cheese I use 40g plain flour. Flour is 76% carbs so that makes 30g of carbs. We have that between 3 so 10g of carbs each. That's not a huge portion but plenty to accompany meat instead of potatoes etc.
 

Brunneria

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Hi Brunneria, can you give me some guidance on how to make the cheese sauce? Obviously my old flour based one is out (couldn't believe how many carbs in a tablespoon of flour). I made a cauliflower cheese using cream, cream cheese and hard cheese but it turned out more like cauliflower cheesecake! I was thinking maybe substitute in some greek yoghurt or creme fraiche?

Sure!
Rather than derail this thread further, I have ‘woken up’ a thread from a while back where people were posting all their different recipes, so that you have a few to choose from. :)
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/low-carb-cheese-sauce.114470/
 

Resurgam

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My cauliflower cheese is cauliflower - frozen, from the freezer where large bags of it lurk - cooked gently microwaving for a few short bursts should do just as well as steaming it as I do. I cover the heap of cauliflower in cream cheese and give it a gentle shake - more a jiggle, to get the two to make friends, then add grated red Leicester cheese over the top, a sprinkle of paprika is good, or a pinch of herbs, or even a bit of strong blue cheese then warm until the cheese melts - should be OK in the microwave, but best done slowly - short bursts over a couple of minutes or the inside will be HOT!!
I always have tins of tuna or corned beef or ham around, also a fridge with bags of prepared salad, tomatoes radishes celery sticks coleslaw cucumber, oil and vinegar salad dressing - sometimes with added herbs - and a large bowl to get it all in. You could try Livlife bread, as it is only 4 gm of carbs per small slice - big difference from ordinary.
 
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copilost

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I'll be over at the cauliflower cheese thread from now on (quite a lot I imagine)
 

ringi

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Firstly I would forget about low carb and think about lower carb. For example advoiding the bread and pasta would greatly help. Track the meals that peak your BG the most, and try to modify them so they give the same BG increase as your best meals. Getting the same response from all meals is likely required given your fixed inslin dose.

Salad with olive oil may be a good option to add to any meal. Tinned cook fish and meat is also a good option.

Don't assume you can't get promision for a slow cooker as it is a lot lower risk then a grill. (I surprised they allow toaster given the risk of settling off fire alarms)

If you have a high BMI see if your GP will surport you losing weight with deit shakes, as these are well defined, so your GP could prescribed a lower inslin dose to go with them. (I consider not being able to cook is one of the few good reasons to use them)

See your GP about the inslin, remember you have a legel right to refuse to take any meds on any given occasion. Hence if you had 4 fix does prescribed of 10 units rather then one does of 40 u its, you could refuce some of the doses.

SGLT-2i have risks, but talk to your GP about them, as in your case, given your limited control over what food you can have, they may make since.

See if you can see a diabetes consultant as I think you may qualify for an insulin pump, then you could have control over the setting with the care staff refilling etc.
 
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Diakat

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@ringi - it is rare for T2s to get pumps and there are many reasons people may not wish/be able to live totally independently.
 

Fndwheelie

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@ringi thank you for your thoughts and ideas.

I think I have come to the realisation that lowering my carb intake by adjusting the meals provided would be more achievable than starting from scratch to get Keto low.

Re the slow cooker, I’m not going to pick that battle as I got permission for a blender to make smoothies. (I may just have ordered a blender that makes soups as well:lock:;))

I am seeing the gp Monday, so will put to them the idea of splitting my doses so I have more adjustments, and about the shakes and the other thing you mentioned. And the team at the hospital have referred me for diabetes clinic at the hospital so I will be seeing them soon.
 
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HSSS

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Be careful about the ingredients for smoothies and soups. Many typical recipes have a lot of carbs.
 

Fndwheelie

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@HSSS For the soups i was thinking of doing veggies and a stock/gravy then add some cooked chicken or something after blending. Experiment a bit, but if I know what goes in it should be ok. And the smoothies for breakfast are some purition (https://www.purition.co.uk/) protein shakes which say they can be Keto friendly.
 
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ringi

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Another thought, you can get frozen cauliflower rice you can cook in a microwave from Iceland, you could replace the pasta in a meal with it. Tesco sells frozen frittatas you can heat in a microwave, they are sold aimed as children's breakfasts.
 
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Resurgam

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I'm afraid that - having bought a Nutribullet just before diagnosis I found it was not a good idea - blending a salad caused a high spike, using one of the recipes from the book caused a huge spike.
 

nomoredonuts

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I'm afraid that - having bought a Nutribullet just before diagnosis I found it was not a good idea - blending a salad caused a high spike, using one of the recipes from the book caused a huge spike.
Quick non-thread-derailing reply:
Me too. Loved my Nutribullet for Christmas, then diagnosed in February. Gathered dust ever since...
 

Fndwheelie

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Quick update, and again massive thanks to everyone who came up with suggestions!

I have cut out bread, potatoes and and all them big no-no’s, I have adjusted meals given to me and I’m having protein yogurt for breakfast, and doing salad for tea. Even though I’m on holiday this week and have had a panini for lunch, my sugars have come down drastically keeping between 6 and 8 for the most part. But the naughty panini and my libre metre showed me that I didn’t peak until over 3 hours after eating and I was still nearly 9 by dinner time. Which has helped remind me why I’m doing this. My hba1c was 83 when tested a couple of weeks ago, the libre is now estimating it to be 51, I will see how accurate that is on future tests, but for now I’m quite happy.